Hijabi Detected!

hijab and outift concepts!!

martha is a pastel princess hijabi she loves layering flowy skirts and draping her hijab and adding star clips and all sorts of cutesie accessories and ofc her bag and shoes matchy match :D

i may or may not have accidentally purple'd all over martha shhhh

veronica i imagine is much more academic, smart casual even with oversized shirts and blazers and loose hijabs she favours darker colours (think navy and grey, maybe mulberry) ALSO she loves ties!!!!!! i bet she has a bigger collection than her dad jfdkdjks XD

This is annoying as hell for multiple reasons, the main ones being it 10 ends any and all discussion about how sexism in the Islamic community can be solved, and 2) ignores the politics and social situations that cause sexism to become widespread. I’ll attempt to explain this, using myself (an Algerian) as an example.

My parents have hurt me in many ways, yet they still clearly love me. This is a very common Arab child experience. Overly strict parents, normalized physical discipline methods, the expectation that girls must do housework while boys shouldn't, and a tendency to blame women for their struggles are all common experiences. And, while individual parents do have to take the blame for their parenting skills, other factors must also be considered.

I am not justifying these behaviours. I aim to simply explain, from a sociological and political perspective, how these mindsets came to form and why they persist today.

Algeria has been in a state of peace since 2002, when the civil wars ended. Before then, it was a time of turbulence, fear, mass arrests, and broken communities/families. Before the civil wars there was the independence war, a similarly harrowing time where France slaughtered entire villages, traumatized towns, tortured innocents, and kidnapped and raped young women.

These experiences shaped Algerian society. On the topic of women specifically, it was simply safer to keep them at home, knowing the evil of French soldiers. No husband would ever let his wife outside with the knowledge that French soldiers had specific games they played with one another involving shooting pregnant or unaccompanied women. No father would ever let his daughter outside knowing a girl from a nearby village was raped so many times she developed extreme mental illness and attempted to escape anytime anyone approached her (both events found in the book Inside the Battle of Algiers, a biography of female freedom fighter Zohra Drif). Over the 50 years of war, this became commonplace. Of the extremely small number of Algerians that both 1) were able to access schooling, and 2) were trusting enough to send their children there, an extremely small number of these Algerians were girls because of this fear. Earlier marriage was seen in the same vein, in such a dangerous environment, a girl needed a protector. This dynamic became cemented in culture. Men went out into the dangerous world to provide, women stayed home and did the cooking, cleaning, and childrearing. It was not seen as overly strict, but merely as protection.

In terms of covering up/hijab, it was mostly an act of resistance at this point in time. While many women at the time dressed in more ‘western’ outfits (once again, as a way to stay safe from French soldiers), others wore hijab as an act of resistance. In the words of Frantz Fanon in his book A Dying Colonialism, “the woman who sees without being seen frustrates the colonizer”. This took the Islamic veil and elevated it from the religious symbol it was to a symbol of cultural/indigenous dress and defiance as well. 

However, wearing hijab was not entirely commonplace just yet. Being visibly Muslim was still dangerous. Moving on from the independence war to the civil ones (which my parents were alive during and remember perfectly), the ‘Islamic’ portion of this is extremely important, as well as general strictness observed in many Algerian parents. During this timeframe, being Muslim was dangerous. Being visibly and publicly Muslim often caused people to be suddenly arrested on ‘suspected terrorism charges’ since the current government feared them. Teenagers and young adults faced extreme scrutiny and rarely went outside. My dad was once nearly arrested for the crime of walking around with a duffel bag. My mom’s close friend once left the house only to find the decapitated body of her brother outside her doorway. They were both teenagers at the time. These experiences shape people. It is unsurprising that many Algerian teenagers (and especially teenage girls) are not allowed outside much when this is the environment that shaped their parents. It's a classic case of generational trauma. Blaming the entire race/religion for women being stuck at home is not helpful when there is clear work to be done here to move on.

As for the Islamic portion, Islam didn’t properly ‘return’ to Algeria until the post-war years. And this is where, most likely, extremism came into play. Many people fell back into Islam hard after being deprived of it for so long. In addition, these same people were uneducated on how Islam actually worked (because of that deprivation) and believed anything ‘Islamic’ that they saw. This created the perfect environment to uphold sexist and patriarchal ideals. Put simply, sexism was rooted in a majority of the world’s cultures at some point. While other parts of the world were focused on breaking those ideals down, Algeria was at war. After said war, the leaders that had power chose to uphold those ideals (instead of putting work into breaking them down) through the religion they preached. Their ideas were also rooted in the same traumas the rest of the country faced, so ideas such as ‘women need to stay home to be safe’ became ‘women need to stay home because God commanded it’. (I am, once again, not defending those who acted like this, but simply explaining how this likely came to be). In a similar vein, victim-blaming mindsets towards women are common for the same reason. After years of struggle, these men simply don’t want to admit they’re wrong, or that they need to put further effort into changing. They don’t want to admit that safety for them doesn’t equate to safety for everyone. This isn’t an inherent facet of Islam or of Arab men, but a reaction to the way they have lived. It also isn’t an excuse. It's simply the most accurate way of viewing current worldviews and dynamics in Algerian families.

By ignoring all of these facts, the status quo remains. Put simply, saying 'all Muslim Men are Abusive' isn't actually going to make any Muslim men OR Muslim women leave Islam, since, surprise surprise! They actually believe in their religion. Instead, pointing out the circumstances that created and upheld these biases can help us break down the status quo. Listening to female/feminist Islamic scholars can help break down the status quo. Listening to queer Muslims can help break down the status quo. Blaming the entire religion will not.

After saying all this, I also wanted to point out that assuming Muslim men are inherently abusive also makes it difficult to discuss abuse due to the assumption that everyone who is Muslim goes through it, which obviously isn’t true. I know many Algerian girls who have not experienced any abuse, both living within and outside of Algeria. I know of many girls who don't wear hijab, go outside often, and experience the same freedoms as everyone else. Making abuse an innate trait of every man makes it extremely difficult to discuss/vent/heal from abuse due to the assumption that it's normal for someone ‘like you’.