Patriarchal domination: Mandating women to cover is a deliberate way of controlling them and their bodies, the American equivalent being the conservative right’s recent decision to take away the bodily autonomy of women by overturning Roe v Wade.
The good news is that the American government has placed sanctions on Iran’s morality police, accusing them of abuse and violence against Iranian women and holding them responsible for the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died in custody last week.
“We condemn this unconscionable act in the strongest terms and call on the Iranian government to end its violence against women and its ongoing violent crackdown on free expression and assembly,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.
The following opinion piece appeared in one of France’s mainstream newspapers today. I’ve translated a portion of it. The author is Jeannette Bougrab. The daughter of Algerian parents, she was born in France in 1973. Bougrab is a doctor of public law from the Sorbonne, a former academic, former president of the HALDE (Haute Autorité de lutte contre les discriminations et pour l’égalité) and former Secretary of State. (Source: Le Figaro)
Jeannette Bougrab
A cry of support for Iranian women and of rage against Western neo-feminists
Mahsa Amini died on September 16 after being arrested by the morality police in Iran for “wearing inappropriate clothes”. Bougrab underlines the courage of Iranian women and deplores the ignorance, even the complicity, of Western movements, which identify the veil (hijab) as a symbol of women’s emancipation.
“We must not be mistaken about the meaning of the veil. It is neither a social phenomenon nor a fashion artefact. It serves a deliberate policy that aims to subjugate the female mind and body,” says Bougrab.
The courage of Iranian women today commands admiration. They are engaged on the front line. These genuine feminists are well aware that they will not benefit from the support of the West, which is too preoccupied with organizing the wearing of the burkini in swimming pools.
Western self-proclaimed feminists are feminists in name only. In reality they are far left activists or deconstructionists. They don’t care about the lives of these women in Iran.
Any feminist who does not possess a modicum of Islamophobia, without which there can be no emancipation of women, is not credible.
***
“the complicity of Western movements which identify the hijab as a symbol of women’s emancipation.”
Take, for example, World Hijab Day. World Hijab Day is observed every year on February 1st to honor Muslim women who wear the hijab. It’s also a day to urge women of various origins and beliefs to try on the hijab and wear it for a few hours.
Why is this day held on February 1st?
On February 1st, 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran in triumph after 15 years of exile. The shah and his family had fled the country two weeks before, and jubilant Iranian revolutionaries were eager to establish a fundamentalist Islamic government under Khomeini’s leadership.
Lift the veil and underneath you will find a political ideology: a set of doctrines, myths or symbols of a movement, institution or large group that explains how society should work and offers a political and cultural blueprint for a certain social order.
The founder of Hijab Day is activist Nazma Khan, a Bangladeshi-American owner of a Brooklyn-based headscarf company, and a Shiite-proselytizing TV station called Ahlul Bayt, “dedicated to delivering the pristine message of the Holy Prophet Muhammad and His Holy Household.”
Sounds like a brilliant marketing gimmick to me. The owner of a headscarf company who promotes the buying and wearing of headscarves. And the whole world has fallen for it.
Juliet in Paris
Bravo, Juliet.
Merci pour ton soutien.
Outside of France, no one will touch this subject. Too scared of being politically incorrect or labeled a racist. But it needs to be exposed. Bravo from us too.
Thanks.
What would you say to Western Muslim women who claim that by wearing the hijab (their personal choice) they are just peacefully expressing their religious beliefs?
How does a piece of fabric make a Muslim woman feel any more or less pious? Faith lives in our hearts, not on the top of our heads. Why must one’s religiosity be external?
There is no passage in the Koran that mandates that women must cover. The headscarf is a tool and symbol of oppression and subservience, wielded by a deeply conservative Islamic agenda; it is political Islam – not to mention a deliberate distortion of passages in the Koran – as practiced by the mullahs of Iran and Saudi Arabia, the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamic State.
That women today must dress modestly to prevent men from becoming sexually aroused is not only utterly demeaning (and insulting to men) but objectifies and reduces those women to sexual objects. Little girls are being asked to don hijabs and jilbabs, turning them into sexual beings long before puberty.
How does this embrace modernity and equality? It doesn’t. It takes us back to the 7th century. All the strides women made throughout the 1960s, 70s and onwards are being rolled back. Whatever happened to gender equality?
A rejection of progressive values.
In short, mandating women to cover is a deliberate way of controlling them and their bodies, the American equivalent being the conservative right’s recent decision to take away the bodily autonomy of women by overturning Roe v Wade.