Morning Star

One veil is not enough

The arrival of ISIS is a nightmare for women, obviously:

Women living under Islamic State’s control in Iraq and Syria are facing increasingly harsh restrictions on movement and dress, which are rigorously enforced by religious police and are leading to resentment and despair among moderate Muslims.

Residents of Mosul, Raqqa and Deir el-Zour have told the Guardian in interviews conducted by phone and Skype that women are forced to be accompanied by a male guardian, known as a mahram, at all times, and are compelled to wear double-layered veils, loose abayas and gloves.

Their testimonies follow the publication this month of an Isis “manifesto” to clarify the “realities of life and the hallowed existence of women in the Islamic State”. It said that girls could be married from the age of nine, and that women should only leave the house in exceptional circumstances and should remain “hidden and veiled”.

All of these veils are worn, of course, in stifling heat no matter what. The hierarchy is essential, so that while the women may be freely attacked and beaten, it is their husbands (or fathers, or brothers) who pay the price, and thus add their weight of authority over the women, who have no recourse. Ever.

Women in labour in maternity hospitals in Mosul are forced to comply with dress codes. “When I was in labour, I went to the hospital wearing a veil though it was too hot. Isis Hisbah were at the front door of the hospital. I saw some women in labour who seemed to be in a panic and did not have time to wear a veil. I was shocked to see that they were denied access to the hospital unless they put veils on their faces,” said Salah.

Hospitals in Raqqa are almost empty of female doctors, according to residents. The few female nurses are forbidden from lifting their veils or wearing anything but Islamic dress. All woman visiting doctors must be accompanied by a mahram, who has to wait outside the clinic. If Hisbah discovers a man inside a clinic, he will be arrested. A woman is permitted to be checked by a male doctor but is not allowed to lift her veil during examination.

There is no escape.

Women over the age of 45 are exempted from the order to wear the veil, but often find themselves in difficulty. On a routine trip to Mosul University where she teaches, Saleh shared a taxi with an older woman who was not wearing a veil. “The taxi driver turned to the woman and said: ‘Why are not you wearing a veil?’ She told him that Isis said the veil was imposed on women who are less than 45. The driver answered: ‘I’m afraid if I have you in my car, Isis Hisbah will stop me at a checkpoint and fine me.’”

Buses are also stopped for passengers to be checked. If a woman is found without required dress or mahram, all passengers are forced to disembark and the bus is refused permission to proceed. “If Hisbah spot a woman without a mahram in a bus, the whole bus is evacuated and sent back because the driver accepted her,” said Maher.

Not even for safety, which should trump concerns about chastity, for isn't that the point?

Women over the age of 45 are exempted from the order to wear the veil, but often find themselves in difficulty. On a routine trip to Mosul University where she teaches, Saleh shared a taxi with an older woman who was not wearing a veil. “The taxi driver turned to the woman and said: ‘Why are not you wearing a veil?’ She told him that Isis said the veil was imposed on women who are less than 45. The driver answered: ‘I’m afraid if I have you in my car, Isis Hisbah will stop me at a checkpoint and fine me.’”

Buses are also stopped for passengers to be checked. If a woman is found without required dress or mahram, all passengers are forced to disembark and the bus is refused permission to proceed. “If Hisbah spot a woman without a mahram in a bus, the whole bus is evacuated and sent back because the driver accepted her,” said Maher.

While this is horrific to those who have drifted away from strict orthodoxy, it has been the way for women in Saudi Arabia without ISIS, and the experience of women who have had to submit to the ways of Muhammed for over a thousand years. Poor dears!

Burkas in Britain

The Daily Mail explains that young Muslimas must be entirely covered if attending Islamic schools:

Muslim schools all over Britain are forcing female pupils as young as 11 to wear burkas, it emerged today. Institutions say that they are 'strict' on uniforms for their children because full-face veils are the 'desired dress code of a Muslim female'.

The Madani Girls School in Tower Hamlets, East London, requires all its pupils wear a black burka and a long black coat outside. On its website, its describes its uniform policy as 'strict' and as supporting the 'desired dress code of a Muslim female.' It continues: 'The present uniform conforms to the Islamic Code of dressing and must be adhered to at all times both within the school and dismissal at the end of the day.'

The school does not allow any of its 300 pupils to wear any form of makeup or jewellery.

The Ayesha Siddiqa Girls School in Southall, West London, also insists pupils wear a navy blue burka or a jilbab, which does not cover the face. On its website, the school says its is 'not willing to compromise on any issues regarding uniform'.

Many other Muslim schools - including around a dozen state-funded schools - require female pupils to cover their hair. 

Meanwhile the topic of wearing veils in school has dominated headlines in recent weeks after Birmingham Metropolitan College was made to retract a policy which forced pupils to remove veils while on the premises so they can be identified. 

Home Office Minister Jeremy Browne has called for a national debate on whether the state should step in to prevent young women having the veil imposed upon them.

But Home Secretary Theresa May has said it is for women to 'make a choice' about what clothes they wear, including veils, although there will be some circumstances when it will be necessary to ask for them to be removed.

These schools are still the choice of the parents involved, although state-funding mandates that the schools admit quotas of non-Muslim students as well (who must also abide by the uniform rule, which makes sense). Still, it is the wisdom of such a draconian approach to modesty that should be discussed by the wider community -- because there are the regions around the world where shari'a has been established that demand that every woman be covered, for example Indonesia:

Much has been achieved since 1998 through democratic reform, but the outcomes have not all been positive. The decentralisation of political power under regional autonomy has allowed local and provincial governments to bring in regulations that force women to veil. In Aceh, for example, female dress has been among the most strictly enforced regulations since the introduction of syariah (Islamic law) in 2001. Syariah police, army officers, local Islamic and student groups have all played a part in ensuring that Acehnese women abide by the new dress codes. Women have been arrested, charged — and even had their hair cut off — for being caught in public without the veil.

Governments in West Sumatra, West Java, Banten and South Sulawesi have followed in the steps of Aceh with the introduction of by-laws enforcing the jilbab, supported by local Islamic groups and political leaders. The city of Padang has introduced Islamic by-laws that require high school students to learn how to read the Qur’an; force city employees to contribute part of their salary as zakat (alms); and require female students in state schools and civil servants — regardless of their religious persuasion — to wear the jilbab.

The difficulty comes when society accepts the premise that women safeguard their chastity by covering themselves, because the corollary follows:  uncovered women are singularly responsible for immorality.

An Islamic mufti in Copenhagen, Shahid Mehdi, has sparked political outcry from the left-wing Unity List and right-wing Danish People’s Party, after stating in a televised interview that women who do not wear headscarves are “asking for rape.”

“Women are not entitled to respect when they walk around without a Hijab. They are to blame for it when they are attacked,” Imam Shahid Mehdi said.

“All the crimes that occur against women is because they are not covered. When they are not covered, you have no respect for them. ”

“She disobeys her master, there are two places in the Qur’an has ordered her to cover themselves (…) Women make a clean society dirty when they walk around without a Hijab. They are not entitled to respect and are not valuable as those who wear a Hijab. 

This means that the men are not responsible for their own self-control, but are obliged to treat women badly when they do not remove all temptation. This will be the thinking of all who attend such schools and who are raised to expect women to conform to this standard. In such settings, temptation is not skimpy clothing or revealing their femininity, but simply showing face or skin. 

The answer is not to hide women, nor to place undue burdens on them. Society should be built on mutual respect: women should consider modesty--in clothing, words, and actions--and men should honour and respect all women for their inherent dignity. Virtue, as always, lies in the middle--never the extremes. 

[the above image shows Christian schoolgirls in Indonesia, who must conform to Muslim standards]

Troubling signs

Violence and depravity have always been in our midst, and always will. One of the jobs of religion is to explain why evil exists and what to do to about it. Christianity has explained that man was created for union with God, was tempted, and used his free will to reject God. In that brief summation, we see the reason for our creation, the reason for our free will, and what happens when we abuse it.

Furthermore, Christ warned of the grave harms attached to harming children. This was because of the innocence of children, which demands they be safeguarded, but also because when children are scandalised, it creates a situation in which the long-term effects may snowball -- harming even more persons.

Unfortunately, when a religion institutionalises the wrong view of children, the harms ripple out and undermine the entire society. Such is the backdrop to these recent stories, which may be related. The first is from Saudi Arabia:

Public anger has gripped Saudi Arabia after a prominent preacher who raped and beat to death his 5-year-old daughter was sentenced to a few months in jail and a $50,000 fine – known as 'blood money' – to compensate the victim's relatives.

­According to Islamic law, the 'blood money' can be paid in lieu of the death penalty. The preacher's fine was reportedly half the usual amount because the victim was a girl.

Saudi preacher Fayhan Ghamdi, a frequent guest on Muslim TV networks, confessed to using cables and a cane to inflict the injuries, AFP reported, quoting activists from the group ‘Women to Drive.’

In December 2011, Lama was admitted to hospital with multiple injuries, including a crushed skull, broken ribs and left arm, and extensive bruising and burns, according to the activist group. Hospital worker Randa Kaleeb said that the girl's back was broken, and that she had been raped "everywhere."

The details are horrific,  but admittedly the actual assault could have taken place anywhere. What is unique to the story is the fact that the father is a Muslim preacher -- but then it's not unknown for the representatives of other religions to do awful things with children (witness the unfolding scandal within the Catholic Church).

There is the added recognition that under Islamic law her life was worth half of a boy's life, and that a convicted abuser can pay his way out of a punishment,  which leaves a seriously depraved individual free to harm others -- perhaps even to live with his wife and continue preaching.

Everything that unfolded in this case has the sanction of the most fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law, and thus we have to accept that there are elements in that religious view that vary widely from Western jurisprudence or Christian justice. To the contrary, we must remember that whatever took place concerning the priest scandal, every bit of it -- from the indecent behaviour to the cover-up -- was unChristian and morally unacceptable.

But what of child-rape in Islam? The next story adds another dimension that cannot be ignored:

A Saudi cleric has called for all female babies to be fully covered by wearing the face veil, commonly known as the burka, citing reports of little girls being sexually molested.

In a TV interview on the Islamic al-Majd TV, which seems to date back to mid-last year, Sheikh Abdullah Daoud, stressed that wearing the veil will protect baby girls. The Sheikh tried to back his assertion with claims of sexual molestation against babies in the kingdom, quoting unnamed medical and security sources.

It is gratifying to see that his suggestion is decried by fellow Muslims, but we have to remember that he is not isolated in his beliefs. It also places blame on the little girls being visible (!) rather than stressing that men are supposed to protect the innocent, not take advantage of them.

But then, a few years ago we were astonished when an Australian Muslim suggested that all unveiled women were asking for trouble:

A senior Muslim cleric in Australia has sparked a furore by comparing women who do not wear a headscarf to "uncovered meat", implying that they invited sexual assault.

Sheik Taj Aldin al-Hilali delivered his comments in a religious address on adultery to around 500 worshippers in Sydney last month, but they only came to the attention of the wider public when they were published in the Australian paper today.

Sheik Hilali was quoted as saying: "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside ... without cover, and the cats come to eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat's? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab [the headdress worn by some Muslim women], no problem would have occurred."

Sheik Hilali said in a statement he was shocked by reaction to his sermon.

Each of these men appear to be fringe in his views, but they are harkening to an undeniable set of beliefs held by countless others over the centuries who claim to be good Muslims:

• Baby girls can be married, and endure intimate relations as soon as they can bear the weight of a man;*
• Muhammed, the perfect Muslim, was married to a child and consummated the nuptials when she was nine;
• Child marriages are widespread throughout the Muslim world;
• The value of a female hinges on her sexual purity;
• The value of a female is half that of a man;
• Women who don't adopt Islamic covering are asking to be raped;
• Religious families perpetuate degrading views of women, as illustrated by this stunning legal decision after proving statutory rape:

Earlier the court heard how Rashid had ‘little experience of women’ due to his education at an Islamic school in the UK, which cannot be named for legal reasons.

After his arrest, he told a psychologist that he did not know having sex with a 13-year-old was against the law. The court heard he found it was illegal only when he was informed by a family member.

In other interviews with psychologists, Rashid claimed he had been taught in his school that ‘women are no more worthy than a lollipop that has been dropped on the ground’.

In the case alluded to above, the Muslim man lived in Britain, but was always sheltered and formed by Islamic institutions, which led to the judge's suspension of his punishment -- based on his ignorance. He was not culpable because of his Islamic beliefs, which see sexual relations with girls, um, differently.

Lollipops? Uncovered meat? All of these items may be based on misunderstandings, but there's an unfortunate consistency that is founded on the objectification and commodification of women and girls, based on shari'a law, which enshrines both their inequality with men and a foundationally misogynistic relationship between the sexes.

If indeed there is something structural in Islam that allows for this ongoing degradation of women, we cannot let it go unchallenged. Just as scandal committed in the name of other religions is highlighted and discussed, Muslims must answer for these events, and we must discover if they are based on Islamic law or contrary to it. Women deserve better.

* According to Sahih Bukhari:

The ulema [Islam’s interpreters] have agreed that it is permissible for fathers to marry off their small daughters, even if they are in the cradle.  But it is not permissible for their husbands to have sex with them unless they are capable of being placed beneath and bearing the weight of the men.  And their capability in this regard varies based on their nature and capacity.  Aisha was 6 when she married the prophet, but he had sex with her when she was 9 [i.e., when she was deemed capable].

It behooves those who call for setting a minimum age for marriage to fear Allah and not contradict his Sharia, or try to legislate things Allah did not permit.  For laws are Allah’s province; and legislation is his exclusive right, to be shared by none other.  And among these are the rules governing marriage.

Children of Abraham

What does that mean in today's Egypt?

"I was once asked: If I came to power, would I let Christian women remain unveiled? And I said: If they want to get raped on the streets, then they can," Ashry told Nahar TV last week.

Introducing a Saudi-style anti-vice police force to enforce Islamic law was "not a bad thing", he said, and added: "In order for Egypt to become fully Islamic, alcohol must be banned and all women must be covered."

Mursi has pledged not to impose Islamic codes of behaviour and to protect adherents of all religions equally. But he has also enacted a new constitution that has more Islamic references than its predecessor and that critics say fails to protect freedoms and the rights of Christians and other minorities.

Activists say although Mursi's camp is not keen on religious austerity, stronger condemnation is required at this sensitive time.

"As long as such actions are not seriously condemned by the officials in public speeches, it leaves room for radicals to freely act and impose things on people," said human rights activist Gamal Eid.

The image of Egypt's bearded leadership flanked by their fully veiled wives sends a powerful psychological message that may belie their official words, they say.

"Islamist officials need to take a clearer stand on their views about rights and freedoms and act strictly if those rights and freedoms were threatened."

He may be an obscure preacher, but he's found a big pulpit, and tempers are flaring. Obviously, with such contempt for women.

Again, denunciation by other Muslims would go a long way.

Acid = compulsion (to most people)

Muslims often refer to this compelling surah to show how tolerant Islam should be:

Let there be no compulsion in religion. Truth has been made clear from error. Whoever rejects false worship and believes in God has grasped the most trustworthy handhold that never breaks.  And God hears and knows all things” (Qur'an 2:256).

Unfortunately, the growing power held by Islamicists in Yemen indicates otherwise:

SANA’A: Local residents in Aden told Bikyamasr.com that al-Qaeda militants in the region were now targeting unveiled women: harassing them, and at least one instance, physically abusing them as they are trying to enforce the full face veil.

Although the Qur’an only specifies that a woman should cover her hair, neck and ears, Ansar al-Sharia chose to understand this somewhat differently, arguing that since the wives of the prophet were covered, so should all Muslim women.

Although Yemenis are considered traditional when it comes to Islam, and fiercely defensive of their faith and practice, the vast majority of southerners have said to be outraged by the recent spate of harassment.

“How can they dare attacks girls and women who do not wear the veil? It is a personal choice, which should not be imposed on anyone,” said Anessa Abdelaalem a school teacher in Aden.

According to reports from the local authorities several girls were sprayed with acid on their face by Ansar al-Sharia, for they refused to bow to their demands.

If only a few months ago, Yemenis did not feel threatened by al-Qaeda, assuming that the armed forces would end up crushing their advances, an insidious fear is slowly chocking Yemen as the dark cloud of extremism is gaining against the light.

What reveals the darkness of the "extremists" is that they would rather maim or kill than have someone choose differently. Rather than taking a young woman aside and explaining that her dignity calls for veiling, they show that it isn't dignity but subjegation that motivates them--for dignified believers would never be attacked in this way.

The Muslims of Yemen prioritise the "choice" they see in the Qur'an, and yet other interpretations point to the prophet and centuries of tradition. Without a singular religious authority on which to rely, it follows that acid and bullying will win the day--in the name of religion.