Danila Jonnud, Hampshire
I could never, by any stretch of the imagination, be a Vulcan. That is to say, I could never fit the criteria required to be part of the fictional logic-driven emotion-rejecting alien race from Star Trek. To be honest, I’m more like the opposite but sometimes I see something so incomprehensible in its illogicality that I am very close to understanding the Vulcan way of life.
Recently, this occurs whenever I see the news. World leaders feign rationality and fairness – or are far gone enough in a lack of objectivity they truly believe they are being fair – so often these days, that I walk around under a cloud of constant bemusement. This was the case a few days ago, when I read of Denmark’s recent proposition to extend the ban on religious face coverings to universities and schools. The Prime Minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, explained this is because,
“There are gaps in the legislation that allow Muslim social control and oppression of women at educational institutions in Denmark (…) You have the right to be a person of faith and practice your religion, but democracy takes precedence.”1
This is a rhetoric I find very dangerous, not least because it is self-contradictory. It creates, based on little evidence, the idea that Islam and democracy are dichotomous, which is entirely untrue, and promotes a mindset of fear that Muslims look for forceful control instead of equality and peace. When authority figures make such statements and the news circulates them, how is a regular person supposed to see Muslim women as anything less than voiceless victims? In fact, a YouGov poll published yesterday, found nearly half of Britons (49%) believe Muslim women wear the hijab due to family or community pressure, with only 26% considering it a personal choice.
Being a scarf-wearing Muslim girl myself, I follow this type of news as closely as I can (without falling into despair at our dystopian world). I could, in reaction to this proposition, explain how the burqa is not intended to be oppressive, how many Muslim women find liberation and connection with their religion in wearing it, how in a perfect world where all men truly abided by Islamic guidelines, such coverings would not even be necessary etc. etc.
But the fact is, as shown by France, Belgium, Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, and Switzerland all banning face coverings in public spaces, such points do not seem to work and are dismissed as part of the poor oppressed woman’s brainwashed rhetoric.
Are you seeing where I’m going with this? Instead, I want to look at it logically.
Wherever this ban is in place, it’s supposed to encourage freedom, a break from the patriarchy and liberation from the abuse of men, mainly fathers and husbands, who force women to cover up when they are in public. Such laws are fighting oppression and the lack of choice Muslim women have in how they dress by completely removing their choice in how they dress.
Oh. That doesn’t sound right.
Look at it logically. If a Muslim woman only feels comfortable in public when wearing her headscarf, burqa or niqab, then it’s not exactly freeing to legally require her to leave the house without it and thereby endure constant discomfort when in public. On the other hand, if she truly is being forced into wearing it by a man in her household who won’t let her leave without it then, in all likelihood, she simply wouldn’t leave the house at all, which is the exact opposite of freeing her.
This is what I find, to put it objectively, interesting (as opposed to subjectively infuriating). The reasoning behind such laws is so clearly flawed and so clearly based on prejudice, something which arises from stereotypes and fear mongering. I don’t deny we’re human and therefore cannot escape feeling concerned, judgemental, or even jump to conclusions about such things, but the issue arises when those thoughts escape our heads and become – or are in danger of becoming – enshrined in law. In a democracy, laws are about protecting the rights and freedoms of the people – or at least that’s what they should be. And yet prejudice – that fear of the Other – creeps in and suddenly, instead of worrying about things actually detrimental to society, laws are being used to decide what women should wear. How is that feminist? How is that liberating? How is that fair?
We can all agree that abuse is vile, and that domestic abuse should be discovered and punished as quickly as possible. Yet, abuse still happens and is not limited to a single religion or ethnicity; abuse happens but abuse isn’t an ideology, it’s a choice, a thought process, a behaviour. Blaming the ideology rather than the person, shifts the responsibility to an intangible idea rather than the real-life perpetrator. And yet, in what is lauded as an attempt to counter abuse by men, a law is created which will only isolate potential victims further by cutting off what could be their only source of escape, by villainising the innocent act of wearing certain clothes because it could be used by abusers.
And that is only in some potential cases. Speak to a Muslim woman on the street or look at the comments on these articles: they say repeatedly that it is not a sign of oppression, only of their faith. I am personally surrounded by these examples even as I write from the site of Jalsa Salana UK, an annual convention which is the largest Muslim gathering in the country. Over 20,000 Muslim women attend this gathering, 6000 of which are volunteers working to keep the convention going and show the thousand non-Muslim guests an image which is very different from what is portrayed in the media.
Political figures like to say they’re working for a greater good, but the problem with future greater goods is that a lot of real people in the present have to suffer for it. Muslim women are still women; it’s demeaning to generalise that they must all lack critical thinking and courage and comfort in their own choices over their own bodies. To do the same to any other women is misogynistic, but for Muslim women it’s decidedly liberating – only it isn’t Muslim women making that decision.
We’re not damsels in distress needing our western saviour to un-Other and homogenise us into their ideal of a woman, so they can proudly say they’re feminist and for the people. Feminism is recognising that women are diverse, intelligent, and definitely not weaker and so have a right to choose for themselves. It’s not feminism, supposedly liberating oppressed women from the clutches of household patriarchs, which drives such laws; it’s simply an illogical emotion. Not understanding a way of life and belief different from your own and so thinking – illogically – that it’s wrong and therefore must be corrected.
And if that way of thinking sounds familiar, well, it’s just the echo of the history textbooks from our schooldays.
Voice of British Muslim Women 
Leave a comment