YesOdi, if you have to torture me with something, do not torture me with the humiliation of the hijab,” said the Sufi saint Sari al-Saqati of Baghdad around the 8th century AD. This is Ali ibn Ahmad al-Nisaburi It is quoted in a contract written by for the Persian scholar Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari. Tafseer-ul-Quran, While offering this prayer, the saint had two verses from the Quran in his mind. One, 83:15, which, referring to the Day of Judgment, says of disbelievers: “No! On that day they will be brought down from their Lord.” Here, the term “screen off” is rendered MAhjoobThat is, on which the hijab has been put on. The second, 7:46, says that on the Day of Judgment, a hijab will save and separate the damned.
Moroccan feminist Islamic scholar, Fatima Mernici, wonders how a term such as the hijab, with a highly negative connotation of spiritual access and exclusion from divine grace, became a symbol of Muslim identity.
There are two reasons for this. One, the seclusion and veiling of women has been a symbol of royalty and nobility in many societies since ancient times. Noble women in ancient Mesopotamia, such as those in the Sassanid and Byzantine Empires, wore the veil as a sign of honor and high status. The Assyrian Empire had laws about which class of women should wear a veil and which should not. Slaves and prostitutes were forbidden to wear the veil and faced severe punishment for doing so. Thus the veil was not only a symbol of aristocracy, but also served to differentiate between ‘respectable’ women and ‘publicly available’ women.
Combine this with Qur’anic verse 33:59: “O’ Prophet” [Muhammad]Tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to take off their shawls (Jilbab) On them. This will make it easier for them to identify, and not tamper with.” The next two verses condemn the ‘hypocrites’ and the “sick in their hearts” and warn that if they do not stop molesting and condemning these women, the Prophet will rise up against them, expel or confiscated them from the city of Medina. and kill them. The persecution of women in Medina brought the city to the brink of civil strife. The Prophet was not in a position to provide as much protection to the weak and vulnerable section of women as he could give to those belonging to the tribal elite.
Mernici lamented, “The veil represents a victory for the hypocrite. The oppression of slaves and attacks on the streets will continue. From now on the female Muslim population will be divided by the hijab into two categories: free women, against whom violence is prohibited, and Mahila slaves, against whom crime is permissible. She adds, “Instead of changing the attitude of women by imposing hijab/veils and forcing ‘those who have heart disease’ to act differently, as a civilisation, I was about to cover the dimension of Islam.”
The hijab also quickly assumed importance due to the association of the woman’s body with community respect. The aura of power and privilege attached to the veil, and the woman’s body as a symbol of respect, are combined to define the Muslim attitude towards the hijab over it.
Read also: From triple talaq to hijab – how Hindutva reversed gains from Muslim women’s movements
Understanding the Hijab’s Popularity
The recent popularity of the hijab and the confrontational attitude of its supporters has to be understood on two levels: the meaning of the hijab within the Muslim community, and its allusion to the secular state and majority community.
Within the Muslim community, the hijab represents a claim to the respect of an upwardly dynamic public. If social respect comes through Islamization and not through modernization, it says something about the development path of the community. And, if this norm is patriarchal, so be it. Women in all religions have always been equal partners in perpetuating patriarchy, and some women have always used patriarchy to oppress others. From the abolition of the practice of Sati to the criminalization of triple talaq, many women have always favored the dominant approach.
Despite all cultural associations and religious arguments, the current hijab – the stylized headscarf – is an apology to the traditional concept, which had two components: the veil, the seclusion of upper-class women, and the niqab, the veiled face. Nowhere in Islamic literature is the word hijab used for a headscarf.
Now, can the scarf-hijab impart the sense of elitism that the veil and niqab once did? Not necessary. It is very common to be a mark of social distancing. So, where does one get a sense of increased self-esteem? Well, from a new sense of religiosity and religious identity. This headscarf is actually a hijab – a ‘barrier’ between communities, between Muslims and non-Muslims. This is separatism inspired by religion, no, separatism. This is political. Identity politics is about that. So it is in India and across the world. Both insisting and opposing the hijab are political. Its imposition and rejection are equally ideological and there is little room for personal preference.
In Muslim-majority countries, the hijab has been applied to make the system Islamic i.e. identifiable in ideology. Whereas in a country like India, where Muslims are a minority, or in the West, where they are newly arrived immigrants, the hijab has been adopted by women to institutionalize separatism from the host community and fight the natural process of integration with them while profiting . With his generous ethos.
Read also: Many Shades of Gray in Iran’s Hijab War Show It’s Not Just Individual Freedom Versus Democracy
so much to choose
As far as the choice of hijab is concerned – well, in the theory of liberalism, the choice belongs to the individual and not the group. What is being presented as a personal choice is actually a symbol of group identity.
Social expectations, parental pressure and ideological education can be a greater compulsion than anything that is mandated by the state. Proponents of the hijab, while arguing how it is a part of Islam, never say that it is optional for a Muslim woman. Iran and Afghanistan do not even allow non-Muslim women to go without it. Even female heads of state had to cover themselves in a Sharia-compliant manner when visiting such countries. Recently, Iranian President Ahmed Raisi refused to be interviewed by CNN journalist Christian Amanpour because he refused to wear a hijab. So much for the choice.
Since we are on Iran, let’s make that clear. Apologizing to the democratic regime, it is correct to say that the women protesting are not against Islam, but against the regime that has made the hijab an instrument of tyranny. They are right. Burning the hijab is as political as imposing it. Similarly, in India, the insistence on wearing the hijab in a school that has a prescribed uniform is political, not religious. Therefore its opposition is also political, not religious – not against Islam.
Politics under the guise of religion has become so ingrained that autocratic women have been at the forefront of identity politics, putting their communal identity before gender.
New Tribalism?
The hijab, as a banner of rebellion against the liberal state and its secular system, remains to be seen for what it essentially is, no matter what liberal-secular idiom it is in and how official liberals defend it. Let’s do, well, liberalism.
What is ironic that the liberals, the ‘pioneers’ of modernity, rationality and secularism, are defending the regressive tendencies in the society. They are doing this when, according to them, the community in question has been marginalised. They intellectualize their retrograde attitude by applying the mystical principles of postmodernism and poststructuralism. But such fancy theories cannot hide the fact that liberals have become liberals. Can liberalism survive this deliberate sabotage by the authoritative liberal class, trying to restore its relevance and gain control over the institutions of story-making? Its dishonest and principled support for minority communalism has already earned it irreparable notoriety. Its studied silence on Iran’s hijab issue has been quite an eye-opener. Citing examples from Western countries of how they make an exception for the hijab even in institutions with dress codes for women, the liberal class went completely silent in the face of conflict in Iran, an Islamic theocracy. Iranian women’s anti-hijab rebellion defied their petty arguments and showed that the hijab is neither a religious requirement nor a matter of personal preference. The Iranian woman is no less religious than her Indian counterpart, and has no less agency, arguing that without the hijab, her religion, personal modesty, and group identity would be compromised.
Official liberals would do better to back down from urging Muslims to go on an ongoing warpath with the Indian state and the majority community. If they sincerely believe that Muslims are marginalised, then they should try to bring them into the mainstream by promoting an integrationist narrative and nationalist ideology amongst themselves. An always confrontational minority serves the vested interests of the liberal elite at its own cost. Official liberals do not want Muslims to create their own liberals who will criticize and correct the distortions in Muslim society. He wants to remain the sole spokesperson of Muslims who will bargain in his name. No wonder, Hindu liberals regard the Muslim liberal as a natural enemy rather than a natural ally. Instead, the Muslim communalist is his natural ally. But only in appearance. In fact, he is just his foot soldier.
But for liberals, Muslims will understand that identity politics is a return to tribalism.
Ibn Khaldun Bharati is a student of Islam, and looks at Islamic history from an Indian perspective. He tweeted on @IbnKhaldunIndic. Thoughts are personal.
Editor’s Note: We know the author well and only allow pseudonyms when we do.
(Edited by Likes)