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Aqsa Parvez: Covering up the diversity of Muslim women

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Dec 13, 2007

                                Why are they all covered?

This week in Toronto a 16-year-old Muslim girl was murdered, allegedly by her own father.

Aqsa Parvez told friends and adults at her public high school that she feared what her father would do if she stuck by her decision to reject the hijab — the Islamic headscarf. She also said it’s better to live in a shelter than at home.

Nobody listened. Now she’s dead.

Moderate Muslims have warned that we shouldn’t leap to conclusions. Who knows what other dynamics infected her family, spout hijab-hooded mouthpieces on Canadian TV. Not once have I heard these upstanding Muslims say that whatever the “family dynamics,” killing is not a solution. Ever. How’s that for basic morality?

Of course, mainstream Muslims will argue that I’m the one who needs to learn basic morality. After all, they’ll say, the Qur’an obligates pious women to wear the hijab.

Not quite. The Qur’an asks women and men to dress modestly. That could mean wearing long sleeves. The hijab itself comes from tribal culture that pre-dates Islam. And culture, far from being God-given, is man-made.

You need venture no further than Muslim Girl magazine to witness how mainstream Muslims reinforce the lie that the hijab is mandatory. This supposedly hip (and certainly glossy) publication routinely features covered girls as their cover girls. So much for representing the full diversity of the Muslim sisterhood.

Even “progressive” non-Muslims fall into this trap. Study the photo above. It’s a post-card flogged by the Interfaith Center of New York. Can you detect even one Muslim woman who’s not covered?

I see the veiled chick at the far end. It gets less conservative from there — but not to the point of depicting a Muslim woman who prays without submitting herself to a scarf.

Worse, the blurb on the back celebrates the “diversity of Muslim communities in the city.” Show me where.

Of course, the diversity exists in spades. So does the tension between Muslim parents and their daughters. In Berlin earlier this year, a group of young Muslim women — not a hijabi among them! — approached me to express gratitude that I’d posted an Islamic defense of inter-faith marriage.

Because this document is written by an imam, they can use it to legitimately challenge parents and clerics who want to force girls into loveless marriages with other Muslims. These young women told me that the Islamic inter-faith marriage defense is being downloaded by their friends. It’s also being used by German social services to counsel distraught Muslim girls.

For all of my readers who feel powerless to help another Aqsa Parvez, I have simple advice: Listen to her. Then come to this website for resources in various languages. Be not afraid of anything except complacency.

Meanwhile, may Aqsa rest in peace. Finally.