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
