Posts tagged Hijab

“The recent article, “To Be Anti-Racist Is To Be Feminist: The Hoodie and the Hijab Are Not Equals“ has sparked quite a bit of debate, most notably around issues such as race, gender, ethnicity, privilege, and religion. Because of this, The Feminist Wire has created space for a response to the author of the article.”

One of the best rebuttals I’ve read online. This might just clog your dashboard up (it’s a tad lengthy) but if you’re interested in understanding why Muslim feminists like us and our allies are so irritated by the white privilege some of our Western peers exhibit, here’s something you should read concerning the Al Awadi tragedy. Many feminists display massive amounts of (intended or unintended) racism and Islamophobia.

An article recently published on The Feminist Wire’s website and circulated via its facebook page has prompted this note. In her article, “To Be Anti-Racist Is To Be Feminist: The Hoodie and the Hijab Are Not Equals,” Adele Wilde-Blavatsky attempts to address the important question of what it means to be an anti-racist feminist in the 21^stcentury. Her article, however, serves to assert white feminist privilege and power by producing a reductive understanding of racial and gendered violence and by denying Muslim women their agency.

In her article, Wilde-Blavatsky takes “issue with … the equating of the hoodie and the hijab as sources of ethnic identity.” Oblivious to the important cross-racial and cross-ethnic connections and solidarities made in light of the tragic murders of Trayvon Martin and Shaima Alawadi, the author contends that the hoodie and the hijab cannot be compared because “the history and origin of these two items of clothing and what they represent could not be more different.” For her, Trayvon Martin’s hoodie signifies a history of racism, whereas Shaima Alawadi’s hijab signifies only male domination and female oppression. Revealing her own biases, Wilde-Blavatsky writes, “The hijab, which is discriminatory and rooted in men’s desire to control women’s appearance and sexuality, is not a choice for the majority of women who wear it. The hoodie, on the other hand, is a choice for everyone who wears it” (emphasis in original).

As feminists from diverse backgrounds, we value challenging, difficult, and necessary conversations on patriarchal violence within all our communities. We also recognize the importance of having an honest discussion about how racial hierarchies, discrimination, and prejudice differently impact racialized communities (for example, as blacks, Muslims and/or black Muslims). What we do find deeply problematic, however, is the questioning of women’s choice to wear the niqab and the presumption that this decision is rooted in a “false consciousness.”

We also take issue with Wilde-Blavatsky’s depiction of the violent motivations behind Alawadi’s murder. Wilde-Blavatsky states, “Scratch the surface and what is underlying racist fear and violence is an all-pervasive global culture of male power and domination.” In writing this, the author has all but stripped women of colour of an intersectional understanding of violence against women, one that is attuned to both patriarchal and racist violence. Instead, Muslim women and women of colour feminists are reduced to a piece of cloth and the experiences of people of colour and practioners of an increasingly racialized and demonized religion are repeatedly questioned and denied.

To us, it is deeply troubling to be patronized by a person who insists the hijab is never a choice made of free will. But what is even more saddening is that such opinions are being propagated on a feminist site with a commitment to highlighting the consequences of the “ill-fated pursuit of wars abroad and the abandonment of a vision of social justice at home.” The consequences of such wars have included the demonization, incarceration, and oppression of Muslim men, women, and children at home and abroad.

As feminists deeply committed to challenging racism and Islamophobia and how it differentially impacts black and Muslim (and black Muslim) communities, we wish to open up a dialogue about how to build solidarities across complex histories of subjugation and survival. This space is precisely what is shut down in this article. In writing this letter, we emphasize that our concern is not solely with Adele Wilde-Blavatsky’s article but with the broader systemic issues revealed in the publication of a work that prevents us from challenging hierarchies of privilege and building solidarity.

[continued]

Bolded emphasis mine. Glad TFW published this. Limiting a woman’s plight to patriarchy only is robbing her identity of the diversity of her background. Shaima’s case wasn’t ‘patriarchy’ (only, if) but a clear case of racism and Islamophobia. Something that Adele Wilde-Blavatsky failed to enunciate.

faineemae:

Some of us have grown up in a culture that tells us that dark skin is ugly, fair-skin is too pale, we’re too big, we’re too skinny, we’re not religious enough. The Muslim media has always shown fair skinned, skinny, hijabi women in their advertisements. There are Muslim women all over the world who do not identify with that image but instead we come in all shapes, all sizes, all colors, all ages, whether we choose to wear a hijab or not. Because the beauty of the Hijab comes from the choice to wear it.

We’re here to show the Islamic world that you can’t fit us all into one skin color or one hijab.

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Love the collage; I see my silly face in there as well. Valid commentary, too. Thanks for letting me be part of this!