her say
Nearly a decade ago, a senior Muslim cleric in Australia described women who do not wear the hijab – the modest dress style that includes covering the wearer’s hair – as “uncovered meat”. He said: “If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside ... and the cats come to eat it ... whose fault is it, the cat’s or the uncovered meat’s?”
There was outrage among Australia’s Muslim community that was shared globally by Muslims and all right-thinking people.
Ten years on, the fact that harassment of Muslim women occurs within Muslim societies is still widely denied. The long-standing myth is that Muslim women, especially those who cover themselves in some way, are protected from harassment.
We see this continued denial in the tropes that recur: pictures of unwrapped lollipops that attract flies, articles that justify catcalling or stalking of women if they are not covered, and the supposedly low rates of reported sexual crime in Muslim countries.
Like women all around the world, Muslim women suffer from harassment. What makes it worse is the silence they have enforced upon them. They are told that they did not behave modestly enough, that it was their fault, that they will live with the consequences of labelling.
We need to accept that this denial of harassment in Muslim communities exists, and we need to open up a discussion of the miserable realities faced by many women.
One of the biggest challenges in this debate is that Muslim societies feel exposed that their “dirty laundry” is being aired, and that it would be better to hide a problem that, it is claimed, will only give fuel to hostility against Muslims. We cannot sacrifice women’s right to safety and dignity for the fear of this bogeyman. What kind of principles are we working to uphold if harassment is excused?
I understand how Muslim societies that feel under attack want to assert moral superiority by claiming harassment doesn’t occur. But this is based on a self-imposed blindness to the facts.
If Muslim women are protected by their hijab, then why does Egypt have one of the highest levels of harassment? It’s men’s behaviour that’s the problem, not women’s hijab.
Another myth put forward is that levels of sexual assault and rape are very low in Muslim countries. In Morocco you might be forced to marry your rapist, so why would you report it? In India, if your father-in-law rapes you and the result is that a tribunal operating under Muslim personal law declares that this has nullified your marriage to your husband, then why would you report it?
The implicit assumption – in contravention of the facts – that simply by brandishing the words “Islam” and “Muslim” in a conversation makes the reality of harassment non-existent must be exposed and annihilated.
The first step is to admit that harassment is a problem in Muslim societies, just as it is for women globally. If anything, the honour for Muslims should come from upholding the Islamic principle of asserting the dignity of women, exposing the harassers and bringing them to justice.
Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is the author of Love in a Headscarf and blogs at spirit21.co.uk
