Hijab is the height of intellect and sophistication: Tawakkol Karman

The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman poses with her medal and certificate during the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony at the city hall in Oslo. The international community has not provided enough support for the uprising in Yemen, “Arab Spring” activist Tawakkol Karman lamented after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Saturday.

Journalists asked Tawakkol Karman with suprise whether she does not see her mode of dressing as something which contradicts her education and intellectual level as the hijab is viewed as oppression of women and backwardness.

Karman answered them : “The human being in early times was almost naked with the development of his thought over time he began to wear clothes.What I am today and what I wear Is the height of intellect and sophistication reached by man through the ages, not backwardness.Unclothedness is a sign of backwardness and human thinking going back to early times”.

From Humanitarian endeavour. Here

Sarkozy's weird idea of banning the veil and some thoughts

A COLUMNIST should never tackle the same topic two weeks in a row, advice masters of the trade. So forgive me for ignoring this counsel and barging in headlong where we have been before — ad nauseam. But I couldn’t help myself when I came across this posting on Arab News online.

Taking part in the raging debate over the ban on the Muslim veil that came into force in Nicolas Sarkozy’s France this week, a reader who identifies herself as “a Muslimah” writes: “Time and time again in ‘free, democratic’ societies women are manipulated and taught to believe that their freedom is directly linked to the removal of their clothing. Such emphasis has never been placed on men though. It’s the removal of women’s clothing and NOT the choice to wear whatever they like that — women are brainwashed into believing — preserves their freedom as is evident from this (French) ban on veil.”

Her whole post deserves to be read by everyone and widely shared. But I have to round it off with her closing lines:

“Yet those supporting the ban would have us believe Muslim women are the ones who are manipulated and suppressed. But it’s hardly surprising to see free societies ban women from covering their bodies. These are the nations in which women are used daily as mere commodities for buying and selling. The lands of the living Barbie dolls, where the daily objectification of women and young girls as sexual playthings has reached the mainstream. The female physique has become public property. Women must be on public display at all times.”

Need I add more? I am yet to come across a more fitting and right on-the-nose take on the issue. Perhaps only a Muslim woman could have spotlighted the absurdity and rank hypocrisy of this whole circus in the continent that takes pride on its image as the land of freedom and civil liberties.

In the land of Magna Carta, no eyebrows are raised if you go around in your birthday suit, go French kissing or get intimate in public. In fact, such actions only prove your liberal ethos and qualification to be part of Western societies. But you are a grave threat to peace and stability of the state the moment you cover your face. How ridiculous can you get?

Do the Europeans even realize the absurdity of their actions? Did President Sarkozy watch the scenes of French cops rounding and rouging up veiled women in nationwide crackdown even as head-to-toe fully clothed Christian nuns watched? This is why I believe this debate has more to do with politics, rather than religion.

This is not about individual freedoms, religious tolerance or Islam’s incompatibility with France or Europe. There are two issues at the heart of this conflict. First is old-fashioned politics. Even as Europe’s politicians, from Belgium to France and from Switzerland to Denmark, trumpet their liberal values and secular democratic credentials, they tap into the deep seated insecurities and paranoia of their Caucasian and Christian European populace for swift electoral gains or power.

So Sarkozy, hoping of re-election, not just comes up with this weird idea of banning the veil and punishing those refusing to take off the piece of cloth that is part of their religious beliefs, he presides over a national debate as to why Muslims cannot be part of the liberal and democratic French society.

His Interior Minister Claude Guéant, under fire for terming French campaign against Libya’s Qaddafi a new crusade, has gone to the extent of saying the problem is with “the growing numbers of Muslim population.”

In the Alpine paradise of Switzerland they have outlawed mosque minarets because they do not blend in a European skyline.

In Denmark, Holland and other Scandinavian countries, they have found another way of rejecting the Muslims — by targeting their sacred icons and beliefs, from caricaturing the Prophet (peace be upon him) to attacking the Qur’an in films and art.

Paradoxically, all this is done in the name of Europe’s liberal ethos and tolerance. So even as they pontificate to us about an individual’s freedom to say and do what he or she wants, they are targeting the very same freedom by forcing Muslim woman to take off the veil.

The second – and real — issue at the heart of this conflict is the white, predominantly Christian West’s deepening fear psychosis about Islam and the Muslims eventually running over and taking over the West and annihilating their entire civilization. Looked at it from their perspective, you would understand their insecurity and growing paranoia.

ON the one hand, their numbers are diminishing and not just in Europe. The continent that ruled the world for nearly four centuries is shrinking and aging fast. It is yet to recover from the destruction and depletion of its numbers during the World War I and II. To maintain its ascendancy, it needs a young population and lots of it. It’s precisely for this reason it has had to willy-nilly take in the growing numbers of immigrants from around the world, especially from those lands that it not long ago ruled. The new arrivals are heading to the West not merely because it offers greater economic opportunities and freedom, many of them are victims of the long years of colonization of Asia and Africa by European powers.

On the other hand, notwithstanding these compulsions, the West finds it difficult to reconcile itself to the reality of its changing demographic profile and what it sees as a cultural and intellectual invasion, especially from Islam and Muslims.

European pundits have long talked about Europe turning into Eurabia and London into Londonistan. While in the past few decades millions from Arab and Muslim lands have migrated to the West in search of a better life, Muslim ranks in the West have been expanding also because more and more white Europeans and Americans are turning to Islam for guidance and inspiration.

With excessive materialism and moral decay destroying family unit and society as a whole, more and more people are finding spiritual solace in Islam. So if the religion is the fastest growing in the world today despite a relentless global crusade against its followers, you know where to look for answers.

We need to look at this wave of Islamophobia, from burning the Qur’an to banning the veil, from this perspective. More important, Muslims must desist from responding to these bouts of bigotry with bigotry. Hatred cannot fight hatred. Only love and understanding can. As the Qur’an suggests, when faced with adversity, we must fight it with something that is better.

The current wave of Islamophobia is largely fueled by ignorance, myths and insecurities. You can counter it by promoting knowledge and true understanding of the faith that came not just for the Arabs but whole of mankind. Not an easy task by any means. We have no other choice though. 

Aijaz Zaka Syed in Arab News. More Here.

Why I Shed Bikini for Niqab: The New Symbol of Women's Liberation

I find it to be a blatant hypocrisy when Western governments and so-called human rights groups rush to defend woman's rights when some governments impose a certain dress code on women, yet such "freedom fighters" look the other way when women are being deprived of their rights, work, and education just because they choose to exercise their right to wear Niqab or Hijab. Today, women in Hijab or Niqab are being increasingly barred from work and education not only under totalitarian regimes such as in Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt, but also in Western democracies such as France, Holland, and Britain.

Today I am still a feminist, but a Muslim feminist, who calls on Muslim women to assume their responsibilities in providing all the support they can for their husbands to be good Muslims. To raise their children as upright Muslims so they may be beacons of light for all humanity once again. To enjoin good--any good--and to forbid evil--any evil. To speak righteousness and to speak up against all ills. To fight for our right to wear Niqab or Hijab and to please our Creator whichever way we chose. But just as importantly to carry our experience with Niqab or Hijab to fellow women who may never have had the chance to understand what wearing Niqab or Hijab means to us and why do we, so dearly, embrace it.

 
Most of the women I know wearing Niqab are Western reverts, some of whom are not even married. Others wear Niqab without full support of either family or surroundings. What we all have in common is that it is the personal choice of each and every one of us, which none of us is willing to surrender.

Willingly or unwillingly, women are bombarded with styles of "dressing-in-little-to-nothing" virtually in every means of communication everywhere in the world. As an ex non-Muslim, I insist on women's right to equally know about Hijab, its virtues, and the peace and happiness it brings to a woman's life as it did to mine. 

Yesterday, the bikini was the symbol of my liberty, when in actuality it only liberated me from my spirituality and true value as a respectable human being.

I couldn't be happier to shed my bikini in South Beach and the "glamorous" Western lifestyle to live in peace with my Creator and enjoy living among fellow humans as a worthy person. It is why I choose to wear Niqab, and why I will die defending my inalienable right to wear it. Today, Niqab is the new symbol of woman's liberation.

To women who surrender to the ugly stereotype against the Islamic modesty of Hijab, I say: You don't know what you are missing.

Sara Bokker is a former actress/model/fitness instructor and activist. Currently, Sara is Director of Communications at "The March For Justice," a co-founder of "The Global Sisters Network," and producer of the infamous "Shock & Awe Gallery."

Sara Bokker in Albalagh. More Here

Banning the burqa is banning modesty and decency

In the early 20th century the Rockfeller Foundation sent Ruth Frances Woodsmall on an eighteen month trip to the Muslim World to study the changing state of Muslim women under the influence of colonial rule. Her voluminous report was published by the American University of Beirut in 1936. She traveled to Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Palestine, Trans-Jordan, Iraq, Iran, and India. At each place she put the subjects of her study under the microscope, looking at all signs of Westernization, which she called as advancement and progress. “Undoubtedly the barometer of social change in the Moslem World is the veil,” she wrote. So she studied it in great detail noting the designs, material and sizes, practices regarding it, and cheering those who were fighting to eradicate the “evil of the veil.”

Mustafa Kamal Pasha, the autocratic and apostate ruler of Turkey, had banished veil along with other Islamic obligations and was therefore a hero and received glowing tributes from her. Everything he did in this regard was, of course, logical and just. “When Turkish women were granted suffrage, women wearing veils were debarred from voting, a regulation which was accepted as entirely logical.”

In Iran the puppet His Majesty Shah Riza Pahlvi declared 8 January 1936 as the day of “emancipation” forcing women’s “advance”. Along with the compulsorily unveiling in schools and elsewhere was the oppressive measures that no veiled woman could receive treatment in Iran at a public clinic or ride in a public conveyance. What did Woodsmall think about this denial of basic human rights on the basis of religious observances? “These two regulations will doubtless for a time work genuine hardship on conservative Moslem women but eventually their conservation will doubtless be overcome.”

King Amanullah with his unveiled Queen Suriyah was set to introduce the same “spectacular change” in Afghanistan but his “tragic” fall delayed women’s advance in Afghanistan and slowed it in Iran.

The book is full of condescending comments that betray the colonial mindset. One entry in her book reports: “A former young Moslem leader of Beirut who was taking an advanced position there in regard to the veil, after her marriage in Jerusalem has followed the prevailing convention of the veil.” Another gives the good news: “Madame Sharawi Pasha, the leading Moslem woman in Egypt, head of the Feminist Movement, with her niece Mlle Ceza Nebaraoui, the Editor of L’Egyptienne, unveiled in 1923, giving prestige to the whole movement.”

The colonial rulers used all of their powers in this crusade against the hijab from ridicule to fierce propaganda to coercion. Hijab was a relic of the dark ages, a sign of oppression, an impediment to economic progress, and an infringement on women’s right. The campaign has continued in the post-colonial period through a vastly improved propaganda machine as well as through myriad agencies of that surrogate of the colonial powers known as the UN.

There have also been cases of aggressive actions by European officials in Muslim countries. In October 2000 it was learnt that a French run school in Alexandria, Egypt banned hijab for its students. When a lawsuit was brought against the school administration, the French embassy tried to shield them by claiming diplomatic immunity. In January 2003 it was reported that the Jeddah Prep and Grammar School, operated by the British and Dutch embassies, did not permit its students to wear hijab. Girls wearing hijab were forced to remove it every morning before entering the school. It was only the refusal of one Egyptian girl, Lujain, to take off her hijab and subsequent refusal of the school to let her attend classes that brought the issue to the surface. When contacted by an Arab News reporter, the school administrative secretary said the school policy was a total ban on head scarves. She added, "Any girl wearing a head scarf will NOT be allowed to enter school." The resulting public outcry and the pressure from Saudi Education ministry finally persuaded the school to change its policy.

And yet the tide has been turning; the Muslim women are coming back to Islam and hijab in greater numbers both in the Muslim countries as well as in the West. A century ago hijab seemed to be on the way out in the Muslim world; today it can be seen in increasing numbers even in London, Brussels, and New York. Further, despite the incessant propaganda about the oppression of women by Islam, western women are coming to Islam in even greater numbers than western men. They have found through personal experience and observation that Islam—hijab and all—is the true liberator for all humanity that brings peace to the mind, contentment to the heart, and dignity to life.

These old and new Muslims in the West represent a change that some view with apprehension because of that old resistance to change or because of a colonial mindset that they cannot get rid of. But the reaction is far from uniform. While in the US and UK a wise multicultural policy is accommodating this genuine demand for freedom of religion, France is still living in the past century, and buckling under the White Man’s Burden.

Banning hijab is banning modesty and decency. There is no doubt that those behind it in France have the fervor of a crusader. But the crusades—despite their bloody toll—were a failure. Will this one succeed?

From Khalid Baig's article in Al balagh. More Here.