Why
The Veil?
The West and Islam view a women's sexuality and place in society
differently. In a strict Christian sense the sexual drive is
considered as evil. Women earn the ultimate grace of God by
remaining celebrate with lifelong virginity as the most desirable state
allowing total devotion to God. While few women choose this
course it is still the underlaying foundation of sexual
attitudes. The Virgin Mary is an example of the revered place for
virgins within Christianity. Social progress and feminism has
further relaxed the view of women's sexuality in the West but
Christianity in general introduces a certain amount of guilt into a
women's sexuality.
Islam starts with a premise which recognizes women as powerful and
sexual beings, so powerful that their sexuality must be masked to
prevent the creation of chaos and social disorder within the community
of believers. The Arabic word "fitna" refers both to social chaos
and a beautiful woman, the epitome of the uncontrollable, a living
representative of the dangers of sexuality and its rampant disruptive
potential.
Women are considered the most destructive element in an Islamic
society. The social structure of Islamic society is an attempt to
subjugate this power and to negate its effect on men and thus allow men
to devote themselves totally to God. If a man was to submit to
the alluring beauty of a woman his sexual urges would prevent his
fulfilling of his social and religious duties and ruin the social
structure underlaying Islamic society.
In His creation of mankind the Islamic faith believes God distinguished
man from other animals by giving us sufficient will and reason to allow
control of behaviour that in other species is purely instinctual.
Although sexual relations ultimately can result in reproduction and
survival of the human race, an instinctual concept, our capacity for
self-control allows us to regulate this behaviour. Even after
giving man some credit for reason and self-control Islam views women as
dangerous distractions that must be used for specific purposes of
providing the community with offspring and quenching the tensions of
the sexual instinct.
Women should in no way be an object of emotional investment or the
focus of attention which ideally should be devoted to Allah alone in
the form of knowledge-seeking, meditation and prayer. Allah does
not simply forbid or allow behaviour whimsically. Islam believes
God has made these decisions with our best interests at heart, guiding
man away from potentially destructive behaviour and towards behaviour
that allows man to achieve his greatest potential as a human
being. A women's rampant desires and irresistible
attractiveness gives them a power over men that could rival God's
and therefore must be controlled at all costs.
The entire Muslim social structure could be viewed as designed to
control and contain female sexuality and eliminate the sexual power of
women over men. The rules of society go to great lengths to
separate the sexes and reduce contact between them. Particularly
between women and non-family males. Many other institutions serve
to reduce female power over men, such as her need for a man's
permission to travel, work, marry, or divorce. Revealingly a
traditional Muslim wedding took place between two men - the groom and
the bride's guardian.
The Qur'an provides for full equality of men and women when it comes to
the status of all human beings as individually sovereign and
accountable before God for their beliefs and actions. However,
Islamic scripture and jurist interpretation gives men authority over
women as Allah has made man superior to women. On certain matters
related to sex, Qur'anic verses apply clearly different rules of
propriety and conduct to men and women. While both men and women
are commanded to cast down their gazes, only women's dress is
specifically regulated. Those Muslims who push for strict
observance by women of customs and rules designed to ensure social
chastity frequently reject any attempt to impose comparable
restrictions on men.
In Islamic society man's sexual instinct is regarded as natural, God
given and is praised and encouraged. Males are given control of
female sexuality and in some societies given opportunities for polygamy
and concubinage. Such practices create a masculine culture and
men develop modes of false strength based on acceptance of the
superiority of their gender. Females on the other hand become
isolated, insecure, and forced to accept their inferior position as
part of the natural order. Women are required to be passive, shy,
virtuous and agreeable to their husband's every vim and vigour.
In Islam women earn God's grace by obeying their husbands, the message
is clear, Men dominate, women obey.
The sexual oppression of women in the Middle East and elsewhere in the
Muslim world is not entirely the result of an oppressive vision of
sexuality based in Islam, but a combination of historical,
socio-political, and economic factors. In colonizing the Middle
East the Western powers adopted the defence of women as part of their
social reforms. At the time women in the West didn't have equal
rights but they weren't forced to wear veils and they were allowed to
walk freely in public. Islamic societies were threatened by the
social reforms introduced by the colonizing powers. Islamic
traditionalists and Middle East nationalists responded by defending
practices which even they found anachronistic as a defence to perceived
and real threats to their culture.
In Islamic societies women's rights and equality are now associated
with westernization and modernization. In defending the
traditional place of women Islamic societies believe they are defending
the faith against the perceived godless and corrupt West. The
place of women in Islamic societies is considered in the same
light as modernization and the fundamentalists oppose any change based
on Western thought.
The religious and nationalist fundamentalists make utmost use of this
perceived threat against Muslim identity by constructing a "Muslim" or
"national" female identity as a last sphere of control against the
"enemy" the West. The power of the religious right is rising and
they have placed the construction of an "Islamic" female sexual
identity and the control of their sexuality at the forefront of its
expression of power. Women are being pressured to become bearers
of a structured group identity and the control of their sexuality is at
the heart of many fundamentalist agendas. The dress code for
women is high on the agendas of the Islamic religious right as a highly
visible demonstration of Islamic political power. Aware of the
power of the imagery of veiling, particularly in the West, the Islamic
religious right has sought to proscribe or violently enforce extreme
veiling as an universal uniform for Muslim women throughout the world.
The Islamic faith is claimed to be perfect by many of its more
extremist followers. Being perfect implies there is no need for
change and criticism is not permitted and offenders are threatened with
one form of punishment or another. The claim of perfection
prevents any change of a women's place in Islamic society and firmly
entrenches the control of women by men.
Those Muslims who push for strict observance by women of customs and
rules designed to ensure social chastity frequently reject any attempt
to impose comparable restrictions on men. Even when parallel
restrictions are accepted in theory there is no push for accountability
for male transgressions. When was the last time a man was
threatened with stoning for adultery? The application of
different rules and consequences to the same cases is the classic
definition of a double standard. Right-wing and fundamentalist
members of the Islamic faith are unwilling to acknowledge either the
existence of double standards or its roots in key source texts of
Islam. The result is that Muslim men have free reign in Islamic
countries with little restraining influence from women. Countries
where women have greater equality to men are also the countries that
are least aggressive in their behaviour as global citizens.
The Islamic faith may have started off with good ideals but has taken a
harsh course in regards to women's rights. The failure to
recognize women as being equal to men has the faith locked in a
primitive state similar to western religions before the Reformation and
the Age of Enlightenment. With the Islamic right-wing and
fundamentalists hijacking the control of women's sexuality and dress
for political and social control purposes it will be a long struggle
for Muslim women to gain their proper status within Islamic societies.
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Revised January 24, 2005