Women in Saudi Arabia. The Hijab - Essay Example

? The Hijab The Hijab Introduction Orientalism is a school of thought that exaggerates and distorts the difference between the Arab societies and their cultures in comparison to the west. It sees Arab culture as uncivilized and backward. According to Said, orientalism began during the age of enlightenment and colonization of the Arab world. Said posits that orientalism is actually a science that the Europeans developed during the colonial times to study the people of the east/ the Orientals. They divided the world into the occident and the orient, meaning the civilized and uncivilized respectively. They used this concept to justify their colonization them being the oriental or the superior race. Islamic orientalism has received constant attacks with Islam being perceived as a weak religion with a mixture of different religions and thoughts. This essay majors on the orientalist view of the hijab (Said, 1978). The phenomenon of wearing the hijab is popular in the Maghreb countries among women and young girls. It is a dress code that ensures the curves of a woman’s body so that they do not both convey the usual motive. There are two types of hijab, the traditional hijab and the modern hijab. The emergence of the traditional hijab came as part of the tradition of the Muslim society and as part of the values, rather than doctrine or religion. The Maghreb communities have different types of hijab portraying their cultural diversity. Each region has their unique dress code. For instance, in the eastern region, women cover their whole bodies except for a small space around one eye that allows them to see. In the north, women cover their entire faces except for the eyes using niqabs and jelbabas. The Islamic dress was not popular in society but was a social norm that was used to distinguish between married and unmarried women. Women were not allowed to divert from this conventional dress code even if there were alternatives that covered their whole bodies. The modern hijab came because of society’s innovation but with the original objective of reflecting and observing the cultures and customs (Bullock, 2003). This contemporary hijab is associated with Islam political organizations the promoted the dressing of the Arab Mashreq. Each religious organization fabricated their dress code in order to acquire uniqueness. This kind of hijab was not without political or doctrinal motives. There is a considerable difference between the Salafi of Islamic organization and the jihadist mode of the “Islamic dress”. The Salafi considers the Islamist hijab unlawful. It reflects a more conservative Islamist environment of the Saudi Najd and does not connote the teachings of Islam. The Islamist hijab on the other hand does not connote the cultural identity of the Muslim societies. Therefore, there are different connotations of the hijab. There are those Muslim societies that consider the hijab as an expression of doctrinal solidarity. This is the Salafi trend worn by the Shiite sect in Morocco. The next category regards the hijab as a contemporary trend. As such, they cover their hair but reveal their beauty through excessive use of makeup. Lastly, is the group that considers the hijab a religious duty. Said writes that contemporary orientalism sits within the western depiction of Arab culture as untrustworthy, irrational, and prototypical. He explains that orientalism is a distorted way of thinking that results in internalization of ideas about individuals or communities that are both inaccurate and historically unfounded (Said, 1978). When it comes to Arab women, the western world has exaggerated and come up with skewed ideas. First, there is the depiction that in the Arab world women are regarded as submissive sexual servants also known as harems. Another depiction of Arab women sees them as terrorist supporters dressed in black. Jack Shaheem in his examination of the portrayal of women in the Hollywood film industry observers that they are humiliated and eroticized. He explains that they are often portrayed as people who never speak nor work and whose achievements are never recognized. He also brings to the fore the importance of dressing in the Hollywood films especially how it is manipulated as a cultural symbol (Shaheem, 2013). The headscarf is just one example of a cultural symbol that has been demonized and politicized leading to distorted understandings of its meaning infiltrated into people’s consciousness. Certain attributions of this dress code are exaggerated and inaccurate. The social and political implications of the hijab sit deep within history even before the revelation of Islam. Today, the place of the hijab is orientalist and mainly so because of the inability of the West to understand the religious and cultural practices of the middle easterners hence they mark it as backwardness and oppression. Said warns that the orientalist discourse on the veil is now being internalized by the Arabs themselves. He illustrates that Arab News Broadcasting Companies are even publicizing the issue of discrimination against women wearing hijabs. He adds that there is even a ban on headscarves in some Muslim countries. He gives the example of Turkey, which is a Muslim country, but headscarves are banned from academic institutions. He adds that even though this ban was lifted in 2008, it shows the implication of systematic misinformation. The orientalist discourse posits that the veiling of women constitutes forcing women to represent extremist values incompatible with modernity (Said, 1978). The subject of wearing the veil is so controversial in the west that France formally banned the wearing of the veil in public after one year of debate. There are many misconceptions concerning the wearing of headscarves by Muslim women. Most people think that it is a sign of submissiveness to meanwhile others think that Muslim women are expected to practice it by law. Such assumptions are the ideas that Edward said writes are commonly mistaken for truth but are merely representations of culture. Said suggests that more effort should be put in place to learn the truth about the culture than accepting representations made from another truth (Bullock, 2003). Michel Foucault refers to the dress code as a form of surveillance. In his book, discipline and punish, he describes the panoptical prison as the way in which people get disciplined either through self-surveillance or through society surveillance. Therefore, since wearing a hijab is optional, women who practice it do it due to society surveillance and as a form of self-discipline (Foucault, 2013). Bullock indicates that the veil’s association with the Islamist movements has a root in the Western power politics and an anti-veil discourse in the West. This is because the media and Western scholars have a stake in maintaining Western hegemony, so some Western scholars provide the intellectual justifications for this anti-Islamic diatribe. Moreover, the US and Western world’s national interests have allowed the demonization of Islam in the public mind to flourish. In addition, ideas about Islam’s oppression of women and the role of the veil in that oppression are part of this discourse (Bullock, 2003). She says that when the Western populace is predisposed to disliking Muslims and Arabs, asserting US/Western foreign policy needs is easier, because the public supports rather than criticizes the foreign policy (for example, by not condemning Israel’s extra judicial assassinations of Palestinians, or the suffering of innocent Iraqi citizens owing to sanctions). People who consume mainstream news as their only source of information about Islam cannot know anything but the negative perspective on the veil (Bullock, 2003). The mainstream Western discourse against Islam has also made it harder for Muslim reformers to improve the status of Muslim women, because betterment has often been linked to colonization and/or Westernization. Conclusion The legacy of Orientalism in mainstream Western media and scholarship, by leaving out these dynamics, works to reinforce the negative stereotype of Islam in the West. It fortifies the negative stereotype because the uncomplicated West/East division enables simplistic equations to be made: West equals progressive, East equals underdeveloped; Western women are liberated, Eastern women subjugated; and so on. Yet it is widely acknowledged that these days the world is a ‘global village’. In recognizing globalization, it is possible to become a more sophisticated observer of the world. The truism the ‘veil is oppressive’ is not tenable in the face of a refined understanding of the dynamics and currents in a global village in which some Muslim women embrace the veil willingly, but others do not (Bullock, 2003). References Bullock, K. (2003). Rethinking Muslim women and the veil: Challenging historical & modern stereotypes. Herndon, VA: International Institute of Islamic Thought. Foucault, Michel (2013). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books. Print. Shaheem G. Jack (2013). Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood vilifies a people. Interlink books. Said, Edward. Orientalism (1978). New York: Pantheon. Print. Read More