The hijab identifies women as followers of Islam, with it also comes tremendous responsibility. Hijab is not merely a covering dress, but more importantly, it is behavior, manners, speech and appearance in public. The headscarf is an outer manifestation of an inner commitment to worshipping. It symbolizes a commitment to piety and is a form of spiritual beauty
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Hijab and Western Hypocrisy from Halaqah Films on Vimeo.
Self or inner morality is what gives meaning to the external scarf. The hijab is the culture of Islam worn on the bodies of Muslim women. The hijab is also a political symbol which calls multiculturalism into account in the West. And the respect of their cultural dress crosses the religious-geographical divide, even in the West, people automatically have a different sphere of engagement when dealing with women in hijab. The same is true for all cultural attire; it informs behavior and in turn behavior is informed by it.
The false focus on a woman head-dress is part of the Eurocentric tradition of removing "the other" to bring diversity into a European notion of acceptability. Thwarting the very diversity they claim to support in their human rights rants.
Europeans through the lens of cultural supremacy and sheer arrogance assume that the values of Europeans should be the values of the world. And unless the rest of the world is struggling to be more like them, the world is backward and oppressed.
This is the continuation of the tradition in orientalist thinking which misunderstood everything in African culture it saw. It is ironic that the issue of "liberation" in the West is anchored almost exclusively to sex: Freedom is an expression of excessiveness and amorality.
And while they would say "choice" when it comes to Western societies, the word is "coerced, and brainwashed" for Islamic communities. However, the majority of Hollywood actresses and singers always end up 1/2 naked in FHM and the like to appease the sexualization and commodification of Western markets. Yet this is not labelled as a form of denigration and oppression. There is a serious social expectation in Western societies to sexualize women, from Rihanna to Beyonce, all of them express themselves with degrees of nudity.
So what is the real issue the West has with the Hijab? The Hijab is a cultural political symbol of the face of the rise of Islam. Every year more of the West sees women wearing this "alien" dress on their high streets. It is a political sign of a world they have always been at odds with. But now the Muslim is again in Europe, but not with weapons of war, but weapons of culture. Now in the UK we see White skinned British girls walking down Oxford street in hijab. A serious threat to the "Europeanization" which is being diminished in the face of multiculturalism.
