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http://qz.com/418893/muslim-women-show-what-the-world-is-really-like-living-behind-a-veil/
Muslim Women Show What the World Is Really Like Living Behind a Veil
By Sana
Saeed – June 4, 2015
I initially
wanted to write this piece as a response to an Associated Press photo essay by Beirut-based photographer
Hassan Ammar - http://blog.apimages.com/2015/05/18/a-look-from-the-niqab/.
The essay is a collection of images Ammar took while wearing a “full niqab” as a way
to depict how some women are being forced to view the worlddue to the conservative practices of
the Islamic State. For Ammar, theniqab—a face-covering veil worn by some
Muslim women—rendered familiar, warm places cold and unfamiliar: a sunny sky
was darkened and the bright colors of life were dimmed.
Photo taken by “BintYounus,”
a Muslim woman living in Canada(Sana Saeed)Photo taken
by BintYounus, a Muslim woman living in Canada.(Sana Saeed)
I wanted to
create a verbal equivalent of the eyeroll-meets-groan reaction I experienced
while looking at Ammar’s project. As someone who has worn niqab in certain
social settings, what he was seeing seemed much more reminiscent of the view
from behind a boushiya—a specific kind of niqab with an extra piece of fabric used to
cover the eyes, if the wearer so wishes. The boushiya is not
as prevalent as the niqab, which itself is not all that common, but can
nonetheless be found everywhere from Pakistan to Canada. Both are also quite
situational for many of the women who wear them.
While Ammar
admits that he had pulled the extra fabric over his camera lens to create the
image effects, he doesn’t seem to see a problem with perpetuating the
inaccurate assertion that the view is really that of a niqab. It’s a small
detail, but something that a simple, run-of-the-mill Google search would have
easily clarified.
Let’s back
up a little bit. The real issue here is with Ammar’s essay, and the continuing
attempts, often by men, to comment on or recreate the experiences of women.
Putting aside his patronizing approach, the presumably well-intentioned project
has ultimately resulted in damaging depictions that will end up hurting Muslim
women—both those who choose to, and those who are forced to wear the niqab
(and, by proxy, other forms of veils).
These
stereotypes reinforce the idea that women who choose to cover themselves are
segregated from society, despite being within it; an interesting thought when
we consider that more countries ban forms of Muslim veils than the number
of countries which force women to wear them. (In other words: who’s really
doing the social segregation here?)
But while I
could write an epic takedown on the points above alone, I decided instead to do
what comes naturally to a tech-addicted twenty-something: I posted about the project
on Facebook. I shared the essay and asked women who wore niqab to get in touch
and let me know how they actually see the world. Is it really like what Hassan
Ammar shows? Or is it, well, not?
The number
of responses I received in a short period of time was astounding. Women of all
different backgrounds, ages, countries, and different careers responded with
enthusiasm. Overwhelmingly, these women were unimpressed with Ammar’s essay and
with the generally positive–or at the very least uncritical—attention
it was receiving. They sent photographs they’d taken of their world (hint: it’s
the same one you and I know), as well as personal stories. Running throughout
these anecdotes was a central theme: it’s frustrating to feel like you are
being kept out of the very narratives that purport to be about you and your
supposed “oppression.”
One woman,
Faatimah—an IT freelancer from California—told me that when she first saw the
photos, her reaction was, “wow, terrible camera settings.” Another woman, a
self-described Canadian Salafi feminist by the name of Zainab, said she snorted
out loud, appalled at “the erasure of Muslim women.” “We have a brain, we have
a voice, and a lot of us have our own cameras too,” she noted.
Then there
was the woman, an American, who spoke of the harassment she faced while wearing
niqab, harassment so fierce she felt compelled to remove it. She told me how
difficult this decision had been for her, and how she continues to struggle
daily with the way society has dictated her self-expression.
Clearly,
these many women—women who wear the niqab, who cover not just their bodies and
their hair, but also a part of their face—want and are able to be in charge of
the stories that are told about them.
Isn’t it
time they were able to?
We are
currently living in an era that has seen a sort of pop culture revival of
feminism in Euro-American societies—what it means and who can be a part of it.
So why are only some women told they can be, wear, have and do as they wish,
whereas others are told what they can wear, have and do?
Far too
often, we fall back on centuries-old Orientalist depictions and connotations of
how Muslim women choose to engage with their bodies in the public space. None
of this really involves the diversity of experience, belief and thought that
make up the lives of Muslim women—an amorphous group we refer to as though
without individual parts. Muslim women still seem to exist in popular
imagination as easily definable characters: Veiled and Unveiled, Oppressed and
Liberated.
But when I
asked Zainab how she, as a Muslim woman who straddled the worlds of feminism
and Islam, saw the world, she responded in a single word: “Clearly.”
Maybe the rest of us should too.