Thursday 17 July 2008

Muslim women in hijab come to the fore

By H. Omer
This article was published in the Daily Mirror - Sri Lanka :- http://www.dailymirror.lk/DM_BLOG/Sections/frmNewsDetailView.aspx?ARTID=20775

My eyes popped upon seeing the photos of the winners of the 1st and 2nd places for Oralists at the Jessup International Law Moot Competition for 2008. They were women, they were Muslim and they were in hijab. The ‘Jessup’ is the Olympics for law students and winning the prize for Oralist is like winning the 100 meters. Muslim women are coming to the fore and doing it all in hijab.

Reflecting on this one does wonder whether to say that the Islamic attire of hijab is backward or oppressive is one big, fat, pseudo-intellectual lie. If not how does one explain the hijab clad Shaheed Fatima, the Human Rights Barrister, with a BCL from Oxford and a Kennedy Scholar to Harvard and the winner of the ‘Professions Woman of the Future Award’ at the prestigious Women of the Future Awards in 2007?

The hijab is a head covering worn by a Muslim woman, done as a requirement of her religion. No other female attire has been subject to so much scrutiny and of course criticism. To the critics the hijab is a symbol of patriarchy and oppression. A seeming critic, M. A. Nuhman in an article titled “Ethnic consciousness, Fundamentalism and Muslim Women” identifies the Purdah or the hijab as “a manifestation of the ideology of female segregation and subordination”. Given that the Muslim girl in hijab is now a common sight in schools and shopping malls, it is useful to examine the validity of these criticisms.

There is very little evidence that the hijab has stifled or restrained a Muslim woman from pursuing her goals and aspirations, as a person and as a woman. Well it has restricted her choice of wardrobe but what else has the hijab stopped? The interesting point is that hijab is worn by a Muslim woman when she goes out of her home, not when she’s stuck at home. Thus the hijab is a symbol of emancipation in itself.

Nuhman states that hijab become more prevalent after 1985 but he interestingly cites “[t]he literacy rate of the Muslim women in 1921 was only 6%, but it has been raised to 75.5% at present. It is a fairly satisfactory development in comparison with the 82.5% of the overall female literacy rate in Sri Lanka. In 1942 only one Muslim female student entered the University of Ceylon. However, for the last ten years more than a hundred Muslim girls have been entering from many parts of Sri Lanka to the universities for several fields of study including medicine and engineering.....the Universities Grants Commission Report, [states that] 32% of the total Muslim students who got admission to the universities for the academic year 1990/1991 were female students.”

The point is that despite becoming a phenomenon in 1985 Muslim women in higher education has not declined but increased. This point is buttressed by Nuhman when he states that “[d]ue to this new development, after 1985 Sri Lankan Muslim women were compelled to wear hijab and it has become the school uniform for Muslim girls in all the Muslim schools except in the primary classes. The Muslim girls who attend non-Muslim schools also have to observe this.” Therefore all those Muslim girls who constituted the 32% entering University or a significant portion of them studied and sat for their examination in hijab. The hijab didn’t cover the route to University.

The fact is that the hijab is the passport to freedom to many Muslim girls. Parents are more willing to let their daughters out to pursue higher studies and employment, on the silent satisfaction that their child is conscious of her religion and identity in this challenging world.

Really, is the requirement that a woman should cover her hair, ears and neck and reveal only her face when men don’t have to do that, “a manifestation of an ideology of female subordination”? That contention is premised on an assumption that the ability to wear [or reveal] whatever one wants, is emancipation. To put it graphically, if men can walk around topless, so should women, because otherwise a woman is not equal to a man and any rule against women going topless is a manifestation of an ideology of female subordination. There may be some of you who may subscribe to such a notion of equality but to me it is a fairly shallow way to look at concepts like equality, let alone equality between the sexes.

Another slur cast upon the hijab is that women are being forced to wear it. No doubt there are instances that groups have forced women to wear the hijab. However that does not explain the energy and the vigour that women have shown around the world in fighting for their right to wear the hijab. The fight against the French laws against wearing the hijab was fought not by some ‘fundamentalist’ Muslim male but by intelligent and articulate Muslim women. Shabnam Mughal, the lawyer who asserted her right to wear the nikab in an employment tribunal in the UK was after all, a lawyer. Don’t tell me someone forced her to wear it.

If the hijab is some patriarchal imposition, why are the women in Turkey, still fighting for their right to wear the hijab, twenty eight years after it was banned from schools, universities, public and government buildings? Their fight is not easy, they fight the Kemalist secularists in their own country and the secularists in the EU and in the European Court of Human Rights which continues to side with the secularists rejecting the rights of the women. Human Rights Watch, to its credit has come in support of the Muslim women and asserted their right to wear the hijab, when other women’s rights groups active in Turkey stayed silent.

To describe the hijab as a symbol of backwardness is to insult the intelligent, smart and accomplished women who beautify themselves with it and who tell the world that there is more to them than that meets the eye and their beauty is more than skin deep.

“Wearing traditional Muslim dress has encouraged me. It’s not an obstacle – quite the opposite.” Ruqaya Al Ghasara, Asian Games Gold Medallist.