It's still open season on niqabis, as the Independent prints four letters in response to Deborah Borr's attack on them in Saturday's edition. The letters can be read here in the left-hand column (not paywalled). The first letter conveys feminist outrage, the second concerns about "trust" and "security", while the third and fourth are basically defensive.
Nicole Ivanoff, a Labour candidate for what looks like a safe Tory council seat in Lancashire in June 2004 (you can read a brief biography here; this letter from the Lancashire Evening Telegraph claims that Ivanoff praised the French government's "integration" policy), claims that it makes her blood boil to see "women who cover their hair with scarves, their faces with veils, their bodies in shapeless garments for so-called religious reasons":
If the leaders of British Muslim communities fail to grasp how sad and angry most of us women in this country feel when we think about the way a large proportion of Muslim women are treated by their men, they will never understand why it is so hard for us to remain tolerant or respectful of their religion and way of life.
I suspect that, like Deborah Orr from last Saturday, Ivanoff has not bothered to ask women who cover their face why they do it and on whose instigation. It does happen that some women do it under pressure from male (and female) family members, but others do it on their own instigation against the wishes of their family. I have had personal correspondence with Muslim women of various backgrounds who veil their faces and whose mothers and sisters do not.
Not only does she make assumptions about Muslim women; she also makes a few about her own kind. "Us women"? How many have you asked, outside your own cosy little Labour party circle, Nicole?
No doubt a minority of Muslim women do defend their decision to hide face and body in the name of their faith. But there are hundreds of different interpretations of the Koran. There are hundreds of different ways Muslim women express their faith and live their lives. Millions across the world wear modern clothes and go about the business of building a life as independent, free women.
And millions also lead independent professional lives dressed as Muslim women, in the west and in the Muslim world. It is only a barrier to women doing this when secularists who hate the sight of a Muslim woman (or religious extremists) decide to make it an obstruction, as they have in France and Turkey. There may be hundreds of ways a devious person can twist the words of the Qur'an and the Hadeeth (yes, there is another source of Islam), but the words say one thing and there are only a handful of valid interpretations - that is, there are only so many ways an honest person can interpret their meaning. An honest person cannot interpret them to mean a woman can wear what she likes, the direction people like Ivanoff want to take us.
By being "understanding", "respectful" or "tolerant" of any woman who hides her hair, covers her face or wraps her body in black because that is what the men in her life or her religious leaders demand of her, are we not saying to our Muslim sisters, "We don't care about you, your liberation is not our business, you are no sister of mine, go back to your own country"?
How is it that tolerating someone's way of life in this country amounts to telling them to go back where they came from? Does she not realise that their own country is in many cases this one? This woman's capacity for logical thought has clearly deserted her on this issue. Perhaps a Muslim woman or two should write back to the Independent and tell this woman exactly what she needs to hear: that they don't care what she thinks, that their "liberation" is none of her business, that they are no sister of hers, and that she should go back to Russia or Ukraine or wherever her ancestors came from? (I'm not best placed to say this, as a man, and don't feel under any pressure, ladies ...)
I can't find anything reliable on MJ Adderley, the author of the second letter; Adderley seems a common name in his part of the north-west and the only returns on "MJ Adderley" are from a single genealogy site. He, or she, brings up the old saw about trust and security, calling the garment "the most sinister garment since the IRA balaclava". The niqab, in one form or another, pre-dates the IRA, never mind their balaclavas, by millenia. What a ridiculous statement! "Unless I can see someone full-face I cannot begin to trust them and I will not speak to them," Adderley opines. Well, women who cover their faces are allowed to uncover them when carrying out business which requires recognition, although a lot probably don't realise this. If Adderley is a woman, then according to most authorities a woman need not cover her face in all-female company.
It is ridiculous also because the IRA wore balaclavas for disguise and were criminals and terrorists, which most women in niqab are not. Despite the well-known issue of the identity disguise provided by "hoodies", which is less than that provided by niqab, the controversy has never extended to niqab because women in niqab are not associated with crime or trouble. They are associated with religious women minding their own business, which is why people interested in security hardly ever make an issue of it. It is not deemed a security risk in the countries where is is customary, even though these are often security-obsessed dictatorial or near-dictatorial régimes with secret police forces. So the people who "play the security card" do so out of ignorance or malice (a case in point being the Pakistani apostate blogger with whom I had a brief argument on the issue a few months back, who insisted that it was still a security risk even after I told him it had never been associated with terrorism in this country, and where I did know of it being an issue - in Kenya - it was to do with crime, not terrorism).
Adderley continues:
I think of all those British women who suffered for women's rights over the past century and I grieve that we have made so little impact on these younger women who appear to live in their own time zone, in a foreign state, and certainly not ours. These are not Britons.
Again, tired stereotypes and false connections. Actually, the number who "suffered for women's rights" are not that many and mostly campaigned for the right to vote - and a lot of those who cover their faces do vote (though some don't, but then, the same is true of those who don't veil their faces as well). A fair percentage of these women were born here, speak English as a first and possibly sole language and received their Islamic education, including perhaps the impetus to wear niqab, in English. They may have a Pakistani or Bangladeshi ethnicity, but they would not fit in in either of these countries. Their culture may be different in most respects from (most) white Britons, but they have no country on this earth other than this one.
Before I finish, I should point out that a lot of the women who dress this way do not wear shapeless or sack-like clothes at all; usually their garments roughly describe their figure. I've seen plenty of slim women whose figures are not greatly disguised, even if they wear the black coat/scarf/niqab kit (which, by the way, a lot actually don't). If she looks big, it's not a disguised figure caused by wearing voluminous garments: she probably is big. Some women are, you know. It is depressing that stereotypes of "oppressed veiled women" are still being peddled in supposedly respectable broadsheets after all these years, when a lot of the worst oppression takes place in families which lack education either religious or secular, and in which women don't wear the headscarf, let alone the niqab.
I wrote to the Independent yesterday in disgust at their letters section. I can't believe that not a single letter stood up for the rights of Muslim women to veil or for 'freedom of choice' that western culture supposedly promotes for that matter.
Unlike the Arab Gulf regions the burqa is not compulsory attire in the UK and thus it seems to me that in many cases a woman veiled in Britain is probably veiled due to self-liberating personal choices and not because of rigid fundamentalist police.
I also understand that in other cases husbands may pressure their wives to veil but would like to think that by living in Britain their attitudes towards women would differ very much to those of their exaggerated eastern representations. I wouldn't like however to assume anything about women that veil or 'the men that make them' and I truly believe that the only way to deal with ignorance such as that displayed yesterday is by asking questions and learning to respect and embrace diversities. The small mindedness of yesterdays commenters actually makes my 'blood boil.'
I would like to think it's borne out of a terrible fear of the unknown mostly, Yusof. Also, it is due to the fact that they don't quite know how to deal or get a grip with their fear, coupled with ignorance, that they hit out at the more vulnerable members of the community - ie: the niqab-ed women.
You could also say this is a form of bullying, further fuelled by assumptions/presumptions that Muslim women by and large may and/or do not know how to hit back; as they mistakenly thought these same women are ignorant, submissive, have no mind of their own [as opposed to their liberated feminist selves which they'd never fail to remind us] and generally speak no English.
How the hey do I know? My ex-circle of expat female friends echoed exact same mentality - and fear of course - as these so-called liberated feminists. You should see the undisguised fear on their faces when they noticed a sudden rise of hijab-ed women over here immediately after Sept 11.
I couldn't help it but, erm, larf. Apart from being mildly annoyed with their inability to engage brain before gob.
Assalaamu alaikum,
Just for the record, the burqa (or niqab) is not compulsory in the Arab Gulf countries either. In Saudi, most Saudi women wear it, but some don't, and many other women don't, either. Outside Saudi, even the hijab is not required. (And actually, you can see women in Saudi not even wearing hijab.)
I went to the dentist today; my dentist was an Egyptian woman in hijab, and there was also a Kuwait dentist in hijab who was in training. When the dentist put the mask on, I commented that some people argue that women with niqab shouldn't be able to drive, because they think they can't see (we can) - yet here she was doing dental work while wearing a mask which was just like wearing a niqab. They both laughed and she said, "Yes, of course the niqab doesn't prevent you from seeing". (And surgeons do very detailed, critical operations while covering most of their face, too.)
Great post Yusuf. You should write a letter to the Independent. And if you send it under the name 'Indigo Jo' then you'll probabily get some of Indy readers to come on here and read in full what you've written.
Salam alaikum
Before I became Muslim 8 years ago I never had an issue or a problem with Muslim women wearing a hijab / headscarf, but I must be honest: it took me a long time to accommodate the concept of nikab, even after I became Muslim. No doubt this was a cultural concern which was based on assumptions, not on any particular reasoning. I would never have denied a woman the right to wear the nikab if she so chose, but it did make me uncomfortable. From my perspective, what was the issue? It wasn't fear. I guess it would have something to do with being brought up in a fairly feminist household, with my mother being amongst the first women to be ordained priest in the English Anglican Church. It would be the feeling that women in nikab were being forced to dress this way in an attempt to make them invisible, to deny their very existence.
My first encounter with the nikab was at university. In September '97 when I went to register for my second year after the summer break I was standing in line behind a young woman dressed completely in a loose black garment, her face veiled behind nikab. By that time my general respect for women in hijab had extended to an acceptance that the nikab was a mere extension of that choice... but this illusion was just about to be shattered. This woman was angry – either because the queue was moving too slowly in the intense heat or because she had forgotten some crucial documents – and I was shocked and appalled by her words, as she repeatedly uttered the F-word quite loudly. If such impiety and immodesty could slip from a person's tongue, I told myself, my previous conclusions about the mode of dress were clearly false. Thus, I asked, was she really wearing those garments out of personal choice as a mark of modesty, or rather because she was forced to do so? And perhaps this was one source of my early perception of nikab. I began to ponder – in paranoia – on the laughter of the young ladies in black for this kafir geek over the previous year during my run-in with some non-practising Muslims. Later, after I became Muslim, it was the harsh words some of these women had for other sisters who were considered not to be wearing hijab properly. I guess all of these things fostered a prejudice inside which said, "If these people do not have modesty in their hearts, the reason that they wear those garments must come from somewhere other than their heart." Nonsense really, but this is the nature of prejudice.
But look, this was the view of one who became Muslim - someone who has an interest, a love for Islam: someone who was sympathetic to Islam and who took up this path. I guess what I'm trying to say is, we need to give more thought about how we communicate with non-Muslims and deal with the assumptions which come up. Remember that we often make assumptions about non-Muslims too – like those sisters in hijab who concluded that I hated Muslims when I wouldn't look at them before I became Muslim, whilst I thought that lowering my gaze was expected of me. These days, through my writing relationships, through professional relationships, through friends, I know of many women who choose to wear nikab, those who follow the Shafi'i madhab, those who consider themselves Sufi and those who consider themselves Salafi. Nowadays I am not opposed to nikab for those who choose to wear it, but it took me a long time to get to this point. I'm not going to dishonestly say this was always so, and I'm not going to start pointing fingers at non-Muslims who continue to find it difficult.
In the particular case of the Independent commentator, Debra Orr – perhaps we have to bare in mind the backdrop against which western feminists often write. They are not writing on the basis of their experience of the Muslim context, but are rebelling against the heritage of our own society, i.e. its Christian traditions. The veil or the headscarf reminds them of the words of the evangelist Paul, who is often identified as a misogynist by European feminists, and thus it is associated directly with his words instead of with the teachings of Islam. In his first letter to the Corinthians which is found after the Gospels in the Canonical Bible, Paul instructs his followers that "every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonours her head" (1 Corinthians 11:5). These words are in turn related to other sayings of Paul concerning women such as, "I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.” (1 Corinthians 11:3-16). Later in the letter he goes further, seemingly contradicting the allowance that a woman might prophesise, saying, "Let the women keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is a disgrace for a woman to speak in church." (1 Corinthians 14:34-35)
I have no doubt that this backdrop plays a major role in the perception of the hijab amongst educated feminists. While Islam has a tradition of female scholarship, feminists view church history as largely misogynist, particularly in light of the later theological debates concerning whether women have a soul, and so on. Thus this very potent distrust of religion persists in the minds of many concerning the role of women. It is not prejudice against Islam per se, but more generally prejudice against religion and against their own religious tradition in particular. The Eurocentric mindset of many of these people prevents them from seeing difference in the context of a much more diverse world history.
I think Muslims need to be more intelligent in confronting such perceptions. It is not good enough to constantly repeat the refrain "it's Islamophobia / anti-Semitic" – we need to get to the root of the matter, to find out what's really behind the concerns. Is there anything we can do to help? Do we need to explain matters better? Do we know enough about the societies and communities we find ourselves amongst, about their histories and traditions? Do we know why people may react a certain way, or are we just making assumptions of our own? These are some of the things we should be thinking about.
Assalaamu alaikum,
Neurocentric, I do understand what you're saying, and when I think back, I didn't understand women who wore niqab, even after I had become Muslim.
But this piece by Deborah Orr isn't a thoughtful comment like yours. It's full of extremely insulting words; the women and/or their clothes are described as: dressed outlandishly, constrained, bizarre[ly], fool, sinister, deeply offensive, repulsive and insulting, awful and saddening, and stifling.
She shows nothing but disgust and hatred for the women themselves; if she really feels that they're the victims of oppression, then you wouldn't expect her to have such comtempt for them. (The entire article is available at http://www.islamophobia-watch.com/islamophobia-watch/2006/7/10/why-the-sight-of-veiled-women-offends-me.html)
It reminds me of the French attitude that girls in hijab are oppressed and they can't let them be oppressed, so they'll rescue them by... denying them an education?
No offense to you Britons, but I wish the women from the Gulf would stop going and spending their money there in London. As they shop and eat - and spend their money - they're offending people like Ms. Orr.
little does this busy body deborah know that wearing the niqab is the most liberating thing for any woman!.
mu'naqabahs (women who wear a niqab) walk around not worrying about being cat called by builders, or invited to come in to men's cars.They know that if the applied for a job they got it because of their mind not how short their skirts are or how lovely the hair was!.The never get treated like a peace of meat.
living in male dominated society, this is truly the way for women.To cover modestly puts and end or nearly to rape, compare the rape crimes in england to any muslim country!.
i would love to speak out, but i highly doubt my voice will be heard. The media soooo against islam these days!.
Ann: FYI, the article at Islamophobia Watch has been taken down.
Assalaamu alaikum,
JD, I think the problem was that I put a parentheses that got included in the link. Try it without it: http://www.islamophobia-watch.com/islamophobia-watch/2006/7/10/why-the-sight-of-veiled-women-offends-me.html