Reply to Muslim women speak out against the hijab as an element of political Islam

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Of course anyone has the right to wear or not wear a headscarf.

The question issue is the dissemination of the view that women must wear a hijab in order to be in compliance with the beliefs of Islam and whether that is part of political Islam or some correct reading of the requirements of Islam.

This is what disturbs me.

I have been on many Islamic websites.  I cannot purport to have been on them all as there are thousands but pretty much every one of them says a woman must wear a hijab to be a good Muslim.  The article posted by OP disputes that and they have plenty of scholarly people who agree.  In addition, we have the evidence that the hijab as it is worn today is of very recent origin.

So, were the grandmothers of the current headscarf wearers who went without hijab but fasted and prayed and fed the poor and did other acts of charity bad Muslims?  Absolutely no one at the time, which was not so long ago, believed this to be the case and people, religious and nonreligious alike, admired the quiet and nonshowy faith of these admirable women.  But according to these websites, these women were not good Muslims even though in terms of spirituality and inner goodness they would almost always come out ahead of any current hijab wearer.

So in today's Islamist climate, it is not really a choice for a woman who feels very attached to her faith to wear a headscarf or not. Because everywhere disseminated is the view that a woman who does not wear a headscarf is not a Muslim of good standing.  This was definitely not the case in the past because, very simply, apart from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries, no one saw wearing a headscarf as having anything to do with religion. Many women in rural areas wore a thin veil over their hair without the least bit of fastidiousness about wisps of hair showing, but this was simply traditional dress and no one equated it with religion as it was worn equally by both Muslim and Christian women in the countrside.

Moreover it is not a choice in certain countries today.  What I find interesting is that almost the first thing that is done when Islamists come to power in a country is to pass laws requiring women to wear hijab (and lower the age at women can marry, but that is another discussion).  If they were truly religiously Islamic, the first thing they would do is require zakat--that people contribute to the poor--but one simply doesn't see that.  Rather, political Islam is way more preoccupied with subjugating women by making them cover and making it legally possible for parents to marry off girls who may not even be in their teens.

These leaders are not stupid.  They know the male populations, especially the ones in their twenties, feel powerless against their current governments and are frustrated in light of their very high unemployment rates.  The exploit their sense of emasculation by promising when they come to power they will restore their sense of worth by giving them complete dominion and control over women who will be forced to be veiled.  The young men following them are not as smart because they are so satisfied with that pitiful bit of control over women they ignore that these regimes bring them no closer to participating in the running of the country or experiencing true economic opportunity.  This leaves the power of the country, as well as the economic fruits of that power, safely in the hands of these cynical political Islamist leaders.

This is how the hijab is part of political Islam and why extremists promote it as the sixth pillar of Islam.

[/quote]

Wow.  This is a great post.  Thank you for sharing.[/quote]

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