Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts
Australian Broadcasting Corporation lauds hijab as “sensuous,” “source of empowerment”
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s slant on this issue was predictable, but not for that any more excusable. The real women who need “empowerment” are not those who wear the hijab, who are praised and hailed in article after article like this one, and celebrated in World Hijab Day, but those women who have been brutalized and even killed for not wearing the hijab. Would Aqsa Parvez agree that the hijab is “sensuous” and a “source of empowerment”? Her Muslim father and brother choked her to death with her hijab after she refused to wear it. Would Amina Muse Ali, a Christian woman in Somalia whom Muslims murdered because she wasn’t wearing a hijab?
Those who claim to be deeply concerned that hijab-wearing women are subjected to wholesale discrimination and harassment in the West, which isn’t even true, showed no concern for the 40 women who were murdered in Iraq in 2007 for not wearing the hijab; or for Alya Al-Safar, whose Muslim cousin threatened to kill her and harm her family because she stopped wearing the hijab in Britain; or for Amira Osman Hamid, who faced whipping in Sudan for refusing to wear the hijab; or for the Egyptian girl, also named Amira, who committed suicide after being brutalized by her family for refusing to wear the hijab; or for the Muslim and non-Muslim teachers at the Islamic College of South Australia who were told they had to wear the hijab or be fired; or for the women in Chechnya whom police shot with paintballs because they weren’t wearing hijab; or for the women in Chechnya who were threatened by men with automatic rifles for not wearing hijab; or for the elementary school teachers in Tunisia who were threatened with death for not wearing hijab; or for the Syrian schoolgirls who were forbidden to go to school unless they wore hijab; or for the women in Gaza whom Hamas has forced to wear hijab; or for the women in Iran who protested against the regime, even before the recent uprising, by daring to take off their hijabs; or for the women in London whom Muslim thugs threatened to murder if they didn’t wear hijab; or for the anonymous young Muslim woman who doffed her hijab outside her home and started living a double life in fear of her parents; or for the fifteen girls in Saudi Arabia who were killed when the religious police wouldn’t let them leave their burning school building because they had taken off their hijabs in their all-female environment; or for the girl in Italy whose mother shaved her head for not wearing hijab; or for all the other women and girls who have been killed or threatened, or who live in fear for daring not to wear the hijab.
Ask all those women, and the innumerable others who have suffered because of the hijab, how much of a “source of empowerment” they think it is.
“Western Sydney poet Maryam Azam explores the modern experience of wearing the hijab,” by Claire Nichols, ABC.net.au, June 19, 2018 (thanks to P.):
For the poet Maryam Azam, the experience of wearing the hijab can mean many different things. At times the headscarf is soft and sensuous. At others, it’s a symbol of power.The silk of my scarf
is sensual on my skin & the drapes
fall more precisely than any hairstyle.
From You Can’t Touch Me“There’s not just one state of being associated with wearing the hijab,” she says.“At times wearing a hijab is very much about putting on your spiritual mind-frame. So when you’re wearing it, for example, you don’t feel like doing something that’s not really the right thing to do.“At other times wearing a hijab can feel a lot like armour. Because I know my body is covered, and the shape of my body is covered, when I have interactions with some men out on the street, if somebody’s trying to ogle at me, I feel really empowered because I know they can’t see anything.”The Western Sydney poet was inspired to write about her own experience of wearing the hijab after exploring the representation of hijabi women in contemporary poetry for a university honours project.“What I noticed was that women who wear the hijab or the niqab, or any kind of Islamic veiling, tended to be represented in very much orientalised terms,” she says.“It was the typical, repressed woman, silenced, without a voice.”The poetry was a source of frustration for Azam, who found that most people writing about the hijab had never worn one.“Being a hijab wearer myself, I found these representations really disempowering,” she says.“The idea that they were painting about the experiences of these hijab-wearing women was totally alien to me.”So she decided to write some poetry of her own.The result is The Hijab Files, a book of poems that explores a contemporary, Australian experience of wearing the headscarf.There are lunchtime prayers amongst the disinfectant smells of a Sydney school sick bay, and scarves are hot and itchy in the Australian sun.The book celebrates the joys and frustrations of wearing the hijab.In A Brief Guide to Hijab Fashion, Azam lists the different looks a wearer can enjoy: a laff scarf for long days at the office, a khaleeji for a hot Sydney summer, a regular scarf twist-tied behind the neck for Bali resort-chic.The hijab is a source of empowerment, making her “as distant and inviolable as the moon”.But there are challenges, too. A young Azam is insulted by a man in a tunnel at Blacktown station who tells her, “Go and hide behind your effing scarf”.A friend stops wearing the hijab for fear of discrimination….
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