Is The Islamic Hijab a Women’s Right?
Nadia Mahmood
The issue of Islamic Hijab has attracted enormous attention from the European and Arabic media in June. As reported, 20 thousands women demonstrated in front of the Yemenis parliament in protest against the government’s resolution to ban face scarf and replace it with white Hijab. In London, Muslim Women Association announced in a press conference held at the British Parliament house a campaign to defend Hijab. In Loton, Britain, a 15-year-old girl lost a legal case against her school to wear her chador. Women in all these cases talked about their right to wear the Islamic Hijab.
Why all this fuss about the Islamic Hijab in the east and west? Is women’s struggle for liberation and equality now all about demonstrating, launching campaigns, and pressing legal cases to defend “the right to wear the Islamic Hijab”? Is the Islamic Hijab a “right” as these women, the European left and Ken Livingston, London Mayor, advocate?
No one has heard of Yemeni women or women in “ Muslim” communities in London demonstrating to defend any of women’s demands; such as equal pay, the right to work, learn, choose a partner, travel, the right in equal share in inheritance, child custody, marriage and divorce, right to organization, drive a car, the right to individual freedom at home, and the right to be protected against domestic violence.
What is the psychological and biological defect that makes women in “Islamic communities” neglect tens of violated rights and freedoms and only defend “the right” to wear Hijab?
No one has heard of a demonstration of not 20 thousand women but 2 thousand, say, 20 women for a women’s demand in Yemen, how come 20 thousand women took to the streets? What women organizational power could have the ability to mobilize such a big mass of women with this immense momentum?
The women behind this campaign, the European left and London mayor say banning the Islamic Hijab in schools violates the rights of women from Arab and Middle Eastern communities! Then are Stoning women for having sex, honor killing, beating women, deserting them in beds, having half the share of men in inheritance, depriving women from the right to rule and from being politically active, sexual segregation, polygamy, disciplining women and obedience to men and other parts of this complete Islamic recipe to turn women to a commodity and maintaining their inferior status the panel of women’s rights?
The Islamic Hijab like stoning, sexual segregation, abandoning women in beds and allowing men to marry two, three or four according to their purchasing power is an article in the Islamic penal code to control women’s bodies and their sexuality.
Would the “left” along with the Britain Muslim Association, which is the European branch of the Muslim Brotherhood Movement, and London mayor go ahead in their struggle to achieve “these rights” one by one and force the European societies which have struggled for centuries for women’s right to vote and to stop burning women which was implemented in the medieval ages to approve these “rights”?
Would not the “European left” and London mayor know that if a woman defended her individual rights in Islamic communities, she would have to choose either to yield to what is planned to her and accept the inferior status or suffer from various sorts of threats, violence and been returned to the original country to be forced in arranged marriage, or been killed if necessary as was the case with Hisho Abdullah, Subhiya Nadir, Suham Qirany, Mahabad and Fatima Sihindal?
All these frantic activities have nothing to do with women’s rights. They are part of the Islamic recipe planed to suppress women and impose inferiority on them, because when god created women, he decided this status for them according their physical characters!! There is no issue called “women’s right” in the agenda of Muslim Brotherhood in Britain, and Islamists in Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq. Why have these Islamists who are today shedding crocodile tears over women’s rights not said anything while women are been detained and tortured in Iran and Afghanistan because they practice their right “not to wear the Hijab”?
The term of “women’s rights” is a modern term strongly related to the struggle of women’s movement for equality and freedom. How must this term be relevant to Islamic movements? Why do they want to empty it from its meaning and add a reactionary Islamic meaning to it?
When Mohammed included veiling women in his book and teachings, he never meant it to be a “women’s right”. On the contrary, he took it as a religious duty that must be observed by women willingly or unwillingly. It must be implemented no matter what the price could be, even if this price was women’s lives.
It is the movement of political Islam that aims in the process of struggle on power at imposing its agenda on women, youth, children and everyone by nothing but terrorism. Here there is no persuasion, no freedom of choice and no human rights, not to mention women’s rights. There is a god in heavens and slaves on earth who follow his orders through Islamic apostles; Afghanis, Saudis, Iranians, Iraqis, and Britain Muslim Association with rattle of swords above their heads and Quran verses forming the background of this gory scene.
Women have been pushed backward instead of advancing their struggle forward thanks to political Islam, and the help of the extreme anti-imperialist left! We have been forced to go back decades thanks to the western governments and to America and its support to Taliban against the Soviet, to the Middle East left which rallied behind Khomeini - the staunch enemy of imperialism! And thanks to the British Socialist Workers party which sees the terrorist's actions of al-Qaeda in Iraq as resistance against imperialism, to London mayor who was given few votes by the British Muslim Association in the council election, so to return the favor he organized an international conference to defend the Hijab!
The defense of a group of Islamic women of the Islamic Hijab is a political movement. It is a movement of political Islamic. It is the movement that blackmail resentful unemployed youth in Middle East to give them a rifle, whisper Al-Shahada (Martyrdom) in their ears to brainwash them from every human feature and ultimately push them to become human bombs instead of organizing them to fight for jobs in a civil and modern society. This movement has control over women either by the force of arms and terrorism as in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan or by the demagogy of implementing Quran teachings!
“The looming revolution against the Islamic Republic of Iran would be a women revolution,” as Mansoor Hikmet says. Islam’s bayonets are directed to each of women’s rights, to impose inferiority on half of the society on the basis of gender. However burning Hijabs in Tehran University is the herald of the coming revolution.
Yes! Women have the right to wear Hijab if they choose to as it is their right not to wear it. But the Islamists, men and women have no right to impose their way of living on others. Suppressing women is no right to anyone.
The society must be protected from these “rights”. Society is duty bound to protect its individuals from harmful and wrong thoughts whether they come from God, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed or anyone else. “Their danger must be explained to people, as is the case with smoking” as Mansoor Hikmet says. These thoughts are dangerous to the lives and security of human beings. We must fight against them.
We must win this phase of our conflict against this trend, which has pushed our struggle backward quickly. Men and women in Middle East talked about the right to remove the veil in the beginning of the 20th century. However a century after achieving this right, we have to go back to struggle not against the traditional costume but against an Islamic costume imposed on women by terror.
The movement defending the Islamic Hijab is not a movement to defend women’s rights. It is the movement of political Islam struggling for power internationally and to gain a footing in controlling the lives of people in our planet. This movement manifested itself in terrorizing people in Iran and Afghanistan, attacking twin towers in New York, and nowadays in beheading innocent foreigners in Baghdad and in a movement to defend “ women’s right to wear Hijab” in Britain.
Source: http://www.equalityiniraq.com/htm/nadia290604.htm
ALSO SEE: STOP THE OPPRESSION OF OUR MUSLIM SISTERS
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