To understand this complex and historically heavy happening an explanation into the construction of Islam in western ideology is in order, a construction which underpins the western feminist values of today. It is key to note that this article only dives briefly into this large body of literature and there are links listed throughout the article to guide further reading in this culturally complex topic.
Such research however has drawn attention to the Islamisation of terrorism largely generated by the media surrounding the American-led war on terror after the 9/11 attacks. Thus making terrorism an ‘Islamic issue’, pinned to the Muslim community despite white Americans being responsible for the majority of terror related attacks across the US during this time.
Terrorism and Islam have since been socially morphed into one, constructed as symbiotic and inseparable to one another, conjuring ideas of an uncivilised and extreme society – a figment of the truth. This construction of fear and therefore subconscious bias within the news has wider implications, and bleeds into western feminism of today, despite seeming like two separate concepts.
These constructions have knock on effects to the agency of millions of women across the globe. In her paper Lila Abu-Lughod describes how this leads to the western “obsession with the plight of Muslim women” and the incessant need to ‘save’ them from their ‘oppressive’ faith, and patriarchal society. A faith which has been incorrectly tainted with ideas of terror, danger, and female subordination.
This is topical for countries like Afghanistan where there is currently a strictly imposed mandatory veiling. This controlled veiling sees the abuse of power through the justification of religion and different ijtihad, despite the Quran explicitly stating “there is no compulsion in religion” [al-Baqarah 2:256].
In no way are the atrocities happening across Afghanistan to be permitted, however anyone imposing mandatory hijab does not reflect the religion itself, but is abusing their own position of power, with the religion used as a vessel to justify personal ideology. One group is not a representation of an entire culture.
Going back to the American-led ‘war on terror,’ Laura Bush gave a radio speech on November 17th which as Lila Abu-Lughod again highlights in her paper “enlisted women to justify American Bombing and intervention in Afghanistan”.
The speech was a ploy used to uphold the ‘need’ for the war on terror, fabricated as a push for ‘women’s rights’, yet Afghan women’s voices were not centred in this discussion. In the speech Bush noted “the fight against terrorism is also the fight for rights and dignity of women” (U.S. Government, 2002), as if bombing their country, their communities, their homes, would somehow alleviate the struggle of Afghan women.
Read more about what’s happening in Afghanistan here
This generalisation of Islamic Society as one of oppression and linked to terrorism is detrimental to the millions of women around the world who choose to wear the hijab or other coverings, as the veil has been construed into, as Ayotte and Husain put in their paper, “visual and linguistic signifiers of Afghan women’s oppression”, and a “political symbol of the evil of the Taliban”. As such, the process of unveiling a woman in some pockets of feminism, namely western, has become the epitome of female liberation, thus removing a Muslim woman’s right to choose, the very access to choice feminism seeks to empower.
Read about Maheen’s story about the censorship of Muslim women’s voices in western feminism here
This is no clearer than in French law currently. In March 2004, the French Parliament passed a law banning headscarves in school. In 2011 it then became illegal to wear face coverings in public, an implicit restriction on wearing the Burqa. Then in 2023 the abhya was banned in state-run schools. Laws in which the national assembly argued “advocates the strengthening of measures aimed at promoting equality between women and men”. In the name of French secularism they said – in the name of guaranteed equality.
More recently, the French President, Macaron, stated that women and girls in Afghanistan “have the right to live in freedom”, while that freedom is stripped across his nation’s own legislation. Freedom for ‘all’, but not for Muslim women, all equal but some more equal than others, a metaphor that Orwell so eloquently founded. Muslim women are instead forced to choose between their religion and their access to state-education and wider public life.
Historically speaking, France has a history of Islamic imperialism within the colonial context of Algeria in the 1930s. In brief this was, as Franz Fanon explains in his novel ‘Algeria unveiled’, the physical unveiling of Algerian women. The unveiling became a sign of a ‘liberated Alergia’ in French society, who seeked to paint Algerian men as savages, which constructed a “hyphenated monster identity” in which to ‘save’ the women from.
The unveiling was symbolic of this, with it acting as a stamp of colonisation, and therefore a pathway to ‘civilisation’ and ‘liberation’. The same history which is now arguably repeating itself in modern day France, yet this time within the borders of its own nation.
These same seeds have been sewn into policy across Europe where there are restrictions on islamic related garments including: Turkey, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Norway, and Bulgaria.
These policies lead to women and girls facing increasing Islamophobia in the name of liberation. Girls as young as 7 are subject to Islamophobia from other women, like the young girl who had her hijab forcibly removed from her head, and told “her hair was beautiful and she did not have to wear hijab to school anymore”.
Girls like Maheen Haq who at 12 years old was prohibited from playing basketball while wearing her hijab, a sport she felt like was hers and an escape – the sport being something that hadn’t yet been taken away because of Islamophobic biases. A list of experiences and names which feels infinite.
A humble piece of fabric, a mere collection of fibres, used historically, politically and currently like a pawn to bind and decide the agency of millions of women across the globe. The laws in Afghanistan and France may argue the opposite outcome, but the result is always the same: Muslim women don’t get a say.
The point stands that the ‘fear’ of the hijab is just as oppressive as forcing one to wear it, and if we are to have a truly equal and empowered world these subconscious Islamic biases need to be confronted and unlearned, without it ‘feminism’ becomes a hypocritical concept that only serves western culture.
