Editors' Note: In response to a Washington Post article criticizing "World Hijab Day," Shadi Hamid writes that Muslims should openly debate the headscarf. This post is excerpted from a piece that originally appeared on Parlio[2].[1]
Muslims need to be able to freely and openly debate the headscarf, or hijab. It's certainly true, as Asra Nomani argues, that the idealization of hijab can put women who choose not to wear it in a challenging position. So, yes, speaking as a Muslim-American, if I had a daughter, I'd want her to be able to not cover her hair and not have to worry about being judged by her peers as somehow less religious or "chaste." But this doesn't change the fact that just as women should be free and empowered to choose not to wear hijab, the y must also be free and empowered to wear it, if that's what they want.
This is why it's hard for me to understand why we need to put quotes around the word "choice." Here in the United States, every single hijabi woman I know has chosen to wear it voluntarily, sometimes to the dismay, or even outright opposition, of friends and family. While there are countries like Saudi Arabia or Iran where hijab is mandated, in countries like, say, Turkey or Morocco, there's no evidence I've seen that suggests that a large number of women are forced against their will to wear the headscarf by a parent or spouse. So it really depends on which countries we're talking about. (Of course, in those cases where women are forced by their families, communities and civil society organizations, whether in Western or Muslim-majority countries, should speak out unequivocally and take action).
[J]ust as Muslims have the right to argue that the hijab is not religiously mandated, they should also have the right to argue that it is religiously mandated.
If Nomani and Hala Arafa's Washington Post article[3] was merely offering the view that the headscarf isn't Islamically mandated, then that's great. (It goes both ways though: just as Muslims have the right to argue that the hijab is not religiously mandated, they should also have the right to argue that it is religiously mandated).Muslims need to feel comfortable debating sensitive issues like this in public forums. I certainly agree with Nomani that people shouldn't feel afraid to object to the notion that hijab is fard (obligatory). This, though, doesn� �t mean casting the choices of the hundreds of millions of women who have worn the headscarf as somehow invalid, irrational, wrong, or backwards. In her post here[4], Nomani argues for example that the headscarf is a symbol of a "dangerous purity culture, obsessed with honor and virginity." This would seem to suggest that anyone who chooses to wear it is somehow encouraging "a dangerous purity culture, obsessed with honor and virginity."
Just as conservatives argue that the opinion that hijab is not obligatory is simply illegitimate and worthy of scorn, we need to be careful about doing the reverse. Nomani and Arafa write that "in exploring the 'hijab,' [those in universities and the media] 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." This is not quite correct. For better or worse, all four Sunni madhabs (schools of law) consider covering the hair to be obligatory by ijma', or consensus, regardless of geographic context. We don't have to like this (and perhaps one day there will be more dissenting voices like Khaled Abou El Fadl), but we can't ignore or dismiss it either. Legal debates aside, there are endless millions of Muslim women who believe that covering their hair is religiously mandated, so, for them, it is inextricabl y tied to Islam and to their own personal relationship to God. To insist otherwise is to deny the agency, autonomy, and choice of these Muslim women.
References
- ^ Washington Post article (www.washingtonpost.com)
- ^ Parlio (www.parlio.com)
- ^ Washington Post article (www.washingtonpost.com)
- ^ In her post here (www.parlio.com)
