It's Not About the Burqa: Muslim Women on Faith, Feminism, Sexuality and Race

by Mariam Khan

It’s Not About the Burqa brings together Muslim women’s voices. It does not represent the experiences of every Muslim woman or claim to cover every single issue faced by Muslim women. It’s not possible to create that book. But this book is a start, a movement: we Muslim women are reclaiming and rewriting our identity. Here are essays about the hijab

This book contains numerous essays written by Muslim women from various backgrounds, occupation and race.

Women are supposed to be ‘less than’, not ‘too much’. Women are meant to be quiet, modest, humble, polite, nice, well behaved, aware of the red lines. They are supposed to tread softly and within their limits. Patriarchy demands that of all women, but the more women fall within intersections of oppression, the more they are expected to live by those demands, and Muslim women are especially vulnerable to what I call a trifecta of oppressions: misogyny (faced by all women), racism (faced by women of colour) and Islamophobia (faced by Muslims).

Revolutions rattle the privileged and discomfort the complacent. They are never about the comfortable majority. Rather, it is always the minority, especially those who are caught by the intersection of multiple oppressions, who instigate and inspire.

‘Never, ever let people make you feel ashamed for who you are. You know what is right and wrong in your heart, and it is your heart that Allah sees, that I see, and that you have to see every day when you look in the mirror. No one has the right to judge you.’

you cannot open a book without learning something. A book can make a home for itself in both your heart and mind, and it can provide the direction you need to succeed in life.

She believed in a woman’s right to not just live on her own terms, but to live those choices with dignity and respect.

Islamic teachings are clear that a father has to fulfil his duty to raise and care for his daughters, and that the obligations go beyond providing financial support. He must provide a safe, peaceful and loving home environment that is conducive to his daughter’s overall spiritual and moral development.

Through reading, I explored worlds that were different and distant from my tiny bubble of the local high street, my school and the council estate.

An education and financial independence would mean that I would never have to suffer the poverty that she experienced as a single mother. It would mean that I would never have to be reliant on the goodwill and charity of relatives if I ever found myself alone.

When a woman travels from A to B, she will encounter mad dogs along the route who will bark at her. Some men (and there are many women too) will always shout discouragement to a woman on her path to success. The thing to do is to ignore them. Never stop to reason with a mad dog.

some non-Muslims viewed Islam as oppressive to women, without any understanding of the patriarchal structures that allow such practices to flourish.

The sin of stealing for both a man and a woman is equal. In no verse in the Quran, or in any hadith, is it written that a woman’s sin is less than a man’s. Islam is very clear that a woman’s capability to do wrong is equal to a man’s.

We’ve seen many Muslim women align themselves with feminist movements in order to uphold and fight for the rights that have been given to us in Islam, and those women have continuously come under scrutiny, one of the critiques being that these movements are predicated on the equality of the sexes rather than equality in the eyes of our creator, Allah: What we so often forget is that God has honored the woman by giving her value in relation to God—not in relation to men. But as Western feminism erases God from the scene, there is no standard left—except men. As a result, the Western feminist is forced to find her value in relation to a man. And in so doing, she has accepted a faulty assumption. She has accepted that man is the standard, and thus a woman can never be a full human being until she becomes just like a man.3

that we dilute our faith in our attempts to mould Islam to make it more palatable to outsiders.

If being Muslim is about faith, the representation of Muslims should come with terms and conditions.

What we once wore as an affirmation of our faith, as an act of submission to God, has become excessively politicized and has come to represent far more than religious observance.

In a bid to be included and represented by the fashion industry, Muslim women are increasingly sexualized and objectified, and the tenets of our faith have been both appropriated and commoditized. The idea of an essential Islam is being lost as we desperately try to reclaim a narrative about pluralism, individual experiences and insights.

when it comes to the fashion world, we find ourselves in a place that expects us to leave behind certain elements of our religion and to comply with a reformed and acceptable version of it.

I worry that we’ve contributed to this dichotomy of the fashionable, modern, ‘liberal’ Muslim woman, versus a supposedly regressive, traditional, ‘conservative’ Muslim woman. And having more representation in industries as fickle and superficial as beauty and fashion further reiterates that in order to be accepted by society, we have to conform to and fit its beauty ideals.

As Muslims, we take pride in our appearance, but when we become slaves to how we look, we run into a number of issues that by their nature are not meant to be solvable, for if they were, how would these industries benefit?

The other danger in the fashion industry’s casual ‘acceptance’ of ‘modest fashion’ is that it breeds a false notion of tolerance, which in reality is far from existing.

It seems that we have become naive in assuming that because there is some minor industry representation, suddenly Islam is being accepted in its entirety; for its veil, its burqa, its different interpretations in dress, its five pillars, its ideas, and as a system overall. We’ve forgotten that we’re just another number; a target market for sellers on the ‘modest’ high street. We’ve forgotten that the hijab is not supposed to be a fashion statement or an expression of choice and freedoms to appease a secular-liberal audience; hijab was and is supposed to be an expression of faith and Muslim identity – that’s where it began, and that is where it was supposed to end.

This!!!

you truly believe it is not about the burqa, prove it and stop talking about it. It is not the duty of Muslim women to have to educate entire nations about boundaries, choices, and representation, and neither is it our duty to justify what we choose to wear.

Within the Muslim community, there is often a lack of acknowledgement of mental health issues, but many also fear judgement. In Islam, alcohol, drugs and pre-marital relations are all forbidden, as is suicide. Therefore, when a Muslim whose mental health issues are tied up with one of these turns to the community, they often find nothing but judgement, when what they seek is the relief promised by the Islamic principles of mercy and forgiveness.

My imam made me realize that having a mental illness did not mean I was not a Muslim, and that it was a combination of spiritual and practical solutions that would help me to recover.

With this and the lack of conversation within their communities about women’s rights, the first time many Muslim girls in the West will encounter female empowerment is likely to be from a White Feminist perspective. But there is a problem. This perspective disapproves of the hijab, the burqa, modest culture and other key elements of the Muslim female identity. Mainstream feminism suggests that my choices and values can’t exist within its framework – if I make the decision to dress for my faith then I must be oppressed or submissive.

Neither can they acknowledge that they themselves are playing the role of oppressor by impressing their ideology of empowerment on others who may interpret empowerment in a different way.

Somehow within feminism there is an expectation that faith needs to be left at the door.

What we wear for our God is a choice for the individual. Isn’t feminism about choice above all?

It’s all so frustrating: being a Muslim feminist too often means taking the blame for Muslim men’s weakness. We are stuck between two sets of people who try to use us as pawns, then get angry when we don’t oblige. I do not believe Islam and feminism clash, but due to the unavoidably fickle nature of humanity it’s hard for many people to make the distinction between Islam as a religion and Muslim culture.

It should be heaped upon the patriarchal cultures that subjugate women. It should be felt by the women who allow it to continue, both through their silence and their actions. It should be placed upon the men who stand by and allow their mothers, their sisters, their wives and their aunts to oppress women in the name of Islam, men who benefit from their privilege. And it also belongs to the men who abandon us to its effects, simply because they are too afraid to speak up.

Islam states that daughters are blessings, that the man who treats his daughters kindly and educates them will be with the Prophet in heaven. But culture dictates that the families of women bear their pain stoically. It is their fate. It is utter bullshit.

But a woman who can read the Quran soon learns that her subjugation and oppression is a man-made construct, very much against the law of Allah and his prophet. She learns that Islam gives her the right to choose her own spouse, and the right to leave a man she does not like. He must release her with kindness and return to her what is hers. Schooled in Islamic sunnah, and raised by a grandmother with a deep understanding of the Quran, I was an educated woman. I knew my place. And it was not as the workhorse of an abusive household.

‘Times have changed and our women have changed with them, but our men have yet to catch up.’

Culture had condemned me despite my having done everything according to the laws of Islam, so I had decided to reject culture’s rules.

I had learnt that, contrary to cultural expectations, good relationships are good from the start and not something to be achieved through effort.

They will know that Islam gives a woman the right to choose her partner and to leave him with only the reason that she doesn’t like him. Where a man needs to state his desire to divorce his wife on three separate occasions, a woman need only make the request once.

Islam has never been about avoiding the opposite gender and creating barriers, but instead about mutual respect and collaboration, and those things cannot happen when women are being stuffed into corners and hidden from sight.

Because women in such unregistered marriages cannot get a legal divorce, if the husband refuses to give an Islamic divorce, they are referred to as ‘chained women’. When a man refuses to give a talaq divorce, a wife can get a khula divorce – but this is often to her detriment.

Whilst Islam teaches you to love everyone under the religion like your own family, it seems like such a lesson is lost on those who choose to put cultural differences ahead of religious teachings.

Muslims are considered guilty of criminal potential without demonstrating any criminal intent. The act of expressing oppositional political opinions or behaving in an (ill-defined) suspicious way is enough to make us guilty of (potential) crimes. Our very existence, let alone our actions and our opinions, are then politicized by the state and we are rendered suspect and silenced the moment we protest.

It sees Muslim women as the key entry point for the repressive apparatus unleashed against our community under the cover of fighting terrorism, radicalization, and ‘non-violent extremism’.

Sometimes, speaking someone’s story is the only way to keep them with you.