{UAH} HASSAN: Iranian protesters are shunning the hijab - let's join them

HASSAN: Iranian protesters are shunning the hijab - let's join them

Farzana Hassan

Published:January 4, 2018

Updated:January 4, 2018 4:52 PM EST

Filed Under:

• Ottawa Sun 
• Opinion 
• Columnists

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This frame grab from video was taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran from FreedomMessenger, that describes itself as an "independent Iranian news agency seeking complete change of the Iranian regime by reporting on the human rights situation in Iran," purports to show attack on Iran police station in Qahdarijan, Iran, Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018. (FreedomMessenger via AP)

By Farzana Hassan

The recent Iranian protests are about a whole array of issues, including the hijab, the head covering which Iranian women have been forced to wear for decades.  

Some dismiss the debate on hijab, suggesting it is a lot of fuss about a mere piece of cloth. They are being evasive.

The hijab is now established as a political tool used by Islamists to restrict freedom for women. They are generally deprived of equality under the law because the hijab is usually accompanied by other oppressive prescriptions for women. It means women cannot make their own decisions.

It is a symbol of oppression, amply demonstrated in Iran's draconian laws imposed after the Islamic revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.

But what has struck me most is what defines enlightened protest in Iran and in the West. Here in the West the left often defends the hijab, insisting we must support the right to wear it. In Iran, and presumably in some other parts of the Islamic world, they are protesting the requirement to wear it.

Courageous Iranian women in recent weeks have been defying the decades-old law for women to cover their hair by publicly removing the hijab.

It is the left-leaning guilt-riddled liberals who defend or even promote the hijab in the West as a Muslim woman's right. Of course, these advocates have not lived under Islamist oppression, so they can easily wear the hijab symbolically for a day to show solidarity with Muslim women forced to.

They have also not experienced wider sharia laws that prevent them from marrying whomever they want and pursuing whatever dreams they choose. These Westerners glibly express support for the hijab within the comfort zone of their own freedoms.

Cosseted by the freedoms here which they take for granted, these misguided left-leaning supporters can afford to offer symbolic defense for this political piece of cloth.

It is only women who have lived under an oppressive Islamic government who know that true progressives should shun the hijab.

Islamists and their naive supporters have worked hard to portray the hijab as an Islamic symbol and imposed it on Muslim women wherever there is strict sharia law. Yet it is not a symbol of Islam but of Islamism.

Nowhere does the Quran explicitly prescribe the covering of the hair. Wearing a hijab is therefore not Islamic, but it is Islamist because of fundamentalist interpretations attached to the Quran's very vague and general verses on modesty of attire.

Most Muslim women across the world do not deem it necessary to wear the hijab. The ones who do haven't been given genuine choice of interpretation on this matter; they merely follow tradition or simply cower under pressure to wear it.

I urge them to look at other ways of expressing their identity and reach an informed and independent conclusion. Perhaps then they will repudiate this potent symbol of patriarchy once and for all.

Meanwhile, the protests in Iran continue and the world should support the anti-government protesters in their quest for freedom. 

I salute all the brave activists who have taken to the streets to fight for their freedom and equality. We rarely hear of liberalism within Islam. But these protesters have shown the world that they can fight for their freedom even if a vicious regime stands against them.

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