For months, Cennet Doganay, a 15-year-old Turkish Muslim girl living in Strasbourg, said that France’s Ministry of Education’s pressure policies – France referred to these as dialogue sessions – regarding the ban on wearing the hijab drove her crazy. She, along with other hijab-wearing girls, tried everything to find a compromise. Cennet, after showing up for the first day of classes this year wearing a beret (is there anything more French than a beret?), was sent home and advised to take correspondence courses. In protest, she asked her parents to shave her hair off. She was allowed back in school. Apparently, it’s OK for a bald girl to attend classes, but not one who covers her hair, especially not a Muslim girl.
For Cennet, and hundreds of other girls who want to stay in school, a piece of their identity had to be sacrificed before being allowed to rejoin their schoolmates, resulting in widespread psychological problems. France might say that they are not targeting Muslims, but the fact is that, aside from Catholics, there are more Muslims in France than any other [religious] group, so it shouldn’t surprise us that Muslims pose a threat.
By the end of this year, hundreds of Muslim girls will be taken out of school – not by their parents, but by the French government. Why? An "unofficial" policy of de-hijabing Muslim girls has been put into place, in order to maintain the "Frenchness" of France. France may try to convince the rest of us that it is merely separating religion from state, and that it does not want religious ideology represented in the school system. Why then are they stepping up efforts to expel as many Muslim girls as possible before the upcoming Catholic holiday? [According to a New York Times article].
Arabs and Muslims have been in France for generations now, having raised their families there and calling France home. France does not want its own people taking low-wage jobs, so they happily hand over this responsibility to the Muslims and foreigners, keeping its doors open to millions of North Africans for many years, after their own economies were destroyed at the hands of Mother France.
It’s ironic that France, a country which demoralized most of North Africa and tried to "liberate" Muslim women from the backwardness of Arab civilization by promising new freedoms for all, is now holding female Muslim students hostage in school study halls, keeping them away from classes to face trial for the crimes of identity.
Hijab around the world
According to BBC News, France is not alone in banning hijab. Turkish students have, for quite some time now, waged protests at high schools and universities for the right to wear a hijab. They have even held hunger strikes and engaged in violent altercations with Turkish authorities. Some have been imprisoned or killed during confrontations. Their families have been "warned" about promoting religious ideologies. But the hijab issue is central to Turkey’s history, when Attaturk’s policies of westernization and secularization first started in the 1920s.
Turkey’s current ruling party is the Islamist-based AKP party. They have been careful not to cause conflict within the establishment and have not attempted to change the policy about hijab. Many political leaders, however, see the hypocrisy in Turkish girls being allowed to wear hijab in western countries but not in their own.
According to BBC News, the issue rose to the surface last year when the country's president refused to invite any headscarf-wearing wives of senior officials, including
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to a reception marking the republic's 80th anniversary. Nearly all the AKP's MPs boycotted the event in protest.
At one point in Egyptian history, women who wore hijab were seen as backwards and keeping the country from modernizing. More recently, a group of Egyptian female TV broadcasters alleged that they had been banned from appearing on screen because they were wearing hijab; some even said they were considering legal action.
However, the hijab has made a strong comeback alongside Islamic revival movements in Egypt. The government is widely believed to be wary of the public display of Islamic symbols such as hijab, fearing it could play into the hands of Islamic activists.
Singapore, keen to avoid racial and religious tensions between its ethnic Chinese majority and the Malay Muslim minority, has banned the hijab from schools. The Singapore government believes the ban is necessary to promote racial harmony, but Muslims say it infringes upon their religious freedom. The German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg has already given initial approval for a law to stop teachers from wearing hijab, and seven other states are considering similar legislation. Legislators believe hijab is a political symbol and that children in state education should be protected from "fundamentalist" influences.
Two politicians from Belgium are hoping to push legislation through parliament that would ban the headscarf from state schools. They believe that many young Muslim schoolgirls do not wear the scarf by choice, and that imposing a ban would protect them from those who impose it upon them.
Last year in Russia, Muslim women won the right to wear the headscarf for identification photos, which was banned in 1997. The women argued in court that the ban infringed upon their civil liberties, and were backed in this by a number of human rights groups, who also alleged that Russia was fermenting anti-Muslim sentiment to aid its mission against separatists in Chechnya.
A Muslim woman last year lost a high profile court case against a large supermarket chain in Denmark, after she was fired for wearing a headscarf at work in 2001. The court ruled that her contract contained a dress code banning headgear.
Many other Muslim countries have experimented with the issue of women and hijab and don’t often agree about the end results. In contrast, countries like Iran, Yemen, some of the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia mandate that girls and women wear the head scarf in public, including in schools. Britain has actually allowed hijab in the workplace, including for women in civil service positions such as police officers.
hijab in the United States
In no other country, however, is the hijab situation discussed and debated as much as it is here in the United States. Imams at mosques lecture about what’s required and what’s not, and encourage women to continue wearing hijab under all circumstances, even after increased discrimination post-9/11. In the news, I read about violent attacks by conservative communities against women who don’t wear hijab and harsh criticism for those who do wear it by Muslim and non-Muslim women who see hijab as oppressive.
Yet, scholars of Islam (male and female) don’t agree about this issue at all. I myself own approximately 40 books about women and Islam, and at least half of these emphasize different views on hijab.
We have immigrants who wear hijab. as a way of maintaining cultural customs and beliefs brought from their home countries. We also have the daughters of these very immigrants questioning whether "to hijab or not to hijab," as a result of being acculturated into American society. Yet another group of girls see it as a symbol of political protest, securing the right to wear the hijab by any means necessary, and an increasing number of university students putting on the head scarf as a way of establishing their identity, beyond matters of faith. Others study Islam for years and are convinced that they should wear it for religious reasons. There are those who don’t see a reason to wear it at all. They become either slaves to fashion or simply resistant and uninterested in a muhajaba lifestyle. There are even some Muslim parents and husbands who may actually discourage girls and women from wearing the hijab.
There are women who are forced to wear it, either through pressure from the community or due to threats from home, like families not allowing them to attend college unless they wore a the hijab. There are occasional "hijabers" who slip in and out of the hijab world for occasions like Eid, Ramadhan or Jumu’ah prayers, or "whenever necessary."
The Muslim Women’s League explains that this sort of behavior is due to the tremendous pressure placed on Muslim girls and women to wear the hijab when these women are not really aware or convinced of their own feelings, leading them to wear it on occasion to please their communities. They also agree with many scholars that a majority of Muslim girls and women do not have access to a solid understanding of and unbiased education in Islam, so they remain caught between two worlds, ambivalent about their own faith. I’ve known many "cultural hijab-wearers" in my day, who wear the head scarf out of tradition, without really knowing the rationale behind it.
Finally, there are the American converts to Islam who are attracted to the hijab and embrace it with faithful enthusiasm, making the native Muslims question their own
ambivalence.
A study in contrasts
I recently interviewed six Muslim Arab women of different backgrounds, each with a sister, about the hijab issue. Within this group, one sister wore the scarf and one didn’t. The first two sisters both work for the United Nations, one in England and the other in Italy. One embraced the hijab during her adolescent years and was deeply religious. She took her conviction to the workplace, and found tolerance in her host country and was able to practice her faith without much effect. The other worked in a socially liberal environment where Arabs and Muslims are considered the underclass, if not detested. Anxious to fit in and not really feeling an urgent necessity for wearing the head scarf, she abstained from her duty. She is the breadwinner in a family of five. Her husband, a Ph.D. of Comparative Religion, relayed that he has found nothing to convince him that his wife is obligated to wear a hijab. He says that the Koran calls for the modest dress and behavior of both men and women and doesn’t specify that a woman’s head should be covered.
The second two sisters were raised in New York. Both, discouraged by their father from wearing a hijab from a young age, led completely Americanized lives.
One, after having grown weary of her past life, took to Islam with intense passion and put on the hijab a year after she married. Although her husband was pleased
with her decision, he does not believe in forcing women to wear the scarf. She is currently a professional in Canada. The other sister who is single and still lives in New
York, is also a professional and sees Islam as a religion that discriminates against women, and refuses to acknowledge or respect the practice of the hijab for personal reasons.
The last two sisters are both unmarried. One, a fashion designer in Paris, considers herself an artist and finds the hijab restricting. Although she’s attended prayers at Mosques and participates in Arab cultural events, she couldn’t imagine herself ever wearing it. She hopes to marry an Arab man who is open minded.
The other is a student activist involved in many issues. She admits to putting the hijab on initially to please her parents, who are deeply religious and, secondly,
as a way of establishing her own identity. All six women acknowledged that it is difficult to wear the hijab in western countries due to discrimination, stigma, and loss of opportunity. Women who were married and "taken care of" financially were more open to the hijab. Being that more women and girls now have to support themselves, it’s understandable that economics has become a factor for many women when deciding whether or not to wear the head covering.
What I have observed in my 20 years in New York is that the women who wear the hijab fall into three categories: either they don’t have a need to work or they work in businesses owned by other Muslims, Arabs or Indians (who don’t have a problem with this custom), or they work in jobs that don’t require much contact with the public (thus not posing a ‘threat’).
Of the six women I interviewed, only one was able to defend her decision to wear the hijab using a verse from the Koran and a Hadith.
The politics of hijab
Zakia Mahasa, the first Muslim woman judge in America was profiled in Azizah Magazine. After many years in the judicial system, Zakia decided to put on the hijab and has since persevered. She, like many other professional Muslim women, has learned to take it in stride. When asked about the hijab during an interview, she explained, "I don't wear it on my sleeve. But I don't hide it. It's who I am. If you stand for what you are, even if it is different from the mainstream, others will respect you.
Unfortunately, Zakia’s case is the exception and not the rule. According to the New York Times, a Federal district court in Brooklyn recently charged the New
York City Transit Authority with discrimination due to their hijab policy, which affected women working on buses and trains. In addition, there have been hundreds
of complaints of discrimination received by CAIR (Council of American Islamic Relations), mostly by hijab-wearing Muslim women who worked for companies such as J.C. Penny, Taco Bell, Holiday Inn, Domino's Pizza, Sears, Office Depot, Old Country Buffet, Pathmark Stores, United States Postal Service, Boston Market, Bank of America, U.S. Airways, and Dunkin' Donuts. I commend those who have had the courage to fight discrimination. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 entitles all employees to reasonable religious accommodation by their employers.
The debate on the hijab will continue long after this article, but I would add that Muslim communities need to stop putting so much emphasis on what a woman wears, and appreciate the strength of her character instead. There is not enough talk about other more pressing issues like, why is it that Muslim girls and women are abused and exploited all over the world; why isn’t there more being done about the education of girls and women; why aren’t there sincere efforts to include women in religious affairs or to
accommodate women at mosques and Islamic schools; why aren’t there enough books written and protests made by Muslims, rather than westerners, about social and economic policies that affect the quality of a woman’s life; and when
will our women be respected as human beings and mothers of our communities, instead of being reduced to a piece of clothing?
