From liberals and feminists, unsettling silence on rending the Muslim veil
By Mona Eltahawy washington post
Saturday, July 17, 2010; A13
The French parliament's vote this week to ban full-length veils in public was the right move by the wrong group.
Some have tried to present the ban as a matter of Islam vs. the West. It is not. First, Islam is not monolithic. It, like other major religions, has strains and sects. Many Muslim women -- despite their distaste for the European political right wing -- support the ban precisely because it is a strike against the Muslim right wing.
Some have likened this issue to Switzerland's move last year to ban the construction of minarets. On the one hand, it is preposterous to compare women's faces -- their identity -- to a stone pillar. Minarets are used to issue a call to prayer; they are a symbol of Islam. The niqab, the full-length veil that has openings only for the eyes, is a symbol only for the Muslim right.
But underlying both bans is a dangerous silence: liberal refusal to robustly discuss what it means to be European, what it means to be Muslim, and racism and immigration. Liberals decrying the infringement of women's rights should acknowledge that the absence of debate on these critical issues allowed the political right and the Muslim right to seize the situation.
Europe's ascendant political right is unapologetically xenophobic. It caricatures the religion that I practice and uses those distortions to fan Islamophobia. But ultra-conservative strains of Islam, such as Salafism and Wahhabism, also caricature our religion and use that Islamophobia to silence opposition. Salafi ideology, which is unapologetically misogynistic, has left its imprimatur on Islam globally by convincing too many Muslims that it is the purest and highest form of our faith.
The strains of Islam that promote face veils do not believe in the concept of a woman's right to choose and describe women as needing to be hidden to prove their "worth." Salafism and Wahhabism preach that women will burn in hell if they are not covered from head to toe -- whether they live in Saudi Arabia or France. There is no choice in such conditioning. That is not a message Muslims learn in our holy book, the Koran, nor is the face veil prescribed by the majority of Muslim scholars.
The French ban has been condemned as anti-liberal and anti-feminist. Where were those howls when niqabs began appearing in European countries, where for years women fought for rights? A bizarre political correctness tied the tongues of those who would normally rally to defend women's rights.
There are several ideological conflicts here: Within Islam, liberal and feminist Muslims refuse to believe that full-length veils are mandatory. In Saudi Arabia, where the prevalence of face veils is great, blogger Eman Al Nafjan wrote a post on Saudiwoman supporting the French ban: "I have heard Saudi women, who are conditioned to believe that covering is an unquestionable issue, sigh as they watch uncovered women on TV and say, 'They get this world, and we get the afterlife.' These are the women 'choosing' to cover, brainwashed into living to die."
But the problem is not just "over there." Feminist groups run by Muslim women in various Western countries fight misogynistic practices justified in the name of culture and religion. Cultural relativists, they say, don't want to "offend" anyone by protesting the disappearance of women behind the veil -- or worse.
For example, French women of North African and Muslim descent launched Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores Nor Submissives) in response to violence against women in housing projects and forced marriages of immigrant women in France. That group supports the ban and has denounced the racism faced in France by immigrant women and men.
Cultural integration has failed, or not taken place, in many European countries, but women shouldn't pay the price for it.
Europe's liberals must ask themselves why they have been silent. It is clear that Europe's political right -- other countries have similar bans in the works -- does not care about Muslim women or their rights.
But Muslims must ask themselves the same question: Why the silence as some of our women fade into black, either as a form of identity politics or out of acquiescence to Salafism?
The pioneering Egyptian feminist Hoda Shaarawi famously removed her veil in 1923, declaring it a thing of the past. Almost a century later, we are foundering. The best way to support Muslim women would be to oppose both the racist political right wing and the niqabs and burqas of the Muslim right wing. Women should not be sacrificed to either.
Let's move away from abstract discussions and focus on the realities of women. The French were right to ban the veil in public. Those of us who really care about women's rights should talk about the dangers in equating piety with the disappearance of women.
Mona Eltahawy is an Egyptian-born writer and lecturer on Arab and Muslim issues.
Mona Eltahawy: Tea With Omar Sharif
The Jerusalem Report March 29, 2010
When I read that Egypt’s Journalist Union had punished two senior Egyptian editors – one a member of the country’s ruling party and the other an expert on Jewish affairs for violating its ban on contacts with Israel, I wondered if Omar Sharif ever thinks of me.
My nemesis wasn’t the once-heartthrob Egyptian actor but a State Security officer in Cairo whose nom de guerre was Omar Sharif and who, for six months in 1999, tormented me for moving to Jerusalem as a correspondent for Reuters. There is no law that bans Egyptians from visiting Israel but everyone knows that once you do, State Security will invite you over for “a cup of tea” – i.e., an interrogation.
I got Omar Sharif’s note inviting me for tea during a quick visit to Cairo the year I lived in Israel. “Miss Mona, an officer left this for you,” the doorman’s wife Umm Mokhtar said. An ebullient woman not easily intimidated, she was unusually subdued as she handed me the note, which I shoved absentmindedly into a jacket pocket. I was on my way to the airport, late as usual.
I did not think of him again until my next trip to Cairo a few months later, when my brother’s very anxious father-in-law took me aside. Once he mentioned the name Omar Sharif, I knew the surreal had kicked down the door into my life.
When I didn’t call Omar, he had gone to my apartment building and dragged Umm Mokhtar’s husband to the nearest police station for questioning as to my whereabouts. After the poor man convinced Omar that all he knew was that I was abroad somewhere, Omar went back to my apartment building where he spoke to the man from whom my parents had bought the apartment and who acted as de facto landlord.
He told Omar that all he knew about me was that I was a journalist and he offered the telephone number of my brother’s father-in-law who was looking after any matters regarding the apartment because my entire family lived abroad.
I told our relative I’d go in and see Omar. By the time we had our cup of tea, I’d resigned from Reuters and was back living in Cairo. Tall and bulky, Omar Sharif wore a shiny purple suit. He had a mustache and every sentence ended in an exclamation, usually not in my favor.
“Mona Eltahawy! Finally! You’re a real character,” Omar shouted. “Who on earth goes to Israel? I have to meet your father. If my daughter ever told me she wanted to go to Israel I’d break her neck!”
Stepping into his office, I walked into a thick wall of cologne; one of those Calvin Klein unisex scents fashionable about 10 years earlier. I didn’t know whether to feel flattered or worried.
“You see this file,” he said. “This is all you. Look – orders to have you followed, orders to tap your telephone. You’re a lot of trouble, you know.”
What had I been saying on the phone lately?
He left for a few moments to go and say his noon prayers. I sat alone in the room watching an Arabic language news channel that had the volume muted. I didn’t know if I was in trouble or not.
“So do you pray?” he asked when he came back.
“I do.”
“No way! You don’t look like the praying kind.”
“Who said religion had a look?” I ventured. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I was falling right into every trap he set for me.
“Well of course there’s a look to being religious,” he said. “Our religion is very specific about what’s wrong and what’s right. Take the traveling you like so much. A woman shouldn’t travel alone.”
I let that bait go. I was learning.
“Are you married? How old are you?” He continued.
“I’m 31. I joke I’m married to my job.”
“You can never get married. Who’s going to want to marry you with the life you lead, every day in a different city? You’ll end up with a man like my brother, a womanizer, who’ll cheat on you,” he said.
And so on and so forth till he got up, shook my hand and told me to call him if I ever needed help.
I tried to forget Omar.
A few months later as I visited my brother’s in-laws with my parents and sister – in town for a while – the telephone rang. It was Omar Sharif. He knew my father was in town. They spoke for a few moments. The next day, my father and mother said they wanted to talk to me.
“What did he mean when he said you were living a life that was not suitable for Egypt?” my father asked. After kicking down the door, the surreal was dancing on the rooftop of my life.
A distant relative, who had recently retired from State Security, was called. Omar Sharif’s paternalism had set the men in motion to save Mona.
“Mona, the guy’s already married,” the relative said after investigating. “I thought he wanted to marry you or something.”
“I know – he showed me his wife’s picture,” I replied.
He gave me the number of Omar’s supervising officer so that I could call him if Omar ever bothered me again.
About a year later, I pressed play on the flashing telephone answering machine.
“Peace be upon you Miss Mona. I’m just calling to see how you are. Give me a call when you hear this message. This is, of course, your ‘brother,’ Omar Sharif.”
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