At my health club on the campus of a Chicago university, I recently watched a young Muslim woman covered in head-to-toe religious garb -- head scarf, long-sleeve tunic and long pants -- as she played basketball with her boyfriend, a tall, black-haired youth dressed in jeans and a striped button-down shirt. All around them, shapely women in skimpy shorts and tight tank tops cavorted on treadmills and Stairmasters, but the black-haired youth had eyes only for his head scarf sweetie. Pretty and slender, the girl moved with the grace of a natural athlete. When her boyfriend missed a shot, she caught the ball on the short bounce, then, planting her sneaker clad feet firmly on the court, launched it toward the basket, where it whooshed easily through the net. Her boyfriend gave her a high five, and she grinned proudly.
Though loose fitting, the girl's clothes were far from frumpy. With delicate embroidery on the front of her tunic and a floaty elegance to the soft trousers, the outfit recalled the kind of casual, boyish chic pioneered in the Jazz Age by Coco Chanel. Her hair and flesh were hidden completely, but hints of her lovely, willowy form were suggested in the contours of her clothing. What's more, she seemed as confident in her attractiveness and as comfortable with her body as the half naked, pony-tailed coeds sweating around her.
As I watched the girl leave the club, her boyfriend trailing behind her carrying his backpack and hers, I had a startling thought. Hijab ("modest wear") doesn't have to mean female subservience and sexual repression.
Westerners have always been uneasy with Islamic dress, which often seems like a rebuke to our liberal values. Consequently, head scarves have been banned in schools in several European countries, including France, and earlier this week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged parliament also to outlaw burkas, the face-hiding, all-body covering sack, which he called "a sign of debasement" that has no place in a democracy.
Burkas are scary. They spark associations with the Klu Klux Klan and bank robbers, not to mention Afghanistan-bred terrorists. But burkas are the radical extreme of Muslim dress worn by only a fringe minority. I've never actually seen anyone wearing one in the U.S or France, where I've traveled extensively.
Sarkozy would better serve the cause of liberté, egalité, and fraternité by mandating sensitivity courses in why Muslim women wear hijab. Several of the Muslims I've talked to say their attitudes toward dress have less to do with repression, than with a strong belief that God commands both sexes to be modest (devout men wouldn't be caught dead mowing the lawn or swimming shirtless) and a sharp sense of the difference between what's appropriate for the public and private spheres.
Westerners often assume that Muslim women would get rid of their veils and head scarves, shawls and chadors -- usually black, garbage-bag like garments that cover everything but the face -- if given a chance. It must be a husband or father who forces them to cover up. That's a serious misconception, says Kareem Mejri, a devout Muslim mother of two who also happens to be vice president of international business for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. "It has to come from the heart. A woman should not be forced to do anything," she says. "My husband is more religious than me, but when I started wearing the [head] scarf only two years ago, he was completely shocked."
Ms. Mejri, who lives with her family in Orland Park, a southwest suburb of Chicago, loves jewelry and make-up and has "tons" of Victoria Secret lingerie. "We care as much about beauty and fashion as do women everywhere," she says. "And we wear whatever we want indoors, with our families."
It might seem counter intuitive to non-Muslim Americans, but many Muslim women actually find hijab liberating. "I used to wear [short] skirts and fitted jackets like any normal business woman, and I travel all over the world," says Ms. Mejri. "Often times, I'd be sitting in a meeting, and men would be staring at my body and not listening to what I was saying, especially in Latin America. What I find now is that they're hearing me, they're listening to what I have to say. There's no distraction of sexual tension."
Until recently, it's been difficult to find attractive religious wear, and Muslim leaders in America know that young women who are surrounded by fashion TV shows, fashion magazines and fashion web sites will stray from hajib if they can't find chic clothes that conform to Islamic requirements for modesty.
To that end last April, the Muslim Community Center in Morton Grove, Illinois, organized a fashion show. For the occasion, the community center's school gymnasium was outfitted with an elevated, 45-foot runway draped in pink and large beaded chandeliers to resemble the tents at New York's Bryant Park during Fashion Week. The 40 models vamped to the tunes of Islamic music blaring from loudspeakers as they paraded in colorful tunics, pants suits, dresses, headscarves and shawls.
Muslim Women Fashion Show (Morton Grove, IL; April 4, 2009) from Meha Ahmad on Vimeo.
The show featured clothing from online and local retailers, including
Contemporary Modest Wear, the Orland Park store owned by Ms. Mejri and her husband. "We purchase things from Paris and Turkey, skirts with mermaid [hems], and colors and fabrics that are more appealing to the eye than the dowdy old school clothing," says Ms. Mejri.
Westerners who tsk, tsk over hajib clad women, convinced that religious dress always reflects repressive, sexist attitudes, should consider their own history. In the west, fashion has often seemed like a torture foisted on women by misogynistic men. It was a male doctor in France, after all, who during the Napoleonic Wars invented the laced, S-shaped corset that allowed generations of women to cinch themselves to near suffocation. Couturier Charles Frederick Worth followed with filth collecting skirts, seat cushion bustles and catering tray hats laden with frou- frou and dead birds. Now we have Marc Jacobs's mini-skirt rompers that look like something your toddler wears, and Christian Louboutin's disaster-in-waiting eight inch high heels.
High Fashion, Oscar Wilde once said, "is a form of ugliness so unbearable that we are compelled to alter it every six months."
Western women are slaves of fashion. Muslims, meanwhile, answer first to God.
I'm an American (raised atheist/agnostic but now Buddhist) who has had Muslim/middle eastern boyfriends, American friends and European friends. I remember in college a German acquaintance who could not look at me or speak to me without apparently addressing my breasts. I found this highly distracting. My fiance is a northern Italian man who finds pinching southern Italian men to be crude and vulgar.
My impression of hejab is not that Muslim/middle eastern men do not trust women. It is because they are insightful enough to realize that men cannot trust EACH OTHER.
Fundamentalist Christians such as Sarah Palin and Carrie Prejean would do well to take a few cues from truly modest Muslim women.
Your points are ridiculous and contradictory.
At least I have a choice whether to dress "respectfully" or not.... and I am thankful for that every time I see one of these "respected" women covered up in public.
I feel sad for people who interpret it as respect.
This message brought to you by a woman who was raped at age 24 while 8 months pregnant.
Quoting: In 2007, Middle East scholar, Daniel Pipes called for a ban on burqas and niqab –not on headscarves. Pipes views the burqa as a security risk and cites literally hundreds of cases in which both common criminals and Islamist terrorists were able to commit robberies, make their escapes or blow themselves and others up, both in the West and in the Muslim world, by wearing a burqa. Male criminals and terrorists did this far more often than their female counterparts.
http://europenews.dk/en/node/24658
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8130639.stm
http://www.salon.com/comics/lay/2009/07/03/lay/index.html?source=rss&aim=/comics/lay
LOLz!
It is asserted that Muslim women answer first to God. If one defines a muslim woman as one who answers first to God, then that statement involves circular logic. Anyone who doesn't obey is not muslim, by definition, and anyone who does obey is answering first to God. Pretty hard to argue with circular logic.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/01/france-burqa-stance-elici_n_223761.html
How soon is now: You mentioned men wearing hijab or niqab. Quite a few Muslim mean do wear such garb and what of it? I'd post pics, but I have no idea how to :). Most Muslims don't even live in the Middle East, rather only a very small % do. It is unfortunate that certain cultural practices (that Islam has outlawed) are considered to be part of the religion.
I am Muslim, I wear hijab and live in NYC and work at the most prominent hospital there. My husband didn't want me to wear hijab either, but I insisted on wearing it because I chose to do so. I dress modestly and he makes sure that he does as well. He doesn't wear shorts or short sleeved shirts outside of the house.
Spirituality and the decision to wear hijab is often a very personal decision. If men choose not to dress according to Islamic guidelines, then that is between them and Allah. The fact that some women are forced to do certain things, does not nullify the fact that some women alternately choose to.
There are many attrocities committed against women, but those occur in every county and we should all be appaled by it, not as it exists only in Muslim countries (I really hate that term), but in all countries. Muslims don't have the monopoly on abuse and oppression.
I never suggested that we should ignore women who are forced to do anything. I just don't understand the need to attack an entire religion. YOUR argument is baseless unless you can prove that no non-Muslim women face oppression and subjugation.
Islam has outlawed female genital mutilation (which still exists today as a cultural practice), burying female infants etc.
What Saudi practices are you talking about specifically? Please elaborate...
Oppression is not a part of Muslim edict. It is human. "Thou shalt not kill" is a large part of Christian doctrine, so then why are any Christians in Jail for murder? Me saying this, is similar to those on here suggesting that all Muslims abide by the tenets of Islam.
The views espoused on here are more oppressive than I have ever felt wearing hijab. I stand up for oppression whenever and wherever I see it, but I see it within all faiths, cultures and ethnicities.
As for atrocities against women, can you point to any outside islam?
If you follow world news (e.g., via BBC) almost every day presents another horror story about the mistreatment of women by islam. Young girls trying to go to school in Afghanistan and Pakistan have acid thrown into their faces. Women are stoned to death in soccer stadiums on nothing more than an accusation by a male of improper behavior. Wealthy Saudi princesses are not allowed to drive cars or leave their homes with being accompanied by a male family member. Honor killings by male family members occur with horrifying regularity across all of islam. Even relatively secular Turkey has regions where honor killings of women are rampant. Recently in Toronto a 16 year old girl was murdered by her father and brother for daring to want to live a western style life. In Buffalo the CEO of the islamic TV network, established for the purpose of improving islam's image, beheads his wife for dishonoring him by asking for a divorce. Yes, I'm sure that the majority of muslims are fine decent people but there's a lot of room for improvement especially in the treatment of its women. The burqa is the symbol of women's oppression in islam.
However, in Brazil and more specifically in São Paulo, more women are brutally killed by their intimate partners than in Afghanistan. That is just one of many examples. As far as I know, Brazil is not a "Muslim country."
However, there is no compulsion in religion and it is his choice. As far as being trivial, I suggest you pose those questions to Allah on the Day of Judgment.