Unveiling the Myth of the Muslim Woman

The Muslim woman is veiled, demure and suppressed. This myth can be traced back through the literature and art of Colonial times that helped perpetuate the image of the “otherness” of the Muslim woman. The myth lives on in the media today. However, it is a myth! Not reality. There is no archetypal Muslim woman. But it is important to demystify this myth and modify this perception to reflect the multiple realities that exist. Edward Said begins this demystification in his seminal work ‘Orientalism’ in 1979, and even though he focuses on the “oppositional” consciousness, it is important to remember that the East, and cultures or religions intrinsic to it, are not one-dimensional. No group can be identified in this manner, and with immigration and globalization, the elusiveness of boundaries between cultures has intensified.

We are, however, constantly being bombarded with images of what a Muslim woman is supposed to look like and how she has to be “saved’ from her oppression. Without doubt, there is a large majority of women in many Muslim countries who are suppressed under the guise of religion, but the plight of women is similar in many so-called non-Muslim countries. Women worldwide face discrimination in the workplace by being paid less than men; they face a glass ceiling in the corporate world; they are kept out of politics; they are abused and raped more often than men regardless of their race, religion or culture.

Hooks mentions the covert oppression of the black woman in the US: “Within white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the social and political context in which the custom of black folks straightening our hair emerges, it represents an imitation of the dominant white group’s appearance and often indicates internalized racism, self-hatred, and/or low self-esteem.” (“Straightening Our Hair”, 109). Why do these women feel the need to change their appearance? Is it because of their own insecurity or is it one way they gain acceptance in an otherwise racist society? Hooks analyses this tradition and even though she concedes that some black women choose to straighten their hair for personal reasons, for others the patriarchal racist society controls these women by making them change their appearance.

Mustafa discusses this dilemma as a Muslim woman growing up in Canada, and realizes that she has spent her whole youth trying to fit into an image created by society. She suffers from bulimia and spends thousands of dollars on make up, until she realizes that her body is her own business, and decides to wear the hijab even though “in the Western World, the hijab has come to symbolize either forced silence or radical, unconscionable militancy…It is simply a woman’s assertion that judgment of her physical person is to play no role whatsoever in social interaction”. (Mustafa,105) Her choice is her own, but she pays the price by the attitudes of those who cannot understand why someone who has the freedom not to wear the hijab would decide to wear it. They treat her as someone who does not understand her freedom to choose. This is one of the reasons that understanding the Muslim woman can no longer be oppositional. Islam is becoming a religion of the West as much as it is has been of the East. Approximately twenty five percent of the world population is Muslim, and it is spread world wide. The vast majority of the Muslim population has traditionally been in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, but with immigration and conversion, many citizens of the West are Muslims and accept the cultural traditions of the West along with the religious traditions of Islam. Also, with the influence of globalization and internationalization, Muslims living in Asia, Africa and even some regions of the Middle East have also adapted to western ideas, creating a similar amalgamation of cultures and ideas. Therefore, it is no longer possible to try and understand individuals through a narrow vision.

Amongst Muslims in general and Muslim women in particular there are multiple interpretations of the custom of veiling. Some feel it is required whenever a woman is in public and especially in the presence of males that she could potentially marry. However, others feel it is necessary only at the time of prayer, as in other religions. Some believe it is to honor themselves in the presence of men, while others believe it is to honor the men around them. For many women who are forced to wear the veil, it definitely is a form of suppression; however, more and more, educated and independent Muslim women are choosing to wear the hijab as a way of asserting their identity as Muslims.

And even though the hijab has become a symbol used to identify the Muslim woman, the tradition of covering the head is definitely not restricted to the Muslim community: Christians, Hindus, Jews and other cultures and religions have the tradition of covering the head or hair for religious reasons as well as other cultural reasons. In some African and Asian communities men will wear turbans or head coverings indicating social status as well as to create religious identities. Why then does this tradition in the Muslim religion stand out from the rest? The reason is probably as complicated as attitudes within the Muslim community toward veiling. Some interpret the verse in the Holy Quran referring to the veil as required for all women; whereas other interpretations differ. There are also a large majority of women who identify themselves as being Muslim, but do not feel it necessary to wear the veil unless during prayer. But for those women who choose to wear the hijab it can be an empowering way to create an identity.

In countries where women decided or were forced to either wear or remove the veil, the not always decision was made for religious reasons. For example in the late 1800s when Algerian women were forced not to veil by the French government, it was seen as a way to westernize and control, and as a reaction to this the women chose to veil in the early 1900s. Similarly pre-1994 there were no laws enforcing veiling in Afghanistan. However, after the soviet war ended; Afghanistan was left in a vacuum, which was quickly filled by the Taliban government, which enforced the law of wearing a burqa. Many urban women in Afghanistan had not veiled before this rule was enforced; in Pakistan, there was a similar movement in the 80s. Turkey has had its political and religious tensions because of the veil and most recently in France even though Muslim women are allowed to veil in public, it is illegal for Muslim girls to wear the hijab to school.

Even though veiling is one of the most obvious characteristics associated with Muslim women, it is definitely not the only symbol with which Muslim women identify. The harem is another symbol that has been used to create a simplistic view of he Muslim woman’s world. This is yet another way of removing the “other” into an unfamiliar dimension, objectifying and stereotyping a group that otherwise is as multifaceted and multidimensional, as any other group. As Said (1979) mentions, the need to study the orient and analyze the East by the academics identifying themselves as orientalists, fabricated an existence defined through the western eyes by the western standards of the time. This perception was further given legitimacy through the works of artists like Jean-Leon Gerome, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Eugene Delacroix, and Frederick Arthur Bridgman. And even though these artists at times seemed to give a photographic representation of the Muslim women they portrayed, it was a warped and eroticized version of reality. These images portrayed erotic, sensual women surrounded by slaves in their harem. Their only objective to please the master of the harem .I use the word “harem” in the way it is interpreted in the west, as opposed to the reality of it in the East. “Apparently the Westerner’s harem was an orgiastic feast where men benefited from a true miracle: receiving sexual pleasure without resistance or trouble from the women they had reduced to slaves.” (Mernissi, 1997).

Mernissi, a Moroccan Muslim feminist, begins her autobiography with “I was born in a harem” and for her “harem” is a synonym for family as an institution. She relates it to the frontiers between the known and the unknown. And she believes the Western interpretation of this word comes from art as well as the media and Hollywood versions of the orient in movies like ‘Aladdin and His Lamp’, ‘Kismet’, ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’, and the many versions of ‘The Thief of Baghdad’.

This interpretation is further intensified through the ads and more recently through book covers. Who has not seen the books about Muslim women in the East, with veiled alluring Cleopatra-like eyes? Why is it that a book like ‘The Bookseller of Kabu’l can be published with one edition with the cover showing the faces of the female characters looking out of a window and in the next edition the title cover shows two women in burqas-completely covered? Does the burqa add a mystique that is unmatched by faces? Similarly, the title cover Reading ‘Lolita in Teheran’ in the English edition is a photograph of two young girls wearing the hijab, but in the Italian version, the face of the woman on the title page is completely covered. Does the act of covering the Muslim woman have such a great appeal to a western audience?

As mentioned earlier, it is neither helpful, nor is it correct to try and classify approximately 12% of the world population by using narrow categories. In reality there is no way to categorize a group that is spread over the entire world because of the diversity it represents. But there are a few historical and literary figures that can help shatter the myth of Muslim women of being suppressed and dependent.

The tradition of strong independent women was initiated with the Hazrat Khadijah (Peace be upon her), the first wife of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), who was the first woman to convert to Islam. At the time she was approximately fifty five, having been married to Mohammad for about 15 years. At the time of her marriage, she had been a successful business woman and Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) had been working for her. She had proposed marriage-after having been married twice before. Mohammad was only twenty five at the time. And even though he married other wives for political and other reasons, he didn’t take a wife during her lifetime. Later his youngest wife Hazrat Ayesha (PBUH)was also a leader in her own right, and is the basis of many traditions in Islamic scholarship. And after her husband’s death she led an army to contest the throne of the Islamic state that was evolving.

Mernissi, in ‘Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems’, further examines the misconception of the Muslim woman from the Western perspective as opposed to her portrayal in the literature of the East. While touring in Europe for her autobiography, ‘Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood’, as mentioned earlier Mernissi was nonplussed about the reaction of her male audience to the word harem.

Analyzing this response, she realizes that one way Muslim women have been misinterpreted is through the Western way of perceiving Scheherazade in ‘The Thousand and One Nights’. Through ballet, paintings and stories, this Muslim heroine is presented by the West as voluptuous and exuding sexual desire (Mernissi, 1997). But here was a woman who had to save not only herself, but the other women in the kingdom. According to the tradition, Shahrayar, a Persian king who ruled over “India and Indochina” had been cuckolded by his wife with a slave, and had been so offended and heartbroken that he had killed both. Then as vengeance against woman kind, he had vowed to marry one virgin every night and then behead her the next morning. In this horrifying situation, Scheherazade offers to save the kingdom from this terrible fate by marrying Shahrayar, and by telling him spellbinding stories every night that will leave him hungering for more the next morning, ultimately saving her own life and the kingdom from turmoil.

Scheherazade, according to Mernissi, has to master three skills: control over a vast intellectual knowledge, the ability to understand a criminal’s mind and the resolve to act in cold blood. She has to control her fears, to be able to control her fate using her intellect. If she had acted like a Hollywood vamp, she would have been beheaded the same night. Mernissi further argues that this presentation of a sensual woman is probably based on the idea that an intellectual woman might seem less feminine to a Western man, and she bases this claim on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.

Laborious learning, even if a woman should succeed in it, destroys the merits that are proper to her sex…and weaken the charms with which she exercises her great power over the other sex.

To Mernissi this is the way the men in the west dominate women: “in the occident men dominate women by unveiling what beauty ought to be,” whereas in the Orient, “men use space to dominate women.” … “Kant’s frontier does not concern the division of space into private (women) and public (men) realms, but into beauty (women) and intelligence (men).”

Any kind of oppression, whether overt or covert, is unjust whoever is being suppressed, but the assumption that all Muslim women are hidden behind veils is not the reality. Many choose to veil and many have decided not to. Women who are forced to veil are as oppressed as those who are forced to unveil-if that is what they choose to do. Regardless of those who impose their ideas and images on others, Muslim women should make their own decisions.

Bibliography

Mernissi, F. 1991. ‘The veil and the male elite: A feminist interpretation of women’s rights in Islam’. Translated by M. J. Lake. New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
--. 1995. ‘Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood’ . New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
--. 1997. ‘Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems’. Translated by M. J. Lake . USA: Washington Square Press
Said, Edward. 1979. ‘Orientalism’. New York: Vintage Books.
http://www.skidmore.edu/academics/arthistory/ah369/w esternrepresent.htm