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I have a piece of writing that I wrote on the 30th of August 2014 titled ‘Hijab’. It is a blog post I wrote for a previous project called Man in the Mirror, which later helped me develop Muslim Women’s Resources (MWR). I wrote the blog to talk about why I started wearing the hijab, what my reasons were, explaining the logic behind it, and ruminating on the reactions of the relationships I had at that time, Muslims and non-Muslims.
It is an interesting piece to read from eight years ago because I had been wearing the hijab then for about eights years. Today, I do not wear the hijab.I took the hijab off a year after I wrote the blog. So I have lived my life on both sides of the fence but I never encouraged the option to be forced on a Muslim woman. I believed then and I believe now that hijab, niqab, conservative clothing, or just clothing that is considered normal in the society you live in should be a choice for a Muslim woman to make for herself It should never be dictated by men.
I have been thinking a lot about the hijab lately especially after the death of Masha Amini (#mashaamini). There is a sadness to the situation in Iran and any other country that dictates how a woman should dress because it means that the woman are not treated like humans but rather like objects that have to look a certain way to please the male establishment. I was fine with Iranian women cutting their hair in grief and frustration from having to adhere to a standard forced on them. It is not a choice for them. They are being treated like children, they are being patronised – being told how to dress for their own good. The government has a morality police on the streets to ensure their standard is enforced.
Looking at the situation, I don’t see a semblance of Islam – the religion of peace. When one reads how the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) created a multicultural and a multi-faith society in Medina, it was not by force. It was always by choice. I am not sure how the government can justify this in the name of Islam. Even some of the scholars in Iran and from around the world are saying that forcing this issues is detriment to the faith.
But this issues is not about faith. it is about patriarchy. My partner accuses me in seeing patriarchy in almost all situations, and of course I am sure I have an inherent bias because I have experienced it and I work in an organisation trying to reverse the affects of patriarchy; but I do firmly believe that patriarchy is seeped into all our institutions and in all parts of the world.
The government in Iran forcing women to adhere to a code of dressing has less to do with Islam and more to do with controlling women and taking power from them. You put a long black cloak on a woman and she can’t ride a bike or do any physical activity. If the weather is too hot, the black cloak forces her to stay indoors and not get enough vitamin D. If the weather is too wet, she avoids being out as to not dirty the long black cloak. She can’t experience the wind or the water. She is told to cover because it is bad for a man to see certain parts of her body and if he does, and if something happens as a result of that, it is her fault. The man is not told not to stare and subsequenyl not do anything wrong if he sees a woman. The onus is on the woman. Try breastfeeding while out wearing the cloak, try taking public transport, try working, try using the bathroom…every step becomes so much more difficult. A woman is imprisoned in a way.
However this is not a situation unique to Iran. This is why it was annoying to watch non-Muslim women cut their in support of Iranian women. Many of these women are living in countries that have the same patriarchal forces running through their institutions. In the ‘opposite’ part of the world, women are suffering from media conglomerates telling them that the need to look like babies as they get older, they need to look like they have not had children regardless of how many children they have had and how, they need to work like they do not have children, they need to parent like they don’t have jobs, they need to tighten or fix the appearance of their vulvas (you can’t even call it a vulva, men would prefer you call it an incorrect body part because it sounds better to their ears). Women pay taxes on sanitary products although it is a necessity. Women pay more for haircuts. Issues with women’s reproductive organs are not covered by private insurance but men’s are.
Women are still trapped in cycles of poverty and abuse. Women make up an astonishing number of the homeless population because no one heard the baby boomers when they said they had to give up their careers to care for families because there was no affordable/ free childcare, when they worked part time jobs with no super (pension), and when everything was in the man’s name because he was head of the household. Now we are seeing the consequences of that. Women still stay in abusive and violent relationships although they and her children are in danger. They have no money, the public won’t believe their allegations, the family and criminal courts don’t believe their allegations, the government has not provided enough support to get out of these situations. They are prisoners too.
We have our own morality police to keep our appearance and behaviour in check. It comes in the form of media: print, online, or digital. And if one does not confirm to the morality police, the comments can be hurtful. Sometimes it can even go as far as an assualt, suicide or murder.
Women are told how to look and how to behave just like the women of Iran. The only difference is the attire, the language and the culture. Otherwise patriarchy exists and traps women outiside of Iran and in Iran. One end of the spectrum does it in a more authoritarian manner and the other end does in a more subtle manner labelling it as ‘freedom and choice’. But neither situations empower women. They have been created by men to take away from power from women.
If we truly want to support the women of Iran to have some choice. Instead of cutting our hair and posting it on social media; we, women and men, have to look inwards and look at the patriarchal systems around us and make political and religious choices to phase these systems out, so all women, wherever they are in the world, can truly be free.