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| Veiling the Real Issues in
Islam Anthony J. Aschettino Researcher - Middle East studies Islam, as a religion on the whole, is not
extremely complicated. One of the things that personally attracted me the
most to the faith was its simplicity in its most basic tenets. Worship one
God, pray, fast, give charity and, if possible, visit the holy sites of
the religion once in a lifetime. This is not something of an overly
complicated system, rather it is a religion that appeals to man's senses
and requires nothing extreme, nor does it ask one to believe in
complicated doctrines and philosophies. Naturally, we as humans have found
a way to mess things up. The rights (and obligations) of women are
always a very hot topic in Islam and with those who examine the way Islam
treats women as opposed to say Christianity or the "West" in
general. To those who defend it, Islam gives women a variety of rights
that were not given to her in pre-Islamic times. Aside from that, the
focus in Islam on respecting women and on their highly held place in terms
of being a mother (as one hadith puts it, "heaven lies at the feet of
your mother") and the rights that a wife has over her husband. It is
very true that despite the vast cultural abuses heaped upon women in
certain parts of the world, and we cannot say enough that these are
cultural and not religious in nature, Islam in its intentions does give
women various rights and is protective of them. Those who attack the
treatment Islam gives women point out the fact that although some of these
rights and obligations were indeed a step up from the pre-Islamic time
period, that hardly holds true today where equality in the West has
trumped the way women are relegated to a secondary role in the household
Islamically and that Islam remains, in spite of the best efforts of many
apologists (myself included), a patriarchal religion. Central to this whole debate I am now
painting is the issue of veiling in Islam, or as it is called in Arabic
the hijab. It is, to say the least, one of the most divisive issues in the
Muslim world today. More than anything else, more than a beard or a kufi
or a shalwar-khameez, the hijab is the most noticeable sign of Islam in
the public sphere. It is used for various reasons: some women wear it
because they believe that the Qur'an (and thus God Himself) commands that
it be the case, and they do cite Qur'an for this as well as hadith. Some
women wear it because it is a clear political message to the rulers of
their various states that they are siding with Islamist forces. Some wear
it, and this is especially true in the United States, because it serves as
community identification: it says, "I am a Muslim woman." Some
wear it because family or friends pressure them into it. I have met,
during the several years that I have been Muslim, women who wear the hijab
for all of the above reasons. Many of the Muslim women I have talked with
who do not wear the hijab belong to one of two schools: those who say that
they know they should wear it, but for some reason or another do not, and
those who feel that it is not necessary at all. The stance of Muslim men on the issue is
much more simple: the vast majority of Muslims in the West believe that it
is something fard, or obligatory, on women much as prayer is obligatory on
Muslims in general. The belief is that a woman is not being a good Muslim
if she does not veil. This does not mean covering the face, niqab as it is
called; most men will simply say that it is enough to cover the hair. In
Islamic Society meetings at Rutgers University where I attended as an
undergraduate, one speaker went so far as to say, "No man really
wants to marry a woman who does not wear hijab." Often, brothers were
very particular as to whom they saw as "decent" sisters or not,
although I do not wish for the reader to infer that they were
disrespectful to those who did not wear a head covering. It was, to say
the least, the main issue in many of the meetings. When I was a Catholic,
we used to joke about this older priest in our parish. No matter what the
topic of the gospel readings for the day, somehow he managed to bring the
homily (which is a sort of khutba for those who do not know) around to the
topic of abortion. This is how I feel with so many of the lectures I have
attended as a Muslim, especially when women were in the audience:
eventually the topic would turn to hijab, and how many of the problems of
the Muslim world could be solved if only women would don the hijab (I kid
you not, one speaker said this). Why I bring this up is simple: it
highlights the main fault that Muslims in the 21st century have. We are so
concerned with an issue such as this that we ignore the more ongoing
plights of the Muslim world. I cannot tell you how many Muslim women have
stopped going to meetings because they feel that they are being talked
down to just because they feel that the hijab should be something
ordinary. As my friend put it once, "why should I go to a meeting
where a speaker tells us that 'there is no way to tell the difference
between a woman who does not wear hijab and a common whore' and sit there
feeling all of the eyes in the room descend upon me?" Perhaps this is
something that is much more of an issue in America. Another friend of mine
from Pakistan told me that his first real encounter with younger women
(college age) who wore hijab was when he came to the United States. This
was also the only place that he felt it was being forced as an issue. Perhaps I would not be so upset about this
if I did not feel that there were several, much more pressing issues
facing the Muslim world right now. One is, for example, the fact that we
have failed to establish any sort of political presence in the United
States despite having a population at least on part with those of the
Jewish faith. Those of us who support Pakistan have also fallen woefully
behind the rabidly Hindu pro-Indian lobby, which is getting more and more
successful at branding Pakistan a terrorist entity. Some of the brightest
Muslim women I have met were from Pakistan and they did not wear the hijab;
should we bar them from taking an active place in the Muslim community
because of this? If a Palestinian girl who does not wear hijab wants to
speak at a rally against the Occupation, should we cast her aside? As
Muslims we have made this issue of such paramount importance that we
neglect to talk about the more pressing issues that will eventually decide
whether we can recover from the blow that men like Osama bin Laden dealt
us on 11th September. Source: |