Symbols represent human mentality in a perfect way. All human existence is covered with various symbols, and it gives the possibility to recognize certain culture, movement, organization or just a simple idea. Shakespeare claimed that life is a theatre, where all people are actors; I can add that this play often consists of encoding and decoding of symbols. Besides, a large amount of material things can have both direct and symbolic meaning. For me, it is really interesting how elements of clothes can perform symbolic functions. Time goes and these functions change, but they never disappear from the scene, because clothes were almost the first pieces of art, in which human beings could visually put the results of their mentality. One of such symbolic things is hijab in the Muslim culture. In this paper, I would like to describe how it can look, which function it plays, how it is connected with feminism and women freedom, and how it influences the life of Muslim women.
Hijab (from Arabic language – veil) can be understood as any clothes that cover the woman's body from head to toe. Nevertheless, the majority of people from both Western and Eastern worlds explain the traditional Islamic hijab as a female headscarf. Sharia, Islamic law, requires wearing hijab from Orthodox Muslim women. Those Islamic countries which are situated closer to Europe than others are more liberal about such a requirement. For example, not all Turkish women wear hijab, because the religious rules are not so strict as in the other countries, such as Iran, Iraq or Syria.
Nowadays, everybody can observe hijabs in almost every country. The globalization process has brought people of other religions to the USA, Europe, Canada, and Australia. Also, everybody has different opinions about this simple headscarf. Hijabs can be black, green, pink, red, orange, blue, and of any other color. They can be made from any non-transparent materials and have absolutely different form and style. Every woman chooses how she is going to tie it; YouTube has a large number of teaching videos how to look stylish in hijab. However, this scarf is not just an element of clothing or a decoration. It is an essential symbol of one of the world's most influential cultures, which defines the place of a woman and prescribes certain rules of ideal behaviour.
Hijab can be explained in two terms, in particular, what meaning and significance does it have for the women who wear it and what effects does its practice have on gender roles and society. The covering of the body and the head means that a woman keeps it only for her husband and no other man should see it. Islamic teachers interpret hijab as a symbol of chastity, loyalty, femininity, mystery, and impregnable faith in Allah. Ideally, such a woman takes care about hearth, children, and her beloved husband, whereas a man has a role to protect his wife and children, maintain the family, and treat his wife as a refined lady. A woman opens and realizes her power only in family and shows her body only for her husband. However, the Western world mostly thinks about hijab in the negative way. It is accepted as a barrier between a woman and the external world, a limit for her abilities, a symbolic curtain between a woman and her possible freedom.
As a result, there are both negative and positive attitudes to hijab in women's life. The supporters of the first attitude declare that hijab is a product of patriarchy when men aim to underestimate the women's necessity in the normal development of the society. Also, they are sure that Muslim women who wear hijab are oppressed. Some feminist movements touch upon this topic. It is absolutely logical according to the statement of Marilyn Frye that the basis of feminism is an assurance that women are suppressed. Moreover, it is also appropriate to mention the opinion of Bell Hooks who wrote that the first feminists were, of course, fighting for women’s rights, but “educated white women” were always in the centre. That is why they make an emphasis on the liberation of women from wearing hijab.
However, it is not so easy. In my opinion, they should remember which abovementioned values are hidden in the core of hijab conception. That is why feminists can be the cause of the same oppression they think Muslim men are. If a Muslim woman does not wear it, it means that her family accepts Islam in a different way or it is her free choice or any other reason. Still, declaring that hijab makes a woman a slave is also totally inappropriate. Many Muslim women are proud of their hijab, and they are sure that Western civilization is full of depravity and violence to women whose men force them to wear in a too revealing way. They do not want to take off hijab, because it is a symbol of their loyalty to God, to husband and their own culture. This is a positive attitude to hijab.
These two positions will exist and contradict each other forever because of the polarity of two mentalities. Because of this fact, I think that it is essential to provide a new type of feminism that will look like “a movement seeking the reorganization of the world upon a basis of sex equality”, but hijab will be understood only as a symbol of femininity, not slavery.
In conclusion, there is no one stable opinion about hijab, because it depends on many various factors. I am sure that hijab is a valuable symbol of a unique culture, and the only thing that should be removed is hijab's misinterpretation both from the side of European or American feminists and Muslim men. Feminism should save a symbol, but end sexism, oppression, and violence.
About the author: Thony Wilson is a master in English philology and histoty at California University. Tony is currently working as one of the best writers at the essay empire He also studies feminine psychology.
