Hijab was meant to be covering women’s body but it covered entire political debate to defame Islam. It worked as great political tool for those who otherwise was failing to destroy the image of Islam in popular narratives. They kind of minimizes the great impact of Islamic ideologies and all Islamic laws by discussing just one dress. All these politics around this one piece of clothing is quite surprising for Muslims. How come a dress defines Islam or how we reached to a point where Islam is known in relation with one dress only. Islam was much more than a mere law around one’s dressing but when you narrow down one great philosophy around one small topic, you win psychological war by default. Hijab was a psychological war in which they defeated Muslim scholars as they were unable to counter it logically.
First of all we have to understand that Hijab is not a Muslim women issue anymore. it has become a political issue that are being played in the hands of those who hates Islam. They were successful at fuelling internal and external battles against Hijab to negate Islam in all political and academic discourse. They used popular mediums such as media and cinema to make Hijab as a symbol of oppression in Islam. If you know about Islam and it’s rulings then one should understand that Hijab is not something that should be debated in political forums around the world. It’s relatively very small issue in Islamic discourse. But Hijab was politicised so when people keep talking about Hijab, then other disturbing issues of the world like systematic oppression, injustice and equality quietly remains out of the debate. Also the Muslim rulers who wanted to take the attention away from their failing state affairs, failing at establishing justice through Islam, they kept mentioning Hijab and women rights in their discussions to divert the attention.
As far as Hijab is concern, the ruling roughly about this dress is to wrap yourself up in one extra piece of clothing than your regular dress. Primary goal of Hijab is to not reveal skins of women. However in the grand scheme of political ideology of Islam, Hijab is relevant only with one percent affect or so. The initial law-makers of Islam had no idea that it would become one of the greatest tool in 21st century to demean Islam. Hijab is a political topic now discussed widely, debated intensely but masses think it is some emotional issue of Muslim women. This is the reason why narratives around Hijab is pushed in media, cinema, advertisements, political manifestoes, political discussion and academic discourse around the world. If any topic of Islam that has grabbed attention of Muslims and non Muslims world wide after terrorism and Islamophobia then it is Hijab without a doubt. The unfortunate part is you can not get anything out of the discourse of Hijab in political sense. This negative publicity about a dress has been used to define Islam as something it is not.
Hijab is another form of Islamophobia
Whether one should wear Hijab or not is something I will discuss later. But first let us talk about Hijab in the form of Islamophobia. In all the debates around the world, the aim is to use Hijab as a counter-argument to negate all positive things about Islam. When one wishes to demoralize Muslims on any debate they use Hijab to argue as this is most unfortunate part of Islam. Presenting Hijab as an idea that Islam has tendency to oppress 50 percent of it’s women population. By saying this, they give impression as Islam doesn’t really value women or their presence in the religious discourse. The aim is to somehow portray Islam through Hijab as this is the religion that tries to erase women quietly from all public life. However covering with one extra dress can’t erase the women from public life. In the life time of Prophet, women was very much active in public life, even with their head covered of maybe face covered sometimes.
Is really Hijab oppressive as they present?
First of all the question is wrong about Hijab if this piece of dress is oppressive or not. How come a dress be oppressive. A dress can’t really oppress humans in any possible way. It’s just a dress, Hijab is all about practicing modesty in public gatherings and that’s it. Neither this dress helps anyone protecting their life or from molestation or anything of that sort, nor it serves any other political purpose, the only and primary goal is to make women appear less attractive to strangers than they really feel to them. This modesty keeps women from unnecessary attention which often is the beginning of every corrupt thing in the world. In Islamic values, it is seen as kind of cheap that you present your beauty to the public or you try to look presentable for strangers or for non-mehrams. It goes against the basic ethics of human life too. Meanwhile, men these days wear full dresses and they embrace some extra dresses in form of suits and all. So modesty is quite common for both the gender when in public but they created a hype over a dress which was so unnecessary. Showing off your beauty in public, just degrades women’s dignity as a human being. If men can wear two three or four pieces at a time then there should not be any objection if women also embraces Hijab in one way or another.
Hijab is not the new phenomenon happened to the Muslim women only, all around the world, in all cultures and religions, women have embraced Hijab in various forms. Jewish women traditionally has some kind of modest dress which covers them, same is with the Christian women, nuns still embraces some extra clothing, same goes with the Hindu women who covers her face with Ghunghat and all. There has been a tradition of modest dresses among all cultures in all parts of the world. So if Muslim women takes an extra piece of cloth in their dressing then it should not have caused a big chaos all over the world as it did. Nobody in Europe should try to ban it or portray it as some biggest hurdle in progressiveness of women. Nobody in the Muslim World should talk about only a dress as a political tool to get away with all the other Islamic duties by only talking Hijab.
The other element that made Hijab a political issue is the consumerism and capitalism. In the era of objectifying women and using them as some sort of object to sell the products have made these less-dress culture as a popular trend. Even in the advertisement of men related products, you find women in short dresses, this means the men who will buy those products are being seduced by the women they see in the advertisement. The advent of social media and dark web has objectified women even further. So the world who sees women as product often gets offensive with a religion that makes modesty in the dressing of the women as a first priority. So Hijab often comes in the way of the free market where the less a women wears the more she is respected in new world. A world where ideology are set for costumers only. The sad part is women themselves are embracing the less-dress attitude in public while they are fully aware that equality and feminism can’t be achieved with their short dresses.
Leave a Reply