{"id":117,"date":"2023-02-01T07:07:35","date_gmt":"2023-02-01T07:07:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.harvard.edu\/aneternityofdiscourse\/?p=117"},"modified":"2023-02-03T18:52:20","modified_gmt":"2023-02-03T18:52:20","slug":"the-muslim-hijab-a-tale-of-two-moralities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/aneternityofdiscourse\/2023\/02\/01\/the-muslim-hijab-a-tale-of-two-moralities\/","title":{"rendered":"The Muslim hijab: A tale of two moralities"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Image courtesy: JSTOR Daily<\/p><\/div>\n

Any discourse about the Muslim headscarf is anchored in what have become profoundly difficult questions of personal choice, or a lack thereof, and the corresponding scope of religious and personal freedom. The visibly Muslim woman is routinely pegged to one or more of these anchors \u2013 ironically, her personal<\/em> choices having become the subject of an intense and fiercely contested public<\/em> debate. As a consequence, wearing the headscarf or hijab<\/em> in some places has been perceived as a defiant act of bravery and standing up for personal freedoms, while in others it represents the archetype of female oppression. Therefore, the Muslim headscarf has become a polarising symbol, and in the lack of sufficient grassroots engagement with headscarf wearing women coupled with the stereotypical layers created around Muslim women by the media, the polarisation around the hijab has become hegemonic.<\/p>\n

Many impassioned voices permeate the hijab discourse, particularly over the merits of its existence in both substance and form. When it comes to the question of a Muslim woman covering her head, there appears to be a competing sense of morality \u2013 one motivated by religion, the proponents whereof are religious hardliners who seek to enforce their radical religious views on how women should dress, wholesale on all women. The other strand of morality can be described as a secular morality, one trying to \u2018save\u2019 the Muslim woman both from religion and its fatwa-givers. The fierce nature with which these competing moralities dominate the hijab debate, and the wider public imagination, means that the moral reasons guiding the woman \u2013 who is the actual subject and the impersonator of the hijab \u2013 are pushed to the periphery and remain relatively unheard.<\/p>\n

Paradoxically the loudest voices in the hijab debacle are not of those who don the hijab, but those who do not. Not only do women who choose to wear the headscarf freely of their own accord remain absent from mainstream narratives around what is their personal sartorial choice<\/em>, they are forced to acquire an identity carved out for them by \u2018fitting them into\u2019 one of the pigeonholes of the dominant discourse. As a consequence, when a hijab wearing woman is seen in public, particularly in the western world, she must carry the questions and the burden that surround her identity on her sleeve.<\/p>\n

The manner in which the western media has engaged with the question of the religious versus the secular moralities has proven pivotal in forging societal perceptions around the hijab-wearing woman as a victim of circumstance, robbed of personal choice and freedoms. The coverage of choice has been to castigate the Muslim headscarf in brutal and oppressive regimes, such as Afghanistan and Iran, where women are subjected to the dictates<\/a> of radical hardliners and forced into burqas and veils. However, the dictates of so-called secularism, that states that only a hijab-less existence equals actual freedom, are not similarly condemned by mainstream media narratives. This form of \u2018radical secularism\u2019 is epitomised by the jurisprudence<\/a> of the European Court of Human Rights (\u201cthe Court\u201d) in its case law on women and religion, wherein women contested bans on their right to wear a headscarf in different settings, but their challenges were unsuccessful. The Court maintained the view that the state must protect these women from the \u2018detriment\u2019 of religion, i.e. the \u2018harm\u2019 caused to them by wearing the hijab. Instead of protecting the women\u2019s agency in making their sartorial choices (the \u2018freedom of religion\u2019<\/em> argument), the Court instead chose to \u2018dictate\u2019 that women could only truly be autonomous when they had \u2018freedom from religion\u2019<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Therefore, while these competing moralities are both radical in their own right, their influence on the socio-political landscape is very different \u2013 the radical secular view being championed instead of being held up to scrutiny in equal measure to the radical religious view. Moreover, when the experiences of women living in oppressive systems are brought to light, little is done to delineate the \u2018religious\u2019 demands of these inhumane regimes with what the religion actually says. Even a cursory analysis of Quranic injunctions makes it clear that the theological basis upon which fundamentalists make their claims finds no support in the Quran. Where the Quran provides, in Chapter 24, verse 32, that women should restrain their looks and guard their chastity, it instructs men to do the same and addresses men first in the preceding verse before addressing women. While these verses provide guidance for women to choose such attire that does not reveal their beauty, except that which becomes apparent thereof, they prescribe no physical or temporal punishments on the question of modesty, leaving the matter firmly between the person and God. Moreover, Chapter 2, verse 257 clearly states that, \u201cThere should be no compulsion in religion\u201d. Importantly, even the Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of God be upon him) has been addressed in Chapter 88, verses 22-23 as only \u201can admonisher\u201d and that he has not been \u201cappointed a warden\u201d over men \u2013 so it begs the question \u2013 who appointed these misplaced faithful as the custodians of faith?<\/p>\n

It is clear therefore that these two moralities are ironically antithetical to their own cause \u2013 the religious morality in fact contradicts tenets of religion and the secular morality negates the idea of true freedom. Without this context and nuance, mainstream narratives on the hijab inadvertently scapegoat millions of hijab-wearing women in the subconscious biases of people around the world. The polarising effect of this on the hijab-wearing woman has been that the moral compass that is in place to liberate her in fact becomes the one that enslaves her. The hijab debate thus perpetuates a vicious and paradoxical cycle \u2013 popular discourses on the subject chastising the inhumanity of the morality police in extremist religious environments for hijacking a woman\u2019s sense of freedom, yet the idea of a \u2018secular moral police\u2019 is given free reign, even though it continues to sabotage a woman\u2019s liberty by forcing her towards its own self-proclaimed idea of freedom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Any discourse about the Muslim headscarf is anchored in what have become profoundly difficult questions of personal choice, or a lack thereof, and the corresponding scope of religious and personal freedom. The visibly Muslim woman is routinely pegged to one … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5481,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[321909],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-women-and-religion","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/aneternityofdiscourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/aneternityofdiscourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/aneternityofdiscourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/aneternityofdiscourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5481"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/aneternityofdiscourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/aneternityofdiscourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/aneternityofdiscourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions\/131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/aneternityofdiscourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/aneternityofdiscourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/aneternityofdiscourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}