This is a guest post by Ibn Khaldun
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The Times recently gave space to Fatima Barkatulla to present a hopelessly misleading defence of the niqab (or, as the Times fawningly describes it, “[a]n insider guide to common misconceptions”). Fatima attempts to address seven issues that have been raised around the Niqab.
The piece is here for all to see. I would like to respond to her points one by one.
1) The Niqab is a symbol of female subjugation.
This is a very interesting take on the hijab debate – a video about a British Muslim woman who decided to take off the hijab after realising she was wearing it not for personal pious reasons but political ones – contrary to what Islamists claim. She is of the opinion that it’s better for society that men learn how to function appropriately around unveiled women than that society shroud women from men and place the blame for men’s behavioural inadequacies on women’s shoulders.
Watch it through as she visits various Muslim women around the world and investigates their attitudes towards the hijab.
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Hat tip: Averroes Press
This is a guest post by Al-Qanaas Al-Masri
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Sohaib Saeed, a leading light of the Scottish Islamic Foundation and a former spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain, has publicly expressed his opposition to countries and individuals that believe that women should be forced to veil or wear hijab.
In a letter to The Metro opposing Sarkozy’s suggestion that the Burka should be banned, and which was published on the Scottish Islamic Foundation’s website last week, Sohaib wrote that that “Forcing a lady to remove a garment is as abhorrent as forcing her to don it.”
Although Sohaib does not spell it out, his uncompromising defence of liberal values can only be seen as a blunt criticism of countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia that force all women – Muslim and non-Muslim - to wear the hijab, as well as a criticism of opposition Islamist groups around the Middle East and elsewhere that aspire to similarly force dress codes on women.
(This article of mine was originally published in First Draft, the Prospect Magazine blog, 18 March 2009)
In Britain, freedom of consciousness and liberalism thrive. Women can choose to wear the hijab (headscarf) or not, and so Katharine Quarmby can ponder at will its aesthetic and fashion implications. In Iran, however, such a luxury is unimaginable. A woman’s worth and modesty is dictated by misogynist Islamist clerics who force women to wear the hijab and throw feminists in jail for daring to protest for equal human rights.
Unfortunately, some do not appreciate the freedoms held in Britain. In a recent talk I attended, Alastair Crooke, a former MI6 agent, labels what we see in Iran as ‘Muslim values’, praising Iran’s leaders for using their ‘creative imaginative faculties’ to construct a society based on collective ‘Islamic’ norms. Most Iranian women recognise this as Khomeini’s politicisation of religion. Crooke rejected the idea that the Iranian regime abuses a woman’s human rights, as these are a ‘Western’ construct – Christian, capitalist and rooted in individualism.