Hair covering, religious minorities and intersectionality

[lavendersparkle]

For full disclosure, I cover my hair. I've covered my hair since I got married, just under eight months ago. I really like covering my hair. I like having parts of my body which I keep private for myself and those I choose to show them to. I like the way my pretty scarves look. I like the way the scarf can pull together a whole outfit. I like being able to fall out of bed and rush out of the door without having to brush my hair. I like not having my hair blow in front of my face when I'm cycling or falling into things I'm doing. I also come from a background where this is unusual. I am white. I was raised in an Anglican family where hair covering was not practised. I go to a synagogue where one other woman covers her hair. I am married to a man who has no expectations about how I should dress and very much takes his lead from me. When I am pooteling about people probably look at and think 'hippy' rather than 'danger to democracy'.

This all, I am increasingly realising, gives me a very different approach to head scarves than an awful lot of people. When I see another woman covering her hair I think good on her.* I project onto her my feelings and motivations and assume she's happy with what she's wearing. I'm sure that there are some women who are forced to cover their hair, legally required in some countries. This is not nice, but actually, in the big scheme of things, I doubt that being made to cover their hair is the main problem facing these women, in the way a lot of the media makes out. Generally, violence and the threat of violence and economic disempowerment are far greater threats to women than any dress code. A burqa (contrary to what my nearest Amnesty International book shop might claim) is not violence, the threat of violence to a woman who does not wear one is. Generally, it just baffles me why anyone would be so concerned about what other people choose to wear.

I was rudely awoken from my benign view this morning. I vaguely remembered that some employer in the UK had commissioned staff hijabs for their hijab wearing staff to wear, in the company colours.** Now, I think that this is just a bit of fun. Most employers are perfectly happy with women wearing hijab in black or white or he company colours and have no need to make a special corporate hijab. I wanted to show pictures of the hijabs to someone so I Googled a bit to find web pages about it and was really saddened by the results. As well as Ikea, the Metropolitan police an the Lincolnshire fire brigade*** have introduced uniform hijabs, that's a good thing in my book. What saddened me was the number of Google results which saw these innovations as the end of Western civilisation. I just can't for the life of me understand their point of view. Usually I'm quite good at understanding views I don't agree with but I just can't understand why people would object so strongly to police woman covering her hair in a way that matches her uniform. Part of the sadness is that this is slightly personal in that, in the unlikely event I ever joined the Metropolitan Police, I'd probably end up wearing the snazy police hijab. However, more it saddens my to think that hijabis, and muslimahs in general, have to face this constant barrage of negativity from the media. It makes me think of how I feel whenever Israel is involved in conflicts and why I don't read the Guardian anymore.****

Muslimah Media Watch is a blog which comments on this sort of thing. I was struck by one story she was dissecting, the BBC coverage of yet another "I was raped and beaten by my evil Muslim family but then I fled to the West, took off my hijab, abandoned Islam and became free!" stories. Now, there are women who are beaten and raped and escape to the West and abandon Islam and feel better for it and they deserve to be believed and have their voice heard. The problem is, call me cynical, but I don't think that these stories get lots of coverage because of the media's deep concern about violence against women. These narratives serve a nice purpose. They make non-Muslim Westerners feel good and allow them to think that their hatred of Islam and Muslim countries is based upon honourable concern for their poor women-folk. Rape is endemic in every country on Earth. Lots of women are raped by their Western secular step fathers. Lots of rapists are successfully prosecuted in Muslim countries. I'm sure there must be a woman somewhere who was repeatedly raped by her Western secular step-father, was ignored by the Western authorities, escaped, converted to Islam, married a Muslim man and moved to a Muslim country where she now happily potters about feeling free in her abaya. You'll never see that story published and if you did it would be spun as crazy brain washing Muslims preying on a vulnerable woman rather than as a indictment of the whole of Western society. The bias comes from choosing which stories to report, which stories can be made to fit into a particular narrative.

This is very, very bad. It's bad because it confirms prejudices. It's bad because it breed complacency and denial about the violence against women in Western societies. However, it's worst effect is upon Muslims. It sets up the discussion that either you're for rape or against Islam, you can't support one and not the other. This paralyses attempts to combat violence against women in Muslim communities because it closes off the discussion if the possibility of being both against rape and for Islam is denied so strongly. The obvious defence is denial and there is a terrible temptation to deny the experience women like Fatimah and call them liars to protect Muslims from the threat of Western Islamophobia. Even more cruelly, it causes Muslim women to silence themselves to protect their communities. Would you seek help from domestic violence from the authorities if you knew that your suffering would be used to discredit your religion? If you knew that you might be exposing your friends and family to police violence and more state intrusion against your community? When you use women's experiences to serve your own agenda, sometimes the only defence women have is to keep silent.

*I'm far too white to be able to get away with thinking like "you go girl".
**It turns out that the employer I was Ikea as you can see here.
***Before we get into 'political correctness gone mad' the fire brigade hijab is for wearing to school visits etc. not for fighting fires, when I presume they wear helmet and such like.
****Referring to funding organisations who have in their charter that they want to kill people like me as 'anti-war activities' is a good way of getting me to stop reading your paper.

Comments

[pepperedmoth.livejournal.com]

I tend to think that the Western perception of women's religiously observant dress as oppressive has something to do with the objectification of the female body and the way women are Supposed To Look. (I also agree with your political analysis, however).

I've toyed a lot with different kinds of Plain dress (Plain being the Quaker version of observant dress). For us, Plain dress is a renunciation of materialistic values and an outward sign of an inward commitment to the Divine (I'm not precisely sure what the Jewish rationale is). Anyway, my Plain practice has ranged from (at its most observant) wearing only subdued colors, no patterned fabric, no embellishments, no makeup, and no jewellery to (at its least observant) wearing whatever I feel good in but buying it mostly second-hand.

The trouble I found with the first form of Plain was that (I'm American) my whole society seemed bent on telling me how unattractive it made me. "You'd be so pretty if you only wore makeup . . . " for example. Or people assuming that I was ill-groomed or possibly unclean because I didn't shave my legs. I think this is because it is an obvious rejection of the values American women are supposed to hold, and it makes people uncomfortable and prone to nasty criticism.

You'd think covering hair alone wouldn't be such a big deal to people. After all, my muslimah friend (with whom I have had several conversations on the topic) wears jewellery, makeup, and stylish clothes along with her hijab. BUT it is a huge, blatant symbol, much more obvious than almost anything else you can do. In addition to the nasty political stuff that you nailed, I think hair covering is a huge rejection of almost everything Western minds think about how women should look. With the result that my muslimah friend (not sure that she'd like her name on the internet, so refraining from referring to it) faces more unpleasantness every day about her hijab than I ever did with my Plain dress.

Anyway. At the moment my dress is nowhere near observant. Although I don't wear revealing clothing or much makeup, that's mostly personal preference. I'd like to be more observant, possibly through headcovering, but the Christian theological justification for it is, I think, much shakier than the Jewish theological justification and I'd want to be able to tie it more directly back to my faith. More reading to do, obviously.

[lavendersparkle.livejournal.com]

I think a big part of why people find hijab so objectionable is because it seems to be such a visible rejection of a bunch of Western values. The most obvious value it rejects is the idea that women should constantly be on display and make themselves attractive to men by conventional standards. Most people don't tend to articulate that objection because they'd sound like sexist pigs and instead claim that hijab is a symbol of being against liberal democracy. I've heard French people articulating it that way. One of my friends studied in France for a year and one of her lecturers justified the ban on hijabs in schools by saying that France wants immigrants to integrate. The greatest sign of integration is interdating. If a woman in the street is wearing a hijab it is a clear signal that she would not be willing to have sex with him or people like him, and therefore is a barrier to integration.

I think there's also an issue that people are all muddled about what liberalism means. Generally politicians will appeal to liberalism when they want to legalise things that they approve of and appeal to public morals when they don't agree with something in a completely hypocritical way. I think liberalism, in it's essence, is about allowing people to do what they want, even if you disagree with it, and only intervening to protect non-consenting parties. Of course, life is more complicated than that, because people have different amounts of freedom and coercion acting upon them and people's actions almost always have consequences for others, but I still think that the principle is quite good when we acknowledge that no-one, particularly not the instruments of the state, are completely benign and omniscient. I think there's a common confusion between Millsian liberalism and 1960s style liberalism where you just don't find a certain subset of sexual behaviours objectionable. Anyway, one of the things a lot of liberals struggle with is people choosing to live their lives in ways which are radically different to what your values believe. (My favourite way to shock a typical liberal is to tell them that I didn't have sex with my husband until we were married and that I found this practice beneficial.) The problem is that people tend to interpret someone living their life in a particular way as a judgement upon everyone who doesn't live that way. This can mean that people see a hijab as a judgement against every woman with bare hair. This discomfort can then be used to justify objecting to the clothing because it has been transformed in the mind of the beholder into hate speech against all of the sacred cows of the sexual revolution.

[pepperedmoth.livejournal.com]

"one of the things a lot of liberals struggle with is people choosing to live their lives in ways which are radically different to what your values believe"

So true. And also true that people often see living differently as a judgment against THEIR life. Hmm, I wonder if this goes both ways- liberals freak out when you mention you didn't have sex before marriage (which is really rather illogical- the freaking out, that is, since someone ELSE'S sexual habits shouldn't affect them AT ALL) and conservatives freak out when you mention that you're marrying your same-sex partner (illogical for the same reasons).

[lavendersparkle.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised by your experience not wearing make up or jewellery. I very rarely wear make up or jewellery, apart from my wedding and engagement ring. I also stopped removing body hair quite a while ago because it just seemed pointless. In not sure how much it's a cultural difference or because I physically conform quite well to Western beauty standards.

[pepperedmoth.livejournal.com]

I tend to think that Americans are fussier about things like that, but not having travelled extensively, that is rank speculation on my part.

[cathedral-life.livejournal.com]

Just after September 11th, I was tempted to wear a hijab in solidarity.

I felt that if enough women wore them (whatever their religious allegiance, and whether they had one or not), one wouldn't need to equate women with head covered with terrorism (which I think the media did at that time). I never did it, and I'm not sure whether it was a good idea.

[fetteredwolf.livejournal.com]

My mother, an Orthodox Jewish woman who covers her hair, had her car vandalized in a grocery store parking lot after 9/11.

[vamcdonnell.livejournal.com]

I've friended you because, holy crap, we're the same person I swear. I found you on modest_style and after reading a few of your entries we're so similar it's weird.

[naath.livejournal.com]

I quite agree. It's entirely strange.

I think it might be because people think that other people making other decisions to them is those people saying "you are WRONG and you should STOP BEING WRONG" rather than saying "I personally like doing this thing but you could do whatever you like really". Of course sometimes I do things because I think the other options really are WRONG, so it's quite easy to be confused I suppose.

Some days I'd like to cover my hair purely in a "gah, my hair, it is ugly today" way. (I don't, because I suck and fail and can't get scarves to stay put, I'm sure there must be a trick to it). I don't see why people shouldn't be able to wear (on not wear) whatever they like really, certainly I don't intend to go around ordering people to wear things.

[lavendersparkle.livejournal.com]

The trick to getting a scarf to stay put is to put your hair into a a pony tail bun (put the hair into a pony tail but the last twist of the hair band don't pull the hair all of the way through) then tie the head scarf underneath the knot. Then put a couple of hair clips in the front to stop it slipping back.

I heard an anecdote of a college teacher getting confused because one of her students would sometimes wear a hijab and sometimes not. She mentioned it to the student who revealed that she only wore a hijab if she was having a bad hair day.

[naath.livejournal.com]

hmmm, I should try that.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

See also: vegetarians and people who would like to burn us.

[fetteredwolf.livejournal.com]

This is an excellent post. Thank you!