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LINK There are two types of hijabs. The difference is huge. - The Washington Post

Masih Alinejad is the author of “The Wind in My Hair: My Fight for Freedom in Modern Iran” and the founder of the #WhiteWednesdays campaign in Iran. Roya Hakakian is co-founder of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center and author of the memoir “Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran.”

In an interview for the April issue of Vogue Arabia, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said, “To me, the hijab means power, liberation, beauty and resistance.” As two women who once lived with the mandatory hijab in Iran, we hope to bring another perspective to this complex matter by describing our experiences.

There are two vastly different kinds of hijabs: the democratic hijab, the head covering that a woman chooses to wear, and the tyrannical hijab, the one that a woman is forced to wear.

In the first kind, a woman has agency. She sets the terms of her hijab, appearing as ascetic or as appealing as she wishes. She can also wear makeup and fashionable clothing if she likes.

In the second kind of hijab, the woman has no agency. Where we lived, the terms were set by Iranian government authorities under a mandatory dress code that banned women from wearing makeup in public and forced them to wear a baggy, knee-length garment to fully disguise the shape of their bodies, over a pair of pants and closed-toed shoes. For a while, the authorities even decreed the colors that women could wear: gray, black, brown or navy.

Iranian women wearing hijab walk down a street in the capital Tehran on Feb. 7, 2018. A spate of unprecedented protests against Iran's mandatory headscarves for women have reignited a debate that has preoccupied the Islamic republic since its founding.

Years of young Iranian women’s unofficial revisions of the code have succeeded in wearing down the government’s rigidity, but the official law remains unchanged and is capriciously enforced. A random sweep can result in mass arrests on a single day.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, women are alarmed by the planned departure of U.S. troops and the negotiations with the Taliban, terrified by the possible return to power of a group whose oppression of women has included the imposition of the burqa — taking the Iranian dress code one step further and covering even their faces. In Saudi Arabia, the abaya and niqab, allowing only women’s eyes to show, are not legally imposed, but the patriarchal society makes wearing them essentially compulsory.

Women who live under these forms of hijab effectively live under a gender apartheid. The coverings mark women as lesser citizens, legally and socially unequal. In Iran, there are restrictions on women’s ability to travel, obtain a divorce or enter sports stadiums. A woman’s courtroom testimony is in most cases given half the weight of a man’s. The forced hijab honors neither tradition nor religion; it is a powerful tool of misogynist oppression.

Women are rebelling against these rules. In Saudi Arabia, Loujain al-Hathloul and several other activists have been jailed for their work toward gaining equal rights. In Iran, the #WhiteWednesdays campaign has endured for several years as women — old and young, from every segment of society — wave white scarves in defiance of the hijab laws, walk the streets with their heads uncovered, and risk arrest and imprisonment.

These women aren’t seeking the hijab’s eradication; they are simply demanding the right to choose what they wear. They hunger for the sort of liberty that is the cornerstone of U.S. democracy. We are pleased to see Omar proudly exercise her right to don the hijab. In an era when nativism is rising in the United States and in many other countries, it is important for those who support the values of a pluralistic society to stand up for the rights of their threatened minorities. In that spirit, we wholeheartedly stand with our Muslim sisters in the West and support their choices.

In return, we ask the global sisterhood to stand with Iranian women as they fight against the mandatory hijab. We ask that American women support Iran’s most prominent human rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh , who has been sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes after defending the women who have defied the hijab laws with their peaceful acts of protest.

Just as Americans must distinguish between violent radicals and ordinary Muslims to successfully fight the former and honor the rights of the latter, so must they recognize that not all hijabs are created equal. Omar and other Muslim women who benefit from the freedom that America has bestowed on them are especially well-positioned to speak up for women forced into hijab.

By itself, the hijab is a mere piece of cloth. Tyranny turns it into a symbol of oppression. It is democracy, with its embrace of diversity, that turns hijab into an emblem of power or beauty for those who choose to wear it.

HippieChick58 9 Apr 14
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9 comments

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1

Ok. Story time. My mobility challenged brother lives in an apartment that is relatively close to another apartment. He was looking out the window recently and happened to notice rapid movements across the way. Like all good voyeurs, he grabbed his telephoto lens and took a look.

A woman in a hijab was stripping off her clothes and dancing naked in her room. The hijab came off last.

Yes folks! Hijab wearing women are just regular women who celebrate life but do so wearing hijabs. 😎

I had a friend who was born in Iran and married an American service member. She said when the hijab first was mandated, the wore whatever they wanted underneath, and makeup and jewelry.. Most of the ladies do. And the hijab allowed them to sneak around a bit, with cooperation of girl friends. Because being completely covered it was hard to figure out who was who. But yes, until their spirits are broken they're just human females underneath the clothing, no better or worse than any other female.

2

France has got this completely wrong. Banning the Hijab is oppression. What they ought to have done is ban the compulsion to HAVE TO wear the Hijab.

1

I am waiting a cheesehead hijab.

1

Brilliantly written and well-said. I have a close American friend in Saudi Arabia with an extended VISA. She says she doesn't mind the rules on women and says things are changing. But then again , she is an American ex-pat so the rules are probably a little different for her.

3

TY for posting. It's a good article.

What I want to know is, how the hell women got so cowed by men that we fell for this shit in the first place.

I know, it boggles my mind. I think it was the advent of xianity.

6

And yet North American politicians continue to support and kiss the asses of these oppressive countries for oil.

4

Certainly wearing a hijab should be a free choice. What you aren't going to convince me of is that any woman would ever choose to wear one of her own free choice unless she was brainwashed. It is a symbol of oppression whether it's a free choice or not.

You took the words right out of my mouth.

@OwlInASack Ask me how I feel about ties.

@OwlInASack You've got a point.

You have been brainwashed to wear clothes. GO NAKED and be free.

5

Nobody in America really cares about this. At least not in the "Jim Bob" areas. What they know is that it's foreign and Muslim and that makes it bad. Very seldom do women in Jim Bob land even wear hats because they think this is rather odd. What they miss is that Paul went to great lengths in the bible to explain why and how a woman should keep her head covered and what it meant. Today Jim Bob and all the rest of us live in Trumpland.

I believe that women can and should wear whatever they want to.

3

That's a good explanation.

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