Discussions about women’s agency, religion, “freedom” and feminism(s) can be centered around different topics and perspectives. Sometimes feminists in Western frameworks choose to center these conversations around the “hijab debate.” This debate’s significance extends far beyond the fabric itself, encapsulating complex narratives of empowerment, oppression, and societal perceptions. The “hijab debate” narrows and oversimplifies “what it means (to be)” Arab, Muslim, or a woman in the Middle East (Abu-Lughod 786). It occupies space and distracts the conversation about “freedom” or “oppression” from Muslim women’s real lives since it focuses on the physical object of the veil—and opinions around it.
This post delves into two distinct perspectives on the debate, examining how two Spanish journalists navigate the complexities inherent in this topic through three crucial themes surrounding the “hijab debate”, emphasizing the necessity for nuance and complexity to avoid perpetuating homogenizing and Orientalist narratives. The first theme, focusing on “freedom,” underscores how discussions easily fall into orientalist tropes, particularly the notion of "saving Muslim women." The second theme critiques absolutism, exemplified in Molina's article, highlighting how concepts like Islam, hijab, freedom, and subjugation are treated as absolute ideas without room for nuance. Finally, the third theme explores who gets to participate in these discussions, emphasizing the need to question mainstream media's role in framing the hijab discourse. We must advocate for nuanced and specific language to avoid reinforcing uni-directional narratives and understand that vital to deconstruct these orientalist discourses to ensure a more accurate portrayal of Muslim women's experiences.
To comprehend these perspectives, we must understand Orientalism. Within this orientalist discourse, some authors perpetuate absolute ideas and concepts, constructing rigid ideological binaries that fail to capture the nuanced reality of Muslim women's lives (AbuLughod 788). We will think of ‘Orientalism’ as a discourse that simultaneously enables and justifies the domination of the ‘Orient.’ Edward Said's concept of Orientalism provides an outline of how the hijab discourse is not isolated but intricately connected to broader narratives of superiority and domination in Western societies (Said 10).
Violeta Molina, in “Can you be a feminist and defend the veil?” offers what could be considered an orientalist discourse dressed as a “feminist” opinion piece (Molina). Molina's work reflects Western fantasies of penetrating the mysteries of the Orient and accessing the interiority of the other, as noted by Meyda Yegenoglu (Yegenoglu 46). In contrast, Chaimae Essousi in “It's not feminism, it's called Obsession” critiques the absolutist approach present in some Western feminist texts (like Molina’s). Essousi's article challenges the Orientalist discourse and questions the generalizations and homogenizations inherent in Western feminist discussions on the hijab, exposing the weaknesses in these simplified narratives (Essousi). We aim to unravel the layers of the hijab debate and its entanglement with Orientalist discourse, highlighting the importance of a more nuanced understanding in discussions of Muslim women's experiences. These news articles were written in the same country, with no more than two years of difference, which makes them compelling examples.
The first theme in both articles explores the discussion on "freedom," prone to orientalist feminist tropes like the "saving Muslim women" stereotype. Molina counterposes the idea of the hijab as a sign of subjugation and patriarchy with the notion of the hijab as freedom and identity. This binary approach, opposing subjugation to freedom, homogenizes women who wear the hijab and implies they need liberation, aligning with a problematic perspective that positions Western feminism as culturally superior—women would have to transform “to something” (something being Western feminism as the “superior” cultural ideology) (Abu-Lughod 788). Thus, perpetuating the idea of "civilizing" and "liberating" the "backward" Orient— making the veiled Muslim woman other (Yegenoglu 46, 49).
Essousi challenges the idea of centering the debate of liberty around the hijab since these feed further the orientalist narratives, as seen in historical contexts like missionary work and colonial feminisms that aimed to "save" women. Lastly, we are minded by Abu-Lughod that wearing the hijab shouldn't be mistaken for a lack of agency (Abu-Lughod 786). The second theme present is the reinforcement of the Orientalist construction of the “silent and veiled Muslim woman” through the absolutization of concepts in contrast with Essousi’s nuance. Molina’s article categorizes Islam, hijab, freedom, and subjugation as absolutes, lacking nuanced definitions or scholarly references. El Hachmi, cited by Molina, asserts that the hijab can't be feminist, equating it with accepting patriarchy and deeming support for it as "insane and conservative," posing a threat to European "freedom and modernity” (Molina). Essousi challenges this absolutism, revealing weaknesses in oversimplified narratives (Essousi).
For instance, the construction of the "silent and veiled Muslim woman" is an Orientalist construct that reinforces and justifies the unwanted intervention in the “Middle East” 3 by White Feminist Authority feminisms or governments that aim to “liberate” Muslim women— and not only in the Global South, but it can happen to racialized women in the West (Hasan 139). The third theme scrutinizes the legitimacy of voices and the consequences of reductive discourse(s). Who gets to discuss these topics, and whose voice gets legitimacy? Who is paying the price for this reductive discourse? Essousi highlights the perpetuation of this homogenizing discourse in the media, emphasizing the differential treatment of Muslim women compared to their Western counterparts (Essousi). For example, Muslim women are wheeled to different expectations than (unveiled) Western women—“the veiled woman must defend and justify why veiling is freedom, while the unveiled woman must defend and justify why the veil is oppression”.
Unlike a simplified binary approach, Essousi challenges mainstream media's role in framing the hijab discourse, she criticizes the dichotomous logic of "veil yes, veil no”(Essousi). Therefore, that “classic veil discussion” already positions using a hijab as our norm, as unnatural, and deviant. We must observe where these debates start, and whose opinions are seen as legitimate or prestigious—in this case western mainstream media sources or Western academics (Essousi). Essousi proposes a new way to center these debates (or rather decenter them). We must “raise questions that avoid (uni)directionality and the imposition of agendas alien to the interests of the community itself…[for example] why veiled women suffer from a triple glass ceiling when it comes to labor-economic opportunities in this country” (Essousi). These discourses are affecting women through growing Islamophobia, which compounds with the barriers they were already navigating— racism, xenophobia, and misogyny. By critiquing the Western superiority and civilizational discourse prevalent in orientalist "feminist ideas” we can observe how these 4 discourses perpetuate power dynamics, and how the narrative of the veiled woman who needs to be saved while the unveiled woman advances toward "freedom" hides various and determined intentions.
Image: A mural artist & activist Ms Saffa
Works Cited
Abu-Lughod, Lila. “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others.” American Anthropologist, vol. 104, no. 3, 2002, pp. 783–90.
Essousi, Chaimae. “No Es Feminismo, Se Llama Obsesión.” El Salto Diario, 2019, www.elsaltodiario.com/1492/no-es-feminismo. Accessed 8 Feb. 2024.
Hasan, Wafaa. Orientalist Feminism and the Politics of Critical Dialogue Between Israeli and Palestinian Women. Diss. 2012
Molina, Violeta. “¿Se Puede Ser Feminista y Defender El Velo?” el Periódico de España, 16 Nov. 2021, www.epe.es/es/igualdad/20211115/feminismo-velo-hiyab-izquierda-12853672. Accessed 8 Feb. 2024.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Redwood Burn Limited Trowbridge & Esher, 1980. Yegenoglu, Meyda. “Veiled Fantasies: Cultural and Sexual Difference in the Discourse of Orientalism.” Colonial Fantasies, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 39–67.
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