Unveiled Frustrations: Notes to Non Muslims from a Muslim Woman

Unveiled Frustrations

Notes to Non-Muslims from a Muslim Woman

by Saraji Umm Zaid

If I were given the opportunity as a Muslim woman (which I am, in a way) to speak to all of the pundits, experts, politicians, and journalists out there, I would have one simple message:

Get real and back off.

There is no shortage of "experts" and others who purport to tell the world -- in our case, the West, specifically the US -- all about Muslim women, and to tell Muslim women what is best for us. These pundits run the gamut from fundamentalist Christian preachers to lefty radical feminists, from politicians to professors, male and female. Jan Goodwin, who hints at a personal atheism, writes a popular book on the "lives of Muslim women." Geraldine Brooks, a converted Jew, writes an angst-ridden book "exposing the truth" about Muslim women of the Middle East. Fawaz Gerges, a Christian man, teaches a course on Muslim women's lives, and women in Islam.

The only group of people missing from the crowd of voices are Muslim women ourselves. Oh, to be sure, there are a handful of Muslim women who are called upon to write newspaper editorials or appear on a panel show on Sunday mornings. But ask just about any Aisha Doe on the street if Asma Gull Hasan with her mini-skirts or Asra Nomani with her "tantric" sex represents her. The answer will almost invariably be no. Yet it is the Asmas and Asras of the world who are called upon by a media and academic establishment whose interest in Islam is pretty much "Johnny Come Lately" to speak for us. Why?

Simply put, it is because women like Fatima Mernissi, Raheel Raza, Asra Nomani, Asma Gull Hasan, Nawwal Saadawi, Tasleema Nasrin, and anyone from RAWA don't threaten the Westerner's comfort level by challenging their preconceived notions and perceptions of Islam, Muslim women, and Muslim men. In fact, they happily affirm all of those perceptions: Islam needs to be reformed, preferably by people who have no formal study in Arabic (let alone Islamic law), all Muslim women suffer under the stranglehold of the Muslim male, and American style liberalism is the only key to happiness for the brown masses of the "Third World."

The dilemma of the Muslim woman is approached from a secular liberal paradigm, with no room for the paradigm of the Muslim woman herself. Because it is assumed that Muslim men long ago robbed of us a voice, the feminists, preachers, and politicians don't bother to trouble themselves by listening for one. And because very little in our current fast-food society gives the time and depth to explore the origins and basis of Islamic law, there is no real understanding or exploration of Muslim women and our position in Islam. How can anyone understand what the hijab means if they don't understand the basic creed of Islam, or the sciences of Qur'anic exegesis?

The overwhelming and hand-heavy focus on the hijab and the face veil is counter-productive and unrealistic. Many Muslims are as guilty of focusing on this to the exclusion of real issues as non Muslims are. When Afghanistan was the topic du jour, the assumption seemed to be that if Afghan women could just be "liberated" from the burq'a, their situation would drastically improve. Hardly anyone bothered to examine Afghan culture and society, their centuries old traditions, and their socio-cultural paradigm. Anyone who had would have seen that burq'a wasn't the issue.

Hijab, in this paradigm, is only a response to sexuality, a symbol of the wearer's political motivations, or a tool of repression and male superiority. Hijab is almost never examined in the context of a woman's personal faith. Nor is the issue of men's hijab ever, ever raised.

Other titillating topics of discussion are female genital mutilation (FGM), honor killings, and zina laws. While these are important topics of discussion, the fact of the matter is that justice isn't given to them (nor to the women / girls involved) when they happen in an environment where there is no distinction made between culture and Islam, and where ignorance of even the basics of Islam exists.

But while the hijab, honor killings, and stonings certainly grab the interests of readers, viewers, and armchair activists, the real issues facing Muslim women are not looked at. Things like free speech in Muslim countries, access to and quality of health care, the quality of education, unemployment, the high cost of living, and property rights of the poor and middle class -- all things which impact almost all Muslim women's lives are ignored. Is it because these issues directly affect Muslim men as well? The overwhelming majority of Muslim women are never going to be faced with the possibility of being stoned, but almost all Muslim women have to deal with unemployment and high housing costs. Is it because, far from being exotic issues, they are problems we share with Muslims worldwide? After all, who wants to discuss how high unemployment in the Arab world affects Muslim women when we have to deal with how unemployment affects women here?

From Amina Assilmi to Ai'sha Bewley, from Ingrid Mattson to Hedaya Hartford, learned, conservative, mainstream Muslim women are out there -- writing, speaking, and educating. Yet they are rarely, if ever, called upon to contribute their views in books, in documentaries, or on television panel shows. Even the Muslim-friendly Washington Report on Middle East Affairs has a not-so-surprising dearth of conservative Muslim women's voices and views. When it comes to talking about Muslim women's lives and rights, our voices are simply excluded from the get-go.

Of course, underlying all of this are swirls of racism, colonialism, paternalism, sexism, and anti-Islamic sentiment that goes back centuries. When it comes to paternalistic attitudes towards Muslim women's issues, Western feminists are probably the guiltiest of them all. Why? Because they subscribe to the idea that Muslim women can't and aren't trying to solve our problems ourselves. They have to change us for us.

How can one be expected to call upon Muslim women to speak out when one has been brought up in a society where Muslim women are considered nothing but silent odalisques? How can one be expected to be able to hear a Muslim women when one harbors deep resentments and ignorance towards Islam and Easterners? These undertones and attitudes are never raised or discussed. Most people don't even consciously acknowledge that they hold these views, even when their entire book reeks of it.

When it comes to choosing which Muslims will be allowed to speak for Islam, naturally the Muslim who has subscribed to the dominant paradigm in every way possible -- in speech, in appearance, in worship, in thought -- is the Muslim who will be heard. The Muslim who has formed her or his own identity and views by basing them on Islam first, and elements of modern Western culture second is discarded.

I once saw a documentary by a European woman on Arab women and hijab. The filmmaker chose to highlight the views and experiences of women whose opinions matched her own. Unfortunately, she was unaware that she was giving Arab Christian women a platform for their views on Muslim women's dress, and that she was deceiving her audience (and herself) by portraying these Christians as Muslim women. The fact that these women were not Muslim became evident in a segment where they were filmed speaking amongst themselves and exposing their genitalia to one another -- as if this is what veiled Arab Muslim women do at home all of the time. Any Arabic speaker had the truth immediately revealed, but the European and American audiences for whom this documentary is intended are deceived. The average Western viewer goes home thinking she has seen a slice of reality for veiled Arab Muslim women.

While it is probably true that this gross error was due to her ignorance of the Arabic language (and a translator with an agenda?), it is true that it was equally due to her own enmity towards the hijab. She found some Arab women who voiced views similar to their own and accepted them at face value, apparently without even investigating and confirming that they were who they claimed to be.

While it might seem improbable that such a huge gaping error could occur, the reality is that it is routine when it comes to the issue of the Muslim Woman. Christians, socialists, feminists, secularists, Jews, and the strange new bird known as the "Progressive Muslim" -- all are heard and attributed with expertise that often exceeds their knowledge but not their errors. Muslim women (as well as real Islamic scholars) need not apply.

For centuries in the West, men presumed to speak for women. Women were considered unintelligent, lustful, vain, petty-minded creatures. It is only in the last few hundred years that progress has been made and rights attained. Today, it is almost unthinkable for a man to speak on behalf of women and women's experiences. Western women have raised their voices and made themselves noticed.

I say it is time for the same courtesy to be extended to us. We may be veiled, but our minds aren't stifled. Some of us may cover our faces, but our voices can still be heard. If you want to talk about us, include us. Otherwise, you are guilty of the exact thing you accuse Muslim men of. If you want to talk about us, be real about it. We aren't all about veils and circumcisions. Muslim women are more complex and more real than that. If you want to know about us, stop talking. Start listening.

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