Rahila Gupta, in today’s Guardian, delivers a confused ramble about the issue of “choice” in wearing or not wearing the hijab in the West and in Saudi Arabia and Iran:
I believe it is misplaced for women to prioritise their race or communal identity over their gender identity. This is a cloth that comes soaked in blood. We cannot debate the burka or the hijab without reference to women in Iran, Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia, where the wearing of it is heavily policed and any slippages are met with violence.
Muslim women in the west who talk about choosing to wear the hijab implicitly dismiss the struggles of their sisters elsewhere. Sure, not all women in Britain are forced to wear the hijab by the men in their families or communities. Many women argue that it preserves their modesty and protects them from men.
Isn’t it ironic that someone writing against hijab can describe it as “soaked in blood” less than a week after a pregnant woman was stabbed to death in Europe by a man who had harassed her for wearing hijab? Gupta invites us to sympathise with women who are bullied into wearing hijab in Saudi Arabia and Iran, a common argument for denial of Muslim religious rights in the UK when these two countries are, in fact, alone in a lot of aspects of the way they police adherence to Islam. Many religious Muslims, in fact, despise one or both of these régimes. Meanwhile, in other Muslim countries, Muslim women are not allowed to wear hijab at all, or barred from colleges and government buildings while wearing it, or prevented from going about their business, and some of this goes on in Europe as well. There are even Muslim families who try to stop their women wearing hijab. What would Rahila Gupta say to these husbands and fathers?
The comment about women who “prioritise their race or communal identity over their gender identity” is a standard feminist trope. Muslims use the terms “brothers” and “sisters” to mean other Muslims, or actual brothers and sisters, not just other men or other women. If Gupta expects hijab-wearing western Muslim women to have solidarity with women forced against their will to wear hijab in Saudi Arabia, perhaps she should show some for those who struggle for the right to wear it elsewhere without facing discrimination, harassment and murder. Or are those women not Gupta’s idea of “sisters”?
(More: Safiya Outlines, altmuslimah, Joseph Shahadi @ Racialicious.)
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blockquote cite=”The comment about women who ‘prioritise their race or communal identity over their gender identity’ is a standard feminist trope”>
A standard liberal Western feminist trope, IMHO. There are Islamic feminists a-plenty, of course, but like Toynbee, Gupta doesn’t seem to be aware that they even exist - not surprisingly, after all, if she did notice, she wouldn’t be able to speak on behalf of, and down to, Muslim women.
less than a week after a pregnant woman was stabbed to death in Europe by a man who had harassed her for wearing hijab?
That’s a one in a million, practically unique case set against the millions of women (all in Islamic countries) who will be punished by law or beaten by their husbands, fathers and brothers for not wearing it.
Hardly a problem.
Still a serious problem, actually. However, “the millions of women…who will be punished…by their husbands, fathers and brothers [and other muslim men concerned that women are not upholding the honour of the glorious ummah] for not wearing it” are not all in muslim countries.
“Soaked in Blood” is appropriately ironic for a British commentator after the atrocities committed in Iraq - something much more pertinent and unforgettable by the whole Muslim world. Her tone is reduced to a tinny robotic whine in the light of this injustice, and the faux concern initiated by the likes of the above commentators is likewise reduced to nothing more than backchatter…
The irony is to even hear these kinds of words being uttered from the citizen of a country which has so much innocent blood on its hands.
Random Guy: I don’t know if you mean me or Gupta. However, it is quite possible that she was against the invasion of Iraq, as there was massive opposition to it (and the biggest demonstration in London for ages). It was supported by one or two corners of the intellectual elite and hardly anyone else.
Most atrocities committed in Iraq were committed by mainly muslim Iraqis on mainly muslim Iraqis. Certainly, the U.S. and British governments were remarkably stupid to invade Iraq and give them the opportunity to kill one another and bear the blame for giving them that opportunity but most of the blood is on the hands of Iraqis.
most of the blood is on the hands of Iraqis. Indeed. More Muslims are killed by other Muslims than by non-Muslims.
The Guardian must have put tongue in cheek allowing Jeffries to make the insulting and misogynist claim that “a western fashion victim is as much a sartorial prisoner as a woman in a burka”. It’s idiocy is plain for all to see.
But to attack Gupta (a “confused ramble”) for objecting to it is beyond stupid - if you think her argument doesn’t answer the case properly then attack the Guardian for not finding someone better.
There’s an excellent chance we wanted Iraqis killing each other and set about causing it. (The incident of the two “British” rescued from that police station in Basra was particularly suspicious). However, just because we want extremism and misery in Iraq is no excuse for condoning it in Europe.
“There’s an excellent chance we wanted Iraqis killing each other and set about causing it.” Who are “we”, Daniel? Even if someone did want Iraqis killing each other they had no need to cause it: it was happening on a large scale before the invasion, eswpecially in therevolts of shias and Kurds and Saddam and the Ba’athists’ responses.
Indigo I was not talking to you, more aimed at Gupta. I was just pointing out the absurdity of her comments from a position of moral relativity.
I think if you compare the relative causalty rate before and after the ILLEGAL Western invasion and occupation of Iraq, the statistics will speak for themselves. We have a tendency to forget those maimed by Western weaponry, those forced into prostitution because of being made refugees, the innocent children killed and the infrastructure demolished. We can overlook it as the Western oil companies go back into Iraq for the reward, and forget Alan Greenspan’s comments that this war WAS resource-oriented i.e. about oil.
It is very easy to box it into Muslim-on-Muslim violence (it has in fact been Shia retribution for Saddam as the Sunni population was basically disenfranchised thanks to the Western alliance, followed by tit-for-tat revenge attacks).
Who created the conditions for present-day (and future) Iraq? Britain and the U.S. I understand that these comments digress slightly from the topic at hand, but I always keep hold of these facts when I see this kind of media commentary and offhand comments by people from the invading countries who still maintain some sort of illusion that they are a benevolent party to all this. It stinks of hypocrisy and ignorance, and to me illustrates the base stupidity inherent in all humanity - something which must always be challenged and overcome.
The deaths in the various Kurdish rebellions and the southern Iraqi rebellion and supression after the Iraqi expulsion from Kuwait were pretty big. Add the attritional death rate of normal Ba’athist politics and you’d have a steady total. The motives for the invasion were- to say the least- confused, but if it really was inspired by “resources” alone it was completely unnecessary; it would have been perfectly easy to deal directly with Saddam, whose only principle was the retention of his own power.
The sunnis were not “disenfranchised” after the invasion; they lost their previous monopoly of political power- a rather different matter- and how is “Shia retribution for Saddam … followed by tit-for-tat revenge attacks” not Muslim-on-Muslim violence? Certainly Britain and the U.S.A. helped create conditions in contemporary Iraq, but it is absurd to speak as if the Iraqis themselves had no part in it and that everything that happened in Iraq happened regardless of them an their desires.
Whatever excuses you make does not change the fact that there is more blood on the hands of the UK and US then there ever will be on anyone else’s - because they were the initiators and the catalysts of all the calamities that have happened in that country.
” they were the initiators and the catalysts of all the calamities that have happened in that country.” I see. Saddam Hussein is innocent O.K.