How I Came to Love the Veil - Yvonne Ridley

Here we will show what Islam is not and how it is refuted by the Quranic Message.
Post Reply
Dr. Shabbir
Posts: 1950
Joined: Sun Dec 24, 2006 12:46 pm
Contact:

How I Came to Love the Veil - Yvonne Ridley

Post by Dr. Shabbir »

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/20/AR2006102001259.html

By Yvonne Ridley
Sunday, October 22, 2006

LONDON: I used to look at veiled women as quiet,
oppressed creatures -- until I was captured by the
Taliban.

In September 2001, just 15 days after the terrorist
attacks on the United States, I snuck into
Afghanistan, clad in a head-to-toe blue burqa,
intending to write a newspaper account of life under
the repressive regime. Instead, I was discovered,
arrested and detained for 10 days. I spat and swore at
my captors; they called me a "bad" woman but let me go
after I promised to read the Koran and study Islam.
(Frankly, I'm not sure who was happier when I was
freed -- they or I.)

Back home in London, I kept my word about studying
Islam -- and was amazed by what I discovered. I'd been
expecting Koran chapters on how to beat your wife and
oppress your daughters; instead, I found passages
promoting the liberation of women. Two-and-a-half
years after my capture, I converted to Islam,
provoking a mixture of astonishment, disappointment
and encouragement among friends and relatives.

Now, it is with disgust and dismay that I watch here
in Britain as former foreign secretary Jack Straw
describes the Muslim nikab -- a face veil that reveals
only the eyes -- as an unwelcome barrier to
integration, with Prime Minister Tony Blair, writer
Salman Rushdie and even Italian Prime Minister Romano
Prodi leaping to his defense.

Having been on both sides of the veil, I can tell you
that most Western male politicians and journalists who
lament the oppression of women in the Islamic world
have no idea what they are talking about. They go on
about veils, child brides, female circumcision, honor
killings and forced marriages, and they wrongly blame
Islam for all this -- their arrogance surpassed only
by their ignorance.

These cultural issues and customs have nothing to do
with Islam. A careful reading of the Koran shows that
just about everything that Western feminists fought
for in the 1970s was available to Muslim women 1,400
years ago. Women in Islam are considered equal to men
in spirituality, education and worth, and a woman's
gift for childbirth and child-rearing is regarded as a
positive attribute.

When Islam offers women so much, why are Western men
so obsessed with Muslim women's attire? Even British
government ministers Gordon Brown and John Reid have
made disparaging remarks about the nikab -- and they
hail from across the Scottish border, where men wear
skirts.

When I converted to Islam and began wearing a
headscarf, the repercussions were enormous. All I did
was cover my head and hair -- but I instantly became a
second-class citizen. I knew I'd hear from the odd
Islamophobe, but I didn't expect so much open
hostility from strangers. Cabs passed me by at night,
their "for hire" lights glowing. One cabbie, after
dropping off a white passenger right in front of me,
glared at me when I rapped on his window, then drove
off. Another said, "Don't leave a bomb in the back
seat" and asked, "Where's bin Laden hiding?"

Yes, it is a religious obligation for Muslim women to
dress modestly, but the majority of Muslim women I
know like wearing the hijab, which leaves the face
uncovered, though a few prefer the nikab. It is a
personal statement: My dress tells you that I am a
Muslim and that I expect to be treated respectfully,
much as a Wall Street banker would say that a business
suit defines him as an executive to be taken
seriously. And, especially among converts to the faith
like me, the attention of men who confront women with
inappropriate, leering behavior is not tolerable.

I was a Western feminist for many years, but I've
discovered that Muslim feminists are more radical than
their secular counterparts. We hate those ghastly
beauty pageants, and tried to stop laughing in 2003
when judges of the Miss Earth competition hailed the
emergence of a bikini-clad Miss Afghanistan, Vida
Samadzai, as a giant leap for women's liberation. They
even gave Samadzai a special award for "representing
the victory of women's rights."

Some young Muslim feminists consider the hijab and the
nikab political symbols, too, a way of rejecting
Western excesses such as binge drinking, casual sex
and drug use. What is more liberating: being judged on
the length of your skirt and the size of your
surgically enhanced breasts, or being judged on your
character and intelligence? In Islam, superiority is
achieved through piety -- not beauty, wealth, power,
position or sex.

I didn't know whether to scream or laugh when Italy's
Prodi joined the debate last week by declaring that it
is "common sense" not to wear the nikab because it
makes social relations "more difficult." Nonsense. If
this is the case, then why are cellphones, landlines,
e-mail, text messaging and fax machines in daily use?
And no one switches off the radio because they can't
see the presenter's face.

Under Islam, I am respected. It tells me that I have a
right to an education and that it is my duty to seek
out knowledge, regardless of whether I am single or
married. Nowhere in the framework of Islam are we told
that women must wash, clean or cook for men. As for
how Muslim men are allowed to beat their wives -- it's
simply not true. Critics of Islam will quote random
Koranic verses or hadith, but usually out of context.
If a man does raise a finger against his wife, he is
not allowed to leave a mark on her body, which is the
Koran's way of saying, "Don't beat your wife, stupid."

It is not just Muslim men who must reevaluate the
place and treatment of women. According to a recent
National Domestic Violence Hotline survey, 4 million
American women experience a serious assault by a
partner during an average 12-month period. More than
three women are killed by their husbands and
boyfriends every day -- that is nearly 5,500 since
9/11.

Violent men don't come from any particular religious
or cultural category; one in three women around the
world has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise
abused in her lifetime, according to the hotline
survey. This is a global problem that transcends
religion, wealth, class, race and culture.

But it is also true that in the West, men still
believe that they are superior to women, despite
protests to the contrary. They still receive better
pay for equal work -- whether in the mailroom or the
boardroom -- and women are still treated as sexualized
commodities whose power and influence flow directly
from their appearance.

And for those who are still trying to claim that Islam
oppresses women, recall this 1992 statement from the
Rev. Pat Robertson, offering his views on empowered
women: Feminism is a "socialist, anti-family political
movement that encourages women to leave their
husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft,
destroy capitalism and become lesbians."

Now you tell me who is civilized and who is not.

hermosh@aol.com

Yvonne Ridley is political editor of Islam Channel TV
in London and coauthor

of "In the Hands of the Taliban: Her Extraordinary
Story" (Robson Books).
Wassalam,
SA
Post Reply