I am currently reading Excellent Daughters: The Secret Lives of Young Women Who Are Transforming the Arab World by Katherine Zoepf. One chapter discusses the use of the veil or the hijab and it is a most telling revelation about the astonishing differences of thinking in the traditional Islamic society as contrasted with Western thought. Zoepf recounts this encounter with a Muslim woman who proudly explains why she wears the hijab.
What if a man sees you girls walking in the street with your hair uncovered and becomes so aroused that he goes and abuses a child?
Wouldn’t you feel that it was your fault that this child was raped? I know that I could never live with myself if something like that happened. That is why I wear the hijab.
Although only two or three years younger than Zoepf, this Muslim woman named Asma is light years removed from the idea that “blaming an unveiled woman for the actions of a child molester [is] outrageous [and] to argue otherwise [is] to suggest that men [aren’t] responsible for themselves.”
Zoepf quotes Fatima Mernissi, a Moroccan sociologist who has explained that the traditional Islamic society “hardly acknowledge[s] the individual, whom it abhor[s] as a disturber of the collective harmony.” Consequently, traditional society “produce[s] Muslims who [are] literally ‘submissive’ to the will of the group.”
If seen in a positive light, this group cohesion creates a strong community bond where all Muslims are guardians of the others in the group. Thus, “if someone slipped, then the guilt would be shared.” Consequently, less important are the rights of the individual compared with the “rights of the community.” This sense of group identity is certainly a common thread among tightly knit communities of many different religious organizations.
On the other hand, this misogyny “disproportionately” burdens female members. Thus, females who grow up under this constant scrutiny “face a particularly difficult path, since the mere fact of their being in the public eye is often enough to raise suspicions about their modesty.”
Herein lies a fundamental and clear-cut difference between a society based on individual responsibility for one’s actions and one based on group conformity wrapped around a guilt-induced rationale. At no time does a man’s accountability for assault enter this mindset. According to this point of view, the woman deliberately put herself in a position to be victimized and the community did nothing to stop the woman’s actions. This, is why Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, Australia’s most senior Muslim cleric can assert, without irony, that an unveiled woman is asking to be raped since she is “like uncovered meat who attract sexual predators.” Moreover, al Hilali “suggested that a group of Muslim men recently jailed for many years for gang rapes were not entirely to blame” since there were women who “sway suggestively” and “wore make-up and immodest dress.” He went on to say that if the woman “was in her room, in her home, in her hijab (veil), no problem would have occurred.” Thus, the problem of rape lies entirely with the women victims.
