Amy Levin: What would Muslim drag look like? Something like this? Yesterday, the AHA Foundation shared a link on their twitter account to an article titled “Egyptian Women’s Group Calls on Men to Try the Veil.” Aliaa El Mahdy, an Egyptian university student, created a facebook page called “Resounding Cries,” which asks Egyptian men to post photos of themselves donning the hijab (Muslim veil). Since the launch of the page on November 1st, dozens of Egyptian men have heeded the call. Mahdy feels that it is unjust that only women are required to wear the hijab, which reflects the unequal status of women in Islam. She says:
For me, the veil is not a personal choice in Egypt, but the result of social and religious pressure. The girls I know who wear the veil do so because of their families or to avoid being hassled in the street. I don’t see why we should always dictate what women must wear and never what men must wear. Asking guys to put on the veil, if only for the time it takes to take the photo, is a way of saying to them ‘See how this feels!’
The other reason I launched this page is because society still considers women as sex objects. [83% of Egyptian women claim to have been victims of sexual harassment. Some women feel that the veil is a necessary form of protection against assault.] Many people, even on television, denounce the harassment of women in Egypt, but in my opinion this is not enough.
Mahdy says she has been “attacked and insulted” since the creation of the page and that many Internet users have cited verses from the Qur’an to refute her cause. “I realise that this is shocking for a conservative society like ours,” Mahdy said, “but I am not going to change my ideas because of that.” Of course, we have to be careful not to take Mahdy’s claims as representative of all, or even most women who wear the hijab. Scholars Lila Abu-Lughod, Saba Mahmood, and Joan Scott, among others, have all documented and argued ways in which women do not feel that wearing their hijab is a sign of submission, but can bring them closer to God, their community, and themselves.
Given that we respect women who choose to wear the hijab, it will be fascinating to see what comes out of this. According to the post, some internet users have suggested that the project be taken into Tahrir Square for a peaceful demonstration. Although the politics of the veil go back forever, one thing is for sure: the growing place of social media in public life both gives voice to and complicates representations of religious signifiers, such as dress. To return to the language of drag, we might question if men dressing in hijab is subversive because of Islam or because we have made the veil so incredibly representative of Muslim women.
6 comments
Matthew Gatheringwater says:
Nov 21, 2011
While I wish to live in a tolerant society that allows women (of whatever faith) to wear religious garb, as a feminist, I don’t admire or encourage the adoption or perpetuation of symbols of female submission. What is it about the choice to wear the hijab that you respect?
ann says:
Nov 21, 2011
Um, perhaps, the choice? What do we know about signifiers of feminism in non-western or non-American cultures? We make the assumption that dress and societal role are read the same way here as they are there. Amy does a great job of making us question our worldview and its universal application to everybody else.
Matthew Gatheringwater says:
Nov 27, 2011
Ann, Thank you for your response.
To learn about the meaning of the hijab or other forms of religious dress in Muslim cultures, I listen to women from those cultures describe their experience. I read about how religious police beat women who do not adhere to standards of religious dress or how governments dictate what women can wear. I note the inequalities between men and women that are supported by religious texts and practices. And I conclude that there is an insulting irony in the practice by Western Muslim women in adopting the hijab in countries allowing them the freedom to do so while they have co-religionists in other parts of the world who do not have the freedom to wear what they like.
As a liberal, I think questioning one’s worldview is generally a good thing, but I cannot share the extreme relativism you seem to espouse. Where, for example, is there room for universal human rights in your perspective? Yes, I do think some values (such as a preference for self-determination and free expression) have a universal application.
Amy says:
Nov 28, 2011
I shall expound on this in more detail later, but first of all, none of us responding is a Muslim female – that already places us in a certain positionality that denies the voice and perspective of the women we are “speaking for” rather than “speaking with.” Secondly, while I do think it is crucial to reserve a space for human rights, who is it exactly that decides on what it means to be human, and what kinds of rights that person deserves? As long as human rights are deciding in a solely liberal, Western framework, we are denying the agency and liberty of those who don’t fit inside that framework.
If you look on the links of the feminists I spoke of like Saba Mahmood and Lila Abu-Lughod, they explain these issues much more articulately that I ever could, but the issue of the hijab is one that is particularly problematic in discussions of Muslim women’s rights. Why are we speaking of dress more than poverty, abuse, hunger, education, health? Neither Ann nor myself are preaching cultural relativism, far from it. We are simply questioning our right as individuals whose voices, much of the time, are blended into a homogenized entity and mediated through Western “liberalism.”
Amy says:
Nov 28, 2011
Sorry, to correct my last sentence, “We are simply questioning our rights as individuals to decide the fate of those whose voices, much of the time. . .”
Matthew Gatheringwater says:
Nov 28, 2011
Dear Amy,
Your argument, although earnest and eloquent, would be more convincing to me if I hadn’t just listened to a news report about Salafis in Egypt covering statues of buxom mermaids. In the context of today’s elections, it seems significant that covering women’s bodies in a civic space is an early example of the use of expanding Islamist political power. “Why are we speaking of dress more than poverty, abuse, hunger, education, health?” You’d do better to ask them, not me.
As for pointing out that I am not, in fact, a Muslim woman: Thank you, but the nice thing about human rights discourse is that the only qualification one needs to enter the conversation is being human. That’s probably a good thing, since if minorities were the only people qualified to discuss their rights, they probably wouldn’t have as many.
I appreciate the time you took to respond and I look forward to reading your promised expounding in a future article.