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Headscarves and Me

 

By Sajia Kabir, OP Contributor

 

When I was living in Bangladesh, I would not, for most of
the time, have thought of putting on a veil, not even when
I was going through my devout reformist Muslim phase.
There would be certain occasions when I would will-
ingly wear the hijab, such as when praying, or when the
azan (Islamic call to prayer) was being said, or when I was

Student Newspapers Satirize Cartoon Controversy

By Tessa Vanderhart, CUP Central Bureau Chief

WINNIPEG (CUP)—Student newspapers across Canada,
like media across the world, have had to make tough edi-
torial decisions about the Jyllands-Posten cartoons.

Some, notably the Strand, the Gateway, and the Peak,
have chosen to run editorial cartoons on the subject of
these highly contentious cartoons. One paper, UPEI’s the
Cadre, even chose to print the original cartoons.

Though it appears that students are understandably
divided on the issue, editors of these papers—many of
them members of the Canadian University Press—
expressed very little regret at what readers of student
newspapers across the country have been exposed to in
satirical cartoons and editorials.

Nick Ragaz, the managing editor at the S7rand, the stu-
dent newspaper of Victoria College at the University of
Toronto, explained his newspaper’s decision to print a car-
toon depicting Jesus kissing Mohammed in the “tunnel of
tolerance.”

“The question that we had was: do we not publish
this? And if not, how do we justify this?” said Ragaz.

The cartoon was a volunteer contribution, passed

 

at a milad (Bengali Muslim religious gathering). But I
never felt any compulsion to wear the veil all the time.

The only time my mother and her sisters ever wore
burkhas was when they were riding the rickshaws to uni-
versity. Once they got there they would take the burkhas
off. My late grandfather was a maulana (Islamic scholar)
with relatively liberal tendencies, and while he was not
strict about purdah, he wanted to avoid the disapproving
looks of the neighbours.

My mother is a devout Muslim, but she has always
looked upon the veil as a form of religious ostentatious-
ness; her attitude was that you do not need to cover your
head to lead a virtuous life. Her attitude is not uncommon
among other Bangladeshi middle-upper class Muslim
women, who are content simply to wear the dupatta (sal-
wat kameez scarf) or aachol (loose end of sari) so that it
covers the breast.

Even when Bangladeshi women do cover their heads,
it is more often with the dupatta and aachol rather than
with a burkha or a separate shawl. A favourite pastime of
liberal Bangladeshi Muslim women is to sneer at Saudi
Arabian rich girls who wear miniskirts under their
burkhas. There was much merriment in my family over an
aunt of ours who had purchased a couple of fashionable
burkhas with lots of embroidery and sequins, which she at
the end was unable to wear due to allergies to the nylon
from which they were made.

Which is not to say that there isn’t a vocal segment of
the Muslim populace who pay too much attention to
women’s supposed need for modest dress. They look
longingly to the example in garment legislation set by
Saudia Arabia and Iran (although which of the two they
admire varies). Some of these people are Muslim women,
often college-educated and working outside the home,
who believe that the hijab protects the female body from
the tyranny of the male gaze. They point to the scarcely
utopian state of the West, with its body-image disorders
and hypersexualization of teenage girls.

along from the University of Toronto’s larger student
paper, the Varsity.

The Strand considered the offensive nature of the car-
toon but in the end, found “no reasons not to publish”
and has received both positive and negative feedback. A
letter from the students’ union accused the paper of an
“act of hate” and concerns have also been voiced by the
Muslim students’ association on campus.

“Since nobody wants to pull the papers off the stands
I don’t regret it,” he said.

Rather, Ragaz said, the cartoon was published in a
genuine effort to promote tolerance, if occasionally misin-
terpreted.

“We thought about this carefully and were sincere in
our expressions of goodwill,” Ragaz said.

Both the Canadian Press and the Toronto Star have
written stories about the Strands cartoon—the Star’ atten-
tion was “rewarding,” according to Ragaz, while CP
termed him “defiant and unapologetic.”

But the media attention garnered by the Strand doesn’t
compare with attention paid to the Cadre. The University

I strongly disagree with this—any study of women’s
magazines and popular fiction and film in Bangladesh (I
cannot speak for the rest of the Muslim world) will show
women concerned that they are too dark-skinned, among
other possible flaws. Skin color is a major factor in the
deshi marriage market. And it is not necessarily the case
that the more Islamicist the girl’s family, the less con-
cerned with beauty they are (although the reverse is not
invariably true, either).

But while I wouldn’t want to wear a burkha myself,
except as maybe a postmodern-situational-identifiable ges-
ture of irony during a performance of highly erotically
charged feminist songs, I do strongly oppose the steps
that the governments of Western Europe are taking to
ban the hijab.

Yes, parents are forcing their daughters to wear clothes
they do not want to wear. The question people should be
asking themselves is, “Is this a domestic dispute that the
state has grounds to intervene in?” After all, since the
1960s—actually, probably since earlier than that—
teenagers and young adults all over the world have dis-
agreed with their parents and guardians over what clothes
they want to wear, and until now the state has rarely
stepped in on the side of youth. I realize that there have
been serious cases of family abuse over the wearing of the
hijab, but these should be dealt with by the social services
and the police, not by banning the hijab altogether.

And yet...I1 would not want to live in a country of
compulsory veiling. The practice sexualizes the female
body every bit as much as lingerie ads on billboards. The
practice promotes the notion that women have only them-
selves to blame if they are harassed, abused, or raped.
Plus, I rather like walking around in shorts during hot
spells.

I will fight for women’s freedom to wear the veil, but

how many of them will fight for my freedom not to wear
the veil?

of PEI student newspaper reprinted the Jyllands-Posten
cartoons, the first newspaper in Canada to do so.

Cadre editor-in-chief Ray Keating said that the car-
toons were printed under the newspaper’s mandate to
inform students.

He added that the cartoons were published with the
support of the student union, but when the university
administration banned distribution of the papers on cam-
pus, legal action was threatened. The Cadre is owned by
the UPEI students’ union.

“Once we were censored, then it became a free speech
issue,” said Keating.

Though they disagree, Keating said the student union
and the Cadre are still on good terms. Some councillors
later expressed a desire to have been consulted before the
issues were pulled from the stands.

Daniel Kaszor, the editor-in-chief of the Gateway at
the University of Alberta, made the editorial decision to
publish a cartoon along with an editorial on February 7.

In the Gateway’s cartoon, a man in a turban yells, “How
dare you say that Muslims are racist? I should kill you for