I am in Baghdad right now and I have my back to the wall as I type. I am slowly moving my laptop closer to my chest and looking around to make sure nobody else sees what I am writing. I am Iraqi. I am a woman. I am Christian. And I am not a hijabi.
Iraq, much like Iran, used to be a more secular place. The Saddam regime was brutal, but he kept Islamism in the country under control until the end when he sensed his loss of power and began turning to Islam. That is what regimes here usually do.
Liberal feminists will tell you the hijab was a response to the West. It is a defiant act against imperialism! It’s not. I am here and I promise you, the hijab is not empowering.
First, not all Iraqis are Muslim. If Islam is what unites us against imperialism, then where does that leave me? Subjugated. As a Christian and as a woman.
Second, and more importantly, women cannot reclaim our bodies by falling beneath another form of hegemony. “We do not want to submit to the Western men, and therefore we submit to the Arab men” is hardly a step forward.
Let me clarify: I do not want the Western armies in Iraq. They rape, torture, and kill Iraqi women and attempt to steal our limited resources for themselves. I do not, however, think abuse by Arab men is somehow a step in the right direction.
When Saddam fell, Iraqi men quickly searched for power. Those who did not find it are doing what emasculated men always do. They are practicing power over the women in their families.
I find it disgusting but expected that women’s clothing is always inspected. Whatever we wear, it is always the wrong thing for some people. I am not here to tell women what to wear. I am trying to dissect the idea that the hijab is empowering especially here in the Middle East.
In Iraq and in every other Middle Eastern country where the hijab is not required by law, (it is required in Iran and more extremely in Saudi Arabia), there are two specific demographics I have noticed wearing it:
1. Poor, uneducated women
2. The family members of Islamic leadersI will focus on the first of these before moving on to the second. It is my experience that in almost every country in the world, poor and uneducated people are the most performative in their religion. When I lived in Spain, this was the case. The poor old women who walked along the beach were more devoted to their Christianity than I, a Christian from a place where my family was persecuted for it, ever was.
But both my parents are professors in biology and studied when Baghdad was the best place in the Middle East to study. None of my friends here, who are mostly Muslim, cover their hair. They come from educated families. They do not need to lean on religion.
For poor women, this is different. They are not likely to receive an education and understand from a young age they will need to depend on a husband or be a burden to the family. They often do not have jobs so if there is abuse in the household they are trapped. They have to follow the rules of men to survive, more than I do.
If these woman do not cover from a young age, they will not find a good husband. Men are close-minded and possessive and they cannot deal with a possibility other men saw such “intimate” parts of THEIR wife.
Their families pressure them to follow these rules. An uncovered woman will bring shame to the family first by revealing herself and then by not finding a good husband to provide for her. They are pressured to cover as young as eight and nine years old. Can any person that young devote themselves to an outfit for life?
Street harassment is very common in Baghdad. The few times I have been harassed when outside with hijabi women, they have blamed me for not covering. “I am Christian” I will say. “The men know that” is usually their response. The culture is so toxic that women with the hijab believe they are superior to those without it.
But materially they are inferior and they know that. In almost every case, women who do not cover are wealthier, more educated, better-employed, less-dependent on men, and live materially better lives. So what do poor, uneducated women have? Religion. I really can’t blame them.
Religion is also used as a tool by the second group I mentioned, the Islamic leaders, to unite and control the masses. Sure, your family is starving and your babies are dying from preventable diseases. But what do I offer you? Eternal life in heaven as long as you do everything I tell you in the name of God.
This makes people feel included and gives them purpose. It also creates a hierarchy in society. When men are permitted and even encouraged to oppress the women in their lives, they are more likely to follow the leaders that allow this. It makes them feel powerful. Men, especially poor men, want to feel power over something or someone.
In this way, the hijab is empowering… but only for men. It strips power away from women. It represents a society moving backwards in many ways.
Many women will tell you they choose to wear the hijab or they wear it for Allah. Once you ask questions, you will find this is less true. In almost all cases, they began wearing it at a young age (and always under eighteen) and were pressured by family.
I am hypocritical because I too perform “feminine” things because of family or society pressure. I wear my hair long even though it bothers me and I wish I could shave it off because I do not want to face society’s judgment for doing that. But at least I realize the source of this contradiction.
Western liberal feminists who praise the hijab are forgetting about the rest of us. I am terrified of a day I live in a place where covering is the law. Iraq is my home and I don’t want to leave, but sometimes I think maybe I don’t belong here especially if something like my hair can get me killed.
In every country, we need to have a larger conversation about what women say we want and what we really want. We also need to realize the broken logic of “wanting” to do something because it pleases men.
Liberal feminists: I know it is scary for you to criticize the hijab because then you have to admit some of your personal choices are actually part of your effort to serve the patriarchy. We all need to face this fact because if we don’t, we cannot get any closer to liberating ourselves.
Tag: islam
do you little shits give a fuck about the fact that mashal Khan was killed in pakistan for speaking ill about islam??? killed??? that THIS is the shit that goes on in islamic countries???? like fucking hell. ask someone who’s lived there & been a muslim. they don’t believe in free speech. rest in peace mashal.
3000-4000 university educated people including staff, shot him in the head and then proceeded to defile his body by stripping him naked, kicking, stoning and calling for his body to be burned.
“To all the women in Pakistan who are working for change . Don’t give up on your dreams.Your bravery and resilience In the face of such adversities is admirable ” – Mashal Khan, Humanist
RIP to another voice silenced by religious adherents.
Genital mutilation procedure more common U.S. women
Over a half-million women and girls in the United States are at risk of their genitals being mutilated, according to a study by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The 2012 study estimates 513,000 females under age 18 are at risk for female genital mutilation, an increase more than four times that of a 1990 estimate. Another study, conducted by The Population Reference Bureau in February 2015, estimates up to 507,000 U.S. women and girls are at risk of undergoing the procedure.
“This is much more common than people think,” said Shelby Quast, Americas director of Equality Now, an international organization that focuses on ending the procedure worldwide. “Female genital mutilation is happening here in the U.S. It is child abuse and we need to stop it.”
So antifeminists can officially shut the fuck up about “women don’t face sex based violence in the west”.
For the record, feminists in the US care about women in other countries. Also, this shit is happening in our own backyard too.
It shocks me how people found this photo “disturbing” and “disgusting” and will fight about the image above but will not understand the message behind it YES IS IT IS SHOCKING BUT THE ACT IS DISGUSTING , THE TRAUMA THESE WOMEN GO THROUGH IS DISTURBING. CUT YOUR BULLSHIT OUT AND STOP FEELING ANGRY ABOUT THE IMAGE AND START GETTING ANGRY THAT THIS IS STILL BEING CARRIED OUT IN 2017 !!!
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is also known as female circumcision or female genital cutting, and in practising communities by local terms such as ‘tahor’ or ‘sunna’. It can have devastating physical and psychological consequences for girls and women
The procedure is traditionally carried out by a female with no medical training, without anaesthetics or antiseptic treatments, using knives, scissors, scalpels, pieces of glass or razor blades. The girl is sometimes forcibly restrained
FGM is illegal in the UK, and it is also illegal to take or help someone else take a British national or a permanent resident of the UK abroad for FGM. There is a prison sentence of up to 14 years for this crime.
Why is FGM carried out?
Religious reasons: There are varying positions within religion, some believe and promote it, whilst others consider it irrelevant and others contribute to trying to eliminate it. Interestingly, there are no religious scripts that prescribe the practice. However practioners often believe that FGM has religious support.
Cultural reasons:
It is believed that FGM is considered a necessary way of raising a girl properly, ready for adulthood and marriage
Involved with cultural ideas of femininity and modesty with the view that the girls are clean and beautiful after this procedure
What are the mental and physical health risks to a patient’s health who have been a victim of FGM?Some of the risks to Mental health:
Increased risks of newborn death
Complications during childbirth
Damages a woman’s relationship
Affects how a woman feels about herself
Some of the Physical risks:It causes injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons
Violates a girls physical integrity
Interferes with the natural function of the female body
Removes and damages normal female genital tissue
Infertility
Cysts
Recurrent bladder and urinary tract infections (UTIS)
Even death.I’m assuming you’re also fighting for the normalisation of MGM to stop then??
You are disgusting.
A controversial new song and video produced by Saudi Arabian artist-provocateur Majed al-Esa would be hysterically funny if it were only a joke.
Instead, the song called “Hwages,” with the chorus “If only God would rid us of men,” focuses on very real concerns by oppressed women in Saudi Arabia, who aren’t allowed to drive, swim in public, or complete any task without permission from a male guardian. It also contains a veiled warning to American women on the eve of the inauguration of Donald Trump.
The video, which has had more than 2.5 million views since it was released Dec. 23, starts benignly with women in full-face-covering niqab crawling into the backseat of a big car driven by a small boy. The women then appear out of the car, lifting their dark robes to expose brightly colored street clothes and sneakers as they skateboard, roller skate, play basketball, and drive bumper cars.
All the while, men, shot from below to make them seem even more overpowering and oppressive, wave their fingers and use hand motions meant to keep the women submissive.
Then, about 80 seconds into the video, a cardboard cutout of a sour-faced Trump rises ominously from behind a podium with the seal “House of Men” in front of dim signs barring out Hillary Clinton and against women in general.
Laughing yet?
The oppressed women then roll bowling balls at pins on which men’s faces are taped and enjoy themselves at an amusement park as if that somehow embodies women’s equality. As the sun goes down, the men who were depicted gesticulating and oppressing women early in the video point to the Trump cutout in the backseat of their sedan. It is unclear exactly what the backseat placement means, whether to say “he’s with us” for his views and comments on women, or whether he is relegated there because of his apparent views about Muslims.
The song then slows down as a soloist mournfully sings the chorus of a famous Saudi protest song: “May men go extinct, they cause us to have mental illnesses.”
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Sugar-coating reality of Islam
How appalling. Two Australian women, sitting alongside each other on a panel, shouting abuse at each other about the status of women in Islam.
That was yet another low-point in the debate in Australia about Islam.
The clash on the ABC’s Q&A last night certainly provided a few minutes of lively television.
But it was unedifying, ill-informed and played to prejudices on both sides of the debate.
Jacqui Lambie is what television producers call “great talent” — a direct communicator who can deliver a punch and can be compelling to watch.
Her adversary last night was Yassmin Abdel-Magied, whose family came to Australia from Sudan when she was two and who now lives happily in Australia as a mechanical engineer.
It’s as if the moment the “Muslim button” was pressed that these two lost it, shouting at each other a level of abuse that does nothing to further an important discussion.
Amid the shouting, the content of each was questionable.
Abdel Magied argued that women are treated well in Islam.
This may be the case in Brisbane, where she lives, but the idea of trying to argue this about Islam in general is nonsense.
The two main drivers of Islamic practice in the world today are Iran and Saudi Arabia — Iran is the leader of the Shia world while Saudi Arabia is the leader of the Sunni world.
Many Muslims in Australia follow the rulings and teachings of the spiritual leaders in these countries.
In Iran, discrimination against women is entrenched in the law — the treatment of women as second-class citizens is open and formalised.
The notion that they are equal is absurd.
For example, if a negligent driver in Iran hits and injures a female pedestrian the courts will make the driver pay half the compensation that they would if they injured a male pedestrian.
I covered the 2009 “Green Revolution” in Iran for The Australian, an uprising violently crushed by the Ayatollahs.
While I was there I got onto a bus with an Iranian-English woman who was showing me around Tehran.
I got on the front of the bus, for the men, and she got on the back, for the women.
A wooden pole separated the two.
When we began talking, an Iranian woman sitting on the bus confronted us — were we married and if not then we should not be talking to each other in public.
In Iran, a man and a woman should not talk in public unless they are related.
That same Iranian-English woman told me how “Islamic police” would walk alongside her in the street and tell her to wipe lipstick from her face, or that her scarf was not covering all her hair.
I was invited into some homes, where I spoke to many young Iranian women about their status.
Clearly frustrated, the married ones told me that an Iranian woman could only leave home, even to go to the shops, if their husband or father gave them “permission.”
The women, who are connected to the world through the internet, movies and the strong university educations available in Iran, were both upset and embarrassed by this reality.
Things in Saudi Arabia are just as bad — women are not allowed to drive cars. Supporting that ban, Saudi cleric Sheikh Salah al-Luhaydan claimed it had been scientifically proven that driving “affects the ovaries” and leads to clinical disorders in children.
Bear in mind that Sheikh al-Luhaydan is a spiritual leader, guiding future generations of Saudis in their attitudes.
This sort of medieval mentality is found in many parts of the Arab world.
In 2010, the United Nations put on a summer camp for children in Gaza. But a Salafist group, Free of the Homeland, said the UN was “teaching schoolgirls fitness, dancing and immorality.” Two days later the camp was attacked and destroyed.
Then in 2013, the UN decided to fund a Gaza marathon. About 1500 people registered, including many woman and children.
But Hamas, which controls Gaza, banned girls and women from participating.
The UN cancelled the event.
It is important that we discuss Islam, its problems and how it functions in countries such as Australia.
To help that debate, we need to hear from sensible, moderate Muslims on how to deal with concerns that a large number of Australians have when they look around the world and see incident after incident of terrorism committed by Islamic extremists.
Ultimately, in my view, the solution to Islamic extremism must come from inside Islam.
We need to remember that when Islamic State first formed in — it was then called al-Qa’ida in Iraq.
It formed in 2004 as a response to the US-led invasion of Iraq.
It was key figures in the local communities — the Sunni tribal leaders — who confronted them.
These tribal leaders drove them out of Iraq because they found their methods and philosophy appalling.
The group reformed as Islamic State — or ISIS — when the uprising in Syria began in 2011.
Islam is currently engaged in a battle for its future, and its identity.
That underpins much of the instability in the Middle East, particularly in countries such as Syria and Iraq.
For Yassmin Abdel-Magied to sit in a studio in Sydney and try to sugar-coat reality of how well women are treated in Islam will not help anyone.
Perhaps she meant that for Muslim women in Australia the reality is much different than for Muslim women in many parts of the world — if that is what she means she should state that.
That, in itself, would lead to a fascinating debate: are there some countries where it is good to be a Muslim woman but some countries where it is not good to be a Muslim woman?
Nor will Jacqui Lambie help the debate by barking “Sharia law” every time she is asked to contribute.
We need informed debate not shouting and abuse.
Photo on the left in Arabic from ministry of foreign affairs: the kingdom is confirming it’s stance in supporting religions and human beliefs.
The photo on the right from a woman supporting male guardianship , asking the account of ministry of interior, how can She report atheist and apostates and will Sharia be enforced on them ,I.e killing them , the account answer is yes and to screen cap the URL and file a police report .
yes ,religions and human beliefs are respected and supported here
Liberal feminists on the burqini ban (rightly so): The burqini ban is bad! A woman should be allowed to cover herself as much as she wants or reveal as much as she wants! Forcibly making someone remove their clothing in public is sexual harassment!
Liberal feminists on enforced hijab on female chess competitors in Iran: *crickets* Uh… when in Rome do as the Romans do… it’s just showing respect for their culture… Uh… Islam is a beautiful religion?
Celtyradfem 