Happy Friday eddiebody (as Eryn would say)!
So this week saw International Women’s Day and the 100th anniversary of the Oreo cookie. Naturally the media saw fit to report on a slew of women-related topics — and especially for Muslim women, covered a bunch of hijab stories.
(haha, see what I did there? Covered. Hijab. Get it?)
So how do you style your hijab? Do you twist it, dunk it, layer it, throw it on at once or in two bites?
Enjoy!
1) *taps mic*
Sick and tired of everyone else deciding how Muslim women live their lives, the lovely and brilliant Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi give their opinion on the public narrative used to construct the “Muslim woman” in their HuffPo piece, “Muslim Women Take Back the Mic on International Women’s Day.”
Very simply put, “Why doesn’t anyone ever ask Muslim women what they think?”
When we raise our voices to tell our own stories, we are silenced. We are either dismissed as outliers — educated and upper class Western-raised Muslim women with no grasp of the reality of “real” Muslim women — or brainwashed, because how could any intelligent woman defend Islam or call herself Muslim? In many cases, our experiences are negated or dismissed as inauthentic by virtue of comparison to the circumstances of some women in other countries…
The voices of Muslim women are diverse, and our individual experiences authentic. We must be placed in our own context without being smothered under an entire globe’s worth of geopolitical baggage. Just as the life of a Catholic woman in a village in Guatemala is very different from that of a Catholic woman in the village of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, so too are the lives, realities and experiences of over 500 million Muslim women across the globe.
Love, love, love! I get shivers!
Speaking of love and shivers, check out Ayesha’s and Nura’s recent video interview with Middle East Voices on their book Love, InshAllah. Giving women back the power to form their own narrative. YES.
2) In some serious news, Kingston police are asking for help identifying a woman after she was caught on security camera pulling on another woman’s hijab. The hijab was pulled hard enough to snap the woman’s head back. Police are calling it a hate crime assault.
I’m sad because I love my old university town. But I’m not surprised. That’s where someone spit on me, yelled obscenities at me from a car and verbally harassed me in the middle of Tim Horton’s. Ooooh K-town.
3) Is your political regime hijab limiting? Does your man chador oppress you? Why not come to a Hawaii-esque beach where you can have a “small taste of freedom” and experience “respite from a regime that regulates hemlines and headscarfs” while getting a tan and swimming with the “rare, sweet sensation of sunlight” on your skin.
With the *shocking* title of “From hijab to skimpy bikini” a New Zealand travel article explores the tropical Iranian island of Kish — where pale, submissive Persians let loose, laugh and play, enjoy some ice cream, and get their thong-tha-thong-tha-thongs on at the women-only beach.
Yeah.
Well at least they didn’t get topless…. Oh wait.
4) The fantastic Eman Hashim over at Muslimah Media Watch takes a look at hijab irony when Egyptian journalist Dalia Rabie was banned from joining her OWN birthday party at one of Cairo’s upscale restaurants because she was wearing hijab. The restaurant serves alcohol, and so the bouncer was only trying to protect her from the “debauched world of dining.” Certainly not because the restaurant wanted to maintain their “image.” NOOooo…</sarcasm>
So now we discuss if the woman who wears the hijab should play sports, sings, runs, play martial arts, etc. If you think whatever choice contradicts with the hijab, then do not do it if you wear the headscarf, and mind your own business if you do not. You might see it contradictory, but she doesn’t!
Some women find it weird to be a model while wearing the hijab, some don’t. What’s the big deal?
You can worry about your religious beliefs, your good deeds and bad ones, and let us worry about ours.
I’m getting that printed on a t-shirt. Or my hijab.
March 9, 2012 at 4:19 pm
I’m not surprised about the hijab pulling, but I’m glad they’re actually investigating it! That surprises me
. As usual with the public comments on any article about hijab, they’re depressing. Most recent comment when I viewed: “Was this a hate crime, or an attempt at liberation? And why
.
don’t men wear these articles of clothing? Guess God was a
man.” Yeah right… I bet if a MAN invented a religion he would make all women dress in skimpy revealing clothing all the time so he could enjoy ogling them
Reading the article about the bikini beach… want to bet it wasn’t written by a muslim? I gotta say… I think I’m a lot more comfortable swimming in my covered up suits than a lot of women at the pool. I’ve had people tell me they’ll come swimming with me (in regular swimsuits)… but only after they’ve lost some weight because they feel so bad about themselves lately. They don’t really want to be exposed. Even before I found Islam I was not modeling a bikini on the beach (and it wasn’t because of body image issues either) nor did I long to do so. I think the article misses the point of the beach. It’s not so much freedom from hemlines and headscarves as it is freedom from MEN.
March 13, 2012 at 10:21 am
I hate reading comments on these articles! I’m always defending Canadians saying that not everyone is terrified or hateful towards Muslims (true) — but hate it whenever comments prove me wrong.
March 13, 2012 at 2:46 pm
Same here… I guess the uncomfortable factor is, even though I’ve had plenty of nasty comments at various times, they don’t compare to the kind of things people will say on an online comment forum, that they wouldn’t say to my face. A larger percentage of people are nice or at least neutral in person, the numbers always end up looking vastly skewed in comments
(or maybe, it depends on the kind of people who feel like commenting, and of course the negative stands out). But it makes you wonder how many people you just interact with casually are the same type that posts these 
, and you just don’t know!
March 14, 2012 at 2:01 am
[...] taking down a silly article (and headline) so that we don’t have to, is this tidbit from wood turtle’s latest roundup:Is your political regime hijab limiting? Does your man chador oppress you? Why not come to a [...]