Islamic veil uncovers intolerance in the world’s Western hemisphere

by Maya Moussawi

December 2003

It has become a boring routine for us Arabs: waking up every day on a freshly constructed international piece of news that questions and attacks our basic beliefs and values.

The latest trend in this series of media condemnation of Arabs and Islam is the controversy of banning veiled Muslim girls from attending public schools in Europe.

This topic, discussed in international and local press, was covered by Alternative in its November 2003 issue.

Entitled Do Muslim women have the right to wear headscarves?, Kamal Sanjakdar interviewed Algerian  sociologist Akhdaril Ahmadi, and British tourist Micheal Midiron, who both  strived to draw our attention to some of the reasons that legitimize, in  their opinion, the banning of the hijab in European public sectors.

Besides the fact that the ideas proposed by Ahmadi and Midiron lacked professional and logical reasoning, the two interviewees were even short on some simple general information, commonly known to people everywhere.

For instance, they erroneously named Lebanon among the countries that contest the wearing of hijab in public institutions, and they drew an inaccurate, misleading parallelism between the rules and regulations of a secular country like France and a religious country like Saudi Arabia, claiming that if Saudi Arabia forbids foreign women to wear bikinis on its territories, then France has the full right to ban veils in its public institutions.

In addition to this, biased terms were repeatedly used by the two gentlemen, with Ahmadi calling the Islamic veil “an exotic manifestation of religious affiliation,” and Midiron calling the Arab immigrants “settlers.”

There is yet a key issue that needs to be raised concerning the subject matter of the article; whether someone is a believer or not, it is with an ethical and humane outlook that we must try to tackle the dilemma behind this problematic question: how absurd is the whole idea of deciding whether or not Muslim immigrants have the right to wear their veils in European secular public schools?

And how much does secularism affect the individual’s freedom of practicing his religion wherever he wants and any way he desires, as long as it does not trespass or conflict with the freedom of others? 

Are not we living in a time where man is given the freedom to express himself any way he pleases? Are not we living in a global village where it  is deemed “perversely intolerant” to condemn homosexual behaviors for  example, because it is the right of every human being to openly practice  whatever pleases him and whatever he believes in, without consequently  suffering from discrimination in his society?

Are not we living in an era  where the West allows itself to play the role of the guardian of “Human  Rights,” and even goes to war under the pseudonym of establishing democracy  in every corner of the world where oil or mineral resources are found?

Are not we living in an era where riots and marches are undertaken by thousands  of people, in order to stop the selling of animal leather, and protect the  right of animals to keep their furs on? 

Nevertheless, it is in this same humane 21st century world, that the right of Muslim girls to wear their veils in public schools is lawfully prohibited, in the name of fairness and secularism.

What kind of a national security threat could a piece of cloth worn on the head of a young girl represent? And why is this same piece of cloth accepted when worn around a girl’s neck or shoulders? What is the big deal anyway, if a girl goes to school wearing the apparel required by her religion?

Even if she is in a  secular country, does this mean that she must let go of the “rights and  freedoms entitled” to her as much as “to all members of the human family”,  as stated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?  Europe’s forcing Muslim girls to drop their veils is similar to Taliban’s compelling Afghani women to wear the veil.

Although one is pushing towards coercive secularism that partially intertwines with skepticism, and the other is pushing towards fanatic religious extremis, both are infringements of the individual freedom, and both must be condemned equally.

The simple fact of letting a girl wear whatever she likes as long as it does not represent a religious value (be it mini-skirts, caps, baggy pants with massive chains, etc…) and banning the other of wearing what she likes and religiously believes in (the Islamic attire, the hijab), pulls Europe a thousand steps behind, and unveils the true picture of a corrupt Western world that does not understand the meaning of tolerance and equality.

As for us Arabs, it is about time that we stop falling into the trap of “modernism” and “emancipation” slogans that the Western world assails upon us. It is certainly unacceptable for us to believe the distorted image that the West is constructing of us and of our religion.

Whether we are believers or not, we cannot allow ourselves to attack the Islamic veil and consider our values and traditions as “oppressing methods to dope the Umma,” as one American journalist wrote in the New York Times lately.

It is improper to repeat the same biased terms and concepts that are being attributed to all of us Arabs after 9/11.

It is about time that we allow ourselves to think deeply about our values and traditions, about our past and our future, before joining the mainstream media choir of accusations against Arabs and Islam, and forgetting that we are entering a battle against ourselves, and complotting against our own destruction.

Maya Moussawi is a senior student of journalism at the Lebanese American University – Beirut. She wrote this commentary for Alternative