The debate over the so-called “burkini” in Europe has taken a sharp twist
in the United States, emboldening those who support wearing the burkini not
only as a matter of human rights but also as a matter of religious duty. This
perspective on the burkini could not be farther from the truth and only
reinforces the conservative Islamic view about the role of women in society.
The debate over the burkini began in
France as a logical extension of the ongoing deliberations over the place of
Islam in French society. The burkini controversy highlighted societal fault
lines over the concept and application of laïcité, or broadly
speaking, the separation of church and state. Coming in the wake of terror acts
in France, the burkini affair deepened the polarization of French society when
the State Council suspended the ban that was initially issued in July 2016 by
the mayor of Cannes. It prevented “access to beaches and for swimming
. . . to anyone not wearing appropriate clothing, respectful of moral
standards and secularism.” Some hailed the decision as a victory over
Islamophobia and stigmatization of Muslims, while others denounced it as an act
of surrender to the creeping Islamization of French society.
Surprisingly, the burkini controversy was taken up in the United States to
corroborate Islam’s outsized role in public life and to underscore Muslims’
personal relationship with God. Writing in the Los Angeles Times,
Shadi Hamid asserted:
If you’re a Muslim woman who wears the
hijab . . . you can’t wear just any swimsuit. Some women, of course, are
pressured or even legally mandated to wear the hijab (as in Saudi Arabia and
Iran), but most choose to do so; it’s about their personal relationship with
God. Regardless of whether we like it, the predominant scholarly opinion today
is that wearing hijab is fard, or obligatory.
This rationale not only misses the foundational ideology
against which the view of women developed in Muslim society, it also reinforces
the conservative and/or Islamist view concerning women and their role in
society. The first Arab Umayyad dynasty expanded its rule from its capital in
Damascus to Spain through military and political means, often discouraging
conversion to Islam. Muslim historians accused the dynasty of relegating Islam
to traditional Arab ideas and customs. Notwithstanding the fact that some
Abbasid caliphs were hedonistic, the second Arab Abbasid dynasty (750–1258)
inaugurated the period in which Islam (and its practice) was incorporated into
religious schools, in tandem with centralized efforts to settle theological
disputes, regulate society, and justify Abbasid rule on religious ground.
It is in this early period of Abbasid rule that the view
of women in society took its final indisputable shape through the modern era.
Building on preexisting Abrahamic beliefs and views, themes of cunning,
plotting, enticing, cheating, seducing and sorcery enveloped the view of women
in Arab Muslim society. With the blessing of rulers, who promoted polygamy and
concubinage both as a matter of supremacy and pride, the religious scholars of
Islam, the ulema, vindicated the view that women are associates of
Satan and the instigators of fitna (strife). Consequently, women had
to be confined and their sexual desire curbed so that fitna would not
endanger the peace of Muslim society. Therefore, marriage and the veil became
necessary vessels to protect society. In fact, marriage and the veil worked
hand in hand in securing peace in society. They secured fidelity and
inheritance, satisfied male desire and hid impotence, and most importantly,
subdued women as an aspect of submitting to God.
This view of women easily trickled along the centuries.
Preventing strife during period of social upheavals became a religious duty.
Rebellion against a ruler was equivalent to fitna brought about by
uncaged, unveiled women. Admonitions and warnings against the unveiling of
women whiffed Muslim society. Sayings such as, “If the sexual organ of the man
rises up, a third of his religion is lost,” and, “If the male organ rises up,
it is an overwhelming catastrophe for once provoked it cannot be resisted by
either reason or religion,” reinforced the obligation of veiling and caging of
women, all in the interest of the welfare of Muslim society.
Not surprisingly, stories of Houb Ozri (platonic love) punctuated
Arab history, literature, and poetry (Keiss and Leila; Gamil and Bousseina).
And themes of suffering for love, pleasure in pain of separation, and
deprivation of one’s lover were expressed in song and verse. Hub (love)
leaned towards an expressive masochistic tendency taking pleasure in pain.
To be sure, with the
advent of the modern era and nationalism, Muslim women and progressive men
fought the strictness of classical conservatism. Women championed their
emancipation in as much as they struggled for their fatherlands’ independence.
Nationalist secular rule in Arab countries more or less helped improve the
status of women. However, as Arab society limped into an anemic political
state, conservative voices re-emerged and emphasized the equality of the sexes
in Islam, but conditioned this equality on the divinely decreed differences of
their natures. Conservatives (and Islamists) asserted that God created the
sexes as mutually complementary halves. Whereas He gave decisive will, power of
reason, and physical strength to the man, He endowed the woman with compassion,
sensitivity and caring. In this sense, woman-as-rib tradition reappears in a
context whereby the woman’s preponderance of emotions over rationality defined
her place in Muslim society. In other words, the notion of secluding women
remained valid for they were essential to raising children. Conservatives and
Islamists alike have frowned upon the principle of gender equality in the
public sphere.
This attitude, which gathered momentum
with the decline of nationalism and the rise of Islamism, dovetailed neatly
with the almost unchallenged conservative interpretation of the Koran. More
specifically, the Koran, as a divine revelation that determined a sacred
mandate for mankind, has been interpreted by conservative men of religion to
the exclusion of female participation. Amina Wadud, an American Muslim
religious scholar, challenged the traditional tafsir (exegetical work)
of the Koran. Part of her argument is that
traditional tafsir has been exclusively written by males. Which means,
according to her, that
men and men’s experiences were included and women and women’s experiences were
either excluded or interpreted through the male vision, perspective, desire, or
needs of woman. In the final analysis, the creation of the basic paradigms
through which we examine and discuss the Qur’an and Qu’ranic interpretation
were generated without participation and firsthand representation of women.
This exclusion of the female voice in
interpreting the Koran has only served the perpetuation and entrenchment of
conservative values and traditions in Muslim society. Paradoxically, within the
context of the Koranic Weltanschauung, or worldview, the verses that
references women become secondary to the Koran’s universal mission. Therefore,
the distinction between individuals saliently become neutrally gendered and
based on devoutness. The Koranic verse (Sura 49:13) makes this distinction
clear:
Oh mankind, We created you male and female
and have made you nations and tribes that you may know one another. Inna
akramakum ‘inda Allah atqa-kum (indeed the most noble of you from Allah’s
perspective is whoever (he or she) has the most Taqwa (devoutness).
So when Muslim scholars assert that wearing the veil or
the burkini is about the women’s relationship with God and that wearing the
veil is obligatory according to predominant scholarly opinion, they are
perpetuating misconceived Islamic notions and doing a great disservice to the
progressiveness of Muslim females in oriental and especially occidental Muslim
societies. Modesty or religiosity in decorum can be defined through means other
than the burkini. In fact, garments that covered the body and/or the face have
been used to advance nationalist or Islamist views and positions regardless of
their religious and social values. Algerian females played a key role in the
struggle for independence from French rule. Females hid bombs under their
niqabs, which they detonated in restaurants frequented by French soldiers. When
the French took notice and monitored niqab wearing females, militant females
wore western clothes to avoid suspicion and hid bombs in their handbags.
Egypt’s media in the 1940s and 1950s boasted movies and television series in
which female decorum and dress were considered provocative by American
standards at the time. Few females veiled themselves until the 1990s when
conservatism and Islamism permeated significant sectors of Egyptian society.
Wearing or banning the burkini or veil can be debated on
grounds of human rights, stigmatization of Muslims in Western society, decorum,
and the spread of Islamic and Islamist values. Nevertheless, the undeniable
fact is that the burkini, niqab, burqa and the veil, like other conservative
traditions, are more or less the product of religio-social mores defined and
shaped exclusively by conservative Muslim males.
Robert G.
Rabil is a professor of political science at Florida Atlantic University. He is
the author most recently of The Syrian Refugee Crisis in Lebanon: The Double
Tragedy of Refugees and Impacted Host Communities (2016), and Salafism
in Lebanon: From Apoliticism to Transnational Jihadism (2014). T
No comments:
Post a Comment