NeMon'ess's Journal: Taj Din al-Hilali's message in plainer English

Metaphor hides mufti's real message

Caroline Overington
October 28, 2006

WHEN you cut the colour out of the mufti's speech - when you drop the references to cats, to uncovered meat, and even to Satan - his message doesn't become more palatable, it is horrific.

Cut back to basics, what is the mufti saying - that men cannot be trusted in the company of women? That they are so driven by sordid, sexual urges, they will pounce upon any female who, for instance, bends down to pick something up off the floor?

Does he mean that women are vixens who flirt and flaunt themselves until men are forced to commit violent acts upon them? Or that men are like horny dogs, waiting for a bitch on heat to wander into their orbit?

While some women cover up as part of their religious experience, there is no doubt that some Muslim men order their wives to wear the hijab or burqa as a form of control.

Tanveer Ahmed is a Sydney-based psychiatrist who is writing a book about Islam in Australia. He says the great shame is that "many, many" Muslim men, young and old, regard women - particularly Western women - as "less than ideal".

"The mufti meant exactly what he said, and those views are widely held," Dr Ahmed said.

"I did my own little poll this morning, of a security guard and others who are Muslim, and all said they agreed with the mufti, that he is absolutely right.

"It comes from households, where young Muslims get the message that white girls are different, and that women in general are a corrupting influence."

Dr Ahmed said it was "an opinion I've heard throughout my life, that women can tempt you into trouble. Even otherwise sophisticated people will say this, and slur white women.

"My own theory is, when they are growing up, they are told they are not allowed to participate in much of Western life, they cannot drink, they cannot go to parties.

"And when they are very young, I think they would love to participate - but then they get older, and suddenly, they find they have developed a contempt for the society in which they live."
Dr Ahmed rejects the argument that women wear the veil because "it's their choice". "You see children aged five wearing it. Are we seriously arguing there is an element of choice, when you sexualise a child in that way?"

The writer Salman Rushdie cut to the quick of the argument last week when he said: "Veils suck. They do. I think the veil is a way of taking power away from women." Mr Rushdie, a Muslim, said none of his three sisters "would've accepted the wearing of the veil. The battle against theveil has been a long and continuing battle against the limitation of women."

It is a view that would be strongly resented by Muslim women such as Zuleyha Seyit, a devout mother of a three-year-old boy, who started wearing the veil about four years ago.

She does not feel oppressed by the garment.

"When I was growing up, there was no pressure from my family to wear it. I simply had a very strong, quite amazing experience one day, when I was reading the Koran, and I thought, I must put it on," she said.

There was nothing suitable in the house, so she attached a cloth with pins "and it was very uncomfortable at first, and I suppose people were surprised when I went out".

She rejects as nonsense the idea that she must wear the veil, or tempt men into violent acts.

"Everyone is responsible for their own actions," she said. "If a man commits a crime against a woman, that is his responsibility, not hers. I wear the veil because I choose to wear it, as an important part of my identity as a Muslim woman."

For Karen Green, the debate over the status of women is both personal and philosophical. She has a sister who converted to Islam.

Dr Green, whose Phd in philosophy is from Oxford, said she initially accepted her sister's view, when she argued that women were liberated by the veil.

But over time, Dr Green concluded that women were so sexualised within Islamic society "that it is assumed that any private encounter between a woman and a man will be sexual. Women are thus assumed to have two functions, and these are sex and child-bearing.

"By submitting to headscarf, chador or burka, women allow men to divide and conquer. Women are either 'good' - which is to say obedient - or they are 'bad'."

Dr Green said she simply could not understand the underlying assumption "that women who are not covered (wearing a veil) are somehow not deserving of respect."

A moderate's response.
Editorial: Sheik's values out of step with modernity