Recently there has been controversy around the veil worn by some Muslim women to conceal their faces. Many have seen this as a conflict between Muslims on one side and the “Islamophobic” west on the other. Nothing could be further from the truth. The debate on the wearing of the face veil and the status of women in Muslim society is being waged primarily within Muslim society and is part of the battle for the heart and soul of Muslim communities worldwide.
From Tunisia to Turkey and Indonesia to India, and here in Canada, Muslims are fiercely engaged in debating the issue. At times there are dire consequences for those who see the niqab as a major obstacle in the path of women’s economic and social empowerment.
Sociologist Mohammad A. Qadeer, professor emeritus at Queen’s University, recently wrote in the Globe and Mail, “Concealment of the face is neither religiously necessary nor socially desirable.”[1] He cautioned Muslim communities to “reappraise this custom, before a scare about terrorists or a bank hold-up raises a public uproar against the niqab.”
In fact, none other than Dr. Yousuf al-Qaradawi, the Qatar-based Islamic scholar, stated in a Friday sermon, “it is not obligatory for Muslim women to wear the niqab (full face veil).” He went on to tell his congregation, “The majority of Muslim scholars and I do not support the niqab in which women cover their faces.”[2]
Yet the practice of covering one’s face as an expression of Islamic religiosity is not diminishing. It is growing.
The Muslim Canadian Congress acknowledges that women have the right to dress as they please—but the rights of the individual have to be balanced with the rights of society. We must keep in mind the impact we have on Canadian society when we exercise our rights. Wearing veils—whether as an expression of religious identity, or as a means of political defiance, is not in the best interest of Canada’s Muslim communities. Nor is it a requirement of our Islamic faith.
Historical evidence
The Muslim world has seen many women in power, whom Moroccan author Fatimah Mernissi refers to as “The Forgotten Queens of Islam”. Whether it was the Fatimide Queen Sitt al-Mulk in the 11th century Egypt or Razia Sultana in 13th century India, Muslim queens governed from their thrones, presiding over meetings with their advisors and with their faces uncovered, as is shown in paintings from those times.
From the times of the early Arab Ummayads and Abbasides to the Persian Safavids, the Indian Moghuls and the Turkish Ottomans, never have Muslim women been forced by decree to cover their faces as an act of religiosity and piety.
Tying religiosity and piety to face coverings is a twentieth-century phenomenon created by the Wahabbis in Saudi Arabia. Today, due to Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth, and their funding of Islamic schools around the world (including Canada), they’re managing to impose their irrational cult on Muslims in the western world. And this oppressive kingdom has the unstinting support of the United States!
The Wahabbis are operating in defiance of what Muslims have known, taught and believed for hundreds of years. They’re ignoring our Muslim heritage. They’re targeting young Muslim women. The Wahabbis want everyone to believe that women should accept a second-class status. And they want women to believe that this segregationist ideology is something they’ve chosen for themselves.
Choices can only be made if the individual is, realistically, in a position to exercise a free choice. There’s pressure within any minority community to conform, to submit to community patriotism. And so Canadian Muslim women are told they must not stand up to their organized disenfranchisement.
Economic empowerment
In the late 1990s the City of Toronto commissioned Professor Michael Ornstein of York University to study the growing levels of poverty among the city’s racial minorities. His report, which came out in 2000, was a bombshell, titled Ethno-Racial Inequality in the City of Toronto: An Analysis of the 1996 Census.
Ornstein laid bare the simmering poverty among minorities in Toronto and released a picture of Toronto that shocked not only the ruling elites of the city, but also the self-styled leaders of various communities. These leaders had refused to even acknowledge the working poor among them. Professor Ornstein wrote:
“Combining all the non-European groups, the family poverty rate is 34.3 percent, more than twice the figure for the Europeans and Canadians. Non-European families make up 36.9 percent of all families in Toronto, but account for 58.9 percent of all poor families.”
The statistics for Muslims communities were even more depressing, ranging from 70% to 80% living in poverty.
If women in marginalized families are made to cover their faces, Muslim communities facing the poverty trap will find it increasingly difficult to get out of it. A veil over the face will close the doors to employment of these women in professions where face-to-face human interaction is absolutely essential.
It would be inconceivable for a man or a woman in a face mask to be employed in Canada as a police officer, a physician, a nurse, a school teacher, an airline pilot, a submarine commander, a judge, a lawyer, a bank clerk, as an office receptionist or even a store clerk.
The Muslim Canadian Congress feels that the face veil would create another obstacle to the economic empowerment of the Muslim community, which already faces discrimination based on the skin color and accents.
The Islamists are not fighting discrimination or solving problems. They’re making it more difficult for us to progress.
Conclusion
We urge our Muslim sisters not to wear the niqab in public. It is not a religious obligation. It does not help us improve our marginalized status in Canadian society. In fact, the niqab makes the position of Muslim women worse.
A bright and prosperous future for Muslims in Canada can best be ensured when we are seen as fully integrated into the fabric of Canadian society. We’re not called on to give up any part of our faith, which is constitutionally guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. No face covering—whether veil, burqa or niqab—has any legitimacy as a religious practice for Muslims.
The Muslim Canadian Congress strongly believes that every human being, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, has an inherent right to be able to see the face of the person they are dealing with. Any attempt to conceal one’s identity by invoking one’s faith is unfair, and a disingenuous abuse of religion. Demanding the right to see everyone, while concealing one’s own identity behind a mask, is unethical at best. And at worst, it’s an arrogant attempt to demonstrate one’s superiority.
Islam must not be used as a tool to score political points for the Islamist agenda.
Notes
[1] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060327.wcomment0327/BNStory/Front/