Unveiling Hijab Hatred

Please check out the two articles linked to below. It seems that those secular, tolerant and open-minded Europeans are at it again. Saying this as an American, I certainly don't mean to imply that the same thing's not going on over here, since it certainly is. Actually it's somewhat scary, since if Europeans (who are certainly more open-minded, informed and tolerant, generally-speaking, than Americans) are acting this way, then what is our redneck population really thinking? Anyway, what I really find interesting is how a lot of people out there (on both sides) aren't living up to the values that they often pay lip-service to. Isn't this entire issue, along with the so-called "War on Terrorism", just one giant case study in double-standands?

The first article, below, is by Yvonne Ridley, an English journalist who embraced Islam a couple of years ago. Recently, she decided to start wearing the hijab and the article documents her experiences. The second article is about death threats and hate mail that a Belgian man has received simply for hiring a woman who wears a headscarf.

'It's only a piece of cloth'
Can a woman in a hijab still get a taxi? asks Yvonne Ridley
The Observer - December 12, 2004

Headscarf hate mail shocks Belgium
"You are a bad Belgian and you have signed your own death warrant."
by Alan Quartly
BBC News - 31 January 2005

Also, check out BBC's Viewpoints: Europe and the headscarf, which contains the opinions of various people, both Muslim and non-Muslim, about the hijab ban in French schools and for French civil servants. I enjoyed reading Fareena Alam (Managing Editor of Q-News magazine) taking some of the "liberated" Muslim women to task for having double-standards. Not only do these women always seem to claim that all Muslim women wear the hijab because they're forced to (which contradicts what many women who actually wear it say), but they, as Sister Fareena points out, compromise their "own secular principles of freedom and choice". A fine example of such myopic double-standards is the viewpoint of Rachida Ziouche, an Algerian journalist living in France, who says: "I strongly believe that people coming from the Middle East to live in Europe must adhere to the law of the land and respect the traditions of the country they have come to live in". I think it's fair to guess that her zeal for adhering to the "law of the land" is a one-way street for "people coming from the Middle East to live in Europe", but not vice versa. I'm confident that if she traveled to Saudi Arabia, Iran or any other country that has a dress code that she disagrees with, her encouragement to "respect the traditions of the country" would lose steam rather quickly. Hey, we've all got issues with our nafs, but I find such overt hypocrisy somewhat disturbing since that's a really bad situation to be in. I pray that Allah frees all of us from self-delusion!

Just in case anyone out there has never met, heard of, or heard from a Muslim woman who willingly wears the hijab (a.k.a. headscarf), then you can read some of their blogs here, here, here and here, as well as a nice set of Hijab Articles.

I case you're wondering,"So why do Muslim women wear hijbab anyway?" The short answer is...because God said so. However, if you want a more detailed explanation, please read the excellent article Why Hijab?, which was recently written by Shaykh Nuh Ha Mim Keller.

Enjoy...