Why do you care about the way I dress?

 

I don’t think anyone would dispute the fact that people are obsessed with how Muslim women dress. When people talk of Islam one of the first things people think about is the hijab and/or niqab, and most people have an opinion about it. Just type ‘Muslim women’ into google and the top suggestion is ‘Muslim women dress’. The reasons for wearing hijab are numerous, diverse and often multi-layered, and I could easily reel off all of the defenses of the hijab and niqab if I wanted to. But the thing that I find really difficult is the idea that I should even have to.


In the west, opinions about the way Muslim women dress usually revolve around the idea that the hijab is seen as a symbol of the subjugation of women, and the niqab to be outright oppression. This is despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of Muslim women in the UK who wear the hijab or niqab do so out of personal choice and find it beautiful and liberating.

 

 

So, if the women who wear the hijab or niqab in fact love it and we repeatedly say that we are not subjugated nor are we oppressed, then why do people who don’t wear it continue to care so much about how Muslim women dress? And crucially, why do people think it is ok to objectify and disempower hijabis and niqabis by talking on our ‘behalf’ but holding views in direct contradiction to how we feel?


Admittedly, some people don’t like the veil because they don’t like Islam. They don’t like the hijab/niqab purely because it reminds them that there are people in their society who practice a religion which, out of ignorance, they have strong sentiments against. For those people we need radical change in the way Islam is portrayed in the media so that it reflects the truth of the religion, and for every Muslim to do their very best to dispel any ignorance about Islam with the people they come into contact with in their every day lives.


However, many people dislike it from what they would deem to be a feminist perspective. The idea that a woman needs to be set free from having to cover herself. For these people, I think it is helpful to take a look at Edward Said’s writings on ‘orientalism’.


Orientalism provided the justification for European colonialism whereby “the West” constructed “the East” as extremely different and inferior, and therefore in need of Western intervention or rescue. I think there is a strong belief in the western world that western women are more progressive and liberated, while Muslim women have to cover up and live as inferior and unequal beings, subjugated by their religion. This subjugation is visually epitomised in their hijab/niqab.

 

 

The people who hold this view need to wake up and realise that their mind-set is no different from the colonisers who went out into the world to ‘civilise’ other people – because ‘difference’ was mistaken as being ‘inferior’.  The problem lay with the mind-set of the coloniser - not the culture, customs or way of life of those they wished to colonise.

 

In today’s society, this mind-set manifests itself in the brutal objectification of Muslim women. British, middle class, middle aged, non-muslim men and women, love to have a chat amongst themselves about how Muslim women dress. They treat us as objects not subjects, because if we were genuinely seen as subjects then it would be pretty bizarre for our lives to be discussed with little, if any, acknowledgment of our opinion on the matter.

 

The point I am making is that if a woman decides to veil herself, and someone has an issue with it, then they have an issue with it. It is not the woman in the hijab who has the problem and so she should not need to continually defend her right or justify her choice to dress in a certain way, just because someone else’s prejudices mean it makes them uncomfortable. 

This excellent article on Islamaphobia quotes John Mullen of France's radical left-wing Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste who has argued that “The majority of the left in France believe that the hijab is an assault on women’s rights. This position quickly moves into the prejudice that Muslim women in France are more oppressed than non-Muslim women...Muslim and Arab men are then presented as the major source of women’s oppression and contrasted with the progressive white values of Republican France. So opposition to religious practices on the basis of progressive values can easily turn into a thinly disguised form of racism.”

 

We should not be having discussions and debates about 'wearing hijab vs not wearing hijab’, the real debate lies in whether it is ok for our society to disempower Muslim women through discussing what we choose to wear, when we have no desire for such a debate to take place.