The Muslim women’s headscarf – the hijab – is quietly fomenting rebellion all over the world.
At least that’s according to a policy paper issued by the Air Force Research Laboratory in the United States. One chapter in the paper titled Countering Violent Extremism: Scientific Methods & Strategies claims that the support for militant groups is driven by “sexual deprivation” and that headscarves worn by Muslim women represent a form of “passive terrorism”. The paper has been used by the FBI to develop its antiterrorism strategy.
The self-proclaimed former extremist, Dr Tawfik Hamid, who wrote the specific chapter, has elsewhere likened Muslim women who wear hijab to a form of cancer. He said that cancer cells must be attacked even if a few good cells die along the way.
These ideas are outrageously crazy and the only fitting response to such notions ought to be ridicule.
But then you realise that those making such bizarre claims or believing them are actually serious, and societies they come from are deeply misogynistic, imperialist and dangerous.
The idea that Muslim women wearing hijab cause sexual deprivation and that terrorism bears relation to religious dress is just as wrong as saying that women who do not wear modest clothing force men to sexually assault them.
Such ways of looking at women is misogynistic – that women are somehow to blame for all problems, and the sexual well-being of men and therefore the stability of society rest with them.
These feelings and ideas dehumanise Muslim women on every level. They paint them as passive incubators, waiting to be switched on from “passive terrorists” to “active terrorists”. It likens them to cancer and reduces them to objects whose only purpose is to satisfy men’s sexual needs.
It’s sickening to see the feeling of hatred these analogies contain. Such ideas are perpetuated by both neoconservatives and extremists such as ISIL who feed off each other.
The Orientalist myth of Muslim women’s oppression is so pervasive that even what they call Muslim women’s terrorism is characterised as passive. So not to worry what Muslim women themselves want, eh?
There’s the stink of a macho contest that has been running for hundreds of years to see who can get Muslim women to do what they want. Muslim women continue to be pawns in geopolitical wars.
In the bigger context of counterterrorism, why is there such aversion to evidence-based policy when it comes to radicalisation? It seems you can just make things up and get away with it when you are a Muslim. Yet, while such former extremists were engaged in a violent discourse, others were living peaceful lives.
Today, extremists want to banish Muslim women from the public space; the neocons want to strip Muslim women of their right to freedom of expression. Everyone is trying to erase the identity Muslim women have chosen.
I’m tired of explaining that women should be free to exercise their own choice and that terrorism bears no relation to clothing.
What makes me angry is that the only thing that is discussed is hijabs and niqabs. Stop it. Seriously. Just stop this obsession with veils.
Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is the author of Love in a Headscarf and blogs at www. spirit21.co.uk
