Dr.
Muqtedar Khan is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Adrian College
in Michigan. He is a Visiting Fellow at Brookings Institution For a
biography of
Dr. Muqtedar Khan click: BIO
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EPISTEMOLOGICAL
HIJAB
M. A. Muqtedar Khan
| May 11, 2005
This
article was first published by Islam21
[issue 37, Sept. 2004] and then by their Friday Notes publication. Arabic
translation is by the staff of Islam21. The article has since be
republished by Altmuslim.com
[April 20, 2005], Islamic
Research Foundation, The Globalist, Naseeb Vibes [April 18, 2005], Pakistan
Link [April 29, 2005], The
Daily Times [April 19th, 2005].
FOR ARABIC TRANSLATION CLICK
HERE
___________________________________________________________
The
issue of "Hijab", its various implications and the politics
surrounding it, has become a globally polarizing issue. Whether in France
or in Turkey, between Muslims and others and between liberal Muslims and
traditional Muslims, the Hijab has become a site for the cultural struggle
between Islam and modernity and between contemporary and traditional
interpretations of Islam.
The Hijab is to some a symbol of Islam's ascendance in the world, while
for others it is a reminder of the intransigent Muslim resistance to
things that first emerge in the West - modernity, secularism, feminism,
liberalism and globalism. For some Muslims in France, it is a symbol of
their resistance to French cultural occupation over Arabs and Muslims in
France. For Islamists in Turkey, it is an important means to preserving
the Islamic heritage of Turkey from secular fundamentalism. For non-Muslim
observers, it is often an introduction to an Islam that has misogynistic
proclivities.
No matter what the perspective one employs, the fact remains that the
Hijab is an instrument of segregation and containment. |
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The Hijab in its
philosophical sense marks the Muslim woman for separation and for
"different" treatment in all aspects of life; the most egregious
being the moral differentiation it engenders. Muslims who claim that Hijab
is an instrument that compels society to treat women in a special, even
exalted way (in terms of security and respect) do not work to ensure that
the society has special affirmative laws in place that will guarantee
equal outcomes for women, since the Hijab ultimately undermines equal
opportunity.
But the sartorial Hijab, and its attendant social practices of
segregation, disenfranchisement and marginalization of women, is but a
symptom of a more profound and civilizationally debilitating form of Hijab
that is practiced by contemporary Muslim society. What is significant and
must be confronted with vigor is the Epistemological Hijab that
"good" Muslims insist on imposing on "good" Muslim
women. The Epistemological Hijab is the traditional barrier that
exists between women and Islamic sources. Women have played a marginal
role in the interpretation of Islam and articulation of the laws and rules
that are forced upon them. The Epistemological Hijab - the barrier
between women and Islamic sources - has fundamentally rendered the
articulation and enforcement of Islamic laws undemocratic. This
undemocratic tradition privileges men and exploits women. Its
reconstitution is important and more so now than before.
In the postcolonial era, a strange paradox has captivated the global
Muslim community. The nearly hundred-year-old Islamic revivalist movement
that is singularly responsible for the global significance of Islam, has
been driven by lay intellectuals. Consider the following key figures of
Islamic revival; Jamaluddin Afghani, Hassan Al Banna, Syed Qutb, Ali
Shariata, Muhammad Iqbal, Abul A'la Maududi, Khurshid Ahmed, Malik Bin
Nabi, Rashid Ghannoushi were all lay intellectuals, many educated in the
West. Many of them were of course exposed to traditional Islamic sciences,
but none of them was an Islamic jurist.
But for some inexplicable reason, the ascendant Islam today is highly
legalistic and Shariah-obsessed. Islam in the mind of many Muslims is
nothing but Shariah - what it really means in operational terms is that
the beauty, the virtues and the meaning of Islam is confined to the rather
mundane domain of medieval Islamic legalist discourse - Fiqh - which lacks
the intellectual depth of Falsafa (Islamic philosophy), the
aesthetics and the mystery of Kalam (Islamic theology) and the
spirituality and charisma of Tasawwuf (Islamic mysticism).
We live today in an era of Islamic banking - Shariah-compliant
transactions - and Halal hamburgers; we ponder over the legality of eating
marshmellows, and deliberate over the propriety of women shaking hands
with men. Mind you, all serious legal matters, such as for example
state-military relations, international transactions, have very little
input from Islam or Muslim jurists, since the Muslim world merely follows
the conventions of Western/international laws. Islamic legalism is itself
confined primarily to issues of personal matters only.
This peculiar legalism, which has colonized Islam and the Muslim
conscience, is a product of the vulnerabilities of the Muslim man who has
tried to cope with his own insecurities in a world dominated by other men.
Muslim men today are not sovereign beings. Other men dominate their world.
The only area where they exercise absolute sovereignty is over the tiny
domain called Islamic law. Here they realize their manhood. They glorify
themselves, grant themselves exotic privileges and assure themselves of
their power by exercising it on their women. This exercise of power is
realized by complete exclusion of women from participating in the process
of deriving and interpreting Islamic rulings from the sources.
There is perhaps no other legal tradition extant today where one has no
say in the articulation of laws that govern one's entire life. Muslim
women have very little if no role in the process of developing Islamic
Fiqh. Even historically, men and men alone have developed all the Madhahib
- legal schools, and legal principles, even those that deal with the most
private aspects of female existence. Thus Islamic legalism has descended
as a shroud on the Muslim women, covering her very essence from the world,
disconnecting her from her own reality, depriving her of the right to
understand and interpret her own being and disabling her from being able
to navigate her own life. Islamic legalism fundamentality veils the Muslim
woman's consciousness. Frankly it dehumanizes women.
Muslims scholars and philosophers of every tradition maintain that the
essence of humanity is either our moral compass or our reason or both. By
preventing Muslim women from exercising their reason to derive the moral
laws by which they live, Islamic legalism denies them the most human of
all exercises using our reason to become capable of making moral
judgments. In a way Islamic legalism steals women's God given humanity
from them.
Islamists are fond of repeating that in Islam, God is sovereign since He
and He alone has the right to make laws. Unfortunately, this is a very
superficial understanding of Islam and fails to recognize the distinction
between revealed principles (Wahy), human product (Fiqh). They obfuscate
the distinctions between the two and call it law (Shariah). By insisting
that the opinions and arguments of long dead medieval jurists are actually
divine law, Islamists make jurists the God of Muslim women and introduce a
new and oppressive partition/veil between the women and her real God. In
some cultures this divine status of men over women is recognized since men
are sometimes referred to as the "majazi khuda" (manifest God)
of women.
If Muslim women wish to regain their humanity and gain an equal moral
status with men, which is not denied to them in principle but only in
practice [within Islamic society], they must tear the partition that
separates them from their right to understand and interpret Islamic
sources and act upon their own understanding.
They must tear asunder this Epistemological Hijab imposed by
Islamic legalism that stands between them and their God. Until then all
discussions about the cultural and physical will remain superficial and
contained within the context of the masculine logic that currently
exercises such supreme sovereignty over Islamic principles and its
derivative laws.
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