The Veil Unveiled

Found this in my drafts and while I wrote it in college it seems interesting to share, as it reminds me to speak up about something, even if there are disagreements.

* This is the extra credit assignment I wrote from a lecture I attended last week. It was about Women of Islam: Liberated or Subjugated. After attending the lecture, I had this moment of strong emotion in the direction of not knowing what to think. For so long I believed everything I saw. And a lot of what I saw was wrong. I was not always taught the difference between right and wrong but was expected to know the difference. I saw the way the elite, upper hand wanted me to see. I now realized that at times I conformed to what I was supposed to believe instead of believing what I wanted to believe. I saw the physicality of the veil, but never thought to think about the meaning behind it. It goes back to not even knowing the real definition of Caucasian. The "White Man" might think he is always right, but that does not mean that he is.*

The Veiled Unveiled

To think that the women of Islam are oppressed is to place us as outsiders at a very high level of ignorance. When asked what community would be best for a woman, the Islamic community is now very high on that list of choices.

People see the veils of Muslim women but fail to see the choices, the decisions and the person behind the veil. Maureen Slater says she feels more liberated behind her veil than she did unguarded to the world. When she first talked about her feelings and choices of placing the veil in front of her face, I thought to myself “what is she hiding?” As the lecture continued I changed that question to “what am I hiding?” All women have a choice in their attire, whether they are veiled or unveiled.

Maureen discussed the roles of women in the Islamic community; and the importance of remembering the difference between the religion and the culture. It is too often that observers looking into the community see first the culture and not the religious choices based on faith and belief. Women in Islamic communities become partners with their husbands, not properties; they sign a marriage contract. Women keep their own family inheritance and pay from work; any giving of their own money to the family is considered charity. Women keep their own names. Women are socially wives, mothers, daughters, friends, and sisters; and their roles as these figures are important to the community. While they are all of these things, they are first and for most women and individuals. With these choices it seems obviously clear that women are liberated. Women subjugate themselves when they judge each other and become pushed aside from not asserting their rights.

From the outside, people looking in see these women as subjugated or forced behind the men of the community. But what people fail to understand is that these injustices occur outside of the Islamic community too, so who is to say that these Muslim women are not liberated?

Men and women are different. They are psychologically, emotionally, and physically different from one another. So why does acting different and being different cause a question of liberation versus subjugated? The positioning of Muslim women behind the men can be viewed as placing men as better than women, or can be viewed as placing the women in a less vulnerable position; as Maureen stated, women like being able to know what is happening in front of us and not feel like we have to look over our shoulders to know what is occurring. Where men and women are equal is in their responsibility to their faith and their duties to God.

Maureen talked some about her journey into the Islamic world, forgoing her Catholic baptism and at the age of twenty converting. A choice she made on her own, and felt pressure from no one. She mentioned how she was able to feel a stronger sense of spiritual connection, not being an object to the world but a spirit, a person, and just a human being. The Quran says that God told the prophet Mohammad that a woman should be covered to be a known believer and to not be molested, she would be identified as Muslim; an act of faith and not an act of force. Making the Shahada, the profession of faith into the Islamic community, was a decision that Maureen made and a choice that she said many women have to make; and each women can make their own individual journey into the Muslim religion on their own terms; the choice to wear a full veil, or to wear only the hijab. Maureen said that sometimes her husband wishes that she would not wear the full veil, a statement that reinforced the choice and the liberation that women have in choosing their own paths.

Behind the veil or not we as women can choose to hide or subjugate ourselves in the decisions and clothing we wear; but it is our choice no one forces us to wear skimpy clothes or to cover ourselves completely. Whether the women wear the veil or are unveiled we do not really know whom the other is until we get to know the person and not the image. See the individual behind the obvious; do not stop at the first observation. Women can be confident and liberated in whatever they choose without the judgment from others, we judge ourselves too often as it is.