Why as a Muslim Woman I think World Hijab day does not empower Muslim Women?
World hijab day asks women from different faith to put on hijab to empathize with struggles of hijab wearing women.
Because Muslim women are supposed to observe hijab in front of men, except the closest male relatives, it serves as a religious marker in the public space. In a climate of rampant Islamophobia in the West, it is true that Muslim women in the West are prone to religious discrimination and hate crimes due to their observance.
The movement that claims to support Muslim women who face discrimination because of their practice of hijab is however is just another example of Western fetishism whereby non-Muslims westerns ‘’fulfill’’ their moral obligation. Here is why:
A non-Muslim person who wears hijab only for a day cannot understand the Muslim Women
One cannot experience what Muslim Women go through by putting on a piece of clothing for a day. It is a lived experience. Beyond that, it is a religious experience characterized by intentionality. The idea that one can understand a cultural or religious experience by immersing themselves within that context is squarely Western and can be characterized as an ethnographic practice.
Ethnography has originated within the Western context in order to better study the non-Western other. It is defined as the study and systematic recording of human cultures; and a descriptive work produced from such research (Merriam-Webster.Com) . In an ethnographic study, the researcher attempts to understand the culture and people they are studying through their empiric means i.e. the five sensory organs and bodily experience. Ethnography comes from a positivist tradition which draws hardline distinctions between body and spirit and privileges bodily experience over the spiritual. An important question arises here: Is it reasonable to expect that the relevance of a spiritual, beyond sensory practice, in this case hijab to be understood through empiric methods?
As Muslim women we do not need Western non-muslim women’s validation to prove that our struggles are real.
The idea behind the world hijab day is asking non-Muslim to wear hijab for a day to get them support Muslim women. It is important to ask why non-Muslim women? By appealing to non-Muslims, we place non-Muslim women on a pedestal of authority and agency in the matters of Muslim Women instead of counting on Muslim Women’s testimonies as the evidence of injustices. This is NOT empowering. Why the voices of Muslim women and men are not considered valid enough to be a call for action?
World Hijab Day takes hijab out of its context and reduces it into a piece of clothing.
Even though hijab is used synonymously with headscarf, Hijab is a religious obligation with inner and outer dimensions. The outer dimensions require Muslim woman to fully cover their body including hair, observing modesty while interacting with the opposite gender.
As New York State assemblyman David Weprin expressed in his endorsement of World Hijab Day “The World Hijab Day movement seeks to end the discrimination and judgment that comes with wearing a hijab.’’ While it is questionable whether this movement will end the discrimination practicing Muslim women face, it reveals that hijab is understood as something to be worn only instead of being practiced. If it were otherwise, World Hijab Day would also seek to empower Muslim women want to pray in segregated places or not to be judged for not wanting to shake hands with men.
The Hijab That is Being Normalized With This Initiative is Headscarf which is treated as a cultural expression in the Western World, not Muslim women’s religious attire.
‘The hijab’ that is being normalized with this initiative is only one type of covering, the one more prevalent especially in the Western World. Although headscarf flags a woman’s religious affiliation, Muslim women not only are judged for their headscarf but for their modest attire, and the more conservative they dress the more isolation they face. World Hijab Day normalizes headscarf not religious attire per say . On top of that, it leaves out the Muslim women who observe hijab differently such as niqaab, burqa, and chador. Studies show that most people in Europe support the banning of religious attire that cover face.
Does World Hijab Day not serve any good ?
Many people argue that World Hijab Day raises awareness around Hijab and Muslims. It is critical to ask, what kind of awareness that is, and what can it achieve? As a Muslim woman, the type of awareness I expect is not the acceptance of my headscarf as a secular cultural practice in the context of cultural pluralism.
If we look at the type of language being used in the Western media even to support hijab is not supportive in essence. Many muslim women are socially conditioned to appeal to Western framework to validate why they wear hijab : ‘’An act of liberation from societal norms’’, ‘’Political statement’’, ‘’Personal Decision’’. But we seldom hear: ‘’An act of submission to God’’(yes the monotheistic God who is the God of Moses, Jesus and Prophet Mohammed), or simply a ‘’Religious Commitment’’ and last but not least, shocking to many ‘’A culturally enforced religious practice.’’ Muslims freak out over associating Islamic practices with any type of enforcement. The fact of the matter is cultural enforcement exists in every society. My 98 year old illiterate great-grandma did not start wearing hijab after a serious of hermeneutic debates she had with herself. There was no such thing as to start wearing hijab in the first place. It was the tradition in their village, but for her tradition and faith were not two separate things, and it is fine. That does not make my great-grandmother an oppressed woman. She is the strongest woman I have seen in my life.
To think that cultural enforcement only takes place in Muslim societies is not correct. In the same way Muslim women were inculturated to wear hijab in Muslim societies, secular women are incalcultured not to follow a specific dress-code in the West. ( It is also noteworthy here that a lot of women of faith adopt a religious attire in a similar fashion to traditional Muslim societies). How bizarre would it be if we asked non-Muslim women to explain why they do not wear hijab? If we are advocating from real pluralistic perspective, why is not wearing hijab is not problematized the same way hijab is being problematized? By trying to explain why we wear hijab by subscribing into notions such as ‘’political statement’’ or ‘’personal decision’’ that are the products of a post-colonial secular worldview, we accept the position of the West as the norm-setter and rest of the world as norm-receivers.
The initatives like World Hijab Day will not be gamechangers that can bring the necessary paradigm shift to solve the root causes of discrimination Muslim women suffer from. If non-Muslim women genuinely want to support Muslim women, I would want them to understand that different worldviews and different paradigms exist outside the Western tradition so that I will not have to express my way of life as ‘my body’, ‘personal decision’, or frame it as an ‘act of rebellion’ to protect it.
