The Clash of Stupidities

Why are women’s bodies the rhetorical battlefield of choice for so many? Forget about drawing a line in the sand, now lines are drawn, pens crossed, across various parts of the female anatomy. Our mullahs use women’s legs as a platform, presenting their exposure in skirts etc as a sign of the west’s immorality. Conservative Indian commentators clip onto their sari wearing sister’s navels like infected belly button rings, castigating the popular shrinkage of blouses as a warning their country is reaping the bitter fruits of globalization (no not melons, I said bitter!). As for faces, we have had it on very good authority in recent months that Muslim women are oppressed, suppressed and depressed because the veils a few of us wear are soaked in spiritual chloroform.

But I guess it’s really all our own fault people keep talking about our bodies and not our brains. Busy as we’ve been with mundane tasks like keeping house, tending the needy, educating children and nurturing our men folk, we haven’t bothered to create anything really useful like, say, a WMD, elephant polo or the cigar. If more of us had tested instead of dusted, left our families to walk into the desert in search of self knowledge, ignored screaming children to focus on bats, balls, cogs, wheels, jet propulsion, cold fusion etc, you know what men would be saying about us in private? ”Did you see the temporal lobe on that one? Forget her, check out this ones hypothalamus!”

It’s not like Muslim women haven’t ever achieved greatness. There have been praiseworthy writers, artists, poets, filmmakers, scientists, mathematicians, even politicians, some of whom observed various forms of purdah. In her book Forgotten Queens of Islam (Polity Press, 1990) Fatima Mernissi cited a list of sixteen Muslim women rulers compiled by Turkish historian Badriya Ucok Un. The list, which Ucok Un based on the criteria of khutbas having been delivered in the name of the ruler and coins being printed in her image, stretched from Sultana Raddiya of the Mamluk dynasty to Benazir Bhutto. Of course, there were no Arab women rulers on the list.

One could argue that the foundations of the intellectual cement currently holding most Muslim women across the world in stasis was laid when the male rulers of their countries decided to be more Arab than the Arabs. But one won’t argue that, one shouldn’t, because one read a hadith in high school that said ‘a good Muslim is one from whose tongues and hands other Muslims are safe.” Can the Council of Islamic ideology please consider whether it counts when the tongue is in the cheek?

Of course, things are changing. The number of female Muslim high achievers outside of the home is growing, and it is only a matter of time before a man invents a mind bra (left brain, right brain, watch them jiggle). Until then though, we shall have to smile, nod and go quietly about our business, watching as others debate the ownership, presentation and use of our bodies, hoping only that they’ll remember to wipe their feet on the mat so we won’t have to do the carpets again later. At least, that’s what people think we’re thinking. I could tell you what we’re actually thinking, but little children wrap their naans in this paper.

I am only writing about this because of a piece by Ayaan Hirsi Ali in Newsweek’s November issue. In a counter point to a rather well balanced take on the veil by Carla Power and Rebecca Hall (“if the history of the veil has taught us anything, it’s that liberation comes in many different forms”), the former member of the Dutch parliament divides women who wear the veil into two categories, those who are coerced and those who choose it voluntarily. Hirsi Ali deservedly castigates the forces of coercion. But her concessions to the ‘literate, verbally forthright and independent’ nature of voluntary shuttlecocks (it’s that high school Islamiat again, sorry) are rapidly diluted by her reading of their actual intent. i.e. “to impose…to provoke, to intimidate.”

Hirsi Ali’s rabid opposition to what she perceives to be dark forces is understandable; the film for which Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was tragically murdered was based on her work. I am more concerned with the others who share her opinion without her experience. One, does a healthy adult of any denomination, ethnicity or proclivity really need to be scared of a chick in a cumbersome chaddar? Two, how enlightened is it to fear what you don’t understand? Consider body piercing. Or football hooliganism. Are people with bolts in their tongues, lips or sensitive body parts profiled at international airports? Are lads in love with the ‘footie’ interviewed before they go out and kick someone to death or after? If ritual maiming and testosterone tantrums can be seen as viable, and hopefully temporary, forms of self expression, why can’t observing purdah be too?

If you ask me, it’s all technology’s fault (Yes I know earlier I said it was our own fault, then I said it was the Arabs fault, but I can keep changing my mind because as a Muslim woman I apparently don’t have one); it confuses us with mirrors and echoes through constant, ceaseless broadcasts. Instead of a dialogue with the self we constantly play to an audience, words are used as hooks so we come back for more. Take the extended sun sign portrait on my favourite astrology site for instance. It says “You rely heavily on feelings and sensations. You are easily led into affairs that are detrimental to your own interests. Your softness is most obvious in family and social matters but you sometimes wear the mask of a shrewd and very practical entrepreneur. In disillusionment with mankind, you may turn to the occult and mystic for what you fail to find in more ordinary spheres.” If it had said “you are a silly, conflicted person with your head in the clouds”, do you think I would have bookmarked it?

Similarly, all the recent brouhaha over whether to draw purdah over the veil could have been avoided if people could just talk straight. Instead of calling the veil a symbol of ‘separation’, Straw and Blair should have called it a symbol of ‘stupid.’ Then the extended death throes of this artificially created clash of civilizations could have been rapidly curtailed; if there is one thing we all know, it is that no one has a monopoly on stupid. Though according to my email inbox there is a clear front runner…

Donald Rumsfeld is briefing President Bush, "Yesterday, three Brazilian soldiers were killed."

"OH NO!" cries the President, "...how many is a brazillion?"