|
« TAP TO LOG IN
|
Play online chess!
Radical Islamists use hijab as a political tool to crush women's rights and freedom
« Back to club forum| From | Message | ||
|---|---|---|---|
|
 Radical Islamists use hijab as a political tool to crush women's rights and freedomTaslima Nasrin writes: Why Islamic fundamentalists use hijab as a political tool to crush women’s rights and freedom Opinion by Taslima Nasrin - Yesterday 11:41 AM After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the new fundamentalist government of Iran made it mandatory for women to don the hijab and wear loose-fitted clothes. Did women in Iran not wear the hijab prior to this? Yes, of course they did, but it had largely been a matter of personal choice. Some did, and some did not. Taslima Nasrin writes: Why Islamic fundamentalists use hijab as a political tool to crush women’s rights and freedom Taslima Nasrin writes: Why Islamic fundamentalists use hijab as a political tool to crush women’s rights and freedom. In fact, women could even wear bikinis to the beach and mini-skirts on the streets; they could choose what to wear, and they had the freedom to do so. After coming to power the first thing that the fundamentalists did was snatch away women’s personal liberties. Wherever Islamic fundamentalists seize power, be it a state or a nation, women’s rights and freedoms are inevitably the first casualties. Women are reduced to sexual objects, slaves to men, and means of procreation. In the Indian subcontinent, there are efforts underway to enforce the hijab on women. There is a world of difference between how this subcontinent had been 50 years ago and how it is now, as more and more women’s bodies continue to be wrapped up in black cloth. But why must we go back half a century? Even two or three decades ago were people of this subcontinent not religious? There were surely just as many pious people then as there are now. Then what has happened that such radical change has been wrought upon women’s attires? Why must women’s clothes continue to bear the marks of their religious identities? They must because Islam as it stands now is no longer just a religion, it’s political. In the mosques of Bangladesh and Pakistan, in madrassas and waz mehfils, the Islam that is now taught is no longer a faith but a political doctrine. A doctrine of power. A power that fundamentalists desire, and their desires have taken flight and assumed the forms of women’s burqas, niqabs, hijabs and full-sleeved tunics and blouses. Fundamentalists now go around saying that the hijab is a ‘choice’. The more they acquire power, or the more they gain control over those in power, the more they will shift from choice to compulsion. Just how it happened in Iran. There may be major differences between Shias and Sunnis but there are hardly any contradictions in their fundamentalist nature, with their common target being women. They wish to destroy women, interrupt their education, they do not wish to allow them self-reliance or a life of self-respect. As if women are condemned creatures of hell, nests of evil, and so they must cover themselves up at all times. Women cannot be in public with their bodies visible, they must be hidden away in a sack. Women’s hair does not deserve air and sunlight, they must keep their hair covered because it causes sexual arousal in men. The same goes for their bare arms and legs. The reasons that used to be furnished in the seventh century in order to keep women covered up are still being bandied about in our scientifically advanced civilised twenty-first-century world for much the same reasons. The more the conservatives force women into donning the hijab, by hook or crook, the bigger the social victory for the forces against women. This is because such social victories pave the way for later political ones, where women are reduced to being stepping stones for the political gains of the fundamentalists. These political gains make it easier for them to ruin the country, do away with secular ideals, persecute non-Muslim minorities and put an end to women’s education, freedom and dreams of self-reliance once and for all. We have all been witness to all that has happened, and continues to happen, in places like Iran, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. ‘Allah has gifted women with hair; to keep it hidden is to insult Him. If hair had been the problem then He would have created women without it. Finding faults in the parts of one’s body is akin to finding faults with Allah’s creation. Worshipping the creation is as good as worshiping the Creator.’ A deeply religious person was telling me this the other day. There aren’t many such people left today; most are politically religious these days. The sermons that the clerics yell out in mehfils are less about faith and more about how that faith can be used politically. Faith does not require sermons and observance depends on the desires and beliefs of the person involved. If religion does not acknowledge this basic freedom of individuals then it is no longer about faith. |
