How
I Came to Love the Veil
I used to
look at veiled women as quiet, oppressed creatures -- until I was captured by
the Taliban. In September 2001, just 15 days after the terrorist attacks
on the United States, I snuck into Afghanistan, clad in a head-to-toe blue burqa,
intending to write a newspaper account of life under the repressive regime.
Instead, I was discovered, arrested and detained for 10 days. I
spat and swore at my captors; they called me a “bad” woman but let me go after
I promised to read the Quran and study Islam. (Frankly, I’m not sure who
was happier when I was freed -- they or I.) Back home in London, I kept my word
about studying Islam -- and was amazed by what I discovered. I’d been
expecting Quran chapters on how to beat your wife and oppress your daughters;
instead, I found passages promoting the liberation of women.
Two-and-a-half years after my capture, I converted to Islam, provoking a
mixture of astonishment, disappointment and encouragement among friends and
relatives.
Now, it
is with disgust and dismay that I watch here in Britain as former foreign
secretary Jack Straw[1]
describes the Muslim nikab -- a face veil that reveals only the
eyes -- as an unwelcome barrier to integration, with Prime Minister Tony Blair,
writer Salman Rushdie and even Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi leaping to
his defense. Having been on both sides of the veil, I can tell you that
most Western male politicians and journalists who lament the oppression of
women in the Islamic world have no idea what they are talking about. They
go on about veils, child brides, female circumcision, honor killings and forced
marriages, and they wrongly blame Islam for all this -- their arrogance
surpassed only by their ignorance. These cultural issues and customs have
nothing to do with Islam. A careful reading of the Quran shows that just
about everything that Western feminists fought for in the 1970s were available
to Muslim women 1,400 years ago. Women in Islam are considered equal to
men in spirituality, education and worth, and a woman’s gift for childbirth and
child-rearing is regarded as a positive attribute. When Islam offers
women so much, why are Western men so obsessed with Muslim women’s attire?
Even British government ministers Gordon Brown and John Reid have made
disparaging remarks about the nikab -- and they hail from across the Scottish
border, where men wear skirts.
When I
converted to Islam and began wearing a headscarf, the repercussions were
enormous. All I did was cover my head and hair -- but I instantly became
a second-class citizen. I knew I’d hear from the odd Islamophobe, but I
didn’t expect so much open hostility from strangers. Cabs passed me by at
night, their “for hire” lights glowing. One cabbie, after dropping off a
white passenger right in front of me, glared at me when I rapped on his window,
then drove off. Another said, “Don’t leave a bomb in the back seat” and
asked, “Where’s bin Laden hiding?” Yes, it is a religious obligation for
Muslim women to dress modestly, but the majority of Muslim women I know like
wearing the hijab, which leaves the face uncovered, though a few prefer
the nikab. It is a personal statement: My dress tells you that I
am a Muslim and that I expect to be treated respectfully, much as a Wall Street
banker would say that a business suit defines him as an executive to be taken
seriously. And, especially among converts to the faith like me, the
attention of men who confront women with inappropriate, leering behavior is not
tolerable.
I was a
Western feminist for many years, but I’ve discovered that Muslim feminists are
more radical than their secular counterparts. We hate those ghastly
beauty pageants, and tried to stop laughing in 2003 when judges of the Miss
Earth competition hailed the emergence of a bikini-clad Miss Afghanistan, Vida
Samadzai, as a giant leap for women’s liberation. They even gave Samadzai
a special award for “representing the victory of women’s rights.” Some
young Muslim feminists consider the hijab and the nikab political
symbols, too, a way of rejecting Western excesses such as binge drinking,
casual sex and drug use. What is more liberating: being judged on the
length of your skirt and the size of your surgically enhanced breasts, or being
judged on your character and intelligence? In Islam, superiority is
achieved through piety -- not beauty, wealth, power, position or sex.
I didn’t
know whether to scream or laugh when Italy’s Prodi joined the debate last week
by declaring that it is “common sense” not to wear the nikab because it
makes social relations “more difficult.” Nonsense. If this is the
case, then why are cell phones, landlines, e-mail, text messaging and fax
machines in daily use? And no one switches off the radio because they
can’t see the presenter’s face. Under Islam, I am respected. It
tells me that I have a right to an education and that it is my duty to seek out
knowledge, regardless of whether I am single or married. Nowhere in the
framework of Islam are we told that women must wash, clean or cook for
men. As for how Muslim men are allowed to beat their wives -- it’s simply
not true. Critics of Islam will quote random Quranic verses or Hadith,
but usually out of context. If a man does raise a finger against his
wife, he is not allowed to leave a mark on her body, which is the Quran’s way
of saying, “Don’t beat your wife, stupid.” It is not just Muslim men who
must reevaluate the place and treatment of women. According to a recent
National Domestic Violence Hotline survey, 4 million American women experience
a serious assault by a partner during an average 12-month period. More
than three women are killed by their husbands and boyfriends every day -- that
is nearly 5,500 since 9/11.
Violent
men don’t come from any particular religious or cultural category; one in three
women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in
her lifetime, according to the hotline survey. This is a global problem
that transcends religion, wealth, class, race and culture. But it is also
true that in the West, men still believe that they are superior to women,
despite protests to the contrary. They still receive better pay for equal
work -- whether in the mailroom or the boardroom -- and women are still treated
as sexualized commodities whose power and influence flow directly from their
appearance. And for those who are still trying to claim that Islam
oppresses women, recall this 1992 statement from the Rev. Pat Robertson,
offering his views on empowered women: Feminism is a “socialist, anti-family
political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their
children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”
Now you tell me who is civilized and who is not.
(Yvonne
Ridley is political editor of Islam Channel TV in London and co-author of “In
the Hands of the Taliban: Her Extraordinary Story.”)
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