SECULAR = PROSTITUTE

Something very strange and interesting happened at the hair salon today. A woman came in with head scarves and shawls for sale. One of the salon’s stylists jokingly told her that people don’t buy scarves anymore, that it is no longer profitable and that she should change her job. In response, the woman said that was not true and that certain people are trying to promote secularism and prostitution in society. We were all stunned, but nobody said anything to her.

XXXX

One officer told a teenage girl to move and stand somewhere else. The young girl looked at him coldly and said, “Are we bothering you?” Another guy came and said to the policeman, “Reza, let it go,” and took him away. I looked at the young girl and blew her a kiss. She blew a kiss back.

BEAUTIFUL

 Now we can eat in restaurants without wearing the hijab, and not a single person says, “Madam, put your hijab back on.” The university security no longer pesters students about their attire. People don’t defend this regime in classes anymore. It doesn’t matter that we don’t protest in the streets. People are kinder and look out for one another every day. If a guard or a security person bothers a student, everyone will come to the rescue. I think it’s beautiful.

BEAUTIFUL

There was one beautiful girl with short blond hair. At the start of the uprising, women were cutting off their hair as an act of protest and a sign of mourning. Seeing her got me emotional. For years we had fantasized about the day we would take off our scarves and let the wind blow through our hair. But now that we can be unveiled, we no longer have our long hair. We cut it for that very basic freedom. Our dreams are always one step ahead of us.

COOL

Today I was talking to my family about how much people check you out in Iran and how much time you spend thinking about what to wear. It feels like you’re under constant surveillance. But I’ve noticed a change in attitude among men. Before this movement, if I went out with my red hair showing or wearing a cool outfit, some men would follow or harass me. Cars would slow down and honk their horns. Now we go out without hijab, we wear what we want and men don’t say anything. They nod in approval. They smile.

THEOCRATS NEVER LEARN

A Twitter friend posted something interesting. Until four or five years ago, he wrote, he never missed a single prayer, but now every time he hears the call to prayer, he starts cursing. Many people around me are turning away from Islam. Some religious families have stopped practicing and even asked the women in their families to take off their hijabs. What will happen to those who no longer pray and are irritated by the call to prayer? Or those who even make fun of religion? How are they going to feel once their anger has subsided? What will happen when people are no longer humiliated and threatened in the name of Islam? When religion is merely a matter of the heart?

… Never in my life have I been so eager for a day to come. The government has announced that as of tomorrow, women cannot appear in public without a hijab, and those who do will be dealt with brutally. The problem is that they cannot force us anymore. I can’t wait for tomorrow.

… The number of hijabless women is increasing by the day. Boys are coming out with shorts now, too. People boycott stores that don’t offer services to unveiled women. The shawls that women used to have around their necks in case they were spotted by security forces are now in the back of wardrobes. Short shirts are replacing long coats. Skirts are replacing pants. Short pants are replacing long ones. There is more and more unity. People have the upper hand. The other side is nothing but bluffs.

… A  few teenage girls with long hair hanging over their shoulders were standing [near me,] taking selfies in the mirror, without the hijab. It made me laugh. I rejoiced at their beauty and courage, in their simple and harmless way of exclaiming, “I exist!” The government is not afraid of women’s hair or the length of their skirts. They are afraid of our existence.

A feminist activist, who has been arrested since the protests began but is out on bail, told the BBC: “From what I have seen in the past few months, women will not surrender. Women seem to be unfazed by these new threats.”

[Iran’s theocrats intend to] double down on their efforts to force women to comply with a law that the vast majority of Iranians either despise or simply do not support... [A]s long as authorities insist on enforcing such unpopular laws, public order and civil unrest can be called into question over a few strands of a woman’s hair, potentially undermining one of the Islamic Republic’s last remaining—and increasingly defining—achievements: security… [T]he profoundly reluctant Iranian armed forces will ultimately be] called upon to restore public order by brutally cracking down on protests spurred by the stubbornness, indecision, and ineptitude of a hardline ruling elite that is both detached from the realities of Iranian society and feels shielded from the ramifications of social unrest.

LOLOLOL.

Je dois dire I too am stunned that courts all over Europe are currently dragging this poor man into aggravated rape proceedings. Sure everyone knew big deal he got violent with the sex slaves brought to his hotels if they refused to be raped! But mon dieu who’d have thought this Oxford don actually raped? Coulda knocked me over with a burqa.

******************

The Ramadan file.

The hijab for me exemplifies fear and humiliation. It symbolizes a system based on misogynist ideology trying to eliminate women from society. 

As an Iranian woman, I’ve worn a piece of cloth on my head for years, which served not only to cover my hair and body. I viewed it as a tool to suppress, control and turn women into second class citizens. 

We were taught that the “awrah” (private area) for a woman is her entire body except for her hands and her face… We were taught that the Islamic hijab is an order from God, and not a choice… Most Muslims … tend to see the veiled woman as “pure” and therefore more deserving of respect, while an unveiled woman is seen as a “fitnah” (corruption)…

In recent years, the West has seen movements normalizing the headscarf, which I am not entirely opposed to. I do not believe that veiled women should be attacked or face discrimination in the workplace. However, considering its history as well as the way it is used in Islamic theocracies, I do not think the hijab could be feminist nor be truly “empowering.”  

While Western feminists may support Muslim women’s right to wear the headscarf, they should remember that there are those of us who seek the liberty to remove it — both in theocratic states and in Western nations. Many of us may not be controlled by a mullah but by our families and communities.

Between 12 and 14 ain’t so cool either, and 7, as this writer correctly notes, is absolutely out of the question – parents are in the position of forcing modesty garments on someone too young to choose to wear them.

The parents are doing it because you want to get your daughter used to thinking that covering up is her only option in life. It’s the only thing she’s ever known. She’s always hidden her hair (and probably her body – such girls are often put in body-hiding robes).

The observation in my headline is one of many comments on a NYT article about multiple lawsuits, character-assassination, and life-destruction resulting from a seconds-long incident in which a 7 year old hijabi’s teacher touched her hijab. Was it an innocuous effort to clear the girl’s vision, which seemed to the teacher for a moment to be obscured by the hijab? Was it a vicious humiliating “stripping” of the girl’s clothing, self-respect, and personal integrity?

Another commenter:

[W]hy is a seven-year old girl wearing a hijab? A hijab is a statement of modesty, a way of deflecting unwanted attention from unrelated males. The girl is seven! In what culture are such innocent creatures the objects of unwanted sexual attention?

The answer is clear: You want girls from the moment they enter the public realm to see themselves as destructive temptresses; and you certainly want them to regard all males as people to whose drives and dominance they must in every way from the very beginning of their conscious lives defer.

Another commenter:

I’m sorry, why is a seven-year-old girl covering her hair? What does she have to be modest about at age seven?? I thought girls were only put under hijab when they began menstruating? How early in our lives do girls and women have to have others’ expectations and projections of what it means to be a “good girl” or “ladylike” foisted upon us?

Another:

I am mostly sorry for the child. Having lived in very conservative parts of the Middle East for some time, I know that seven-year-old children typically don’t wear hijabs unless their parents are really extreme religious fundamentalists.

********************

In Muslim countries where I lived, hijabs are not worn by 7 year olds. Girls starting puberty wear them. Forcing a 7 year old to wear one sounds…

*********************

[T]he early Muslims including Prophet Muhammad PBUH did not preach covering the heads of pre-pubescent girls. This trend simply marks the increase of religious conflict and religious fundamentalism (across many religions).

**********************

More on this controversy.

**********************

Tarek Fatah on Twitter: “Forcing #Hijab on a 7-year-old American girl? Has my Muslim community lost their bearings? Imagine telling a child, her hair triggers sexual desire among men! What has gone wrong with my Muslim community? What next? A hijab for newly-born infant girls?”

…. but time and time and time again the court affirms the right of businesses to ban hijabs.

Relying on two previous headscarf-related rulings, the five-judge panel held that employment policies that ban head coverings do not violate EU employment law so long as they are applied in “a general and undifferentiated way.” 

Not sure why, given airtight certainty that they won’t win, the cases keep coming.

The solution for women who absolutely refuse to part with their modesty garments seems pretty obvious: Try to get a job at the tons of other workplaces in Europe that don’t object to modesty garments, or perhaps try to move to a part of the world (Indonesia, for instance, is full of hijabs, and lacks Iran’s violent insistence on them) where no one is going to object to them.

The hijab-obsessed Iranian regime needs help. Millions across the country are stripping off – and burning – their hijabs, a non-negotiable modesty garment as far as the mullahs running the country are concerned. The little hat that hides at least a bit of female obscenity (the body-covering robe women are encouraged to add to the hijab certainly helps even more in the endless task of making women somewhat less obscene) means everything to the guys, and their government’s tanking as much of their population says fuck the hijab.

Short of shooting everybody to death, the government appears to be trying some soft power. Most recently, it displayed, in central Tehran, an enormous billboard with a photo collage of happy proud Iranian women brandishing their wondrous hijab. Immediately a number of the women demanded their photo be removed; they might have worn the thing once under duress, but they hate it and they hate the regime.

Some of these women are high-profile performing artists, and they filmed themselves denouncing the ‘murderous,’ ‘disgusting,’ regime.

Funny, ain’t it, how erasing images of women from everywhere is Job #1 in many Islamic regimes (and of course in their doppelgangers – ultra-Orthodox Jewish circles), but when they start feeling truly endangered they plaster women’s photos in the city square…

Anyhoo here’s the help they didn’t ask for but will now get.

You wanna keep women in hijabs you need to launch a trendy American style campaign, with goofy bold ecstatic young Iranian women dancing wildly while singing a new hit song, inspired by the massive Will Smith hit, Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It. The Gettin’ Hijjy Wit It campaign will transform the hijab from a drab oppressive requirement to a wild and crazy Fun Thing. Trust UD. Give it a go.

From New York Magazine:

From the first day, I put my scarf in my bag and never put it back on my head. We know that we can be arrested for not wearing our scarves, but we know that people will defend us. And the police know how angry people are. At night, I look online for tips on how to defend myself: if they tie my hands and legs, how I should fight back. We share this information with each other and take it very seriously. 

**************************

What is a priority for me is true freedom, collective freedom — where we have a route to express our grievances. It’s striking for me to see the younger generation on the streets — people in their early 20s. They are extremely brave — more so than I. I think the government itself was not expecting this generation to be this fiery. Any stereotypes about women as fragile and weak are completely gone.

****************************

It’s not unusual to see girls wearing hijab among the protesting students. Girls with scarves and girls without scarves hold hands together and chant slogans demanding justice and freedom of choice to wear what they want. It is common to see women without scarves walking around the city. I saw a young girl without a scarf boldly pass in front of police on the street. A few meters away, some young Basijis ran after her. The girl continued walking slowly. When the Basijis approached her, she turned around and shouted, “What, what? Come on, kill me. Don’t you want that? Just like you did to Mahsa and Hadis?” All three of them stopped dead in their tracks, shock visible on their faces. They didn’t dare say another word.

Even if the government wants to fight to enforce the dress code, it can’t. It’s impossible to count how many women are bravely walking without their headscarves. These days, no morality police can be seen on the streets.

**************************

This is a critique of unequal power relations in all forms — of anyone who is stepping on your rights and limiting your freedom. This critique can be applied in every time and place. The worst thing that could happen would be if people in other countries look at us and see us as poor, oppressed women who are stuck fighting for rights like American and European women did a century ago — that they think we’re at the beginning of the road. People need to understand that our fight is shared with people all over the world including themselves.

________________________________________

Don’t you want that? Don’t you want to kill me? She’s right – annihilating women under burqas, policing them in hijabs, removing the genitals of baby girls, making them clean themselves up all the time in ritual baths, refusing to sit next to them on planes and buses, erasing them and their images from the public square, making beating them legally permissible, etc. – they do want to kill her.

What’s striking in the scene described is the apparent shock on the part of the Basijis as they confront, no doubt for the first time, this desire.

As for their confronter: She can die protesting in the streets, or she can rot to death behind their shrouding and numbing and homicidality.

… burqa (they’ve had a ban for a while), and as Aljazeera restates the party line on how appalling it all is, let me link to this UD post.

Quebec’s bill prohibiting public school teachers from wearing the hijab remains popular. Here, from this time last year, are comments — from immigrants from Muslim countries — on the bill:

“For me the hijab is a symbol of inferiority even if they [the Muslim teachers] say they don’t feel inferior or superior or equal to men. It’s a symbol of inferiority and I insist on that point,” said Ferroudja Mohand, who immigrated to Quebec from Algeria in 2011.

Mohand said she is worried that her daughter will be influenced by a teacher who wears the hijab at her school and decide to take up the practice. 

“Teachers must be neutral because children are impressionable,” Mohand said.

Ensaf Haidar, whose husband is the imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, said she is “shocked” when she sees Quebec women dressed in Muslim religious clothing given how they are treated in Saudi Arabia.

“The hijab is not a good image for Quebec,” said Haidar, who fled Saudi Arabia not long before her husband’s arrest in 2012.

Djaafar Bouchilaoun, an Algerian immigrant and father of two, told the court he considered the hijab an affront to his “dignity as a man” because it supposes men are sexual threats to women.

A teacher who wears a hijab, he said, is sending “subtle messages” to children. He called the hijab a “symbol of Islamist proselytizing,” adding: “It is pernicious because of it.”

The parents were called by two pro-secular groups — Mouvement laïque québécois and Pour les droits des femmes du Québec — who have intervenor status in the case. 

As part of their defence of the law, lawyers for Mouvement laïque québécois are arguing that rather than strip minorities of rights, Bill 21 upholds the rights of parents to have their children receive a secular education.

“This is a necessary condition for the freedom of conscience,” Guillaume Rousseau, a lawyer for the Mouvement, said in a recent interview.

 At the juice stands and shopping complexes that were open, nearly all the young women had their head scarves down, as did middle-aged women doing their shopping. What was transfixing, though, was seeing bareheaded women in central parts of the city where such liberties are rarer, on the backs of motorcycles darting down Enghelab Street, at cafes frequented by university students. At an outdoor mall in eastern Tehran, a young woman flounced past a stall selling shawls and head scarves. “Pack up and go, sir. Don’t you know this is all over?” she exclaimed, sweeping her arm past his wares. “Why don’t you buy them and then burn them?” he suggested, smiling.

How many times must it be said? There’s no scriptural warrant for the hijab, much less the medieval burqa. Iran mandates hijabs because its leaders prefer women to be stashed away. But women refuse to be stashed away, and now Iran’s leaders are shooting them dead.

Ah, but we all know the burqa represents a different category from the examples of religious attire the Toronto Star‘s public editor lists.

He’s explaining to readers why he erased part of an opinion writer’s column about the hijab revolution. At one point the columnist jumped from hijab to burqa and – rather like Boris Johnson comparing wearers to letter boxes – commented that the women in them seem to be wearing Halloween costumes. This was deemed too offensive to retain.

If, as seems likely to me, many girls and women hidden under black hoods and robes are oppressed (a lot of them probably envy the hijab that’s causing all that trouble in Iran), I don’t suppose it’s very nice to add to their downtrodden condition by taking these sorts of jabs at them… OTOH, you could argue that, short of outlawing it (which much of the world – and, for many public-facing circumstances, some of Canada – has done), various forms of verbal complaint about it might help give some burqa wearers the clarity/guts to stand up to their husbands/imams/communities and take them off.

And as for the editor’s effort to see it as equal to turbans and yamulkes (The thing about the pope is ridiculous, though it does reveal the radicality, the extremity, the editor rightly intuits about burqa-wearers — tens of thousands of ordinary citizens dressing every day in a look comparable to that of the head of the global Catholic church? You expect to see lots of people every day in Toronto dressed like the pope? Even the pope doesn’t routinely dress like the pope.), there’s a vas deferens between guys plunking a small or even large head covering on their noggin, and the astounding full-body coverage (including black gloves so you can’t even see fingers) of the burqa. The way it blocks access to basics, like sunlight, free movement, full vision — much less simple interaction with other people in the world. The way it features black cloth over your mouth. The way it subjects eight year old girls to this.

Nope. The burqa is incomparably problematic, which a glance at its legal status in much of the world will reveal.