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.
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.