HIJAB & SPIN-Part 2
An open letter to the Muslims of the United Kingdom
From Shaikh Riyad Nadwi M.A., PhD.

1. Preface
2. Hijab & Spin Part 2
3. Hijab & Spin Part 1
4. OCCRi Statement

Preface

I was asked a question a few days ago which made me realise that I owe an explanation to everyone, especially my students, as to why I have changed my approach with regard to political issues.Over the past ten years here in Oxford, we have been on the receiving end of a series of sustained attacks, ranging from smear campaigns and agent provocateurs to ‘Fake Shaikh Chaplaincy’ conundrums and policy intrigues, and my advice had always been to concentrate on improving your knowledge and practice of Islam and to ignore political rhetoric.But within the last few weeks you have witnessed a dramatic change in my modus operandi.I have written an open letter criticising an Oxford politician and I have called for him to be denounced by Muslims all over the country.

The reason for this big shift in my approach is due to significant changes in our circumstances as a minority community living in the West. It is easy to ignore the rhetoric against Islam and Muslims that emanates from fringe groups and people in far away places, as long as one is able to continue to practise Islam and conduct Da’wa.    However, when the attacks come from people who represent mainstream parties in the country, and polls begin to show a significant shift in attitudes against our freedom to practise the very basic and personal aspects of our faith, it becomes incumbent upon all to stand up and speak out.This is especially true for me as an Alim in the city which this person represents in Parliament.I know of many Muslims who would have voted for him.

This is not primarily about politics but it has to do with the future of our freedom to practise Islam in the West and, by extension, to practise Islam anywhere in world.Having given much thought and consideration to the long term implications of entering this debate now, I have come to the conclusion that it is a debate we will have to encounter sooner or later, irrespective of whether we remain in the West or choose to migrate to a Muslim country.The effects of decisions taken in France can already be seen in some Muslim countries.The grand plan, as it appears, concerns not only hijab in Western countries but also much of what Muslims hold sacred, wherever they happen to be.

This additional component to my approach does not mean that I have abandoned my previous advice to you. The objectives remain the same – the best way to defend Islam is to practise it – but, as with so many things in life, extraordinary situations require extraordinary decisions.

Please pray that Allah protects and guides us through these difficult times and I request you all to participate in this endeavour as much as you can.

Wassalam
Riyad Nadwi
Oxford, 22^nd February 2004.

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بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

Dear Brothers and Sisters

Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah wa barakatuh

Re: Challenging the ‘spin’ on hijab

Having written to you about the motives behind the ‘spin’ on hijab and having received a large number of letters and e-mails, I have come to the conclusion that it is necessary to write another letter to share my thoughts on the nature of this ‘spin’ and to suggest ways in which to deal with it both in your own minds and when speaking to others.  I apologise in advance for the length of this letter but the gravity of the situation requires a detailed response.

May Allah reward all those of you who responded to my open letter of 1^st February 2004 and acted on the advice therein.  It appears that your efforts have born fruit: Dr Evan Harris appeared on the BBC 2 Daily Politics programme (3^rd February 2004), attempting to ‘spin’ his way out of his attacks on the religious freedom of children.  He also appeared on the Radio Five Live programme again (12^th February 2004) to protest his innocence.  Apparently, he now claims that he had never argued for schools in the UK to have the right to ban hijab, but was simply supporting the French decision.  Based on a bizarre logic, he hopes that his new-found ‘reluctance’ to ban the religious freedom of 2 million Muslims in Britain will exonerate him from the crime of supporting a ban on 6 million Muslims in France [1] .

In his defence, I had expected Dr Harris to resort to the usual gagging charge of anti-Semitism.  However, this charge was difficult to level against me because my message was not anti-Semitic [2] in any way.  So it appears that he decided to take a gamble and feed me bait.  It is a well known fact that Dr Harris is a pro-Israel MP.  He is Treasurer of the All Party British-Israel Parliamentary Group and he was part of a ‘Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel’ visit to Israel in June 2000.  To claim that a ‘friend’ of Israel is pro-Israeli is not a tremendous leap of faith.

The bait I refer to was an audacious e-mail implying that I was completely wrong to assume that he (Dr Evan Harris) was a ‘pro-Israel’ MP.  He wrote:

‘…Unfortunately, much of what is written in that open letter is factually wrong and also misrepresents my views.  In particular I would be grateful if you could explain how you would justify the assertion that I am ‘pro-Israel’ and - by extension – ‘anti-Palestinian’...’ (E-mail dated 3^rd February 2004 from Dr Evan Harris).

I suspect that he and his advisers were hoping I would respond with a deluge of ethnocentric rhetoric upon which he would be able to lay the usual charge of anti-Semitism.  In our reply we ignored the bait and focused instead on the hook. An e-mail was sent to Dr Harris stating the following:

‘Dear Dr Harris, It appears from your questioning of our, as you put it, 'assertion', that you wish to state that you are not ‘pro-Israel’.  If this is your official position then would you please confirm it in unambiguous terms?’

Dr Harris did not respond but someone replied on his behalf with a carefully worded question.  Instead of implying that he is not pro-Israel they requested

‘Any substantiation you may have of the claims you make that Dr Harris is pro-Israeli in the way you suggest.’ (My emphasis)

So far we have not received any confirmation from Dr Harris that he is not a pro-Israel MP, but he has sent us another e-mail saying that the BBC has played back the original Radio Five Live programme and it could not see any basis for my allegations.  I too have played back the programme and I beg to differ, as will anyone who pays attention to his message as a whole in that programme.  I am also keen to know who in the BBC played back the tape and who exactly was responsible for vetting the incoming live correspondence on the programme.  The presenter had said that they had received an enormous amount of correspondence, yet he read only one single-sentence e-mail against the ban, whilst reading four lengthy e-mails and allowing an extremely Islamophobic phone call in favour of the ban.  If any of you (Muslims) e-mailed or called the BBC during the first Five Live programme, I would like you to get in touch with us because we are going to ask the BBC producers to justify the 80% e-mail and 100% telephone bias towards the ban on hijab in that programme.  We need to know exactly how many e-mails and phone calls they received during the programme and who made the decision to lean so heavily towards Dr Harris’s position.  I could be wrong, but it seemed as if the selected correspondence was perfectly tailored to suit Dr Harris’s arguments.

Double-speak ‘spinning’

With regard to the first programme (29^th January 2004, BBC Radio Five Live) Dr Harris employed several ‘spin’ techniques that are used on a regular basis to manipulate public opinion against Islam.  It requires advanced planning/scripting and the ability to use language in an unnatural and deceptive manner.  It is popularly referred to as the ‘double-speaking’ of politicians when they are trying to please diverse audiences.  In the case of Dr Harris, it is slightly more complicated, for he is not only keen to please the audience, but one gets the impression that there is a strong and almost irresistible drive to emphasise the negative aspects of anything to do with Islam and Muslims.  Along a carefully chosen path, laden with double-speak and prevarication, there is a distinct pattern in the choice of words, examples and areas of mental focus.

He began by widening the scope of the target, albeit with creative language in order to secure a degree of ‘plausible deniability’.  Instead of using the word hijab, the target was described as ‘ostentatious religious symbols of all religions in schools’.  In reality, this would be the same as saying, ‘I do not support the banning of women but I do support the banning of all XX chromosome organisms’.  At the beginning of the programme, Dr Harris was quite successful in employing his double-speak technique to conceal his motives.  He even secured an apology from the interviewer with it.  However, as the show progressed the act was hard to maintain and in the end unravelled itself.  Instead of telling us what he meant by ‘ostentatious’ and discussing the ‘religious symbols in general’ that he was so keen to emphasise at the start, Dr Harris embarked on a multi-faceted attack on hijab.  He began by casting doubts upon the religious validity of hijab by quoting from a fatwa issued by Shaikh Tantawi in Egypt.  This was followed by a series of unnecessary and opportunistic statements designed to reinforce a stereotypical perception of Muslims in the minds of the wider audience, for example ‘France is not a Muslim country’.  This is not earth shattering news and he had already made his point by this stage, but by using the sentence in this way he reinforces the anti-Muslim perception that ‘these foreigners are trying to tell us how to live our lives while they don’t allow us to drink alcohol when we visit their countries’ [3] .  In a similar vein, he made a reference, whilst hedging heavily, to female circumcision, using it to direct the discussion towards the British context by saying: 

‘We don’t allow that in this country…We are, as a state, entitled to draw a line, particularly around state institutions, schools and particularly around minors.  I have no objection absolutely to an adult woman wearing a headscarf or indeed girls wearing them in their own homes or out or in the mosque or whatever’ (Dr Evan Harris, 29^th January 2004, BBC Radio Five Live) [My emphasis].

He also tried to use the current legal powers afforded to schools in the UK to justify this position by saying:

‘Expressing their identity as individuals is all well and good but schools are allowed at the moment to put restrictions on that [facial jewellery etc] and I don’t think it is unreasonable for state schools to do that or definitely state schools that aren’t faith schools’(Dr Evan Harris, 29^th January 2004, BBC Radio Five Live).

Special attention should be paid to the fact that he mentions ‘institutions’ before ‘schools’ and ends his list with emphasis on ‘minors’.  The question we have to ask is: why is Dr Harris so interested in our minors?  The answer to this may lie in the fact that children who do not maintain an overt level of practice of a given faith during their minority are much more likely to drift away from their religious identity in adulthood and, more importantly, they are far less likely to teach religious traditions to their own children [4] .

It should be clear from these arguments put forward by Dr Harris that the issue is hijab, not ‘ostentatious religious symbols’.  Some Muslims have accused us of making this a Muslim issue; they have been convinced that it is an equal attack on all religions.  They have accepted the terms of reference expounded by the superficial ‘spin’ surrounding the debate, yet ignore the substance of the argument put forward by proponents of a ban (in France or the UK).  I draw people’s attention to the BBC headline on the day of the debate for the proposed ban in France: ‘Hijab debate’ not ‘Debate on all religious symbols’!  As for the argument that this affects other faiths as well, most of us should be familiar with the concept of ‘collateral damage’, and in the same way that we do not base our arguments against illegal wars on the inevitability of collateral damage, we should not allow policy ‘spinners’ to distract us away from the main objective of this ban.

Another classic example of double-speak was the outburst on the topic of hijab by the writer Toby Young on the BBC’s Question Time programme (12^th February 2004).  Having begun by saying, ‘it is such a difficult question to answer because it [banning hijab] seems like such an illiberal, intolerant thing to do’, he goes to on say:

‘Muslim school girls at the moment don’t have the option of whether or not to wear head scarves, because if they don’t, members of their own community, in some cases their brothers and their fathers, will brutalise them, in some cases rape them.  The persecution of women who don’t tow the conservative, hard-line, Muslim fundamentalist line, in these communities is appalling…’

Based on this analysis, he concludes that the hijab is a ‘symbol of just how oppressed women are in these communities’ and that Muslim women get ‘stoned to death if they are suspected of adultery’.  He then rounds off his comment by confirming that what the French government is aiming to do via the ban is to address the oppression of Muslim women in our communities.  Faced with these conclusions, should we respond to him by insisting that this is not about Muslims, but that it concerns all ‘ostentatious religious symbols’?  I think not.

Conspiracy theories

The charge of ‘conspiracy theorist’ has, of course, been levelled at me.  However, it has not come as expected from the pro-Israel activists, but from a Muslim website.  It rather strangely described my letter as ‘excellent’, even requesting permission to publish it [5] , only then to replace it with a barrage of criticisms before charging me with being a ‘conspiracy theorist’ six days later

The issue of ‘conspiracy’ is a complex one and deserves some attention.  In my observations of people’s attitudes towards this issue, they seem to fall into two broad categories and position themselves at one of the two extremes.  At one are those who read conspiracies into everything whilst leaving very little room for Allah and His plans.  I find these people exceedingly frustrating as they are despondent because they fail to grasp the complexities of our world, the sophistication of human nature and, more importantly, Allah’s ever present and gracious power over all forces and plans.  Allah says in the Quran ‘...They plot and plan and Allah too plans.  But the best of planners is Allah’ (Al-Anfal 8:30).

Having said that, I find those at the other extreme equally frustrating.  These are the ‘accident theorists’: people who would like you to believe that all occurrences in our world are random, arbitrary and accidental.  From the Big Bang to the Big Crunch and everything between the two, they refuse to accept the existence of any propensity in human beings to cooperate with one another in secrecy, and deny the existence of something known more popularly as ‘strategic planning’.  These are the people who live in the bliss of ignorance, and revel in showing condescension to those who refuse to join them in placing their heads in the sand.  For them, the pro-Israel activists are innocent victims of Muslim paranoia.  Little do they realise the extent to which they are influenced, directly and indirectly, by the ‘spin’ theories of pro-Israel activists such as Daniel Pipes [6] and others.

Both of these extreme positions are unhealthy for the mind and are counter-productive for a vibrant and progressive society.  The mind stagnates with the oversimplifications made by both groups.  As Muslims we need to maintain a healthy balance between paranoia and naivety, acknowledging the possibility and probability of strategic planning, especially when the evidence is overwhelming.  We cannot allow our minds to be kept in a straight jacket, fettered by the fear of being labelled conspiracy theorists or anti-Semitic.  We should not become pawns in a global mind game designed and controlled by others.  We must consider what it would mean for the pro-Israel activists to be given a guarantee that Muslims will not question their motives, and whenever someone does, that he or she would be dismissed promptly as a conspiracy theorist by other Muslims.  Fortunately, Muslims have a strong sense of history and are able to see through ‘spin’ to recognise the ulterior motives, such as when the ‘spin’ doctors use ‘militant Islam’ and ‘Islam’ interchangeably [7] .  We know what they mean when they say, ‘There are no moderates’ [8] .

Why do we blame Israel

Some people ask, ‘Why do we blame Israel for everything?’  I say to them, we do not blame-Israel for everything.  Indeed, we have numerous faults of our own that we must recognise.  However the frequency of interference from the pro-Israel activists in our affairs, and the reactions they receive, have caused it to appear that way.  If they are allowed to continually blame and stigmatise entire communities (Muslims) and countries for the actions of a few, and if they are justified in their cherry-picking from our jurisprudential sources in an attempt to dictate the terms of our commitment to Islam, then we are certainly entitled to explore their motivations for this obsession with the details of our faith.  For example, we are entitled to ask why there are so many pro-Israel activists at the forefront of this exercise.  It is also not unreasonable to ask why someone who argues that ‘just as Muslims rule an undivided Mecca, Jews should rule an undivided Jerusalem’ [9] , is also concerned about Muslim children and our schools in the West [10] .  It is not by accident that it has become fashionable to bash everything to do with Islam and practicing Muslims in the West within a span of less than three years.  Quite apart from the expediency that 9/11 offered to their cause, there has been a tremendous effort from pro-Israel activists to propagate their spurious theories about Islam.  They have done this by being bold, loud and persistent with ‘spin’.  It is time for us to respond by being equally bold, loud and persistent with the truth.

Some people have written to warn me that Israel often assassinates those who criticise her injustices.  Well, if that is the price we must pay, then so be it

‘…No soul shall taste of death before completing its sustenance...’ (Ibn Majah)

In order to prevent an escalation of attacks on our faith, and protect our future in these countries, it is crucial that we stand up and call people’s attention to the fact that the same ‘spin’ which may have taken this country and others to war might also have a part to play in fashioning their fear of Islam and Muslims.  There is an overwhelming body evidence to show that the ‘spin’ against Islam in the current global situation is spear-headed by pro-Israel activist

For those ‘accident theorists’ who deny the existence of strategic planning, the following passage needs to be carefully considered in the context of similar attitudes that are expressed on a regular and structured basis by the Neo-Conservative and pro-Israel activists around the world

‘Demographic, socio-economic, political and cultural-psychological shifting processes, together with the importance of a few rulers, assure instability in most of the domain of Islam, with much anti-Western insurgence. At the same time, technological and military capacities of Islamic actors are increasing, soon including mass killing weapons with global reach. Therefore, in the twenty-first century insurgent Islam in its aggressive and fanatic forms of state and non-state actors will pose a major threat to the West and humanity as a whole. Hence the need for a long-term grand-strategy to prevent, contain and counter-act it. Main components recommended for such a grand-strategy include: (1) relating respectfully to Islam; (2) selective accommodation, with red lines; (3) helping socio-economic development; (4) curbing aggressive actors; (5) reducing aggressive capacities; (6) holding states and rulers strictly accountable; (7) damage limitation; and (8) if all fails: moving towards a Global Leviathan. To work out and apply the grand strategy to shifting situations, much shared strategic thinking and planning by the West is needed in cooperation with other major countries and civilizations and with non-aggressive Islamic states, together with preparation of fitting action capabilities. The USA, together with the European Union, has to take the lead in doing so. Tragic but imperative is the necessity to adjust Western values so as to adopt ‘immoral’ measures, so as to avoid greater moral evil. But, first of all, fanatic Islam must be recognized as a serious threat justifying determined counter-action within a coherent fully considered and carefully applied grand strategy.’ (Yehezkel Dror [11] , Facing insurgent Islam: A grand strategy for the West) [My emphasis]

One needs only to read the Neo-Conservative literature to be ‘enlightened’.  Most policy considerations, especially those concerning Islam, are all linked back to the need to protect and support Israel.  Yet conversely, we are being told not to question the motivations of the likes of Richard Perle when he makes the detailed composition of the educational syllabus in the Muslim world a focus for his attentions!  I suggest those Muslims who are still in denial should spend some of their time learning about the ideas of people like Laurent Murawiec, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, Joshua Muravchik, Martin van Creveld, Meyrav Wurmser, David Wurmser, Douglas J. Feith, Colonel Yigal Carmon, Norman Podhoretz, Eliot Cohen, Midge Decter, Frank Gaffney, William Safire, Charles Krauthammer, Stephen Schwartz, Simon Henderson, Joseph Lieberman et al.

The average person in this country is looking for an answer: he/she wants to know why the USA and Britain went to war.  People are far more perceptive than they are given credit for.  In the same way, the truth about the motivation for attacking Muslims will replace the artificial fear and ‘spin’ about Islam if we able to muster the courage to be bold, reasonable and persistent.  However, I fear that if we are unfortunate enough to have Muslims who are willing to stand up to defend the pro-Israel activists from valid criticisms, and to dismiss reasonable voices as conspiracy theory, then the momentum of attacks on every aspect of what it is to be Muslim from these quarters will only increase

I strongly believe that the fear of being dismissed must be weighed against the tremendous opportunity that silence provides for the pro-Israel activists to continue their attacks on Islam and Muslims with impunity.  In my ten years here in Oxford, I have tried my utmost to avoid conflicts of this sort.  But my restraint did not prevent them from launching sustained and multi-faceted attacks on every aspect of the Muslims’ activities, to the extent that they began objecting to our proclamation of faith (The Kalimah).  A few years ago, a pro-Israel activist came up with an argument to ban the Kalimah because it was, in his opinion, ‘too dismissive of other gods’ and should therefore not be displayed in a university exhibition.

In continental Europe, the hijab has been banned but it will not end there.  The objective, it seems, is to force an artificial reformation within Islam, which will encompass everything from the way we think about the Quran, to the food we eat and the clothes we wear.  I have come to the conclusion that this psycholinguistic war is being led largely by fervent pro-Israel activists and the only way to stop it is to challenge the ‘spin’ head on, whilst asking legitimate questions about their motivation.  If they have the right to question our motives by cherry-picking verses of the Quran, then we should have the right to respond with a similar level of scrutiny.  They may do what they wish to their own faith but Islam is our faith and we will decide what it is and how we practise it.  We do not need the treasurer of the all-party British-Israel Parliamentary Group to present us with a fatwa from half way around the world to justify the uncovering of our daughters.  We have scholars here in this country who are more than capable of providing us with guidance on the importance of hijab in Islam.

Some people have asked as to why I singled out the Lib Dems when they were the only party to oppose the war on Iraq.  My response is that we should not forget that the French government – that has just banned hijab – was also a fierce opponent of the war.  Should we therefore refrain from criticising the French also?  No, I don’t think so either.  We need to go beneath the surface of this divide and examine the reasons for these different attitudes towards the Iraq war.  On the one hand, many supporters of the war were obviously aiming to provide long term security for Israel and at the same time secure control of oil reserves.  But on the other hand, many of those who opposed the war did so not because they wanted to protect innocent Iraqis, but because of their fear of Islam.  For them, Saddam Hussein’s extreme secularist ideology, with its barbaric track record, deserved protection against the then slim possibility of Islam surfacing in Iraq.  Calming the fear that Islam (rather than Saddam’s secularism) would be on the rise, the Californian Democratic representative Tom Lantos said, candidly, to an Israeli member of the Knesset ‘You won't have any problem with Saddam. We'll be rid of the b*****d soon enough. And in his place we'll install a pro-Western dictator, who will be good for us and for you.’ (Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz, 30^th September 2002).

My criticism of the Lib Dems concerned the contrasting treatment of Jenny Tonge and Dr Harris.  For being a voice of reason, Jenny Tonge was sacked from the front bench.  However Dr Harris’s unacceptable inference that schools should have the right to ban hijab in the UK, didn’t result in even a reprimand from the party leadership.

The Leader of the Party, Charles Kennedy, succumbed to pressure from the pro-Israel activists in the case of Jenny Tonge.  My demand was for consistency.  Had this occurred in any other party my response would have been the same.  My main objective was to defend our freedom to practise Islam in this country.  A further source of  anger within the community is the way Dr Harris, in his second appearance on BBC Radio Five Live, chose to go on the attack and claim that he had never supported a ban on hijab in the UK (see quote three paragraphs below).  He urged Muslims to ‘debate the issues…play the ball, not the man’ and not to antagonise people [like himself] who ‘agree with you [Muslims] on practically every issue’.  Some important points need to be made concerning this ‘spin’:  

·        Dr Harris has to address whether he has now retracted his earlier view, as expressed in his first Five Live appearance (and quoted in this letter), which clearly makes a case for the State drawing a line around state institutions, schools and minors.  He must clarify whether he intends to continue using ‘spin’ and double-speak to attack practising Muslims in this country and around the world.

·        As for being a friend of the Muslim community and agreeing with us on ‘practically every issue’, this does not stand up to the slightest scrutiny.  Indeed, Dr Harris is a well-known supporter of banning faith-based schools in the UK. [12]

·        We do not believe Ariel Sharon when he says he wants the Israeli government to leave the occupied territories. Why should we believe Dr Harris when he says the same thing? [13]  

The concern caused by this silence of the Party leadership is amplified when one considers the history of the Neo-Conservative influence in the United States.  A large number of the first-generation Neo-Conservatives were liberal Democrats [14] , or even socialists and Marxists, often Trotskyites.  They drifted to the right in the 1960s and 1970s as the Democratic Party moved to the anti-war McGovernite left.

 “One major factor that drew them inexorably to the right was their attachment to Israel and their growing frustration during the 1960s with a Democratic party that was becoming increasingly opposed to American military preparedness and increasingly enamoured of Third World causes (e.g., Palestinian rights)” [15]

I have also been asked why I did not refer in my letter to the violation of human rights in the context of banning hijab.  I think we need to realise that this debate is not merely about the law.  Relying solely on relatively static legal arguments in a fluid psycholinguistic war is not only naive but futile, as we have seen in France.  Every French politician who voted for the ban did so in full knowledge of the human rights legislation.  I suspect that they voted as they did (ostensibly against the grain of human rights) primarily because their perspectives have become dominated by the preponderance of ‘spin’ surrounding Muslims and Islam.  In addition, these laws are open to wide interpretation, and can be easily changed or manipulated to suit emerging conditions and changing perceptions.  One need only look at the implications of the Patriot Act in America on human rights legislation to appreciate this point.  Our primary focus should be to defend ourselves from the onslaught of ‘spin’ by challenging it with solid arguments and exposing the motives of those who create and propagate it

If the truth of this strategy was ever doubted, the Muslim community should note the unprovoked legal defence of the French ban put forward by Dr Harris during his second Five Live appearance.

‘I am not supporting a ban on the hijab, I am supporting the French decision – because they have a constitution that refers to secularism in their schools [16] – and I even would only support the French decision if it was compliant with the Human Rights Convention.  The Vice-President of the European Court of Human Rights [17] has said that he thinks it [the French decision] would be [18] because it doesn’t restrict the right to religious worship or belief but there’s a state policy that wants to restrict some degree of freedom of expression in respect of religious wearing of clothes in schools.  We have that protection, that fallback in Western Europe of the European Convention on Human Rights… My concern about the British situation is that, in schools of all places, we should not be discriminating against people on the basis of their religion...’

I note that the Muslim representative of IACN, who appeared on the same Five Live programme as Dr Harris, did not mount any challenge to the legal position put forward by Dr Harris.  This contrasts with the IACN public criticism of my article because

‘The ban on hijab is a blatant violation of the European Convention on Human Rights and that would have been sufficient grounds to argue the case.’  And ‘laws that are being violated through this hijab ban would be a much better focus for the UK Muslims’ (IACN mailing list, 9^th February 2004)

Unfortunately the Vice-President of the European Court of Human Rights thinks no laws are being broken.  I do not mention this in order to antagonise, as the brothers at IACN appear to be sincere Muslims, but rather to highlight the futility of a response based merely upon interpretations of law.

The nature of the ‘spin’

The principal arguments advanced by the ‘spin doctors’ with regard to hijab (thus far) are:

1.      Secularism is at risk

2.      Ostentatious religious symbols are offensive

3.      School is no place for religion

4.      Muslim girls, by virtue of wearing hijab, are reflecting their fathers’ view rather than their own

5.      Hijab is not sanctioned by the Quran

6.      Some Muslim scholars say hijab is not necessary (e.g. Shaikh Tantawi)

7.      Hijab is a threat to national cohesion

8.      Hijab was banned in Turkey - A Muslim country

9.      Most Muslims in France support the ban

10.  Hijab is a symbol of radicalism

These ten arguments are all carefully designed to divert attention away from the absurdity of the original suggestion (to ban hijab) by indulging the audience in discussions that are peripheral and in many cases irrelevant.  It is important that we refrain from allowing the ‘spin’ doctors to set the parameters of the debate, especially when they are the ones inventing the problems in the first place.  We have to develop a conscious defence against ‘designer’ arguments and terminology.

It needs to be made clear that the actual proposition is to force young girls to remove a piece of clothing and thus reveal parts of their bodies that they do not wish to expose in public.  The symbolic value of hijab is secondary to its functional and primary purpose, which is to cover a significant part of the body.  The whole debate about religious symbols is irrelevant until we discuss the primary purpose of hijab.  It appears that all fathers from all cultures are allowed to be protective towards their daughters except Muslim fathers.  Let us turn the argument on its head and ask how many French fathers, irrespective of their religious persuasion, would tolerate it if someone were to say to them: ‘We want your daughter to reveal in public more of her body than she is currently showing because we find her covering offensive’.  This is the question we should have been asking from day one.

In addition, the question to what extent the human body should be exposed, and in what way it should be exposed, is a valid and hotly debated issue in Western society [19] .  The heart of this debate lies in who decides where the line should be drawn between decency and vulgarity.  In a land of equals, no one should be told how much of his or her body can or cannot be exposed, say the nudists [20] .  Others argue that ‘experts’ should be the ones who decide, whoever they may be.  But even if people argue that in many cases it is the government that decides by consensus what is acceptable in terms of decency and what is not, the debate has seldom been about forcing people to wear less; it is most often about forcing people to wear more (e.g. the nudists are forced to wear clothes etc).

Muslims stand apart from both of these poles by defaulting to the guidance of their Creator.  As for the list of ten arguments used to ‘spin’ attention away from the real issue, I believe we need to be cognisant of the following:

1. Is Secularism really at risk?

2.            Ostentatious?  What does it mean?

This adjective is derived from the Latin ostentationem (nom. ostentatio), which means ‘vain display’.  In modern usage it is often employed to describe extravagant, excessive, vulgar or pretentious display and boastful showiness.  The word is not only pejorative connotatively but all of its denotations are surrounded by explicit negative semantic fields.  The first question we need to ask here is: why do some people perceive hijab as offensive while others clearly do not?  One reason, of course, is insecurity in one’s own belief system.  However, the other reason, which I believe is the dominant one in this current crisis, is the preponderance of ‘spin’ that has an ulterior motive.  As we have seen, the pro-Israel activists are keen to force into existence an artificial reformation of Islam.  Covering the head with a plain piece of cloth is far less ostentatious than a fashionable hairstyle that can cost more than £50 per week in a beauty salon.  The word ‘ostentatious’, with its meanings of extravagance and showiness, is far more applicable to the competitive teenage culture from which emanates the pressure to choose from over four thousand teenage hairstyles.  If anything, the simplicity of hijab places it in stark contrast to this.  Wearing hijab is, in fact, the polar opposite of ostentation but sadly this is the nature of the upside-down world of ‘spin’.

3.            Schools are no place for religion

A principle, such as this is trying to be, must be applied with uniformity, if it is to be applied at all.  If we believe that banning hijab will keep religion out of schools then we need to think again.  Hijab is not the only overt religious component in the identity of a Muslim.  Food, names and behaviour are also conspicuous components.  The question is, if we accept that schools should be free from all explicit aspects of religiosity then it would mean that children should not be allowed to bring halal food into school or consume it on the premises.  All the arguments against hijab are applicable to halal food, as halal food is defined by religious guidance and is visible and different from non-halal food.  The same applies to general conduct: a Muslim girl may want to avoid holding hands with boys in a playground game because of her religious upbringing.  According to the above principle, she must be forced into holding hands, for if not she would be guilty of practising religion on school premises.  I wonder how many Jewish parents would agree to a ban on the consumption of kosher food in schools [22] ?  Or how many Christian parents would agree to a ban on Christmas trees in schools?  Or a ban on nativity plays or Easter eggs?

This spurious argument is rooted in ‘spin’ rather than common sense.  Religion plays a much larger role in people’s lives than merely the garments they wear.  The entire thesis of separation between religion and school is questionable [23] .  While some people campaign for schools and other institutions to be sterile from anything to do with religion, the extreme secularists are constantly trying to increase their interference in the private and personal affairs of religion: the clothes we should wear, our choice of religious figures, the level of our religious conviction, the interpretation of our sacred texts and our attitudes towards them, the structures of our scholastic authentication mechanisms, our methods of teaching religion, our attitudes towards tradition, our rituals, and the list continues.  It appears from the evidence that these secularists wish to rid the world of what they call ‘organised religion’.  In its place we are expected to practise a ‘disorganised religion’ with maximum interference from them, to the extent that they even dictate to us our choice of clothes and the syntax of our kalimah.

4.            Muslim girls, by virtue of wearing hijab, are reflecting their fathers’ view rather than their own

Girls from all backgrounds, be they Christian, Muslim, Jewish or ‘Secular’, in terms of their appearance and behaviour, often reflect the views of their fathers and mothers.  This ‘novel’ concept is called parenting.  Every Friday night in homes across the United Kingdom and beyond there are thousands of fathers who protest over the skimpiness of skirts and blouses when their daughters leave for the night clubs.  It is a natural human instinct for parents to be protective towards their daughters and particularly the extent to which their daughters expose their bodies in public.  Dr Harris quotes from the results of the study conducted by the Commission in France, which recommended the ban, saying:

‘[T]hey found that in many cases girls were being forced to wear [the hijab], to cover their hair, by the men in their community, and I think that France recognises that in school, at least, girls should be free from that sort of cultural persuasion’ (Sunday Herald Online, 17^th January 2004).

Given that Dr Harris and others have found no qualms to justify what he calls ‘freedom from cultural persuasion’ – i.e., preventing parents from having a say in the appearance and behaviour of their children whilst in school – I believe it is necessary to remind him and his friends of the secular family law in this country (which is not dissimilar to that of most Western countries).  Rights of parents are guaranteed through ‘Parental Responsibility’ even when children are in school.  The Latey Committee accepted that disciplinary rules in colleges could only be justified by reference to the concept of in loco parentis [24] .  The Children Act 1989 defines a child as ‘a person under the age of eighteen’.  According to the Act, children under 18 may not enter betting shops [25] or be tattooed [26] .  Children under 17 may not purchase crossbows [27] and those under 16 cannot obtain the ‘morning-after pill’ without prescription [28] or buy a National Lottery ticket.  We argue that these are all rationalised by the aim of preventing harm to children because of their presumed inability to make wise decisions [29] .  In the same way, Muslims will argue that hijab is a means of preventing harm.  The harm is two fold: spiritual and perceptual.  We do not allow children to purchase lottery tickets because of the long-term dangers this practice could have on the child’s character.  Muslims believe, and people are free to disagree, that excessive exposure of the body has long-term negative consequences on the identity of female Muslims.  Muslim girls, and naturally their parents, should have the freedom to choose.

5.            Hijab is not sanctioned by the Quran

The Quran was not sent down on its own.  It was revealed to the Prophet (SAWS) who exemplified its teachings.  His entire character was based on the Quran and so is the guidance he gave to his companions.  This body of knowledge is conveyed to us in an unbroken chain of scholastic authority that has survived the test of time and continues to play its role in the modern world.  As time progresses and needs change, the scholars of these traditions decide, after rigorous consideration and with an acceptable level of consensus, on the importance of certain aspects of religious practice.  This is certainly not the territory of self appointed pseudo-experts or freelance activists with their own political motivations.  Hijab is one of the inalienable aspects of practice by virtue of being rooted in clear textual Guidance.  Allah says in Quran:

 

قل للمؤمنات يغضضن من أبصارهن ويحفظن فروجهن ولا يبدين زينتهن إلا ما ظهر منها وليضربن بخمرهن على جيوبهن ولا يبدين زينتهن

‘And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty: that they should not exhibit their beauty and adornment except what (must ordinarily) appear thereof; that they should draw their khimar over their bosoms and not exhibit their beauty …’(Al-Nur 24:31).

يآ أيها النبي قل لازواجك وبناتك ونسآء المؤمنين يدنين عليهن من جلابيبهن ذلك أدنى أن يعرفن فلا يؤذين وكان الله غفورا رحيما

‘O Prophet!  Tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to draw their Jilbab above