Maybe i'm getting brainworms from twitter and this isn't a real thing and there's nobody defending this, but there is no way in hell hijab is a way to show "modesty in women". I know that there is a lot of westerners who are assholes and prejudiced against muslims and a lot of leftists want to defend them, and you should defend them, but don't do it by defending backwards practices. Hijab objectifies women.
Most of the time, women who wear hijab are pressured into doing it by an external force. It could be their immediate family, their relatives or their neighborhood. This isn't a fucking trope, it's the reality of it. It is very rare to see someone who decides to wear hijab by themselves. Sometimes people who migrate to west choose to keep wearing it as a way to connect themselves back to their home, but it isn't a common reason to wear it.
I'm not saying attack hijab, because it is not your duty to criticize islam as an outsider(and probably you won't have sufficient information nor experience to do so), but when you see some assholes attacking a hijabi woman for her hijab, defend her right to wear what she wants(even if she's forced by her family to wear it), not the hijab.
Focusing on the hijab is in and of itself Islamophobic. If you look at beauty practices the world over, either about showing skin or being modest, they're all based on external pressure. High heels aren't healthy. Bras are painful. Makeup is terrible for your skin. Haircare can destroy your scalp. The issue isn't that the hijab doesn't empower women, it's that the hijab isn't unique in being a symbol of oppression. Only in the West, we see bikinis and high heels as liberating, even though they're very much similar.
Bras are not painful if you wear the right size, but most women are forced into bad sizes cause companies make more profit if they force women into the limited sizes they stock. Bad narratives surround what is a D cup size. The media creates unreasonable body standards for cleavage which means women wear smaller sizes than they need.
r/ABraThatFits for everyone that needs a bra on how to measure yourself. They're trans and nb friendly too!
I'm a dumbass cis dude, I've only ever worn a bra for drag, but this is an excellent PSA.
Good answer. But while it's good to reject western islamophobia disguised as "freedom", I would prefer it if many leftists stopped romanticizing the hijab.
The hijab is not just some beauty practice or societal pressure, at least not in the same way as high heels or a bikini. Your parents will never disown you or throw you out of home because you refuse to wear high heels.
Please, always keep in mind that this is the reality of many muslims. Don't tell them that their struggle is the same as the one of western women that don't want to wear high heels (please don't). I understood your point was about the hypocrisy of western politicians against the hijab, I'm just making something clear.
Critical support for islam, against the western hate and propaganda. Full support for those who struggle under islam.
You worded it better than i could, thank you.
You wrote a good post, don't feel bad about it.
As a person who has grown up as a muslim, I could understand the points you were making and what you were talking about. People who have downvoted it probably did it out of instinct, even if your post is nothing similar to what chuds usually argue about.
I think it's important to make these points. Many young muslims really want to talk about this kind of stuff and feel conflicted, as western leftists unknowingly pressure them the same way their families or friends do, stopping them from talking.
It's true that the hijab can be used as an oppressive tool. And it's not the same as high heels, but the West has plenty of religiously oppressive assholes who use both garb and behavior to control women. There are sects of Christianity and Judaism throughout the US in particular that would absolutely disown or throw a girl out of her home for failing to comply, but more often than not they're likely to just murder her.
So you are correct that it's not the same in that regard, but we have a lot of our own religious fundamentalists engaging in gendered violence. And that is quite comparable I would say.
This is true, but i don't think i ever saw them defended by leftists. I think the issue is you can see negative effects of christianity and judaism since you live in a country where they are common and it is harder to see negative impact of hijab since there aren't a lot of muslims in US. One of my friends had said something like "Western leftists/liberals would never be this gentle against christianity since they are negatively affected by it, but hijab and islam etc. becomes empowering because they will never once have to deal with the negative consequences."
I defend Islam, as a leftist, as NOT WORSE THAN Christianity or Judaism. There's literally people arguing that Islam is somehow uniquely violent or hateful or terrible. That's put me in a spot to say that it's not that bad, really.
I saw this from chuds and internet atheists, but never from left spaces.
No, you are right. But it's a startlingly popular view.
this so much. OP this post is absolutely disgusting. I know where you're coming from, but please try to read some anthropology before you spew ethnocentric notions of what "backwards practices" are.
???
Please tell me where i'm from and explain how it is ethnocentric for me to judge something that is embedded in my own culture.
This is a huge problem with american leftists, you guys are used to criticism of anything foreign being from chuds or patronising white people that you automatically assume the criticism is coming from outside of that culture.
Sorry for comming too hard on you, wasn't my intention. I am just so tired of these same arguments coming from a bunch os islamophobic pricks, so I overreacted.
Regardless, what I tried to point out is that the view that Hijab is backwards is shared amonst lots of western liberals, that take their ideia of a free woman to be rooted in the liberal ideals of the 'progressive' liberal west. That is to say that a women is more free when she uses western clothes, shows her own skin, etc - which is also deeply related what she is able to consume. These takes usually take for granted the idea that the west is the bastion of freedom and any expression that goes on a different way is backwards - which in itself could be taken as an evolutionist idea (as in some cultures are more advanced than others).
The other point is about the generalization that women rarely chose to wear hijab, where are you taking this from? Is it from your personal experience? That is not to say that this wouldn't be valid, but you can't equate your personal experience to the full experience of hijab wearing muslims.
Overall, I just get triggered when I see people calling shit "backwards practices"; without further context it always seems like an evolutionist notion of cultural practices, despite this not being the case.
also, point taken (altough I'm not american). I really saw your comment as coming from a white american. I really need to logout more.
The idea for it being "backwards" is because the biggest goal for it is "preserving" the female body from others, and saving it for the future husband. It denies women agency over their own body. If a women wants to wear it without outside pressure, i'll disagree but more power to them.
Mostly personal, almost all women who wears hijab and if i could talk to them about this stuff, their experience usually had some form of coercion into wearing it. Other than that, in muslim majority countries where a hijab isn't mandatory, in most regions prevelance of hijab has a correlation with domestic violance and non-working women.
Sorry, i got pissy too.
nah, i was definately the jerk first lol.
I honestly don't have enough knowledge to continue with this discussion much further, I haven't really read a lot of muslim ethnographies, and most of my knowledge of muslim majority countries is related to wars - so not a lot of good cultural takes can come from that at all. Also, I still have a very hard understanding and getting to know how I feel about how the west seems to culturally change everything it touches - mostly in regards to how parts of the indigenous population in my country deny their heritage, in exchange to be assimilated into big cities. Until I can understand this better, there's no point in me saying what I think about hijabs or whatnot. My opinion is abolutely pointless regardless, but the discussion about agency is definitaly something I would love to dive to in the future - there's just so much to learn.
Anyways, my original comment still probably serves to some people in this audience, who think that a free woman is only one that shares the same liberal beliefs they do. Definately not targeted towards you, but overall people should be wary about how they view other cultures, it's super easy to fall into our ethnocentric default.
Sorry again for being so rude and thanks for your reply :)
Now that's what I call white leftist brainworms vol. 69