Asra Nomani discusses the eternal issue of the hijab this Saturday in Chicago

I’m an admirer of the work of Asra Nomani, a journalist, cofounder of The Muslim Reform Movement, and author of Standing Alone in Mecca: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam. I’ve posted about her before; she’s a genuine believing Muslim and so, unlike Ayaan Hirsi Ali—who’s dismissed partly, and unfairly, because she left Islam—Nomani’s efforts to expunge the extremism and misogyny from Islam can’t be rejected on the grounds that she’s not a believer. (See her nice interview with Bill Maher here.)

Nevertheless, she’s had pushback. Her article in last December’s Washington Post with former Voice of America journalist Hala Arafa, “As Muslim women, we actually ask you not to wear the hijab as a sign of interfaith solidarity,” apparently led to a fair amount of online debate (see here)—and to the expected online abuse of Nomani. Here’s a bit of Nomani and Arafa’s Post response to the call on “Hijab day” for women to don the headscarf as a sign of solidarity with Muslim women:

Born in the 1960s into conservative but open-minded families (Hala in Egypt and Asra in India), we grew up without an edict that we had to cover our hair. But, starting in the 1980s, following the 1979 Iranian revolution of the minority Shiite sect and the rise of well-funded Saudi clerics from the majority Sunni sect, we have been bullied in an attempt to get us  to cover our hair from men and boys. Women and girls, who are sometimes called “enforce-hers” and “Muslim mean girls,” take it a step further by even making fun of women whom they perceive as wearing the hijab inappropriately, referring to “hijabis” in skinny jeans as “ho-jabis,” using the indelicate term for “whores.”

As I’ve recounted several times, when I visited the Middle East Technical University in Ankara a few years ago, I had a conversation with women students who were Muslims. At that University the headscarf is banned, and I asked the students what they thought of it. They unanimously agreed with the ban, saying that although they were Muslims, they didn’t like the headscarf; but if it were permitted, and they didn’t wear it, the “enforce-hers” would tell them that they weren’t “good Muslims”. Hijab-shaming is apparently not rare in Turkey. Also, the absence of the hijab in pre-Revolution Iran and Afghanistan, and the presence of websites like “My Stealthy Freedom,” show that most women don’t wear it voluntarily, unless by “voluntarily” you mean “choosing to wear it to avoid bullying or a beating—or worse.”

More from Nomani and Arafa:

To us, the “hijab”is a symbol of an interpretation of Islam we reject that believes that women are a sexual distraction to men, who are weak, and thus must not be tempted by the sight of our hair. We don’t buy it. This ideology promotes a social attitude that absolves men of sexually harassing women and puts the onus on the victim to protect herself by covering up.

The new Muslim Reform Movement, a global network of leaders, advocating for human rights, peace and secular governance, supports the right of Muslim women to wear — or not wear — the headscarf.

Unfortunately, the idea of “hijab” as a mandatory headscarf is promulgated by naïve efforts such as “World Hijab Day,” started in 2013 by Nazma Khan, the Bangladeshi American owner of a Brooklyn-based headscarf company, and Ahlul Bayt, a Shiite-proselytizing TV station, that the University of Calgary, in southwest Canada, promotes as a resource for its participation in “World Hijab Day”. . .

. . . Today, in the 21st century, most mosques around the world, including in the United States, deny us, as Muslim women, our Islamic right to pray without a headscarf, discriminating against us by refusing us entry if we don’t cover our hair. Like the Catholic Church after the Vatican II reforms of 1965 removed a requirement that women enter churches with heads covers, mosques should become headscarf-optional, if they truly want to make their places of worship “women-friendly.”

They go on to argue that the religious dictate to wear a hijab depends on misinterpretation of the Qur’an, where the word doesn’t mean “headscarf”. Their discussion is interesting, and finishes with a some words about the recency of mandatory veiling:

In 1919, Egyptian women marched on the streets demanding the right to vote; they took off their veils, imported as a cultural tradition from the Ottoman Empire, not a religious edict. The veil then became a relic of the past.

Later, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel-Nasser said in a speech in the early 1960s that, when he sought reconciliation with members of the Muslim Brotherhood group for attempting to assassinate him in 1954, the Supreme Leader of the Brotherhood gave him a list of demands, including, “imposing hijab on Egyptian women.” The audience members didn’t understand what the word hijab meant. When Nasser explained that the Brotherhood wanted Egyptian women to wear a headscarf, the audience members burst out laughing.

As women who grew up in modern Muslim families with theologians, we are trying to reclaim our religion from the prongs of a strict interpretation. Like in our youth, we are witnessing attempts to make this strict ideology the one and only accepted face of Islam. We have seen what the resurgence of political Islam has done to our regions of origin and to our adoptive country.

As Americans, we believe in freedom of religion. But we need to clarify to those in universities, the media and discussion forums that in exploring the “hijab,” they are not exploring Islam, but rather the ideology of political Islam as practiced by the mullahs, or clerics, of Iran and Saudi Arabia, the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamic State.

My own view is that the hijab shouldn’t be banned (but what about Middle East Technical University??), but covering of the face in the West should be banned in certain public places that require identification. In the end, though, I agree with Nomani and Arafa that wearing an oppressive garment to demonstrate “solidarity” is deeply misguided. There are better ways to show solidarity with Muslims than wearing a garment designed to oppress women.  (One of the best demonstrations of solidarity, I think, was the recent demonstration of Europeans, who held hands and surrounded mosques after recent terrorist attacks to prevent their countrymen from damaging them.)

At any rate, this Saturday, Asra Nomani and two presumably pro-hijab women, Hoda Katebi and Duaa Eldeib (they’re both pictured wearing the headscarf), are speaking at the Chicago Humanities Festival on the topic, “Politics and Clothing: The Hijab,”. The full announcement is below, and here:

Sat, Apr 30 | 3 – 4 PM
Art Institute of Chicago
Fullerton Hall
111 S. Michigan Ave. | Chicago, IL | 60603

• Members: $12
• Public: $15
• Students and Teachers: $10

When Italian designers Dolce & Gabbana announced its first hijab collection, it wasn’t just the fashion world that took notice. In many ways, hijab is becoming part of mainstream Western culture, worn by characters on television series, Olympic athletes, even a new Barbie doll. Still the wearing of hijab continues to spark other responses, from attacks on women in Paris, to calls from some Muslim women to end what they view as an oppressive form of dress. CHF convenes a conversation to discuss the complex and sometimes contradictory responses to hijab, including Asra Nomani, journalist and author of Standing Alone in Mecca and Hoda Katebi, activist and author of Tehran Street Style, moderated by Duaa Eldeib of theChicago Tribune.