Is the Hijab a Symbol of Oppression? ⇒
12 December 2007, early afternoon
This is a muddled article from BlogTO.
This is a post from my link log: If you click the title of this post you will be taken the web page I am discussing.
12 December 2007, early afternoon
This is a muddled article from BlogTO.
This is a post from my link log: If you click the title of this post you will be taken the web page I am discussing.
My devout Jewish professor said it best, “before the Muslims came along, Jews were the freaks!”
First of all, the death of the young girl is a tragedy but should not be classified as a Muslim problem as the media seems to assume. The further we exploit the cultural clash as a religous problem, the more we marginalize the majority of the people of Muslim faith.
Any religious requirement could be obscured into symbols of oppression. If we compare orthodox jewish religion, and orthodox christianity or even “mainstream” christianity, we can see how some of the requirements can be obscure. (eg. how about circumcision on a baby?) Just because some religious symbols and requirements are more visible to others should not be presumed as oppressive. Shouldn’t we as “mainstream western” society question why young people feel like they have to dress a certain way to fit in?
The kind of Muslim-phobia that’s infiltrating our media is dangerous and parallels the sentiments against the Jews leading up to the Holocaust.
by tiff on December 12 2007, 11:34 pm #
Rebellion is normal. This result is not.
by Ramanan on December 13 2007, 11:16 am #
“The kind of Muslim-phobia that’s infiltrating our media is dangerous and parallels the sentiments against the Jews leading up to the Holocaust.”
How so?
by Ananthan on December 14 2007, 1:28 am #
Commentary from Torontoist: One isolated instance of brutal domestic violence –– motivated by religion or not; the only declaration that it was an honour killing has come from the girl’s friends –– has been spun out into a huge argument over the cultural divide between Islam and the West.
by Ramanan on December 14 2007, 9:18 am #
A commentary by one of my professors, Anver Emon. [excuse the typo re: Ms. Perez…geez]
My comments re: Holocaust are referring to how the Muslims collectively as a religious minority has taken over the Jews’ role as the scapegoat for cultural conflicts.
Leading up to the Holocaust, there were the irrational assumption that many social problems were caused by the Jewish religion (and its inconsistencies against Christian ideology). There was no recognition of the Jews as distinct from Jewish religion (and this non-distinction continues today). Practicing Jews or not were assumed to be all alike and homogenous.
Today we see the same characterization of the cultural clashes re: Muslim. There’s the underlying assumption that the Islamic religion is the origin of all these clashes when many of these tragedies are motivated by cultural tradition (often guised as a religious one). There is an alarming implication that the Muslim ideology is clashing with the west when in fact the real problems stem from cultural traditions from oppressive societies. We see news reports that imply a homogeneity of oppression in the Muslim ideology.
Literature from the Nazi regime often alludes to the desire for a “pure” state from the Jewish culture and religous ideology b/c of their inconsistencies with German nationhood. Now we have the media, albeit more subtly, suggesting that cultural tragedies are the products of incompatible religious ideologies. The implication is a need to “liberalize” or “westernize” these religious incompatibilities (that are inconsistent with the Judeo-Christian liberal ideology) in order to prevent tragedies like that of Ms. Parvez. Religious freedom includes a right to be veiled as well as a right to be free from the veil. Any type of solution that violates either of these rights would be dissatisfactory. The battle over the veil in public policy (such as any government that vows to ban the veil to protect women’s right) is ignoring an important casaulty — the devout and liberal individuals who freely chooses to be veiled as a symbol of faith rather than oppression.
If we continue to assume these problems as mainly caused by religious ideologies, then we are furthering a stigma that would lead to the non-distinction of culture and religion. This dangerous “us” versus “them” attitude is not unlike the attitude during the Nazi regime which blamed its own socio-economic failures on a minority religion and transposed that on a larger demography of Jewish people.
Are we sure that the media (and perhaps society as a whole) today aren’t making a similar mistake?
by tiff on December 14 2007, 1:10 pm #