Like a Flock of Goats

Protests have recently risen up over women’s hair. It seems so innocuous, what a woman wears or doesn’t wear on her head. And yet people have died over it and are still dying over it.

In Iran, a young woman was arrested and beaten for not “properly” wearing her hajib. Her death at the hands of the morality police sparks protests across the country, not only against the hajib mandates but against the entire religious regime. Women are defying the law, taking off the hajib in public, cutting their hair.

In India people are protesting for the right to wear the hajib on school campuses, where uniform dress codes made no exception for religious coverings. When Muslim women began protesting by wearing their hajibs to class, some Hindi women counterprotested by wearing saffron scarfs, saying they should be allowed to wear religious garb if the Muslim students were allowed to wear hajib. The protests spread to other universities, and some Hindi students joined the Muslim students in protesting for their rights to wear hajibs.

The women in Iran and India are fighting for the same thing: the right to choose how to express their faith. They want to be free to practice their faith as they believe it. Some Muslims believe in veiling and others don’t.

I can’t speak on the Islamic arguments. As someone who often veils at Mass, I can say if I was told I had to veil, I probably wouldn’t appreciate veiling as much, might even resent. Until the 1980s, women were supposed to cover their hair at Mass, and other denominations have histories of prayer coverings. Sometimes the rules are strict and heavily regulated. Sometimes it's just the social custom. Some Muslim women only cover their hair at the mosque. As do some Christians and other faiths. And of course, socially in the West, women historically covered their heads in some form when out and about. It's rather recent that covering one's hair wasn't a part of the social custom. But that only makes the religious debate about if and why and who says more intense. 

Since veiling in church is no longer a rule, the meaning has changed: it is an individual choice, an express of piety, a sacramental to aid in the practice of faith. For someone without the baggage of having it forced upon me, it's always been a personal matter, one that isn't anyone else's business and not a stance on how conservatives my views (religious or political) might be. I am free from all that. But others, who have had it forced upon them, may feel the exact opposite and worship more freely without the weight of its history on their head. It is oppressive when imposed, empowering when chosen.

It's easy to see the sexism in the regulation of the practice. There is centuries’ worth of men debating if the veil must be opaque, if it must touch the collar, how much hair might show, etc. The risk of women going against the rules regarding their hair has varies from side glances to fines to imprisonment and death. While part of me does wish we still had the social mores of hat and gloves, again, being told you have to wear a head covering is simply sexist. It implies there is something obscene about a woman’s hair—often that she’s trying to entice men or she’s brazen and easy. The idea that hair covering is about modesty implies an exposed head is immodest. It also implies that men are too weak to operate in public if they see a woman’s hair, yet the onus is on women to hide their appearance, not on men to practice basic self-control.  

And regulating the other way—not allowing covering—is a form of secularism that punishes religious practice. (I do think the argument is different when it comes to dress that covers the face, like the burka, because security, identification, social cues that’s read through facial expression, etc, comes into play.) If a woman must choose between following her faith or going out in public, she will often choose her faith, thus being excluded from participation in the larger community. The very basis of religious freedom is that we should be able to practice our faith and be a member of society.

It can get difficult to wade into the details and try to parse what is religious and what is cultural; they are often so intertwined that there is no clear delineation. But the point of the recent protests is that whether women choose to veil or not veil, they are demanding that their clothing, their faith, their right to exist in public, be in their hands.

 

“How beautiful you are, my friend, how beautiful you are! Your eyes are doves behind your veil. Your hair is like a flock of goats streaming down Mount Gilead.” – Song of Songs 4:1