Women and the Hijab or Why Is That Man Shouting at Me?

by Grace Andreacchi

It was not without some trepidation that I set out on my first ever journey to the Middle East this winter. I’d be visiting Istanbul first, with my husband, and then we’d be undertaking an extensive tour of Syria with our two sons, one of whom has been perfecting his Arabic during a year at the University of Damascus. Due to unforeseen difficulties in obtaining a visa for Syria, I’d be on my own in Istanbul for several days.

Americans are not exactly flavour-of-the-month at the moment in the Islamic world, albeit with extremely good reason, but my own personal beliefs regarding war and peace wouldn’t necessarily shield me from the hostility aimed at the government of the country of my birth. And then there’s the whole issue of the Hijab. To cover or not to cover – that is the question. For many western women I suppose the answer would be self-evident – not to cover. To cover is to submit to oppression, to deny one’s fundamental freedom and equality with men, to betray one’s sisters, longing for the right to feel the wind in their hair. But I wasn’t sure it was all that simple. On the practical level, I wished to benefit from my time in new and fascinating places without the distraction of unwanted attention. A bit of research on travel forums yielded the following highly interesting results: Among western travellers, the men reported back (for both Damascus and Istanbul) no special dress was necessary for women, as plenty of local women wore western dress. But, and here’s where it gets interesting, the women travellers universally recommended that you cover, cover, cover. Long sleeves, long skirts, and yes – a headscarf were advisable ‘if you don’t want to be harassed’. And who does? So, as a matter of sheer practicality, I decided in favour of the Hijab, and also equipped myself with a couple of jilbab, or loose-fitting ankle length dresses from the Whitechapel market, London’s place for all things Asian. These were not ‘bin bags’ but quite attractive and comfortable gowns, not unlike a beach cover-up, that you simply slip over your clothes. I wasn’t sure whether I’d need them, but I liked the idea of having them, just in case.

In the event, I did wear the Hijab, and the jilbab as well, and the experience was an enlightening one in many ways. I did not find it ‘oppressive’, but liberating, and , in some ways, quite seductive. Dressed in this manner I became, in the eyes of my hosts, something I am, namely a respectable woman who is not interested in sex with strangers. Dressed in my ordinary clothes, which are, I can assure you, in no way outrageous by the standards of twenty-first century London, I would’ve been a whore on the make. I was treated with respect and even courtly deference by the men, and with sisterly solidarity by the women everywhere I went. Did they take me for a Muslima? Probably. Was this dishonest on my part? I hope not. The message I wished to give, which was wholly honest and true, was simply this – I am a decent woman.

What is a decent woman? How do we know one when we see one? However far we may have wandered from such Christian ideals as chastity and modesty in the west, the idea of respectability or decency still has some meaning. Dress is a means by which we give out information about ourselves to the world, and the code is different in every society. When you change cultures, you risk giving out the wrong signals about yourself. Add to this the generally low opinion of western women in the Muslim world, and you can see that such misunderstandings are practically inevitable. It’s true that many women, in both Istanbul and Damascus, don’t wear the Hijab, although far more do. Do these women suffer harassment? I’ve no idea, but I suspect to some extent they do, although not nearly to the same degree that a foreign woman, and especially a foreign woman travelling alone, would do. It’s also safe to assume that local women are familiar with nuances of dress that are beyond the visitor’s ken. Exactly which types of western dress are appropriate and when and where – it can get pretty complicated. The unwritten rules are always the hardest to learn and the easiest to break.

But above and beyond the practical side of the matter, I’m a bit puzzled by the glib assumption in the west that the Hijab is an instrument of oppression. I felt no compunction about wearing it – ‘It’s only a scarf!’ I said to my husband, to my sons, as they looked on, baffled and bemused. We seem to have forgotten that, as little as fifty years ago in our own culture, no respectable person, man or woman, was seen in the street without a hat. It was not unusual for women to veil themselves in the west, particularly women of high caste, or women in mourning, or, significantly, women travellers. A last vestige of this practice can still be seen in the persistence of the bridal veil, nowadays often worn as the bizarrely incongruous accessory to a dress that leaves the bride’s shoulders and bosom bare. In the last fifty years our dress code has changed so radically that it’s difficult to tell, on a Saturday night in London, who are the streetwalkers and who the innocent suburban girls in town for a night of fun. Only the deadness in their eyes gives it away, their clothes certainly don’t.

Now as a prelude to my journey I did more than check a few travel forums. I read the Qur’an, and read it carefully and seriously, and what I found there surprised me very much. I found nothing that oppressed or demeaned women, or relegated them to second status. I found much that was beautiful, respectful, and admirable. The Hijab, or act of covering, is described as obedience to God [S33:36], as modesty (to protect women from molestation) [S33:59], as purity of heart for both men and women [S33:53], as Shield: ‘Allah, Most High, is Heaven, is Ha’yeii (Bashful), Sit’teer (Shielder). He loves Haya’ (Bashfulness) and Sitr (Shielding; Covering).’ The Hijab is righteousness, the Hijab is belief, it is the natural ‘bashfulness’ of women, and the ‘gheerah’ or natural dignity of the woman who does not wish to excite sexual interest inappropriately. These are beautiful virtues that take us very far from the mores of the secular west. However, they intersect closely with those of an earlier Christian tradition, which, while practically abandoned in Europe, still has some currency in the United States. St. Paul tells us: ‘In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array. But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works.’ [1Timothy, 2, 9-10] Well, it’s hard to argue with good works, and handsome is as handsome does is an old but sound adage. St. Paul does spoil things a bit by going on to admonish us to ‘learn silence with all subjection’, and then to bring up that old business about Eve and the serpent, a convenient stick always. Still, why I’ve no intention of keeping silent so long as I’ve got something useful to say, I do rather suspect we’ve thrown the baby out with the proverbial bathwater on this one, that traditionally gender-specific virtues such as modesty and chastity have gone largely missing in our brave new world, and we are the poorer for that. There is an argument to be made that a woman has a right to her honour and dignity, to the beauty of her person as a private and sacred thing, to her sexuality and power over men as something serious to be taken seriously and used wisely in the service of God, not bartered in the marketplace. I’ve not space here to make the argument at length, but I’d ask the reader to entertain the possibility that such virtues, which have existed in most cultures and at most times, may not be intrinsically oppressive but rather enlightened and enlightening.

Whether you agree with any of this or not, you can’t help but wonder what all the fuss is about a piece of cloth on a woman’s head. Why does it matter so much to so many people? Isn’t it a woman’s own business what she chooses to wear? Why is it always men kicking up a fuss about what we have or haven’t got on, and never, ever the other way round? In Turkey women are not permitted to enter public buildings if they’re wearing a headscarf (a policy currently under review). This cuts off the education of all those girls who choose to wear one, and make no mistake, many do choose to do so, sometimes for the reasons outlined above, sometimes for other reasons which may include an identification with political Islam, an adherence to a tradition with which they are comfortable, and no doubt many others, as subtle and manifold as the complexities of the human heart and the individual’s intersection with society. In France too, the doctrine of so-called laïcitéhas been interpreted to mean that girls and women are not to wear the Hijab in public buildings, including schools. All this can seem manifestly unfair to one brought up in the American tradition of ‘freedom of religion’, where the Amish children attend school in the quaint garb of yesteryear without raising a murmur. Meanwhile, women from the streets of Iran to the classrooms of Anatolia to the bainlieue of Paris and the airport queues of London are fighting for the right to wear the Hijab or the right to take the damn thing off.

At the heart of Orhan Pamuk’s novel Snow lies the dilemma of the Hijab. The plot centres around a writer who has come to a remote town to investigate reports of numerous suicides among the so-called ‘headscarf girls’, high-school girls who are killing themselves under pressure from the authorities to remove their headscarves. He puts the following speech into the mouth of one such girl. ‘If a lot of girls in our situation are thinking about suicide, you could say it has to do with wanting to control our own bodies. That’s what suicide offers girls who’ve been duped into giving up their virginity, and it’s the same for virgins who are married off to men they don’t want. For girls like that, a suicide wish is a wish for innocence and purity.’ (trans. Maureen Freely). Now, there are real problems for women living in Islamic cultures, there are evil traditions of oppression and domination, false and murderous notions of honour, a whole catalogue of horrors, sometimes justified, however unjustifiably, in the name of religion. But I don’t think we can just ignore the voice of that girl. We ought to listen, and try to understand what she is telling us. Salma Yaqoob, a British-born Muslim and political activist, has spoken eloquently of the ‘woman’s right to choose’. She sees the banning of the Hijab, rightly, as racism and xenophobia in the west, and insists that both banning and enforcement are equally oppressive, as both deprive a woman of the right to choose for herself what she will wear. [Salma Yaqoob,‘Women and the Hijab’, speech to the European Social Forum, 16 October 2004] If you doubt the racism and xenophobia, just try a little experiment - put on a headscarf and go for a walk in London. I sometimes wear one, just to keep my hair dry – it rains a lot in London, not generally a steady downpour but more of a persistent drizzle that soaks gradually into your clothes and hair, and a headscarf makes sense. The Queen often wears one, for example. And more than once I’ve had strange men shout insults at me such as ‘Go back where you came from!’ or ‘OOOOHH I can see your HAIR!’ and so on. There you are, men shouting at you again. In one part of the world they shout at you because you’re not wearing a headscarf and in another part of the world they shout at you because you are. Can’t win.

I spent a few days in Istanbul and a couple of weeks travelling in Syria – this hardly makes me an expert. But I discovered something by wearing the Hijab than I could not have discovered in any other way. When I had it on, I was exactly the same person as I was when I didn’t have it on. I was just as intelligent, just as curious, just as funny, just as observant, just as critical, just as everything, just the same! I see women in Hijab differently now. I’ve tumbled to their secret. They’re just like the rest of us.

Grace Andreacchi was born and raised in New York City but has lived on the far side of the great ocean for many years - sometimes in Paris, sometimes Berlin, and nowadays in London. Works include the novels Give my Heart Ease, which received the New American Writing Award, and Music for Glass Orchestra, and the play Vegetable Medley (New York and Boston). Stories and poetry appear in both on-line and print journals.Her work can be viewed at http://graceandreacchi.com.

Sisters in the Dark

by Mary Anne Zammit

Gender violence is a challenging problem affecting all societies, and the trafficking of women by international crime organizations is one form of violence that has been kept in the dark. It is quickly becoming one of the biggest challenges in the western world, yet the international community is largely unaware of this violent crime against women - violence that violates Human Rights and destroys victims’ lives.

Economic globalization has increased the trafficking of women from poorer countries to wealthier countries. The trafficking is done legally or illegally, and in most cases the women find themselves in forced work and into prostitution. The United Nations estimates that around 4 million people are being trafficked each year globally, amounting to large profits to criminal groups. About 700,000 to 2 million of those are women according to one rough estimate by UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. In the United States it is estimated that as many as 50,000 women and children arrive each year, forced to work as prostitutes, servants, and laborers, most likely under the threat of violence carried out by crime rings. The trafficking of women especially for prostitution is becoming a serious problem for many developing countries.

The lack of opportunities and poor conditions in the women’s respective countries caused by increased corporate globalization and privatization compel them to leave their homes with hopes of finding better jobs. The poverty of women has increased since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the economic transition in Central Europe and Eastern Europe prompting many women to migrate for work in Western Europe. These women turn to all resources, including adverts in the newspapers, and accept positions as maids, factory workers, and dancers - which all promise a better life. But promises are not kept. What appears to be a proper job application and contract with a legitimate employer turns out to be an introduction to the sex industry, in which women find themselves sold for prostitution. Such is the case of Olga, a twenty-five-year old woman from Ukraine.

One day in search Olga read an advertisement for a job in Greece as a shop assistant. This adventurous prospect appealed to her so she applied for the position. All was arranged and Olga s’ hopes for a better life were heightened until she started her adventure. A perilous adventure was what awaited her. That day she was supposed to travel there were other women who met the organizers who transported them across a river. Instead of Greece, Olga found herself in Bosnia and with the other women. The women were transported from one car to the other crossing unknown territories until they arrived at a club. Soon after the women were sold and forced into prostitution and if they did not cooperate they would be sold again to more dangerous owners. They were not only being kept in filthy rooms with inadequate facilities, but were exposed to sexually transmitted diseases and grave injuries. The IOM (International Organization of Migration) have reported about 420,000 women trafficked from Ukraine in recent years, so Olga’s story of abuse by human traffickers is one that is becoming too common in her country.

In this sisterhood of forced sex workers from Ukraine, violence and deplorable conditions have dimmed hopes for economic prosperity. Unknowingly, women like Olga ended up as victims of trafficking and going unwillingly into the sex industry because of the threat – and execution – of violence. And there are other stories, of women who knew from the start they were going to work in the sex industry as dancers in nightclubs or as prostitutes. Yet, since these women may have entered illegally in the countries, they were enslaved to their traffickers, afraid of turning to local authorities or INTERPOL, the International Criminal Police Organization. Women sex workers have also been exposed to violence and substandard living conditions against their will - human rights violations.

Prostitution and trafficking in women violates women’s rights and should be stopped. With the help of and international development organizations like UNFPA, and NGOs (Non-governmental organizations) like the Global Fund for Women, the women most likely to become victims of human trafficking are achieving more autonomy and empowerment. INTERPOL is also working very hard to combat this criminal activity following the guidelines for law enforcement. These actions include:

a) The exchange of information between states in order to establish whether individuals crossing or attempting to cross an international border with travel documents belonging to other persons.

b) The type of travel document that individuals have used.

c) The terms and methods used by organized criminal camps for the purpose of trafficking.

d) The transportation of victims, routes and links.

We cannot tolerate any form of gender violence. Human trafficking of our sisters is another abuse that must come to light, and those who create the darkness should be penalized.

Shopping for International Women’s Day

by Carolyn Boyd

This International Women’s Day, I plan to celebrate with one of my favorite activities: shopping. I don’t mean at the mall; I mean on the internet, buying magnificent works of art created by women all over the world as a means to their economic, social, and political independence. By doing so, I will not only be enabling women to support themselves, but also bringing back a very ancient kind of women’s art and empowerment.

Women have always created great art. Of course, the spectacular embroidery, quilting, weaving, painting on functional objects, and other arts that have been women’s specialties in the home are called “crafts,” while work done for pay outside the home, more frequently by men, is known as “art.”

One way to bring honor back to traditional women’s art while improving women’s lives is by purchasing our clothes, home goods, foods, and other items through “fair trade” or other similar organizations. These groups providing opportunities for the women who make the art they sell to support themselves and their families, sometimes leave abusive homes; educate themselves and their children; gain self respect; and form bonds with the other women with whom they work.

We who buy what they make are lucky enough to surround ourselves with hand-created beauty and symbols of sisterhood, hope, and empowerment. As I write, a red basket made by women from Rwanda graces my file cabinet; beaded necklaces from Uganda swirl in my jewelry bowl; vests, pants and dresses from India hang in my closet; wooden bracelets from Nepal click on my wrist; soup mixes from Chicago sit in my sister’s kitchen; and a purse made by a teen in a residential program in my town lies in my closet.

Each day we are given more choices of where we can purchase such art. Organizations that are designated “fair trade” have committed to a variety of business practices, including providing a reasonable wage, safe working conditions, and opportunities for advancement; equal treatment of women; and environmental sustainability, among others. Many of these organizations have both men and women artists. Ten Thousand Villages at http://www/tenthousandvillages.com and A Greater Gift at http://www.agreatergift.org both offer a variety of items from around the world.

Some organizations provide goods made exclusively by women. Http://globalsistergoods.com offers jewelry, accessories, and home decorating items made by women from many nations. Http://beadforlife.org sells beaded jewelry made by women from Uganda. Http://www.marketplaceindia.org has a variety of clothing and home decor made by women from India. The Women’s Bean Project at http://womensbeanproject.com sells food products made by U.S. women. Finally, feminist organizations like the Feminist Majority Foundation, at http://store.feminist.org, sometimes offer products by women as part of their mission.

So often the economic system works to exclude and impoverish women. By buying women’s art through these organizations, we can form a very global special circle of women that has economic, political, and spiritual impacts. This International Women’s Day, it’s time to shop!