The veil has recently become a subject of great controversy in Western societies, due to its increasing appearance in the streets of European and international cities, and this appearance has led to many political and social reactions, some of which have reached the point of physical assault on many veiled Muslim women in these cities.

The veil has often taken on political dimensions, and has even emerged as a symbol of protest against the oppression that Muslims are subjected to in some countries of the world, or in the struggle of peoples against tyrants, for example. Iranian women wore the veil voluntarily as a kind of protest against the rule of the Shah, or the insistence of American Muslim women on Wearing the hijab to protest the phenomenon of Islamophobia after the events of September 11, 2001, says writer and researcher Dr. Anna Bella, a university professor specializing in religious studies at Northwestern University in the United States, in an article recently published by Jstor Daily, We present to you the highlights of it.

The veil has emerged as a symbol of protest against the oppression of Muslims in some (European) countries.

Hijab is a political symbol

Historically, political actors who banned or imposed a partial ban on the headscarf did so to indicate their “modern” secular orientation, including - for example - Reza Shah Pahlavi in ​​1936 in Iran, and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Turkey about a century ago.

The Pahlavi dynasty continued to rule Iran until the 1970s, and the Shah's rule was widely opposed by the Iranian people, and as a sign of civil protest and resistance, Iranian women voluntarily wore the veil.

It is one of many moments in history in which the veil has been used as a symbol of resistance, and, as Huma Hoodfer writes, "the veil is a living experience full of multiple meanings."

King Amanullah, King of Afghanistan, severely and violently banned the wearing of the veil in the 1920s and 1930s. On the contrary, the Islamic Republic of Iran, since coming to power in 1979, has imposed the veil as a symbol of its approach to government, in clear contrast to the approach of ruling deposed Shah.

During the British colonial period in Egypt, the veil was a subject of controversy, as Lord Cromer, the British consul in the second half of the 19th century, called for the "liberation of the head" of Muslim women, which he considered an improvement in their lives, at a time when he was opposed to the severity of the right to vote for Egyptian women. .

Laila Ahmed explains in her book "Women and Gender in Islam" that Egyptian women have more diverse and different opinions about the veil, and says, "While some, such as Hoda Shaarawy, founder of the Egyptian Feminist Union, strictly rejected the veil, others had different opinions, such as Malak Hefni Nassef, who took a much more moderate stance and advocated for women to be able to decide for themselves whether or not to cover their heads and wear a headscarf. Hijab is mandatory.

For her part, researcher Fadwa El-Gendy pointed out that the adoption of wearing the veil helped Egyptian women protect the opportunities offered by modernization, such as access to education and the ability to work outside the home. A means to obtain social and economic rights.

However, the headscarf - along with other traditional, modest clothing such as the abaya, jilbab, and niqab that covers the face - played a much more complex role for women who wore it than gained social acceptance, and for many women, wearing the veil was and remains an element of piety.

Women in Iran were the first to spontaneously and voluntarily wear the veil as a form of protest against the rule of the Shah (Getty Images)

Iranian women voluntarily wear headscarves to protest against the Shah's rule

With the outbreak of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, the veil became a lens through which outside observers interpreted developments there, often knowingly or unintentionally misunderstood.

Western media considered the "chador" (the Persian version of the veil) covering the head as evidence that Iranian society considers women to be inferior, even though it was women who first spontaneously and voluntarily wore the veil as a form of protest against the Shah's rule before the revolution.

But when Ayatollah Khomeini decided that women should wear the chador, the women who objected to this decision were portrayed as revolutionary women championing the feminist cause in the Western style, erasing the anti-colonial aspect of their protests, particularly criticism of the involvement of Western powers in Iran's oil industry.

In this context, "Sylvia Chan Malik" argues that this was the beginning of a new dichotomy in Western media: "Islam" versus "feminism".

It was he who paved the way for future justifications for war as a means of liberating women from the oppression of men, and gender equality was about to be an “American” value that had to be presented in a militarily fashion.

Indian Muslim women rejoice after Supreme Court rejects petitions in favor of headscarves in (European) educational institutions

American Muslim women use headscarves to protest Islamophobia

The attacks of September 11, 2001 ushered in a new era in which Muslims were collectively punished for the actions of 19 involved in the attack. Hate crimes against Muslims rose 17-fold in 2001 compared to 2000, and women who wore headscarves were clear targets.

Women were often subjected to discrimination at work and racial profiling in airports, and US propaganda for the "war on terror" blamed Islam for terrorist acts, and American Muslims had to choose Islam or the American system in order to survive.

American Muslim women overwhelmingly decided to break out of this artificial dichotomy, with thousands of them wearing the hijab as a means of protest, while claiming the right to be American.

Referring to her newly-worn veil, Muslim women at the time raised the slogan “Islam is beautiful! Deal with this fact!” A woman interviewed for a project on wearing the niqab in America recalled the advice of her co-worker after she wore the veil, “Halima, all you have to do is It's just a big American flag wrapped around your head and then nobody will have to worry about your loyalty."

However, framing Islam as inherently un-American erases the experiences and voices of African American Muslim women, whose legacy goes back more than 400 years from the era of slave ships bound for North America, of whom about 30% were Muslims.

Their stories indicate that discrimination for them was compounded and includes racial prejudice because of the color of their skin, gender bias as being women and anti-Muslim simultaneously. How these groups practice Islam influences one another. For example, some African-American Muslim women adopt the "Arab-style" wrapped headscarf instead of the turbans popular in other circles.

Western media paradox

After the events of September 11, 2001, the war on Osama bin Laden and his supporters in Afghanistan was portrayed as a noble war to liberate Afghan women who had to wear the burqa against their will as portrayed by Western propaganda.

The "bad fame" of the Iranian chador was recalled in the eyes of the West in 1979, and in 2001 the burqa became a symbol of women's oppression at the hands of the Taliban.

This was clearly demonstrated in the cynical justifications for the "war on terror" offered by right-wing and left-wing political actors on both sides of the Atlantic.

First Lady Laura Bush made this clear in a radio address in November 2001 when she emphasized that "the war on terror is also a fight for women's rights and dignity."

However, the harsh rule of the Taliban was not noticeable to the West until after the events of September 11, and before that the Afghan mujahideen of the Taliban movement and others were portrayed as the first American founders in the American media, and in this there is a contradiction.

Two French citizens in a demonstration to denounce the ban on headscarves in schools in France (Al-Jazeera)

hijab in france

In 2004, France's "veil ban" launched a wave of legislation targeting Muslim women who wear the niqab, and pro-ban politicians argued that the niqab was imposed on women by male relatives, and compared the wearing of the niqab to the burqa imposed by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The counter-arguments of French Muslim women who insisted that wearing the niqab is their choice and that no one forced them to wear it were ignored, and legal challenges to this legislation in the European Court of Human Rights did not succeed, but the rulings were widely criticized by legal scholars who saw that the court's interpretation of " "religious practice" is rooted in Christian theology, and they argued that the court could instead accept the position taken by women who wear the niqab that it is their personal choice, and that otherwise, these laws criminalize the niqab, which eventually led to the absence of women who wear the niqab from places the public.

Several countries, including 7 countries in Europe, have imposed a similar ban on the niqab, the latest of which is Switzerland in 2021, and a partial or regional ban is also in force in other places, especially in the Francophone province of Quebec, where government employees are prohibited from wearing any religious symbols in the work.

Islamic fashion as a global protest movement

Perhaps because of all these restrictions, many Muslim women began to challenge the negative stereotype associated with Islamic dress, and many of them began to promote modest Islamic fashion until a global movement was formed under the name "modest fashion" led by religious women who chose to design and wear fashion derived from Islamic culture, but modern and modern at the same time, and challenges the stereotyped image of veiled women in the media and Western thought.

The hijab and the niqab have become controversial because they have been hijacked from their religious form by politicians, exploited by geopolitical actors and movements that use their alleged stance, whether positive or negative, toward Islamic dress as a form of political stance.

In this context, scholars Ghulam Khayabani and Millie Williamson assert that "it has become impossible to talk about Islam without referring to women, and it has become impossible to talk about Muslim women without referring to the veil."

Thus, the "veil discourse" devised by all but Muslim women has unfortunately largely overshadowed the insights that Muslim women themselves had on the subject.