Oct 13, 20226 min read

Women, Life, Freedom

Over these past few weeks, the world has witnessed unprecedented protests in Iran over the death of Mahsa (Jhina) Amini. Mahsa, a 22 year old woman, died on September 16 2022 following her arrest by ‘morality’ police for allegedly wearing her headscarf loosely. Such laws like the mandatory hijab are built on the paternalistic domination of public space and exclude women from participating in society. Mahsa’s death sparked Iran’s first-ever feminist revolution which extends beyond dress codes and has become a symbol for the freedom, dignity and liberty of Muslim women everywhere.

Mahsa was only 1 year older than myself and many of you reading this. Like many of you, I am able to shut my phone off and be completely removed from this movement; that is privilege. Like many of you, I have felt futile over the past few weeks, unsure of what I can do to support the movement in a meaningful way. But what I’ve realized is that we are not as helpless as we think; there are many other avenues we can use to stand in solidarity with Mahsa and the hundreds of protestors who have lost their lives to the ongoing police brutality.

Before we discuss this movement with our friends or share resources on social media, I think it’s important to take the time and understand why some Muslim women choose to veil, and how we as non-Muslim women can fight for their choice to veil. Last semester I had the opportunity to write a paper on the discourse of the veil and from that, I learned more than I could have imagined. I’ve pasted a slightly slimmed down version of this paper below and some ways you can take action and support this revolution. Thank you for reading!

Essay

Introduction

Hijab is an Islamic concept of modesty and privacy, most commonly expressed by veils worn by Muslim women. Women who veil have become the centre of modern discourse both among Muslim feminists and between Muslim and western feminists. Muslim feminists argue for Muslim women’s freedom of self-determination and defend their bodily autonomy from external critiques of a personal decision to cover. The ability to choose whether to veil or not reflects the basic Koranic ethic of the sovereign right of both men and women as human beings to the freedom of self-determination. The history of veiling and its criticisms span over centuries of European imperialists who sought to impose European heteropatriarchy in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Today, western feminists continue to criticize veiling in the name of feminism while inadvertently furthering Islamophobia and the marginalization of Muslim women. In this discourse of hate, covered women have been personified as the backwardness of Islamic societies and fearful subordination. However, according to Muslim feminists, the act of veiling is the opposite of subordination as it represents women’s rights and freedom of choice. This essay will focus on Muslim feminist responses to western conversations about veiling and how these conversations fail to consider intersectionality, take accountability, and stand in solidarity.

A Muslim Woman is Muslim and a Woman

Western feminists engaging in conversations about hijab often fail to consider the different forms of power that oppress Muslim women who choose to veil. There are many factors such as political instability, war, religious ideology, class, race, and sexuality that place Muslim feminists and western feminists in different worlds. Specifically, Muslim women are discriminated against on the grounds of their religion, gender, and ethnicity which western feminists often fail to consider. These systems of power that marginalize specific communities is known as intersectionality. The term was coined in 1989 by Kimberle Crenshaw in order to identify the simultaneous disadvantages experienced by individuals who are discriminated against on multiple grounds.

A Muslim woman’s intersectionality has a great effect on this conversation. Muslim women as women of colour are marginalized within discourses of their gender and ethnicity as they are both women and of colour; an experience that western feminists will never share. As the headscarf represents a religious symbol worn exclusively by women and predominantly by ethnic minorities, it is a paradigm symbol of intersectionality. Not only are Muslim women disadvantaged based on the manifestation of their religion, but the marginalisation they face compared to Muslim men further discriminates them on the grounds of gender.

Western Feminists Fail to Take Accountability

Western feminists lack accountability and solidarity in their conversations about veiling. Many western feminists assume that Muslim women who veil are forced or brainwashed rather than making an informed decision; they perceive Muslim women as subordinates to their male counterparts who must to be saved from the backwardness of Islamic societies. Embedded in many statements made by western feminists and media are the assumptions that the West must rush to liberate Muslim women from their faith and practices. Feminist of all colours agree that they must rally together to ‘save’ the Muslim woman from her plight that she, herself is unaware of as she is patronised into the ‘right’ choices.

Muslim feminists have worked hard to address assumptions made about their personal, political, and religious choice to veil. Muslim feminists like Shelina Janmohamed challenge these assumptions by acknowledging that all arguments have pitfalls. Janmohamed argues “If you ban it to ‘save’ the women who are forced, then what of the free will of those who have chosen to wear it, but are now prevented from doing so?”. This statement demonstrates that the reason Muslim women cover is very nuanced and bans on the hijab oppresses more than it addresses the assumptions made by western feminists.

The ultimate argument from Muslim feminists is that women’s veiling is crucial to women’s rights because it represents freedom of choice. Due to its long history, hijab and veils are pregnant with meanings. However, its meaning and use should be determined by those who are affected, not by western feminists who fail to consider intersectionality while trying to be the heroes. As a result of pushback from Muslim feminists, western feminists increasingly practice solidarity and accountability with Muslim feminists around conversations of veiling. Western feminist movements are increasingly advocating for choice feminism which views freedom as the ability to determine your own life path, rather than simply the capacity to make individual choices. Other movements that echo choice feminism include the multiracial feminist theory which considers the adoption of feminist identity by female ethnic minorities to be a different struggle, with different goals, than the dominant white class of previous movements.

The Road to Practicing Solidarity

Western conversations about veiling rarely practice solidarity as a principle or goal. Solidarity in feminist research is founded on women interacting to find areas of shared interest and political activism; this principle of solidarity is based on a prerequisite of similarity rather than difference. However, projects of solidarity, especially with marginalised groups like Muslim women must take intersectionality into account. Unfortunately there has been a historical pattern of women of colour and their exclusion from feminist movements as their intersectional identities are ignored. For example, colonial feminism has historically targeted the veil as a symbol of women’s oppression instead of offering support to the other issues these women faced. Today, many Muslim feminists like Janmohamed have also indicated that prevailing conversations should stop obssessing over what women wear and start addressing more critical issues that all women endure.

Often times, western feminists will claim that they practice solidarity when in fact they remain invested, knowingly and unknowingly, in privilege and inequality. An instance of this is World Hijab Day; one of the largest transnational campaigns of solidarity with veiled women. WHD encourages non-Muslim women to wear a hijab and share their covered pictures on WHD’s social platforms. The intention of this campaign was for western feminists to stand in solidarity with plights of hijabi women by temporarily experiencing the hijab. However, the campaign received criticism for its reductionist narratives of solidarity on the grounds of sameness. This solidarity practice feeds into the misconception that one cannot understand something unless they try it themselves which fuels cultural appropriation. The practice is also construed as privileging the experience of western feminists over the experiences of Muslim women.

As Janmohamed describes, veil tourists fail to understand that the veil means much more than a piece of clothing to the women who wear it. Covered women face Islamophobia and daily struggles for survival evidenced by the average of 3.8 reported attacks a day on Muslims. Non-Muslims, especially feminists, should not be so shallow to assume that the defining characteristic about a Muslim woman is what she wears on her head. Many western feminists who stand in solidarity forget that the very basis of feminism is celebrating differences and respecting the choices that all women make. In order to truly show solidarity, a contextualized understanding of the practice and its consequences, as well as in depth understandings of participants is crucial to building effective activism and feminism that can unite all women.

Conclusion

In conclusion, western and Muslim feminists alike must realize they share more in common in terms of the challenges they face together as women. There are countless real, critical problems that women in countries like Iran face and addressing them should be the priority for all feminists. Therefore, to ensure true accountability and solidarity, feminists of all stripes must lead the way in challenging structures of power that obstruct efforts towards self-determination rather than pander to the oppressive common denominator.