NPR, the Full Face-Veil and Double-Standards

I listen to National Public Radio (NPR) quite frequently, often tuning into Morning Edition, All Things Considered and some of their other shows during my commute to and from the office. Without stretching the truth, you could actually call me a real fan of NPR-up to and including shows like A Prairie Home Companion. Just yesterday afternoon I happened to be listening to All Things Considered when they read a couple of letters they'd received in response to their recent show on "Muslim women who wear full veils". I'm happy to admit that I'm glad about missing that particular show, which was unsurprisingly complete with the token representative of "liberated" Muslim women-Asra Nomani, since just the letters that the show prompted were more than enough for me.

The first letter, from an Iranian living in New York, said: "There is no education on the subject in most Muslim societies and the women are not given a choice. The hijab has been exploited by patriarchal societies to a cruel and inhumane degree". These are interesting claims for a number of reasons, but probably first and foremost we should recognize the sad fact that NPR seemingly believes that comments from an obviously secularized Middle Easterner add some inherent value to this discussion and that their audience will place some value on them as well. No doubt it's assumed that the average listener will think that since this guy's from Iran, well then he must be a Muslim, thus he must know what he's talking about. Yes, folks, there's no need for not-so-subtle distinctions here, such as the fact that not only are many secularized Iranians rabidly anti-Islamic (thus they often put forward distorted, if not wildly outlandish, opinions), but many are quite ignorant of anything other than the religion's most basic tenets. My guess is that in choosing to air the comments of this Iranian expatriate, who they more than likely just assumed to be a Muslim, the editor's of NPR's All Things Considered felt they were offering balanced listener feedback on the topic. While their intentions might have been good on a certain level (i.e. an ill-conceived attempt to let the "other" share their point-of-view), to mainstream Muslims, it's rather clear that NPR has fallen into the trap of selecting people to represent Muslims who are rather unrepresentative of Muslims. In short, NPR selects to propagate the opinions of Muslims who adhere to their pre-conceived notions of what Muslims should be like. Thus instead of being disinterested and benevolent promoters of truth and understanding, they just make another contribution to the heap of misunderstandings and misrepresentations being piled upon Muslims today.

To analyze this in more detail, the editors at NPR seemed to have missed the fact that their very own show was specifically supposed to be about Muslim women with "their faces covered", not just the "hijab" (i.e. headscarf) which is all that the letter in question mentioned. If the editors were astute-and they're certainly not when it comes to Islam-they would know that the full face veil (i.e. niqab) is pretty much a practice of Sunni, not Shi'a, Muslims, thus one doesn't see it too often in Iran. Needless to say, I found it frustrating, but not surprising, that NPR allowed the discussion to get sidetracked before barely reaching the second sentence of the first letter...especially in light of the fact that they no doubt chose to read the letters which they thought were most thoughtful and informed. In spite of the fact that stories which are related to Islam, justifiably or not, are in the news on an almost daily basis, I find it rather troubling that otherwise intelligent people in the West-even well-meaning and sincere ones-continue to be so painfully misinformed about a religion embraced by a full one-fifth of humanity. It doesn't make me feel any better when I find media outlets—ones that are generally known for making an effort at showing both sides of a story, if not for being outright liberals—continuing to stumble and bumble their way through any attempt at not only representing Islam in a fair manner, but analyzing it in an intelligent manner.

Anyway, the real shortcomings of the letter in question were its outlandish claims, such as saying there's "no education on the subject in most Muslim societies". Since "no education", even from the perspective of the letter's author, is clearly an exaggeration (i.e. maybe "not enough" or "very little" would do, but I'm sure there's at least some and not none), one has to wonder what he meant by "education". Since the rest of his statement makes it quite clear that he's a run-of-the-mill secularist with a bone to pick with Islam, by "education" he most probably meant convincing Muslim women that the veil, however defined, is nothing but a societal practice fabricated by misogynistic male Muslim clerics that has nothing to do with "true Islam" (i.e. the pick-and-choose pseudo-religion to which cultivated secularists like him nominally adhere). Once one realized that the views of modernist Muslims are based on a mixture of irreligion and dishonest textual interpretation, it should be no surprise to learn that what they mean by "education" in regards to the hijab are efforts aimed at duping Muslim women into adopting their own shoddy opinions.

Likewise, to say "the women are not given a choice" is at best a half-truth, especially in the context of a radio show that attempts, however feebly, to show that some (if not most) Muslim women in the West, not to mention the Muslim World, wear the veil out of strong religious conviction...but that's not something they really want you to know. This is not to say that the treatment of women in some Muslim countries is ideal, since in some cases it's certainly far less than that (if not abysmally un-Islamic). However, readers should also be aware that there's also the phenomenon of God-fearing Muslim women being forced not to wear the veil in such countries as France, Tunisia and Turkey, where wearing the hijab in schools, government offices and other areas is banned by law. Additionally, many Muslim women who want to wear the hijab out of religious conviction often times find they are pressured not to if they belong to families that adhere to a staunchly secularist and nationalistic ethos. This counter-phenomenon is almost always conveniently overlooked by the media, since what bothers people in the West is any type of religiously-based standard or command which tells believers to reign in on their personal whims...especially if it's alien to their own culture. However, when it comes to secularists forcing their godless standards on religious people, or the pressures brought on by keeping up with the latest fashion trends and the obsessive desire to look good, suffice it to say that they're not seen as "cruel and inhumane".

Which brings us to the last statement of the first letter in question, which claimed that "The hijab has been exploited by patriarchal societies to a cruel and inhumane degree"—a statement which could be understood as confirming that there is indeed an Islamic requirement called "hijab" (which many Westernized and secularized Muslims deny), but that this requirement has simply been "exploited by patriarchal societies." If that's what the author meant by these words, then I have no real problem with them...but I seriously doubt that's what he was trying to say. While the real question should be, at least to believing Muslims and those who value freedom of religion, is what the teachings of Islam actually dictate in terms of women's clothing, not the fact that some Muslims have misused Islamic Law in a misguided attempt to control women. However, instead of this we get a sound-byte from a person who may have only desired to find a way to use "hijab", "patriarchal" and "cruel and inhumane" in the same sentence. Mission duly accomplished, this slanted view of things fell on the ears of NPR listeners who may now be well on their way to believing that the hijab is just a cultural aberration and method of exploitation that should be banned for the benefit of women. Indeed, there's no doubt that the subversive efforts of "liberal" and "progressive" Muslims, who are disproportionately sought out by the media to act as Muslim mouthpieces, are starting to bear fruit. I wonder how many people in lands where "freedom" is advertised as the highest value will eventually be mislead by such misinformation and end up supporting efforts aimed at forcibly stopping Muslim women from wearing "the veil"? The fact that such a trampling of freedom of religion, which is considered a basic human right by many, would be "cruel and inhumane" is seemingly lost on people who already feel that way. We should find it disturbing that principles that some people claim to so deeply value, such as "freedom of religion" and "tolerance", are discarded as soon as they come under the influence of a facile presentation in the media that relates to Muslims. Some people seem to have the attitude that, as long as they consider themselves the good guys and their values have been deemed to be universal, it's okay to force these values on other people...but I thought it was only Islam that (allegedly) spread by force!

The next letter that they read on All Things Considered, which happened to be from another listener in New York, was noteworthy because it's attempt at exposing a double-standard in regards to the veil simply showed that its author had some double-standards of his own. The letter's claim that there is a "double-standard here that seems to have been ignored. Western women in Islamic countries, like Saudi Arabia, are expected to conform to the local dress code. Why should a Muslim woman be offended by being asked to do the same?" is problematic for a number of reasons. First of all, it's unethical (not to mention idiotic) to blame women who want to wear a full-face veil (i.e. niqab) in Western countries for the policies in some so-called "Islamic" countries. Such a view seems to come from an intellectual fallacy that we see a lot of today, and that's the already mentioned error of treating Muslims as a monolithic force in which all Muslims are held accountable for the actions of a few...the issue of whether such standards of dress are, or are not, required by the teachings of Islam being irrelevant to this particular point.

Anyway, to get to the point, the short answer to why a Muslim would be offended is this: because it violates her religious beliefs. If he really wanted an honest answer, you'd think that the letter's author would be smart enough to direct such a question to a believing Muslim woman instead an uninformed third-party like NPR...but I guess not. Yes, indeed, asking (or forcing) a Muslim woman to expose herself by removing her veil or headscarf would violate her deeply held and (what she believes to be) God-given religious teachings related to modesty and chastity-virtues which the West used to value greatly until the so-called Enlightenment swept them aside. Yes, that's the same Enlightenment that the current Pope abhors for what it did to undermine Christian faith and values in Europe, although he seemingly adores it for what it could do to Islam (i.e. get it in the same mess that his religion is currently in). Anyway, in spite of how some may try to spin it, the hijab and the veil are not merely easily discarded outward religious symbols, methods of post-colonial political protest or cards to play in the big game of "identity politics", but they are ethical requirements based on religious guidance.

Likewise, to more directly address the alleged "double-standard", I sincerely doubt that there are religious teachings or ideologies that are violated by someone putting on more, rather than less, clothes, but there are some that are violated by women (and men!) dressing down too much. It wasn't too long ago that most people in America and other Western countries understood this obvious fact. Still in the United States and Europe, believe it or not, there are standards (not a "dress code") which require that people wear at least a certain amount of clothing. Due to this, I'm quite sure that even if someone were to claim that going nude in public was part of their religious beliefs or cultural practices (whether a bushman of the Kalahari, someone from deep in the Amazon, or a New Age nudist), they would be forced to adhere to minimal acceptable clothing standards while in public-like it or not. It seems that some people in America, most especially a couple of guys in New York, need to put that in their purportedly freedom-loving, secular-humanist pipes and smoke it.

Understanding that minimal acceptable clothing standard, and not a "dress code", is the more accurate operative phrase for describing how most societies, including America and Europe, dictate how people dress exposes the real flaws in the thinking that spawned this second letter. Indeed, in his effort to taint Muslim women who want to wear the veil in the West with having a "double-standard", the author not only got his facts wrong, but undermined the values that his country claims to stand for as well. It is rather odd that someone would claim that the U.S. or the U.K. has a "dress code", since what they have in reality is a minimal acceptable standard of dress. When non-Muslim women travel to countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia, they are expected to adhere to the minimal standard of dress. Likewise, women visiting America must do the same. If you doubt this, just think what would happen if they removed all of their clothing and then tried to proceed through the line at U.S. Customs! Ah yes, there is indeed a minimum standard of dress here, although there is no "dress code" (i.e. you can dress pretty much any way you want as long as you meet the minimum acceptable standard).

Once one understands this, it should become clear that it's not a matter of Muslims enforcing a "dress code" in their countries while hypocritically ignoring the "dress code" in non-Muslim countries. Rather, it's a matter of both sets of countries having minimal standards, but some Muslim countries simply maintain a standard of dress that sets the minimum higher (or more conservatively) than countries in the West. Thus to claim that Muslim women are adhering to some sort of "double-standard" in wanting to maintain what they believe is religiously mandated modesty, especially in a country that claims to be "free", is to see the situation with a complete lack of clarity...but God knows best.

Some food for thought, insha'llah. Deen On...