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Muslimah Media Watch on the murder of Marwa el-Sherbini

BBC News entitled their piece “Egypt mourns ‘headscarf martyr‘”. Additionally, they describe the murderer’s initial actions toward Sherbini as “insulting her religion” – an inaccurate statement, as W. insulted Sherbini herself, not her religion. Making such a statement skews the reality of the case and paints the story as the “Muslim angry over insult to Islam” trope. Stating this lie trivializes Sherbini’s very real experience of personal hate and Islamophobia. It diminishes W.’s hateful actions toward a Muslim woman. It ignores the fact that it was human being who was hurt, not a religion.

Meanwhile, on this side of the pond…

California: FBI investigating death of Muslim leader in High Desert

The FBI is investigating the death of a Muslim leader whose body was found inside a burned home in Yermo that had recently been spraypainted with racial epithets and Nazi symbols…

When firefighters doused the flames 40 minutes later, they found the body of 51-year-old Imam Ali Mohammed inside the East Yermo Road house he had moved his family out of last month.

"We don't know if it was simply an accident or if there is foul play involved," said sheriff's spokeswoman Cindy Beavers. "We just don't know if a crime occurred yet."

(Why is this a mystery?)

Seattle: Man charged with hate crime for threatening Muslim woman

The woman, who was holding her six-month-old son, tried to reason with the 24-year-old Auburn man by saying that her "her clothing does not make her a bad person," court documents said. When the insults didn't stop, prosecutors said, the woman backed away from Garner and tried to shield her son from him.

Garner then cursed at the woman, got in her face and pulled out a large sheathed knife, court papers said. Garner told the woman he was going to "cut" the woman and her baby with the knife, charging documents said.

Minnesota: Minnesota withdraws "Run Hadji Run" fireworks from shelves

Miami: Miami-Dade police have charged two teens in the latest vandalism of a West Kendall mosque and school that has been targeted twice this year

Gonzalez-Vaca told police that the vandalism had been planned for months. He said "all Muslims are terrorists," according to the report….

Six months ago, the mosque was sprayed with 51 bullets that left broken windows and holes in the building's golden dome. In June 2005, unknown assailants used a large rock to shatter the door of the Islamic center, which draws 500 Muslims for Friday prayers and has a 250-student religious school.

The year before, the center's sign near Southwest 147th Avenue was defaced with a Nazi swastika and profanity. No arrests have been made in the prior vandalisms.

Marwa Sherbini, a pregnant 32-year-old Egyptian woman, was stabbed 18 times in a Dresden courtroom by a man who had harassed her for wearing the hijab. Earlier she had won a judgment against him after he called her a "bitch," "slut," "Islamist," "terrorist," and other names. They were in court because he was appealing the decision. Her husband tried to intervene on her behalf and was stabbed as well, and then shot by security who mistook him for the attacker. He is now in critical condition. Her three-year-old son was in the room at the time and watched his mother die.

Thousands of people attended her funeral today in Alexandria, carrying signs calling her 'the martyr to the headscarf.' Egyptian bloggers have lashed out against the lack of international press coverage of her death. They have also criticized Germany for charging the attacker with manslaughter rather than murder, and for calling him a 'lone wolf,' ignoring widespread prejudice against Muslims in Germany.

The next time someone tries to talk to you about the misogyny behind the hijab, comparing it unfavorably to the freedom of Western fashion, please direct them to this link: Nina Ricci Fall 2009 Shoes

I need to go soak my feet in hot water just thinking about it.

Last Friday I went to Al-Azhar Park, a new (to me) public space in Old Cairo. X’s sister wanted to go there because there would be lots of space for the children to run around. Which they seriously DID. I think we ended up staying for six hours.

And the view was amazing:

This is the restaurant. If you look at pictures of Cairo proper, you can see why building something like this is such a feat: green spaces are so rare, and the city is already appropriating the desert to make room for housing. I remember I used to find it strange that the Cairo Zoo was such a popular picnic destination for families — people would be stretched out for the day on tiny little patches of space between the sidewalk and the zebra cages — but it makes sense if you consider it’s one of the few places with trees and grass. This is like that only way more so.

And the FOOD. Oh my GOD. Connor, you would have died. I am more indifferent to food than anyone I know — I’ve had this journal for seven years and have made, what, three posts about food? four, tops? — so believe me when I say that if *I* think it was incredible, it was incredible.

This was just the meat. Each of those tins contained a different dish: lamb, goat, beef, fish, chicken made five different ways, kofta, stuff I don’t even know the name of…

There was another room full of salads and vegetables, and a third full of pastries and desserts. On Fridays it was all-you-can-eat buffet. I felt like I was in one of those Middle Eastern medieval folktales where the humble servant comes to ask a request of the decadent sultan but has to interrupt him in the middle of his feast. (I, of course, playing the part of the decadent sultan.)

Actually I’m lying. THIS was the meat:

Seriously, it was a stupid amount of food. And then afterwards they bring you tea.

Later we went outside for a while.

At some point Laila decided to co-opt my scarf:

That’s X’s mom beside us. She was very mod in her younger years. It’s an ongoing joke that no one knows how old she is or what her real hair color is.

Laila and Omar go for a climb on the faux-latticework:

A waiter interrupts, offering to lift them over:

Omar goes for it, but Laila books for the stairs. When the waiter gives Omar a big kiss on the forehead her suspicions are confirmed, and she scolds her brother for being too trusting. (She explained to me that her baba told her that only mamas and babas are supposed to kiss you.)

As it got later the park started filling up. It was almost entirely Egyptians, not tourists, which surprised me. X’s sister pointed out that there were so many young (presumably unmarried) couples, much more so than you would have seen a few years ago.

Almost all of the women are wearing hijab now, a huge difference from when I was here in the past. Accordingly it’s become less meaningful as a religious symbol, and people are always complaining that it’s become just another fashion statement, something some women wear with tight jeans, sleeveless tops, or a lot of make-up.

On that note, here’s a funny tidbit: I went into the bathroom while I was at this restaurant and noticed a woman’s long black evening gloves abandoned by the side of the sink. I assumed they belonged to a niqabi woman, but the girl who came out of the stall was young, maybe seventeen, wearing jeans and a heavy metal T-shirt. I wanted to ask her if she thought we should take them to the reception (was there a reception?) or if there was some other way of dealing with lost items, but that was too many Arabic words for me so I just smiled instead and decided the woman, whoever she was, would eventually remember and come back for them. But then this heavy metal girl pulled a niqab out of her bag! And started putting it on! Ah! The gloves were hers! I like to think I’m immune from succumbing to hijab stereotyping, but I really hadn’t expected this girl, who looked less conservative than my own American teenage daughter does, to be the one so concerned with modesty she wouldn’t show her hands in public. That’ll learn me.

My thoughts on the two hijabi women kicked out of an Obama photo-op.

Beyond the Veil

"When the French government invaded Algeria, in 1830, it started a vast campaign of military 'pacification,' which was quickly followed by the imposition of French laws deemed necessary for the civilizing mission to succeed. Women were crucial to that enterprise. In articles, stories and novels of the day, Algerian women were universally depicted as oppressed, and so in order for civilization truly to penetrate Algeria, the argument went, the women had to cast off their veils. General Bugeaud, who was charged with administering the territory in the 1840s, declared, 'The Arabs elude us because they conceal their women from our gaze.'"

“I don’t want to see women on the street wearing burqas,” said Mr. Giordano, a nattily dressed man with the flowing white hair of an 18th-century German romantic. “I’m insulted by that — not by the women themselves, but by the people who turned them into human penguins.”

(more)

AS WE ALL KNOW, veiled women are a dowdy, dumpy bunch. They are women with no thoughts or opinions of their own, women who can't so much as shut the bedroom window if they're getting a draft without first consulting a man and asking his permission. Maybe, back when they were three or four years old, they dreamed of grander things from life, but now that they are adults they’ve been forced to wear the shroud, walk three feet behind their husbands, and stifle whatever hopes and feelings they used to call their own under the guise of being hapless helpmates to domineering men.

Right?

Then again, we ALSO know that unveiled women are wanton sluts, women who require nothing more than hearing a man call “hey, baby” on a street corner and suddenly they’re in the backseat of his car, throwing their legs in the air while shrieking whee, I love Satan!

At least that’s what we’ve been told. I heard it on television and read it on the internet, so it must be true.

Or wait, did I get it wrong? Perhaps it goes like this:

Bare-headed women are liberated and free, sure of themselves, comfortable with their sexuality, a page straight out of Cosmo. They are women whose lives are filled with meaning and purpose; above all, they are modern — unlike backwards veiled women, who wouldn’t recognize their own oppression if it hit them on the head with a slipper.

Or no, wait, what I meant to say was that veiled women are the true feminists, women who are secure enough in their sexuality that they don’t need to engage in some base attempt to advertise it — unlike their sell-out sisters, who are so desperate for attention that they will abandon every iota of self-respect in a sad attempt to grovel for male approval. (“Tee-hee-hee, have you seen my belly ring?”)

Right?

Well. Maybe not. To all of the above.

+ + +

A Saudi friend of mine once said that "the only thing more cliché than talking about the veil is apologizing for talking about the veil." She’s right; the subject’s boring, long-exhausted. Yet, for Muslim women, it’s one subject that won’t go away. Here’s an insider tip for my male Muslim friends, even the so-called progressive ones who say they don’t care whether women veil or not: the difference between you and me is that you’ve never had to make this decision. And as much as we love you — plural — for claiming that you don’t care what conclusion we come to, the fact is you will never have to be in this position. And that, right there, makes your experience of Islam different from ours.

This is especially true in the United States. Which might seem odd, because we have no laws about veiling here, but that’s part of the reason the issue is so contentious.

In Iran, because veiling is mandated by law, a woman must be especially progressive to wear it in a lax and casual manner (in public) or forgo it altogether (in private). Veiling is the norm, so she’s well aware of the statement she’s making when she rejects it.

On the flip side, in France or Turkey — where there are laws against veiling inside various public institutions – a woman is, presumably, especially religious if she decides to take it up. Since not-veiling is the default, for Muslim and non-Muslim women alike, going against the grain of public opinion requires a commitment to Islam that most observers would understand to be something over and above the mere coincidence of being born into a Muslim family.

In the United States, however, it is precisely the freedom of choice I so cherish that makes this such a complicated decision for the Muslim women who live here. The cultural norm – the “average American” woman – is unveiled, but the predominant image of a Muslim woman, even among non-Muslims, is that of a muhajabah. Therefore a muslimah who decides not to veil is seen as transgressing against her community and will have her commitment to Islam doubted, while the woman who does decide to veil is seen as rejecting everything about American life save for her religious practice. We can’t win; there is no middle ground. Being 51% one way or the other is seen as a complete rejection of the other side.

In case you weren’t listening the first time around, let me be clear: I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m opposed to both the French ban on veiling and the Saudi mandate for it, and listening to the Dutch whine about the loss of their Pure Dutch Culture [sic] in the face of all these – gasp – immigrants is one of the few times I’m proud to be American, where multiculturalism is an established fact, however imperfectly it’s practiced.

But I also remember living in a country where the signifiers weren’t so strong. I’m told it’s different in Egypt now — that somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of Cairene women now veil — but when I was living there, in the early 1990s, it was closer to 50/50. I loved that. I loved, especially, that there was no great social divide between veiled and unveiled women; you’d see differences of opinion even within a single family. One of my sisters-in-law veiled, one did not, the third took it up for a few years and then changed her mind and took it off. None of this was a matter of any great controversy. It didn’t even merit much discussion.

This is not to downplay the choices Egyptian women had to make. One friend of mine at the university said her father never forced her to veil, but it was only after she decided to take it up that he allowed her study late at the library, walk home unattended, and otherwise participate in public space in ways he wouldn’t have permitted without her willingness to adopt the hijab and, accordingly, serve as walking symbolism for everything the hijab represented in the popular imagination. On the other side of that spectrum, there was another girl I knew, also Egyptian, who said she wanted to veil but worried it would interfere with her career as a journalist. She wanted to be a foreign correspondent, and she was afraid people would read so much into her scarf that they wouldn’t get around to reading her words.

Can the choice to veil or not veil in such a context truly be considered “free”? I don’t know. Then again, I know plenty of American women who will tell you no one forced them to diet, but they believed that being thin facilitated their right to speak with authority in a manner they’d have lost if they had to confront the bias against fat women in a country where being heavy is equated with a loss of self-control and a where a loss of self-control is considered shameful, if not downright sinful. My point here is not to excuse the former because of the existence of the latter: only to argue that there is nothing uniquely “Islamic” about a woman negotiating with the patriarchy, nothing specifically “Muslim” about a woman who trades in Her Personal Ideal in favor of getting what privileges she can with a minimal amount of compromise. We ladies, the world over and religion notwithstanding, have been doing that for thousands of years.

I wonder, though, if our notions of “Islamic dress” had evolved in such a way that the turban (for example) was considered as mandatory for men as the hijab is for women in some circles, would Muslim men in the West expound on the subject with the same confident manner they do now, one that is as flippant as it is self-assured? I’m sure 10% of men would wear it everywhere without a second thought, and another 10% would scoff at the mere idea of it. But for the majority, those in the middle, it would (I would hope) elicit a little more reflection. Do you risk community censure for being one of those “non-turban guys,” knowing that – before you even open your mouth – your bare head will be considered, by some, proof that you eat pork, drink alcohol, never pray, love capitalism, support colonialism and the war in Iraq, neglect your children, and cheat on your wife? Or do you take it up, knowing that, in different spheres, it will brand you as ignorant, ascetic, oppressed, and/or radical? Be careful! Remember, you don’t get to choose how you want to be seen at this event, or with that crowd of people: the choice you make has to be applicable for all times and circumstances. No fair picking one option for a family reunion or protest march, and another for your first nervous job interview at Chase Manhattan.

For a while, in Cairo, I lived across the street from a girls’ high school and would watch these young scholars stream out of class after the final bell. There would be the same roar of high-pitched laughter I recognize in teenage girls anywhere, in any country, as they coagulated in groups in the garden, or at the front gate: veiled girls interlinking their arms with girls who wore their hair uncovered, occasionally leaning over to whisper some secret that necessitated pushing back a girlfriend’s headscarf or ponytail, depending, in order to have access to her ear. The intimacy of girls that age is always charming to me, but it seems even more endearing in retrospect, knowing that they were doing something that, in so many parts of the world, would be considered a radical act: ignoring the politics of the veiled/unveiled split in favor of interacting with the human being inside.

Feminist, socialist, devout Muslim: woman who has thrown Denmark into turmoil

Parliamentary candidate, 25, finds herself at centre of Europe-wide controversy

In the land that launched the cartoons war between Islam and the west, Asmaa Abdol-Hamid finds herself on the frontline, gearing up for a new battle.

The 25-year-old social worker, student and town councillor describes herself as a feminist, a democrat, and a socialist. She has gay friends, opposes the death penalty, supports abortion rights, and could not care less what goes on in other people's bedrooms. In short, a tolerant Scandinavian and European.

She is also a Palestinian and a devout Muslim who insists on wearing a headscarf, who refuses, on religious grounds, to shake hands with males, and who is bidding fair to be the first Muslim woman ever to enter the Folketing, the Danish parliament in Copenhagen.

For the extreme right, the young activist is a political provocateur, an agent of Islamic fundamentalism bent on infiltrating the seat of Danish democracy. To many on the left, Ms Abdol-Hamid is also problematic, personifying through her dress the reactionary repression of women and an illiberal religious agenda that should have no place in her leftwing "red-green" alliance of socialists and environmentalists.

As a result of announcing her parliamentary candidacy earlier this month, the young Muslim and Danish citizen has been thrust to the centre of a debate tormenting Denmark and the rest of western Europe – on the place and values of Islam in modern Europe and the treatment of large Muslim minorities.

Ms Abdol-Hamid is unfazed. "I see more Islam here in Denmark than in Iran or in other places in the Middle East," she says. "It's easier to be a Muslim in Denmark than in Saudi Arabia. I don't feel a stranger here. I'm interested in politics. I want to talk about this society, about political issues. But I'm not in politics because I'm a Muslim."

Her ambition, combined with her insistence on flaunting her religious affiliation, have outraged the Danish political establishment and triggered a new bout of soul-searching almost two years after the publication of cartoons of the Prophet ignited violence and protest across the Islamic world.

"This goes far beyond the extreme right," says Toger Seidenfaden, editor of the Politiken daily newspaper. "Asmaa is insisting on the right to be a religious Muslim and that's provoking broad debate among the public."

The key issue is the headscarf and whether it can be accommodated in parliament. This month Ms Abdol-Hamid gained the candidacy for a safe Copenhagen seat for the leftwing Unity List.

The Danish People's Party or DFP, the far-right movement that unofficially props up the weak centre-right government of the prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, is on the warpath. A couple of DFP politicians compared the headscarf to the Nazi swastika. One described the prospective MP as "brainwashed".

"We don't like the idea of her performing as an Islamist in the parliament," says DFP spokesman Kim Eskildsen. "We find it wrong that she'll use the parliament as a tool for Islamism … We don't consider this woman a Nazi. But the way the headscarf is used is comparable to other totalitarian symbols."

The happiest country in the world, according to one detailed survey of international living standards and public attitudes, Denmark is economically highly successful, with the lowest unemployment in the EU.

For the country's 200,000 Muslims and immigrants, however, that happiness is increasingly somewhere else. By virtue of the DFP's influence on the centre-right government, Denmark has enacted the tightest anti-immigration legislation in Europe in recent years.

Many Danes married to foreigners now commute into Copenhagen every day from the southern Swedish town of Malmo across the bridge linking the two cities because they cannot obtain residence for their spouses at home.

Ms Abdol-Hamid, who shares a one-room council flat with one of her six sisters in the "ghetto" of Vollsmose, in the town of Odense, says her political mission is to fight for this underclass.

"This is such a rich country. But we have people in Denmark in deep poverty and nobody helps them. For me the welfare system is very close to Islam. But we need to change the government."

But conservative Muslim leaders are also disapproving of her activism.

"Some Muslims don't think it's right for a female to act like this. They go to my father and tell him, get her married, get her married," she laughs. "Others think you can't be Muslim and Danish at the same time. Some of the Muslims and the extreme right are just the same.

"And there are women in my party who say that anyone who wears the headscarf is oppressed. It's like they think I'm dumb. They're taking away my individuality. We need the right to choose. It's up to us whether or not we wear headscarves.

"They think I'm a woman from the Middle East. No. I'm a Danish Muslim."

The first time I saw the cover of Asra Nomani's book I was in the Harvard bookstore with Hijabman. "Why is she veiled?" I asked him.

He knows Asra; I'd met her at least once. We both knew she didn't wear hijab. In fact she's one of the few women who sometimes goes unveiled even in the mosque, which is almost unheard of, even among women who don't otherwise veil, even among non-Muslim tourists. In the fury over the woman-led prayer in New York City last year, much of the controversy centered around the fact that Asra Nomani was in attendance and she didn't veil. Gasp.

This isn't something you just forget to do. It's something you do to make a point. So why was she veiled on the cover of her own book, a book that deals with this very subject?

"I don't think she had much control over cover art," he said.

A lot of writers make that complaint. It still bugged me, though. This wasn't a matter of different aesthetics. Using the veil in this way is not only cliched as all hell, it's actively playing into the stereotypes the book itself is trying to undermine. Plus, she appears unveiled on the back cover, which made the whole thing seem silly and costume-y on top of everything else.

Last month she wrote about her war over cover art: Why do Western publishers have a veil fetish? ("this is my mea culpa"). Her publishers eventually relented, and she appears unveiled on the paperback edition.

Good, I guess. But why was there a need to put her picture, or that of any woman, on either of the covers in the first place? Is it really so hard to sell this kind of book unless a) it's got a pretty girl on the front, or b) it's promising a trip inside the harem? That's it, them's the choices?

I'm not opposed to veiling. I'm not opposed to not veiling. I am opposed to reducing everything a Muslim woman says or does or writes or thinks to what she does or doesn't wear on her head. Look at those two covers side-by-side, and it's hard to believe the same book is contained between them. Notably, when they let her take off her veil they also stripped off the word "Mecca," presumably because that word's connotations don't sit right next to a picture of a woman, sans hijab, looking confident, happy, and self-assured (even though neither of the photos were taken IN Mecca — one was a photo shoot; the second was on the street). She's right when she quotes Mohja Kahf, in the piece linked above, who says the image forces Muslim women into "a Victim or Escapee package." In the first picture she looks trapped — not only because of the scarf, but because of the lighting, her head tilted down, the word MECCA as large as her face beneath her. In the second picture her scarf's around her neck instead of her head (just like those French libertines!), the light's on her face (did someone allow her to go outside without a male chaperone?), her smile is broader, and she's no longer Standing Alone in Mecca (how lonely), she's simply Standing Alone (what independence, what strength!). It's like she earned political asylum in the time it took the paperback to come out.

But her book isn't about suffering within Islam, nor about joyfully leaving it behind. It's about embracing it and reclaiming it. Neither of those images convey that.

While trolling for Orientalist art I came across these two paintings by Jean Leon-Gerome:

The first is called "Slave Auction." The second is called "The Slave Market." Both paintings have always disturbed me, I guess because I'm used to having my women-as-merchandise images poked through some irony filter before they get to me. A completely literal portrayal of such an exchange? I tend to forget that was the norm for, oh, thousands of years.

I was talking to someone a couple weeks ago about the role of the veil in Islam, or maybe, more accurately, "the role of Islam in the veil." I'm not pro- or anti-veil and frankly I hate even talking about it, not because I think it's uninteresting but because I think it's cliche and therefore tacky. Mention Islam and first thing you'll get asked about the veil; it's like being asked about "socialization" if you homeschool, about jealousy if you're poly, or hearing bad Wizard of Oz jokes if you admit that you're from Kansas. Just once I would like to mention Islam and have someone say something surprising, maybe something like "Really? What do you think about the changing nature of Muslim expression among the Mzeina Bedouin of Sinai?" but no, it's always "So what do you think about the veil?" In fact veiled references are second only to the Not Without My Daughter comments once you mention your child is half-Arab and that you're no longer married to her father. In both cases: a girl wearies.

But as I said, I really don't think the veil is an uninteresting topic, the fact that it's been exhausted notwithstanding, and as for "So what do you think about the veil?" well, I think a great many things about it, some of which I will now share!

There's widespread agreement that Muslim women should cover their breasts but that face veils are overkill (allowed, if that's what floats your boat, but not a religious mandate). Whether or not Surahs 33:59 and 24:30-31 refer to covering one's hair, legs, or upper arms is a matter of open debate. In fact it's hard to know what one means by "the veil" or "the hijab" since there are so many versions of it cross-culturally and historically.

It's often pointed out that rural women are less likely to veil than are wealthier, urban woman, and in the past heavy veiling emerged as a status symbol: only wealthy families had the means to maintain a harem with separate entrances for women, and only wealthy women had the freedom to dress in a manner that suggested seclusion and therefore leisure. (To wear the hijab in such a social climate can be compared to men who wear suits & ties rather than jeans & T-shirts — as an indicator of one's class and status. Now, if I were a man who worked on Wall Street I would admittedly welcome a foreign invasion to "liberate" me from the constraints of my necktie, but I think I'm in the minority on that one.) Today, in an era of mechanized clothing production, wearing some version of the burqa is a practical and effective method for middle- and lower-class women to escape the whims of a fashion industry that assumes people have enough money to buy a new wardrobe every year or even every season.

Beginning in the 1980s the veil's connotations changed again, when women, mostly university students, took it up as a nationalist symbol. Western critics often ask why "the Muslim world" is so resistant to embracing "modernity," but it is perhaps more useful to ask what forces colonized people draw upon in their efforts to resist colonialism. Apart from its strictly religious element, Islam was a unifying cultural totem (especially in the context of the Cold War, where it was a third option in the Soviet/American battles for third world loyalties), and the veil a visible expression of that resistance.

Beyond all that, though, I think it's interesting to explore the context in which veiling came to be so closely associated with Islam. It's odd, when you think about it, since the wearing of scarves of one type or another is common throughout many cultures and many historical time periods. Veiling was a traditional pre-Islamic practice in Arabia — both men and women cover(ed) their hair to keep the sand out, if nothing else — but Islam's relationship to the veil goes deeper.

To appreciate the Qur'an, I believe, you have to appreciate the fact that Mohammed was an orphan in a tribal society where "protection" always and only meant protection from one's family, particularly one's father and paternal relatives. There was no such thing as protection from the state, because there was no state. Growing up without such a foundation had a profound effect on his life, and whether you are a non-Muslim who believes Mohammed wrote this into the Qur'an himself or a believer who says Allah chose Mohammed as Prophet because the circumstances of his life would leave him uniquely sensitive to this message, it's clear that the Islamic tradition is heavy with references to the treatment of the most vulnerable in any society. In fact I'd go so far as to say that this, along with the notion of one God, serves as the very foundation of Islam.

In this context veiling has to be interpreted within a framework of what we now would call class: it's the notion that even poor women have the right to modesty and the control over their own bodies. In other words, it's the antithesis of the scenes depicted above. In a climate of slavery and a sexism so pronounced that female infants were buried alive, and in a world where there was no such thing as a social safety net apart from the mercy and generosity of one's family — providing one had a family — the notion that women had an inherent, God-given right to life, privacy, and bodily integrity was revolutionary. No longer did such rights stem from one's ancestry, no longer were they dependent on the cooperation of male relatives, tribal affiliation, or the ability to pay for protection.

(Of course, there is theory, and there is practice.)

But fast forward fourteen hundred years and we are consistently interpreting veiling in the context of modern-day feminism's relationship to the sexual revolution, where covering one's body is associated with either moral integrity or shame and repression, depending on who you are. But how far back does that line of thinking go? 40 years? 100? Behind it lays thousands of years in which wealth was the only thing that saved a woman from being raped, bought, and sold (and even wealth wasn't always a guarantee). The right to say no took a lot longer to earn than did the right to say yes.

And it's still going on. Even if you (like I) believe that "financial desperation" is not the sole reason that Western women engage in sex work, one only needs to look at countries like Thailand and Nepal where girls as young as five are being sold into the sex trade because they [their parents, their communities] have no other economic options. I think we can agree all around that these five-year-olds are not part of any sex-positive movement and that they don't find their situation particularly empowering.

Which brings me back to the open sale of women's bodies. Hijab, which literally means "curtain" (screen, divider, partition, division), provides both a psychological and concrete barrier between a woman's body and the world around her. As a concrete barrier I find it less convincing; Mohja Kahf has written some great poetry about what the hijab isn't, and one of those things is a rape shield, despite the bizarre insistence of some fundies that veiled women are never harassed. As a psychological barrier, however, I find it more interesting. All discussions of the "invisibility" of veiled women aside, I can see it as an act of claiming space, not in opposition to men per se but in opposition to a larger system that privileges some women's bodies over others. Hijab-as-partition says no, such rights are inherent: this is where I start and stop.

ACLU Nebraska Files Lawsuit on Behalf of Muslim Woman Barred from Public Pool Because She Refused to Wear a Swim Suit
June 9, 2004
Mother Was Told She Must Remove Religious Garb or Leave Young Children Unattended

OMAHA — The American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska today filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of Omaha on behalf of Lubna Hussein, a Muslim woman who was told she must remove her religious garb in order to accompany her children at a municipal swimming pool.

“The city cannot operate its pools in a way that discriminates,” said ACLU Nebraska Legal Director Amy Miller. “In this case, they have barred the pool doors to three children because of their mother’s religious beliefs. There is no doubt that the City Parks and Recreation Department policies are not only discriminatory, but also have been applied in a disparate manner against Mrs. Hussein.”

In June and August 2003, Hussein took her three children, ages 9 and under, to the Deer Ridge municipal pool in Omaha, only to be turned away at the gate after informing city employees that she could not wear a bathing suit without violating her religious beliefs. She was told by pool employees that she could not be in the pool area in her street clothing, even though she observed other people in the pool area who were not wearing bathing suits. On one occasion, officials told Mrs. Hussein that her children could enter but that she would have to remain outside and observe them from the other side of the pool fence.

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