I have been speaking up, writing columns, and presenting papers at International Conferences against the politics of hijabization of Muslim women for many years now. I am glad to see that many more Muslim men and women are speaking up against this falsehood of equating Islam with the debilitating hijabization of women.
Farida Majid
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:45:41 -0400
Subject: The Burka is not Religion: My op-ed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten
The Burka is not Religion: I support its ban in Denmark
Friends,
My friend Naser Khedar who is a Danish MP has introduced a bill in Parliament asking for a ban on the burka in public.
One of Denmark's leading newspapers, Jyllands-Posten asked me to comment on whether the burka is a religious requirement in Islam or not. Here is my op-ed that appeared on September 16, 2009.
Tarek
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Tarek Fatah
Jyllands-Posten, Copenhagen
When a Muslim member of President Sarkozy's cabinet, Fadela Amara asked for the banning of the burka in France, the reaction from the worldwide Islamist movement was npredictable. She was denounced as a traitor to Islam.
My friend Naser Khedar who is a Danish MP has introduced a bill in Parliament asking for a ban on the burka in public.
One of Denmark's leading newspapers, Jyllands-Posten asked me to comment on whether the burka is a religious requirement in Islam or not. Here is my op-ed that appeared on September 16, 2009.
Tarek
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The Niqab wars in Europe and North America
Tarek Fatah
Jyllands-Posten, Copenhagen
When a Muslim member of President Sarkozy's cabinet, Fadela Amara asked for the banning of the burka in France, the reaction from the worldwide Islamist movement was npredictable. She was denounced as a traitor to Islam.
Now, Danish MP Naser Khedar has joined the ever-increasing chorus of Muslims around the world demanding a total ban on the imprisonment of Muslim women in niqabs and burkas.
Khedar and Amara's demand to end this insult to the female gender has found resonance across the Atlantic, where in Canada, the Muslim Canadian Congress has taken up the challenge to confront the Islamists and their leftwing allies.
This unholy alliance claims women should have the right to wear face masks in public and invoke religious freedom and Islam as the basis of their claim.
Nothing could be further than the truth. The latest incarnation of the niqab controversy surfaced last month in Toronto, when a judge ordered a Muslim woman to take off her niqab when she testified in a case of sexual assault. The woman invoked Islam as the reason why she wanted to give testimony while wearing a facemask. She told the judge: "It's a respect issue, one of modesty," before adding that it was a matter of Islamic "honour."
These explanations were rejected by the judge, who determined that the woman's "religious belief" was not particularly strong, and that, in his opinion, the woman was asking to wear the niqab as "a matter of comfort."
However, such arguments are beside the point — for they are premised on acceptance of the myth that a facemask for women is a necessary part of religiously prescribed Islamic attire, which is nonsense.
There is no requirement in Islam for Muslim women to cover their face. Rather, the practice reflects a mode of male control over women. Its association with Islam originates in Saudi Arabia, which seeks to export the practice of veiling — along with other elements of its austere Wahhabist brand of Islam — to Muslim communities around the world.
If readers have any doubt about this issue, they should take a look at the holiest place for Muslims — the grand mosque in Mecca. For over 1,400 years, Muslim men and women have prayed in what we believe is the House of God, and for all these centuries, female visitors have been explicitly prohibited from covering their faces.
For the better part of the 20th century, Muslim reformists, from Egypt to India, campaigned against this terrible tribal custom imposed by Wahhabi Islam. My mother's generation threw off their burqas when Muslim countries gained their independence after the Second World War. Millions of women, encouraged by their husbands, fathers and sons, shed this oppressive attire as the first step in embracing gender equality.
However, while the rest of the world moves toward the goal of gender equality, right here in Europe and North America, under our very noses, Islamists are pushing back the clock, convincing educated Muslim women they are mere corrupting sexual objects and a source of sin.
Minister Amara and MP Khedar are not alone. In 2006, India's prominent Muslim film star and activist Shabana Azmi told a gathering in London while receiving the International Gandhi Peace Prize:
"The Quran speaks about women wearing clothes to cover her modesty. A woman is supposed to cover herself to be modest. She does not need to cover her face. A time has come for a debate on the issue,"
Her comment led to India's leading Islamic cleric, Imam Syed Ahmed Bukhari, referring to Azmi a for prostitute.
Despite the fact Islamists cannot produce a shred of evidence that the burka or niqab is a religious requirement, they rely on bullying tactics and threats of violence to spread their oppressive misogyny.
Not only is the Niqab not a requirement in Islam, head covering known as the hijab too is a cultural practice, not a religious one.
Author Farzana Hassan, communications director of the Muslim Canadian Congress says, "Originally a source of modesty, the hijab, or Muslim head scarf, has become a political tool."
She wrote, "All women have, at some time in their lives, chosen to wear a head cover. In blinding snowstorms or freezing rain, the covering of the head, irrespective of what religion one practices, is crucial to one's survival. Halfway across the world, in the deserts of Arabia, whether one was a Muslim or a pagan, the covering of one's head and face was an absolute necessity -- not just when facing a blistering sandstorm, but any time one-stepped out of the home in the searing sun. What was essentially attire for a particular climate and weather has been turned into a modern symbol of defiance and, at best, a show of piety by Islamists and orthodox Muslims."
The only verse of the Quran that comes vaguely close to such a dress code (Sura 24, "The Light," verse 31) directs believing women to cover their breasts, not their heads of their faces.
Islamists have turned the hijab and niqab into the central pillar of Islam. They consider Muslim women who do not cover their heads and faces-- the vast majority -- as sinners or lesser Muslims.
It is time for all Muslims to come out and challenge the Mullahs. They should be told, they do not speak for us; Muslims like Danish MP Naser Khedar and French Minister Fadela Amara, do.
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