Page 2 of 2 COMMENT
Unveiling men in the Arab world By Sami Moubayed
equally wrong, since according to Islam, he who wrongs the faith should be
given a fair trial before being convicted.
Even al-Azhar said that, where one of its theologians, Muhammad Hassan al-Din
noted: "Blood must not be shed except after a trial [when the accused has been]
given a chance to defend himself." The Iranians just sentenced Rushdie to
death. Period. The
Japanese translator of the book was stabbed to death in 1989. Less than a month
later, assassins tried to kill (and seriously injured) the Italian translator.
The publisher in Norway suffered an assassination attempt. In July 1933, a mob
attacked a literary festival in Turkey where Aziz Nesin, the Turkish translator
of the novel, was present. They demanded that he be handed over for summary
execution. When that did not happen, the mob (numbered 2,000) set the hotel
ablaze, killing 37 people (Nesin actually survived the fire and escaped).
Syria in the 1920s witnessed the rise of a feminist movement that encouraged
unveiling, influenced by the secular nationalism that developed in Egypt, and
was brought to this part of the world by the British and the French. The first
to do so in Syria was Naziq al-Abid, who courageously removed the veil in
public (before Huda Shaarawi did so in Egypt in 1923) to fight alongside
General Yusuf al-Azma, the minister of war, at the battle of Maysaloun in 1920.
Here was a young woman from the nobility of Damascus, the daughter of a pasha,
unveiling in public to take part in the most sacred of tasks usually reserved
for men: warfare. This shook Damascus out of its stuffy puritanism, which had
been inherited from the Ottoman era, showing that gender roles were changing
quickly in Syria.
Eight years later, in April 1928, a 20-year-old girl named Nazira Zayn al-Din
wrote a book called Unveiling and Veiling, saying she had read,
understood, and interpreted the Holy Koran and therefore, she had the authority
and analytical skills to challenge the teachings of Islam's clerics, men who
were by far older and wiser than her. Her interpretation of Islam, she boldly
said, was that the veil was un-Islamic. If a woman was forced to wear the veil
by her father, husband or brother, Zayn al-Din argued, then she should take him
to court.
Other ideas presented by her were that men and woman should mix socially
because this develops moral progress, and that both sexes should be educated in
the same classrooms. Men and women, she added, should equally be able to hold
public office and vote in government elections. They must be free to study the
Koran themselves, and it should not be dictated on them by an oppressive older
generation of clerics.
Great men from Islam, including the muftis of Beirut and Damascus, wrote
against her, arguing that she did not have the authority to speak on Islam and
dismiss the veil as un-Islamic. Nobody, however, accused her of treason or
blasphemy. They accused her of bad vision resulting from bad Islamic education.
But despite the uproar, which lasted for two years, the Syrians and the Muslim
establishments did not let the issue get out of hand. They did not lead street
demonstrations for weeks, as if the Muslim world had no other concern than
Nazira Zayn al-Din.
The leaders of Islam in 1927-30 were far too busy to occupy themselves and the
Muslim community at large with the ideas of a 20-year-old girl. They had better
things to do: attend to their mosques, run their charity organizations, answer
theological questions, cater to Muslim education, promote cleanliness, lead
political issues, fight the French, etc.
Targeting Christian symbols
Arab and Muslim community leaders have quite unintentionally made the ugly
cartoons and the remarks of Attiya famous - more famous than the cartoonist or
Attiya would have ever dreamed. They gave them free publicity.
The same applies to a similar controversy, this time in the Christian world, at
an art exhibition last month in Sydney where two Australian artists were
slammed for paintings that insulted Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. One
showed Christ being morphed into Osama bin Laden. The other showed the Virgin
wearing a Muslim burqa. The paintings were condemned by Prime Minister
John Howard, with Australian columnists asking if the painters could have been
so bold had they been using Islamic icons.
My opinion is that the insulting images of Christ and Virgin Mary are equally
provocative as the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. The only difference is
that these paintings were not drawn by Muslims. They were drawn by rebellious
Christians. Religious symbols, which arouse so much passion among people,
should be red lines (by law) that cannot be touched in the name of art,
intellectualism, etc.
Unveiling men
In 1930, the Syrian daily Al-Shaab wrote an editorial saying: "Men should
unveil, before women in Syria." A woman's veil, it added, is a physical garment
that covers her head and sometimes her face. It is a matter of personal choice
and freedom. It does not prevent her from being a good citizen and a highly
professional or prolific woman.
Modern examples of veiled woman who are very active in their careers are
Khadija Bint Ganna, anchorwoman on Doha-based Al-Jazeera, Maha al-Gunaidi, the
founder and chief executive officer of Islamic Networks Group, Ingrid Mattson,
a Canadian professor of Islamic studies and current vice president of the
Islamic Society of North America, and Benazir Bhutto, prime minister of
Pakistan in 1988-90 and 1993-96, who was the first woman in modern times to
lead a Muslim country (her veil differed from the one worn in the Middle East).
She is now preparing for a thundering comeback to Pakistani politics after
years of exile.
Most men in our societies are more veiled than any of these women. A man's veil
is an abstract one, created by him at will and not imposed by God. It is a veil
against freedom and education. It is a veil against new ideas and dialogue. It
is this man-veil that makes him walk up to the Danish Embassy and set it
ablaze, thinking that this will lead him directly to heaven.
It is this man-veil that accounts today for so much ignorance in the Arab and
Muslim world, and results in statements like those of Ezzat Attiya or the
recent one pertaining to actresses and their marriage scenes. It is this
man-veil that produces men who cannot accept women as equals, or lets them
debate whether a woman's toes should be revealed in public, while other people
around the world are studying astronomy, genetics, and informatics.
It is this man-veil that wrongly dwarfs Islam in the eyes of the West from a
great religion discussing grand ideas to a mob movement against a bunch of
silly cartoons, or Rushdie. It is this man-veil that lets men fear and hate the
West. It is this man-veil that has produced men who value and have nourished
themselves on ignorance and violence - at will - and contributed nothing to
civilization for the past 500 years.
When Mustapha al-Akkad produced Al-Risala (known as Mohammad, Messenger
of God or The Message in English) in the 1970s, a Hollywood
classic about the early days of Islam starring Anthony Quinn, Muslim scholars
outlawed the film because it showed the cane and camel of the Prophet. That
movie, however, had done Islam and the Arabs a great service in the Western
world. Akkad met with Iranian president Mohammad Khatami - a truly unveiled and
intelligent Muslim - who said that in spreading the faith, the movie ranked
second only to the Koran, because it attracted people to Islam.
Yes, men (before women) should unveil their minds throughout the Arab and
Muslim world.
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