Just look what Jack Straw has started!

Here’s Robert Spencer in FrontPage magazine on the issue.

Taking whose picture?

(I didn’t take this photo. It was sent to me by a friend, who got it from the Internet, I assume.)

And this very interesting article by Saira Khan in The Times of 9 October is entitled Why Muslim women should thank Straw.

Saira Khan’s parents moved from Kashmir to the UK in the 1960s. They brought their faith and their traditions to their new home. But they also understood that they were starting a new life in a country where Islam was not the main religion. Saira herself wore the traditionl salwar kameez at home and a typical English school uniform at school. Her parents did not feel that wearing English clothes compromised her faith. They wanted her to fit in and to make use of all the advantages that school offered. She captained the school hockey team and took part in county athletics, not things she could have done wearing the salwar kameez, let alone being entirely covered by a jilbab or niqab.

No one in her immediate family, she says, either in the UK or in Kashmir, wears the niqab, the blackout veil that covers the face.

Her mother had no problem with removing her chador when she used to operate heavy machinery at work. And she jogs in a tracksuit and swims in a normal swimming costume.

Of course, this is not acceptable to Muslims who believe there is only one way to dress as a Muslim, to express Muslim beliefs and do Muslim practices. Such Muslims, Saira Khan says, forget

that the Muslim faith is interpreted in different ways in different places and that there are distinct cultures and styles of dress in Muslim countries stretching from Morocco to Indonesia. But it is not a requirement of the Koran for women to wear the veil.

Ah, so there’s something else behind the increasing pressure on Muslim women to cover themselves completely, to hide their faces from the rest of society.

Saira Khan thinks that the growing number of women veiling their faces in Britain is a sign of radicalization. She tells of her shock at discovering that some of her fellow students at University in the late 1980s had turned very religious and started to wear the jilbab. They had never worn this before, nor had their mothers before them. But the university’s Islamic Society had told them they were not proper Muslims if they failed to adhere to the strict dress code. She continues:

It is an extreme practice. It is never right for a woman to hide behind a veil and shut herself off from people in the community. But it is particularly wrong in Britain, where it alien to the mainstream culture for someone to walk around wearing a mask. The veil restricts women, it stops them achieving their full potential in all areas of their life and it stops them communicating. It sends out a clear message: ?I do not want to be part of your society.?

Some Muslim women say that it is their choice to wear it; I don?t agree. Why would any woman living in a tolerant country freely choose to wear such a restrictive garment? What these women are really saying is that they adopt the veil because they believe that they should have less freedom than men, and that if they did not wear the veil men would not be accountable for their uncontrollable urges ? so women must cover-up so as not to tempt men. What kind of a message does that send to women?

But a lot of women are not free to choose. Girls as young as three or four are wearing the hijab to school ? that is not a freely made choice. Girls under 16 should certainly not have to wear it to school. And behind the closed doors of some Muslim houses, women are told to wear the hijab and the veil. These are the girls that are hidden away, they are not allowed to go to universities, they have little choice in who they marry, in many cases they are kept down by the threat of violence.

Saira Khan thinks that Jack Straw was right to raise the issue and that no one should feel threatened by his comments…

…after all, the debate about veils has been raging in the Islamic community for many years. To argue that non-Muslims have no right to discuss it merely reinforces the idea that Muslims are not part of a wider society. It also suggests, wrongly, that wearing the veil affects only Muslims. Non-Muslims have to deal with women wearing a veil, so why shouldn?t their feelings be taken into consideration? I would find it impossible to deal with any veiled woman because it goes so deeply against my own values and basic human instincts. How can you develop any kind of a social relationship with someone who has shut themselves away from the rest of the world?

And if we can?t have a debate about the veil without a vocal minority of Muslims crying ?Islamophobia?, how will we face other issues, such as domestic violence, forced marriages, sexual abuse and child abuse that are rife in the Muslim community? These are not uniquely Muslim problems but, unlike other communities, they are never openly debated. It is children and women who suffer as a result.

Thank you, Saira Khan, for writing so frankly about an issue that is stirring up profound discomfort in Britan. I’m a Baha’i and the Baha’i Faith has, as a fundamental principle, the equality of women and men. Baha’i women do not wear any kind of veil. The famous 19th century Iranian poetess, Tahirih (see my previous post with Tahirih’s story), inspired by the teachings of the B?b made a dramatic break with the male dominated past by publicly removing her veil in male company. To borrow a phrase from a letter of the Universal House of Justice, “We have crossed a bridge between times”. There can be no going back, no return to oppressive traditions. How can women and men be equal if women’s faces are hidden?

I leave the last word to Saira Khan:

This is my message to British Muslim women ? if you want your daughters to take advantage of all the opportunities that Britain has to offer, do not encourage them to wear the veil. We must unite against the radical Muslim men who would love women to be hidden, unseen and unheard.

I was able to take advantage of what Britain has got to offer and I hope Mr Straw?s comments will help more Muslim women to do the same. But my argument with those Muslims who would only be happy in a Talebanised society, who turn their face against integration, is this: ?If you don?t like living here and don?t want to integrate, then what the hell are you doing here? Why don?t you just go and live in an Islamic country??

Technorati Tags: Saira Khan, Muslim, Kashmir, salwar kameez, jilbab, niqab, veil, chador, Koran, Islamophobia, Baha’i, Tahirih

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