The email I received from one of my friend yesterday included pictures of women in When the campaign was launched a few weeks ago, most of the western news organizations hurried to report it. I read most of the articles the BBC news website published along with comments from Iranian women about how hard for them was to be arrested, interrogated and humiliated in the middle of the day by a policewomen who God knows if she can run or pull her gun from under her black Abaya that wraps her from head to toe.
For many reasons, I am a person who does not believe in the headscarf at all, even though it was clearly mentioned in the Holy Quran as a “must” for women to adhere to wearing it. Maybe because I am kind of secular, maybe because I was raised like this, or maybe because that’s how Baghdad used to look like before the new Islamic revolution that took over the country as part of the country’s latest liberation, which I consider the liberation of Iraq from secularism to strict Islamic fanaticism.
I know that many conservative Muslims will hate me as they read the above paragraph, even before finishing reading the entry which they may not even finish. But let me continue. The headscarf issue for me has two faces: either belief or imprisonment. When a Muslim woman wears the headscarf out of complete belief in her religion and God’s will, she gets my utmost respect and I take a bow for her desire to wear it. I respect people who adhere to their beliefs even though they know others don’t. On the other hand, when I see a woman being forced to wear the scarf, I feel disgusted and sick. Why? Why should they do something they don’t believe in?
Some people say that forcing a woman to wear the scarf is a way to carry out God’s orders. But did they ask themselves if this enforcement makes these women close to God or even love him? Is it really the scarf that is making Muslim women “Good Muslims”? In our society, there are good women wearing the scarf and there are bad women who are sluts and pimps [one of them was a classmate in my undergrad school] wearing it too. There are unveiled women who have full respect and love to their religion and God, and there are unveiled women who are sluts and pimps. So does forcing the woman to wear a scarf change her status from a “bad Muslim woman” to a “good Muslim woman”? Do they really think that faith in God will change if a woman wears a scarf?
I hated it when most of the women in my family were forced to wear the scarf fearing the religious militias and insurgents who are in full control of most parts of the country. Most, if not all, of them were unveiled before the war. However, their devotion and respect to God and Islam was in its utmost level. They were good representatives of the modest Islam which never forced them to do something they were not convinced of. Did that make them bad and made the veiled pimp in my college better than them? Of course not. One of my aunts did not cover her head since she was born. She insisted on not wearing it. One day, she was caught by the extremists in her neighborhood who displaced her eventually. As she was parking her car in the garage, they threw a threatening letter to her, ordering her wear the headscarf, otherwise they will kill her and mutilate her body and make it a lesson to every woman who does not cover her head. Eventually, she surrendered to wearing it, but you know what? She is wearing it out of fear of death, not out of belief. She said she feels she is covering her head with an iron mask, not a piece of cloth. She would cry every time she puts it on. Do you think God is satisfied now? I hope the answer is no! Otherwise, I don’t know what to say.
On the other hand, secular extremism is not accepted as well. If a woman wants to put on a scarf and cover head, why should I object? She believes in it just like I don’t. I am free to do what I want and she is free to do so. The events against women with headscarves in countries like in
In today’s world, there are no balanced scales. There are extremism in both secularism and Islamism. The question is that how we, human beings, become able to differentiate and make things balanced, and whether we are going to be able to do so.
