The Harm of the Hijab

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October 3, 2022

Now is the time to juxtapose the reaction to the hijab in Iran with the attitude of the Western left.

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For an “improperly” worn hijab, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was beaten to death, sparking massive protests revealing deep anger against the Iranian regime.  A photo showed Hadis Najafi, another 20-year-old, tying her hair into a ponytail before joining the protests.  She had filmed herself dancing on a beach, pirouetting with swirling hair, so inflammatory to the mullahs.  A spray of bullets felled her.  A woman eating in a restaurant without a hijab was arrested.   

In striking contrast, the hijab, the symbol of women’s oppression in Iran, is the same piece of cloth the Western left considers “empowering.”  Woke companies like American Eagle and Nike hawk hijabs to woke consumers.  Nike could not resist virtue-signaling, saying its Nike Pro Hijab would “advance inclusive conversation around hijabs.” 

Surely, an “inclusive” conversation must extend to the left’s efforts to encourage the hijab in Western cultural and political life.  

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Silence toward the hijab protests in Iran

Linda Sarsour, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib are high-profile Democrats, vocal defenders of Muslims’ rights, and constant critics of Israel.  In an article, Phyllis Chesler excoriated them for not speaking out for the women of Iran:

Sarsour and Omar continue to glorify their wearing of the hijab as a protest against white racism and alleged “Islamophobia.” None of the three women offered their own words in support of the protesters. They merely retweeted the briefest of remarks by others. All three, who are ordinarily so vocal, were suddenly tongue-tied.

Anyone familiar with the ways of the left would know that its orthodoxy requires promotion of the hijab.  Tellingly, President Biden’s “solidarity” with the Iranian women did not include the word “hijab,” nor any mention of Islam.

The E.U. and the Council of Europe have tried to foist the hijab on Europeans

In September 2022, in a decision that can be explained only by the left-leaning E.U.’s ideological insularity, arrogance, and incompetence, and after the Iran protests had started, the E.U. showed a young girl in a hijab promoting its Erasmus programme.  Outrage prompted its withdrawal.  In 2021, Europe’s top human rights body, the Council of Europe, pulled a poster showing the split image of one women wearing a hijab and one not, with the slogan “beauty is in diversity as freedom is in hijab.”

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The American left finds a vivid portrayal of the burqa unacceptable in the U.S.

The burqa triggered a debate in the Democratic primary in New York’s 12th Congressional District in 2021.

Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks,  Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D) had worn a burqa on the House floor, railing against the treatment of women in Afghanistan.  After the disastrous U.S. pull-out from Afghanistan, the Taliban reimposed their tyranny on Afghan women.  The hijab-wearing Rana Abdelhamid, a progressive, founder of Hijabis of New York and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, challenged Maloney in the primary, criticizing her 2001 decision to wear a burqa, stating:

Maloney … wore a blue burqa on the House floor to advocate for the invasion of Afghanistan, under this very Islamophobic narrative that Afghan women needed to be saved.

It clearly escaped Abdelhamid that Afghan women want to be saved, pleading, “We want the world to hear us, and we want our rights to be saved.”  The United Nations, too, would be surprised to learn that its attempts to help Afghan women are “very Islamophobic.”

Rather, Abdelhamid’s motives were murkier.  She wanted to dissuade other American infidels from having the gall of Maloney, a white woman (albeit a Democrat), from wearing the dehumanizing and grotesque burka on TV that could — and emphatically should — arouse revulsion in viewers.

Never mind that the burqa is an ambulatory prison, with an elevated risk of disease and social exclusion.  For the socialist Abdelhamid, the burka is exempt from any negative portrayal in non-Muslim lands.

The rules of the Congress made way for the hijab

The left’s genuflection to the hijab for reasons of “inclusiveness” is limitless.  In 2019, the Democrats changed an 18-year-old rule disallowing the wearing of religious headdress in Congress.  The impulse behind this change was Ilhan Omar with the cooperation of Nancy Pelosi and Jim McGovern (D-Mass.).  Omar celebrated lifting the ban, saying it was “more inclusive for all.”

The world’s first “feminist government” in Sweden dutifully wore the hijab in Iran

In 2017, Swedish female officials, belonging to the world’s first self-declared “feminist government,” wore headscarves during a trip to Iran.  They defended themselves from criticism, saying, “Failing to do so would have broken the law” and the “only other option would be to send an all-male delegation.”

These “feminists” could not cobble together enough collective spine and demand that Iran retract its conditions, failing which no agreement could be signed.  The hijab was insisted upon, and woke leftist Western women complied.

Following the Christchurch terror attacks on Muslims, New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, could have chosen to hug Muslim women without the hijab.  But as a progressive, it was mandatory for her to wear one and give it wider currency. 

The left used the hijab as a symbol of democratic defiance in the 2017 Women’s March

The 2017 Women’s March saw a profusion of colored hijabs in the company of pink pussy hats and rainbow flags.  They morphed into — what else? — an effervescent example of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

The march also inspired Gisele Fetterman, wife of the mayor of Braddock, a certain John Fetterman, now a Democrat Senate hopeful, to dream up — what else? — hijabs for Barbies.  Mrs. Fetterman thought it “wrong” there were no dolls for the “mostly Muslim” refugee population and teamed up with a Saudi Arabian woman to create “Hello Hijab” dolls.   

Has any of our “journalists” asked John Fetterman what he now thinks of his wife’s doll creations as anti-hijab protests rage in Iran?

The hijab has links to violence, crime, and terrorism around the world  

The hijab is neither benign nor only a women’s issue.  In Nigeria, a Muslim group threatened barring female Muslim law students from wearing the hijab — “a dangerous situation capable of snowballing into a religious crisis whose consequences no one can predict.”  In Malawi, which is 13. 8 percent Muslim, the “Hijab Task Force” threatened to burn down Christian schools, angered by the refusal to allow female Muslim students to wear a hijab in school.  In India, two men threatened to kill a judge who had upheld a ban on Muslim female students from wearing the hijab.  In Mumbai, another Muslim killed his Hindu wife for not wearing the hijab.  In Pakistan, a hijab-wearing woman blew herself up, killing the Chinese director of the Confucius Institute.

Just observe the world of Islam.  You will know that the hijab is a tool for many Muslims that transforms Muslim women and their clothing into weapons for civilizational conquest.  As self-defense is the first and an irrevocable law of nature, we must protect our Judeo-Christian heritage and defeat the left’s unceasing efforts to mainstream the hijab in the U.S.

Image via Pexels.

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