In yet another complaint pertaining to female students being harassed for their attire before taking the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) on Sunday July 17, two Muslim girls have come forward saying they were forced to remove their burqa and hijabs.

The incident took place at the Matoshree Shantabai Gote College which was serving as an examination centre in Washim.

The Times of India quoted one of the aggrieved students as saying, “We asked them to check us and then allow us in, but the concerned staff spoke to us disrespectfully and their behaviour was not good.”

An investigation was underway after parents of the girls filed a police complaint.

A senior police official was quoted by the publication as saying, “Their application to the police claims that the staff involved in checking students made objectionable remarks like threatening to cut the burqa – hijab if they didn’t remove it voluntarily.”

This news comes just a day after reports that female students who appeared for their National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) at the Marthoma Institute of Information Technology (MIIT) in Kannur in Kerala on Sunday, July 17, were allegedly forced to take off their undergarments by the security staff.

The father of one of the girls has now lodged a police complaint. According to him, his 17-year-old daughter and other girls were forced to remove their bras because of the metal hook.

“Is your future or innerwear big for you? Just remove it and don’t waste our time,” is what the authorities told the girls, reported NDTV quoting the father’s complaint to the police.

On Tuesday, the Kerala Police filed a First Information Report (FIR) under section 354 (assault or criminal force with intent to outrage the modesty of a woman) and 509 (words, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Related:

Female students forced to take off undergarments in Kerala?

Now Mangalore university to implement hijab ban

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A group of goons in Islam Nagar in Bhopal forced a young woman to remove her Burqa. The woman, along with her male friend were on their two-wheeler when they were stopped, harassed and filmed.

As per a Scroll.in report, the Police have not registered a case and the two men, part of the group, have been let off with a warning. It has also been reportedly suggested that the mob believed the man was a Hindu and the girl, a Muslim, and hence the mob tried to stop them. 

The video, posted by NDTV’s resident editor, shows some people standing near the man and woman, forcing the woman to remove her burqa. One gang member said, “Aap burqa utariye, aap humari qom ko badnaam karr rahe hai” (Remove your burqa, you are bringing disrepute to our community).

A girl was forced to remove her burkha as the people suspected that the man on whose scooter she was riding pillion was a Hindu, in Islam Nagar, Bhopal on Saturday afternoon @ndtv @ndtvindia pic.twitter.com/66QPE5OJax

— Anurag Dwary (@Anurag_Dwary) October 16, 2021

One can see the girl crying in the video, while her friend tries to reason out with the right-wing supremacists to let them off. After a point, the perpetrator can be heard raising his voice and saying that she will have to remove her burqa, and that she is a disgrace to the community.

This was followed by heavy criticism on social media where the Twitterati, called this sexual harassment under the guise of moral policing.

Madhya Pradesh appears to have become the new hotbed for hate and bigotry with multiple incidents that have come to light over the past few weeks. 

Violent clashes broke out in Sendhwa on October 13, where residents of Moti Baugh resorted to stone pelting around 8:30 P.M and the clashes went on till 12 A.M. The police arrested 15 persons after this incident under various charges including “one for attempt to murder”. A curfew is in place in Sendhwa till October 19.

Indore saw two gruesome incidents- one, where a Muslim family was assaulted and threatened for not leaving the Pewday village in the Kampel area of Indore city, and second where four young men were harassed during Navratri. 

CJP, SabrangIndia’s sister organisation, has also written to the Minorities Commission to take cognisance of these incidents and conduct a full-fledged investigation. Four youths were arrested for creating “public nuisance” after members of Bajrang Dal caught them outside a Garba organised by the city’s Oxford College on October 10.  

In Barwani, Muslims were forced to flee from Borlay village, which according to news reports is dominated by the Hindu Patidar community. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) put up posters outside Garba venues in Ratlam saying “entry of non-Hindus is prohibited” across 56 pandals. The VHP claimed that “non-Hindu men indulge in objectionable activities and thus their entry is being prohibited for Garba”.

In the first week of October, a Muslim shrine called Hazrat Bheda Peer Dargah Sharif, was vandalised in Neemuch, allegedly by around two dozen masked men belonging to a Hindutva group. The attackers used explosives, damaging the structure, and also injured its caretaker, Khadim Noor Shah.

Related:

Is Madhya Pradesh steadily turning into a communal hot bed?

Indore: Police file FIR against Muslim family that was attacked ‘for not leaving village’

No Garba for non-Hindus: Right-wing in MP

CJP moves NCM over hate crimes against Muslims in Madhya Pradesh

MP: Dargah blown up, allegedly by Hindutva mob

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As the world continues to reel under the effects of Coronavirus pandemic, tailors in Odisha are working day and night to meet the unexpected rise in the demand of burqas post its outbreak, reported The Indian Express.

In an unexpected consequence of the the Covid-19 pandemic that has infected over 4 lakh people globally, the demands for burqas have increased manifold in the state, with the outfit almost being seen as protective gear in the absence of masks which are currently in shortage in the state.

Tailors in Kendrapara, Odisha, have received hundreds of orders of burqas amid this crisis. The demand has also escalated burqa costs with each burqa being sold at exorbitant prices ranging from Rs. 500 to Rs. 1,500. At least 10 tailors of Kendrapara town and other nearby areas said that due to the lockdown imposed by the government, they are now busy stitching burqas from their homes to meet the demand.

Sk. Akbar, a tailor in Tendakuda told The Times of India, “Many Muslim women have resorted to wearing masks and gloves to protect themselves. For the women, the burqa acts as a natural defence against germ-carrying droplets. Most burqas even have a net lining for the eyes, so the demand for the garment has spiked.”

Mohammad Sahid, a tailor from Kendrapara who mentioned that tailors are working day and night to cash in on the situation said, “We stitch different sized burqas for women and girls. Usually they sell at dismal prices. Sales are ordinarily slack, except during Eid and the marriage season. But Covid-19 has boosted the sales of burqas like nothing else.”

Tailors across the town mentioned that many do not know how to stitch burqas as it is a seasonal business due to which not many are employed in the trade. This is why experienced tailors have now hiked tailoring prices in-order to cash in from the demand. 

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Burqas and niqabs (pictured here) are often thought of as one type of dress in the UK. Smarta/Shutterstock

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Rio 2016 is proving not just to be a platform for sporting prowess, it is also helping to shake up some traditionally-held cultural misconceptions too.

In the West, many regard traditional Muslim dress like the hijab as a sign of oppression, with women forced to wear the garments by men. But it is not as simple as that: many women choose to wear the hijab as a sign of faith, feminism, or simply because they want to.

Recently, 19-year-old Egyptian volleyball player Doaa Elghobashy’s decision to wear a hijab while competing against Germany caused a stir. Her and partner Nada Meawad’s team uniform of long sleeved tops and ankle length trousers were already a “stark contrast” to the German competitors' bikinis, yet it was Elghobashy’s hijab that media attention focused on.
 

Doaa Elgobashy at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Reuters

Elgobashy and Meawad were the first team to represent Egypt in volleyball at the Olympics and, in the words of Elgobashy, the hijab which she has worn for ten years “doesn’t keep me away from the things I love to do”.

The determination and sporting prowess that Elgobashy displayed is a polar opposite to the assumption that all hijab-wearing Muslim women are passive and oppressed. The support and celebration that Elgobashy’s hiajb has also received is in direct contrast to the banning of burkinis in several French towns – though to look at both outfits, they cover the same amount of the body.

Many Muslim women today are wearing hijabs and other traditional dress to challenge the assumption that these are symbols of control. In fact, there are several revealing truths about Muslim dress that society must hear.

1. Women are not forced to wear hijabs

Some women choose to wear the hijab because it is a national tradition of their country of origin, or because it is the norm in their local area, city or country. Others wear it to demonstrate their commitment to dressing modestly and for religious reasons. Like any item of clothing, some women wear the hijab for specific occasions, such as for family or community events, or during particular times of day but take it off at other times, such as wearing the hijab to and from school or work but taking it off while studying or working.

A very small minority may claim to be forced to wear the hijab. However, many studies show that in fact Muslim women choose to wear the hijab as a way of showing self-control, power and agency.

2. You’re not sexually oppressed

Many hijab wearers have said that they wear the veil not as a symbol of control by a man, but rather to promote their own feminist ideals. For many Muslim women, wearing a hijab offers a way for them to take control of their bodies and to claim a stance that challenges the ways in which women are marginalised by men.

Research has shown that for young Muslim women, wearing a hijab says little about the likelihood of them having a boyfriend or participating in a sexual relationship. Indeed, some young women have said they would wear the hijab to give them more space to engage in such activities.
 

Pakistani activist, Nobel Prize laureate and hijab-wearer Malala Yousafzai. Niall Carson / PA Archive/Press Association Images

3. You’re not more likely to be linked to terrorism

Since 9/11, negative media coverage of Muslim communities, alongside government counter-terrorism policies in many Western countries, has further demonised Muslims. British research has shown that government policies have resulted in Muslims receiving unjustified attention in airport security, for example. They have also been shown to have created extra tensions and divisions between Muslim communities and the police.

For some hijab wearers, the hatred towards Muslim communities pushed them to stop wearing the veil after terrorist incidents, like the 7/7 London bombings, in order to minimise the chance of them experiencing racism. However, at the same time others started to wear the hijab to show their commitment to their religious faith. The hijab therefore cannot be a fixed symbol, but is far more flexible and changeable – and certainly cannot be deemed a marker of terrorism.

4. It’s not a ‘West versus rest’ division

There are many different styles, colours and shapes of hijab including different ways of wearing it. There is also a rising transnational Muslim fashion trade focusing particularly on younger women. In many respects, the hijab is similar to any other item of clothing with businesses marketing different styles and brands in order to maximise sales.
 

Patriotism, politics and hijab combine at a US democratic rally. EPA

This global fashion trade transcends national and regional boundaries. It is about maximising the market rather than reinforcing divisions between the West and the Muslim “rest”. Rather than asking why a women is wearing a hijab to reinforce difference, we should ask what high street store or online retailer she purchased her clothing from and what attracted her to this brand. For some wearers, this is far more pertinent and telling of their personality.

5. The hijab is not something to be feared

A recently published report of anti-Muslim abuse in England found that more than 60% of victims are women, and 75% of these women were visibly Muslim so were likely to be wearing some form of head-covering.

Women were also more likely than men to suffer anti-Muslim attacks on public transport or when shopping. The vast majority of the perpetrators in these incidents were white men, motivated by stereotypes. So rather than being feared, it’s more likely that women wearing hijab might fear others.

Muslim women wear the hijab for many different reasons all of which can change over time. This applies if the wearer is a community activist, an Olympic athlete like Elghobashy, a PhD student, a mother of young children or some or all of these. Any assumption that society attaches to the veil will never be right for each individual wearer, and it is for that very reason that we need to start changing the way we view it.

(Peter Hopkins is professor of Social Geography, Newcastle University).

This story was first published on The Conversation.

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The issue of hijab, its various implications and the politics sur-rounding it, has become a globally polarising issue. Whether in France or in Turkey, between Muslims and others and between liberal Muslims and traditional Muslims, the hijab has become a site for the cultural struggle between Islam and modernity and between contemporary and traditional interpretations of Islam.

The hijab is to some a symbol of Islam’s ascendance in the world while for others it is a reminder of the intransigent Muslim resistance to things that first emerge in the West – modernity, secularism, feminism, liberalism and globalism. For some Muslims in France it is a symbol of their resistance to French cultural occupation over Arabs and Muslims in France. For Islamists in Turkey it is an important means to preserving the Islamic heritage of Turkey from secular fundamentalism. For non-Muslim observers it is often an introduction to an Islam that has misogynistic proclivities.

No matter what the perspective one employs, the fact remains that the hijab is an instrument of segregation and containment.

The hijab in its philosophical sense marks the Muslim woman for separation and for "different" treatment in all aspects of life; the most egregious being the moral differentiation it engenders. Muslims who claim that the hijab is an instrument that compels society to treat women in a special, even exalted way (in terms of security and respect) do not work to ensure that the society has special affirmative laws in place that will guarantee equal outcomes for women, since the hijab ultimately undermines equal opportunity.

But the sartorial hijab and its attendant social practices of segregation, disenfranchisement and marginalisation of women is but a symptom of a more profound and civilisationally debilitating form of hijab that is practised by contemporary Muslim society. What is significant and must be confronted with vigour is the ‘epistemological hijab’ that "good" Muslims insist on imposing on "good" Muslim women. The epistemological hijab is the traditional barrier that exists between women and Islamic sources. Women have played a marginal role in the interpretation of Islam and articulation of the laws and rules that are forced upon them. The epistemological hijab – the barrier between women and Islamic sources – has fundamentally rendered the articulation and enforcement of Islamic laws undemocratic. This undemocratic tradition privileges men and exploits women. Its reconstitution is important and more so now than before.

In the post-colonial era, a strange paradox has captivated the global Muslim community. The nearly 100-year-old Islamic revivalist movement that is singularly responsible for the global significance of Islam has been driven by lay intellectuals. Consider the following key figures of Islamic revival, Jamaluddin Afghani, Hassan Al Banna, Syed Qutb, Ali Shariata, Muhammad Iqbal, Abul A’la Maududi, Khurshid Ahmed, Malik Bin Nabi, Rachid Ghannouchi, were all lay intellectuals, many educated in the West. Many of them were of course exposed to traditional Islamic sciences but none of them was an Islamic jurist.

But for some inexplicable reason, the ascendant Islam today is highly legalistic and Shariah-obsessed. Islam in the mind of many Muslims is nothing but Shariah – what it really means in operational terms is that the beauty, the virtues and the meaning of Islam is confined to the rather mundane domain of medieval Islamic legalist discourse – fiqh – which lacks the intellectual depth of falsafa (Islamic philosophy), the aesthetics and the mystery of kalam (Islamic theology) and the spirituality and charisma of tasawwuf (Islamic mysticism).

We live today in an era of Islamic banking – Shariah-compliant transactions – and halal hamburgers; we ponder over the legality of eating marshmallows and deliberate over the propriety of women shaking hands with men. Mind you, all serious legal matters such as, for example, state-military relations, international transactions, have very little input from Islam or Muslim jurists since the Muslim world merely follows the conventions of western/international laws. Islamic legalism is itself confined primarily to issues of personal matters only.

This peculiar legalism, which has colonised Islam and the Muslim conscience, is a product of the vulnerabilities of the Muslim man who has tried to cope with his own insecurities in a world dominated by other men. Muslim men today are not sovereign beings. Other men dominate their world. The only area where they exercise absolute sovereignty is over the tiny domain called Islamic law. Here they realise their manhood. They glorify themselves, grant themselves exotic privileges and assure themselves of their power by exercising it on their women. This exercise of power is realised by complete exclusion of women from participating in the process of deriving and interpreting Islamic rulings from the sources.

There is perhaps no other legal tradition extant today where one has no say in the articulation of laws that govern one’s entire life. Muslim women have very little if no role in the process of developing Islamic fiqh. Even historically, men and men alone have developed all the madhahib – schools of jurisprudence, and legal principles, even those that deal with the most private aspects of female existence. Thus Islamic legalism has descended as a shroud on the Muslim woman, covering her very essence from the world, disconnecting her from her own reality, depriving her of the right to understand and interpret her own being and disabling her from being able to navigate her own life. Islamic legalism fundamentally veils the Muslim woman’s consciousness. Frankly, it dehumanises women.

Muslims scholars and philosophers of every tradition maintain that the essence of humanity is either our moral compass or our reason or both. By preventing Muslim women from exercising their reason to derive the moral laws by which they live, Islamic legalism denies them the most human of all exercises, using our reason to become capable of making moral judgements. In a way, Islamic legalism steals women’s god given humanity from them.

Islamists are fond of repeating that in Islam god is sovereign since he and he alone has the right to make laws. Unfortunately, this is a very superficial understanding of Islam and fails to recognise the distinction between revealed principles (wahy) and human product (fiqh). They obfuscate the distinctions between the two and call it law (Shariah). By insisting that the opinions and arguments of long dead medieval jurists are actually divine law, Islamists make jurists the god of Muslim women and introduce a new and oppressive partition/veil between the women and their real god. In some cultures this divine status of men over women is recognised since men are sometimes referred to as the "majazi khuda" (manifest god) of women.

If Muslim women wish to regain their humanity and gain an equal moral status with men, which is not denied to them in principle but only in practice (within Islamic society), they must tear the partition that separates them from their right to understand and interpret Islamic sources and act upon their own understanding.

They must tear asunder this epistemological hijab imposed by Islamic legalism that stands between them and their god. Until then all discussions about the cultural and physical will remain superficial and contained within the context of the masculine logic that currently exercises such supreme sovereignty over Islamic principles and its derivative laws. 

www.ijtihad.org

Archived from Communalism Combat, November-December 2007 Year 14    No.126, Gender Jihad, Cover Story 4

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