Opinion | On ‘Hijab Day’, the only choice is to drop the cloth for ‘No Hijab Day’

February 1 is World Hijab Day. There is not much to celebrate about making millions of women and little girls roam lifelong inside tents, sometimes in 45-degrees heat, in the name of modesty.

But the day will not be observed solemnly. Across the world, Islamists will launch a blitz-marketing campaign upholding this atrocity as free choice, despite women across countries being subjected to lashes, public beating, acid attack, execution, and honour killing for not wearing it. More than physical intimidation is the ever-dangling threat of severe censorship, boycott, and chastisement in family and society.

And yet, it will be sold as choice not just by Islamists, by their biggest allies, the Left and self-proclaimed liberals, who would not want to stay even one day of their lives in a cloth prison but whose secular credentials are only validated by defending Islam’s ugliest practices.

On the same day, however, a growing number of Muslim women worldwide have started observing #NoHijabDay. They voice the struggle of millions who are subjected to the hijab and the burqa. Women like Taslima Nasreen, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Yasmine Mohammed, Masih Alinejad, Rana Ahmad, and Ensaf Haidar today openly champion the liberation of coming out of the hijab. Their numbers are growing faster than one can imagine, and silently.

A woman wearing burqa playing cricket with her son in Bangladesh. She was an athlete. But she had to quit & had to wear burqa. She may say it is her choice. But burqa cannot be any sane person's choice. It has always been men's 'choice' for women. pic.twitter.com/UKHScqhKk5

— taslima nasreen (@taslimanasreen) September 13, 2020

In India, for instance, there has been much outrage about a school in Karnataka which has reportedly disallowed girls from coming to class in hijab. India’s liberals are seething, eager to keep up with the rage of Islamists. Hijab and burqa fail the most basic test of a liberal mind. But as long as you are deemed ‘secular’ for whitewashing the worst excesses of Islam by a small but powerful club of urban, English-speaking, privileged individuals, it is worth playing along.

The problem with this kind of perverted secularism is that more and more Muslim women are calling it out.

1)
All my sisters who have the experienced the brutally under Sharia laws are now united. Women of Iran, Afghanistan and all Middle Eastern who still get lashes, jailed, killed and Kicked out from their homeland for demanding freedom and dignity now asking the world: #LetUsTalk pic.twitter.com/pOT4BFp0kM

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) January 18, 2022

Even Muslim-majority nations like Kosovo, Azerbaijan, Tunisia, Morocco and Lebanon have outlawed burqa and hijab by various degrees. Egypt and Syria have long banned the face veil for girls in universities. MP and journalist Farida el-Shoubashy is about to introduce a bill in Parliament to ban the niqab across Egypt.

In her 2021 Dawn piece ‘Burqa Isn’t Choice’, London-based Pakistani lawyer Ayesha Ijaz Khan writes: “When I am told that women choose to wear a hijab, niqab or burqa, I find the notion completely fanciful. Some may certainly be choosing it, but a large number are not. Particularly those who live in Muslim-majority countries, where free choice has never been part of our ethos.”

Some progressive Muslims argue that the Quran does not clearly stipulate the use of hijab or niqab.

But in an overwhelming majority of Islamic societies, rulers, scholars and moral guardians widely cite two verses from the Holy Book of the Muslims.

The first one is 24:31: “And tell the believing women that they should lower their glances, guard their private parts, and not display their charms beyond what {it is acceptable} to reveal; they should let their headscarves fall to cover their necklines and not reveal their charms except to their husband, father, husband’s father, son, husband’s son, brother, brother’s sons, sister’s sons, slaves, male attendants who have no sexual desire or children unaware of a woman’s nudity; they mustn’t stamp feet to draw attention to any hidden charm.”

The second one involves visiting Prophet Mohammed’s house with his wives around. A part of this verse, 33:53, says: “Believers, enter not the houses of the Prophet without his permission, nor wait for a meal... And if you were to ask the wives of the Prophet for something, ask from behind a curtain or veil. That is better for the purity of your hearts and theirs.”

When a tangible threat of shaming, social ostracisation, violence, and even murder hangs on one if she does not wear a piece of cloth, it is not choice. It is oppression.

The Islamic world faces a massive crisis of faith today. There is a silent crossover from Islam to deism and atheism in Turkey, Iran, parts of the Arab world and even Pakistan.

Movements like ‘ex-Muslims’ and ‘Awesome Without Allah’ start quietly in Islamic society, but individuals out themselves only in the safety of western societies or entrenched democracies. Others silently make the shift.

Some stay within Islam and try to fight Islamism from within, instead of leaving the faith and becoming persona non grata. They feel they should take on tyrannical practices instead of questioning the existence of God.

Other stay silent because declaring themselves atheist could invite social boycott, beating, firing, jail, and murder. Families feel atheists ruin their honour. Employers don’t trust them. Nations and communities call them traitors and security threats.

Liberals defending practices like hijab stifle the voice of those who suffer lifelong in silence. Which is why Pakistani blogger Eiynah famously responded to actor Ben Affleck’s spirited defence of Islam and calling Bill Maher a racist for asking uncomfortable questions about the faith.

“I saw your discussion with Bill Maher and Sam Harris, and I must say you did me a great disservice. Your heart was in the right place… What you really did though, perhaps inadvertently, was silence a conversation that never gets started,” she wrote. “Why are Muslims being ‘preserved’ in some time capsule of centuries gone by? Why is it okay that we continue to live in a world where our women are compared to candy waiting to be consumed? Why is it okay for women of the rest of the world to fight for freedom and equality while we are told to cover our shameful bodies? Noble liberals like yourself always stand up for the misrepresented Muslims and stand against the Islamophobes, which is great but who stands in my corner and for the others who feel oppressed by the religion? Every time we raise our voices, one of us is killed or threatened.”

Questions that no self-proclaimed, blindly Islam-defending liberal has been able to answer to this day.

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