02/02/2023
Imagine if enslaved people celebrated slavery as an excellent and inspirational condition every year.
Imagine refugees celebrating the forces that drove them from their homes and caused them all the pain and agony every year.
Imagine working people celebrating their employers for not giving them enough to survive and treating them as disposable objects.
Imagine if women worldwide would celebrate Mysogny, second-class status, and humiliation.
Welcome to World Hijab Day.
Every World Day must have a purpose; what exactly is the purpose of World Hijab Day? Is it to empower Muslim women worldwide to be free of any theology that puts them down, is a day to challenge Muslim Imams to treat them equally to males, is it to promote Islam as a universal message for all humans and defend all Muslim women from intimidation, harassment, and attack by governments, institutions, and societies that want to force them to dress according to what men want?
This World Hijab Day has been shaped and coined by a twisted interpretation based on submissive control, contempt, and insult and driven by a theology that denigrates women, backed by the logic of an ideology of male domination and total power control over females. Let me first state this:
I don't care what anyone wears or does not wear. I only care about individuals using Islam to justify a practice like the Hijab as the vehicle for promoting a day that damages Islam and does a disservice to its universality. The beliefs about the Hijab requirement have taken control due to petrodollars and a Wahabi ideology that considers women an object created to serve and please men. This threat to Islam from within is trying to change a central part of our faith that values thinking to value culture and actively trying to prevent Islam from being what it is, a universal faith to humankind to an Islam based on Arab and middle eastern cultural practices. At its core beliefs, Islam emphasizes the heart and good deeds for both men and women, and nothing more important than the belief that no one can be defined by what they wear but by what they do. My problem with World Hijab Day is that it emphasizes appearance, not substance, culture, and not the universality of Islam. I would have hoped; instead, we could have a day to highlight the plight of poor Muslim women, abused, controlled, marginalized, held hostage, prevented from education, and all the theology stacked against them by male theologians from birth to death for centuries now. Many women are convinced that Islam mandates this dress code, but this is where the problem lies, it does not, and nothing in the Quran or authentic Hadith describes a dress code that requires covering women's hair, face, or head and not even for men either.
On the contrary, plenty of verses emphasize thinking and pondering about the universe and our role on this planet. I write this post because I know how dangerous promoting World Hijab Day is to young women worldwide; women who are recklessly and passionately promoting this day should understand that in many places, not wearing the Hijab, women are killed; women are jailed; women have acid thrown on their faces. World Hijab Day, as well-intentioned as it may be, promotes these un-Islamic, brutal, dangerous, cultural, and twisted male interpretations of a couple of verses from the Quran interpreted through a pure misogynist lens by MALE theologians with a track of hateful, harmful, and dangerous opinions on the status of women in every aspect of their lives. I write these words with sadness and pain on what has become of a great religion that offered math, science, philosophy, geography, medicine, and fantastic architecture to the world to benefit from in the past. Now we have nothing left to offer humanity, and we are left as marginalized people with nothing to offer except a miserable political message, such as World Hijab Day. I know how angry some of you will be reading this post, but you don't even come close to the pain you are inflicting on Muslim women worldwide by setting a false version of righteousness and a deadly narrative to millions. I pray that one-day Muslim women who are celebrating this day will celebrate our Mosques demolishing barrier walls between men and women, our societies becoming balanced and fair, and our institutions valuing all its members and not only one gender. Many brilliant women wear the Hijab and are amazingly dedicated to this faith and their communities and families, and I have nothing but respect for them. My post here is not to offend anyone but to encourage all not to blindly follow the opinions of dead misogynist men whose views on women are shocking and disgusting. Still, I would recommend for all who see the Merritt in World Hijab Day take the lead to create a version of Islam not in contradiction with the Quran, an Islam that has its roots in the universality of Islam, in humanity's common goals that unit it and not to divide it. Let all of us Muslim men and women understand once and for all that Islam is and will always be about serving humanity and leaving a legacy of good, and working towards a safer planet and a better world for everyone and every culture and religion. May Allah bless us to be part of our human community and serve everyone based on our shared values enshrined by the creator.
