veiled4allah: yes, intelligent women can choose to veil veiled4allah: yes, intelligent women can choose to veil
And this is the most insulting aspect of the article. Somehow, a woman who wears the hijab could not have made a conscious choice. Yet, Islamic teachings stipulate that each individual is responsible for her choice before God -- and God alone. Here in the West, many of us have heard both sides of the hijab argument -- both pro and con -- and have made decisions using our God-given intellect. We are not in need of Islamic reformers to tell us that we are mindless sheep, duped by godless atheists or religious extremists. We have minds of our own, keen to learn, listen and contribute towards the evolution of Islamic thought. Our historical traditions -- both Sunni and Shia -- are replete with examples of Muslim women with courage, intelligence, piety and yes -- a veil.True freedom for women includes the freedom to choose to wear a veil if one wants, the freedom to choose to be a stay-at-home mother or to have a large family if one wants, even the freedom to choose to adopt traditional marriage roles if one wants. A woman who wants of her own free will to do these things should not be forced away from it just to meet some ideal of what the "modern woman" is supposed to be like, just as a woman who does not want to do those things should not be forced to it just to meet some ideal of what the "proper woman" is supposed to be like. The two attitudes are really mirror images of each other.
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Subject: Re: yes, intelligent women can choose to veil
I agree. I think the main point to stress is not the hijab/burqa but women's right to choose to wear a burqa or bikini.About that article, I think the author is confusing the specific modern style of hijab with the general idea and even there he's stretching his argument very thin. The headscarf that I see in the US and in the major cities of Pakistan is somewhat new and a result of globalization. A generation ago women in different regions covered themselves differently. Nowadays, a lot of Muslim women wear a similar kind of head covering. But so what? People used to wear kilts, thob, or kameez shalwar or whatever their local clothing was, but now lots of them, especially younger and urban ones, wear shirt and trousers.
Subject: Re: yes, intelligent women can choose to veil
I'm still shaking my head over this one. It's one thing to claim that hijab is not required and the Quran isn't referring to it. It's another thing entirely to claim that it doesn't exist.Subject: Re: yes, intelligent women can choose to veil
Utterly ridiculous. It's the same stupid "logic" that the feminist movement heard 30 years ago, "well, you're only in favor of women working outside of the house, what about housewives?" and you got tired of saying to these nimrods, "Yes, it's all about choice, and choice implies and includes all options!" The more things change...Subject: Re: yes, intelligent women can choose to veil
I think that there are some feminists who may think that way, or at least give the impression that they do, when it comes to certain issues like veiling. I tend to see this attitude in connection with Islam and veiling but it does seem to me that it's more a reaction to Islam than a general attitude about women's choices.Most young Muslim women that I know, including the veiled ones, are very interested in improving conditions for women and taking on active roles in their communities, schools, and workplaces. But they can get turned off by the attitude of some people that if you wear a headscarf and modest dress you must be oppressed or can't be a feminist.
It's really a very difficult issue.
Subject: Re: yes, intelligent women can choose to veil
If the author is just going to make something up he should have at least chosen an earlier date. There are plenty of people around who were alive before 1970...
On another topic, what is it with this word "Islamist?" It seems to be a fairly new thing, and from the context in which it's used I gather it's meant as in insult. Anyone know who made it up, and why? It's rather clumsy, and I've been wondering if I should start referring to Christians as "Christianityists." :-)
Subject: Re: yes, intelligent women can choose to veil
LOL. Good point.A little linguistic background: The word "Islam" in Arabic means "surrender" or "submission". Specifically, submission to God. In Arabic, words are based on consonantal roots. For the word "Islam" the consontal root is S-L-M*. Different types of words can be constructed using those root consonants. In Arabic, one of the forms to indicate a person who is or does something is to put the prefix "mu-" on it. Thus, in Arabic a "Muslim" is a person who is or does Islam. Both words come from Arabic and therefore follow Arabic linguistic patterns rather than English ones.
The word "Islamist"** generally seems to be used to mean "adherent of political Islam", whatever exactly that means. Depending on the context it may be synonymous with "Islamic fundamentalist" or "Islamic activist".
According to English linguistic patterns, the word "Islamist" seems to imply that one is an adherent of "Islamism" which purely from an aesthetic standpoint I think is a very ugly neologism.
I am not sure where the term "Islamist" came from or why it was felt that a new word was necessary. I suppose it's meant to distinguish from Muslims (although to some people those two terms are also synonymous).
Kynn Bartlett has recently been discussing Christian fundamentalism and nationalistic Christianity in America. He is using the term "Christianism" to refer to it. I think that an adherent of Christianism would be a "Christianist" but I'm not sure.
*incidentally, the same root S-L-M is also the root for the word "salam" - peace. I am not sufficiently expert in Arabic linguistics to opine on the connection between peace and surrender to God.
**Not to be confused with an "Islamicist", which is a scholar who studies Islam
Subject: Re: yes, intelligent women can choose to veil
I think the word "Islamist" started out from the French and refers to political Islamic groups like the FIS, Ikhwan (Brotherhood), etc. I actually like it since it distinguishes between political and religious or cultural aspects. However, a lot of people use the word too loosely.Subject: Re: yes, intelligent women can choose to veil
Salaam `alaykum,The word "Islamist" is actually a reference to anyone, especially a thinker or activist, who believes that reformation or revival of the Muslim world will come through Islam, rather than secularisation.
However, the more popular meaning of the word, thanks largely to the mass media, means that it is often used for the more 'extremist' movements. This means someone like Rachid al-Ghanoucchi, who is wholly committed to 'democratisation' of Islamic politics, can be called an 'Islamist', as much as someone like Ayman az-Zawahiri.
I tend to use the word with some quote marks, to try and let people know I am making a distinction.
Subject: Re: Islamist
I heard one Arab professor's definition who basically said that an Islamists' goal is to replace a secular political regime with a religious one. But, he said, a distinction should be made between radical and extremist Islamists, who want to bring this change violently, and other "mainstream" Islamists who want to do that peacefully.Accurate or not?
Subject: wrong place to say this
Wrong place to say this, but I can't find a 'contact' link off the main page.Your main page is over 140KB (I stopped loading it, so I don't know the exact size). For those of us on dialup, this is painfully slow. Perhaps there are some images that can be optimized, or some revisions you can make in your design?
Just a suggestion.
Subject: Re: wrong place to say this
Thank you for your feedback, Burhan. I'm sorry that you found it so inaccessible. One thing that you can do is hide the sidebar panels on both sides that you are not interested in viewing. There is a little x in the corner of each that you can use to hide it and your preferences will be saved for the next time you visit. You may find that this helps as a stop-gap measure to make the page load faster.If you really find it just too impossible to load my blog in your browser you can also keep up-to-date on my posts via my RSS feed or bookmark my low-graphics version, which is intended for use in PDAs but which can be viewed in any browser.
I'm afraid that like many bloggers, I tend to put a lot of stuff in my sidebars. I find that if I don't put something on that page, my visitors will not see it, so if I have something that I want people to see, I put a link to it on the page. I am sure that you have visited other blogs that are almost as bad as mine; I know that I have.
I will certainly look to see what I can do to make the file size smaller and if there is some content that really doesn't need to be there.
Again, thank you for your feedback.
BTW, in the left sidebar there is a section called "Connect to Me" which has an email link.
Subject: Re: yes, intelligent women can choose to veil
I just had to comment on this: as a Christian woman who adheres (attempts to adhere) to Biblical standards of dress and behavior, I get this type of feminist statements a lot. But I think that emphasizing the "freedom" aspect is counter-productive. No feminist worth her salt is going to admit that she wants to restrict women's freedom; their tactic is much more insidious--they argue, and assume, that a woman who *chooses* to wear religious clothing or adopt traditional roles is by the very fact of her doing so somehow non compos mentis. It's similar to Mehgan's Law and other repressive sex-crimes laws. In both cases, it is the so-called liberals who start the repression by removing accountability, choice, and free will and making everything a matter of "mental disorder." We are fighting not only for our right to choose but for the right to even be considered "consenting adults."As a side note, I vaguely remember learning that it is linguistically wrong to combine word roots with prefixes and suffixes from another language. So wouldn't "Islamist" be incorrect form because it involves putting a Greek suffix to an Arabic word?
Subject: Re: yes, intelligent women can choose to veil
No one reading the passionate defenses of veiling from such intelligent women would consider them to be stupid, slaves, oppressed, etc. What I took from the article was this: it was only in the 1970s that veiling took on such charged political meaning. Do you think anyone in the USA beside a few loonies gives a rat's ass whether you veil or not? And will they get any support from general society if they try to a) pull the niqab off or b) beat you because they can see your face? No, they'll be arrested for assault and they can rot in jail. But if you look beyond the USA, that is clearly not the case. As you pointed out above, "True freedom for women includes the freedom to choose to wear a veil if one wants... ultimately the choice must be theirs." Until that statement is true in the wider Muslim community outside the USA, until a woman in Saudi runs no risk of being attacked by state-appointed religious police, the veil will remain a political symbol that it was never intended to be.Subject: Re: yes, intelligent women can choose to veil
As salaamu 'alaykum,I think in our desire to come to a postion that all can agree to we go to far if we say the Muslim position is that women should be able to wear whatever they want. As Zack put it, to wear a bikini or a burqa. This is not the Islaamic position, nor is it necessarily a principled position.
All people that I know of agree that there the society can put limits on people's dress both customary ones as well as legal ones. A woman is not free to go topless in public places in the U.S. A man is not free to walk around with no pants on.
Unless people are against these limits, then no one is suggesting that people should be 'free' to wear whatever they want. So, the question is where should we draw the line. For Muslim societies, I can't think of any other place to draw the line than where Allaah (swt) draws the line in the Qur'aan and Sunnah which is that women should cover everything except the hands and face while in public.
You'll have to give me a reason why it should be drawn anywhere else.
Salaam,
Abu Noor al-Irlandee
Subject: Re: yes, intelligent women can choose to veil
I think that you have misunderstood me. The teachings of Islam are indeed clear; however, it is the choice of every individual whether or not to follow those teachings and to what degree. That is the test that Allah SWT has given us in this life.Subject: Re: yes, intelligent women can choose to veil
Unless people are against these limits, then no one is suggesting that people should be 'free' to wear whatever they want.
I'll suggest just that. People are free to wear whatever they want. Many governments infringe upon that freedom to varying degrees, it's true (and I've heard that European governments infringe much less than America). Of course, people are also free to associate with anyone they want, so if someone wants to refuse entry into his store to women who aren't suitably covered by his religion's standards, that is his right.