By Cyril Anderson

Part Three of Three

Benefits to women of hijab

In addition to the greater good of protecting the positive and nurturing social structure of the institution of family, hijab also has benefits on an individual level.  That is, hijab is not simply a matter of sacrificing one’s own happiness for the greater good.  Rather, hijab also promotes the happiness and best state of affairs for both men and women.  For women who wear hijab, it represents a protection of women walking in the streets from unwanted looks and harassment.  The hijab allows her to walk the street as a human being, without being judged and evaluated merely on the basis of her body. 

 Advertising and trends in the media and in the fashion industry have contributed toward an overall objectification of women in Western culture.  Women here feel a great pressure to keep up with the social norms by going with the trends, which, over recent decades, has meant less and less clothing.  Young women often feel discomfort because of this pressure to expose themselves in public.  However, most give in to this powerful social pressure in order to fit in and have the attention of young men and the social acceptance of their female peers.  The efforts of powerful, rich clothing companies, allied with advertising agencies, and the examples of celebrity figures in music and other popular entertainment wield mighty influence on people’s dress and behavior.  The cosmetics and diet industries, meanwhile, prey on the insecurities, both real and manufactured, of women.  Billions are made off of this push to encourage women to increasingly undress themselves in public. 

 Increasingly, the attention of these vultures has turned toward younger and younger girls in the rush to make money off the objectification of women.  These people, who have truly lost all moral compass, seek to sexualize prepubescent girls, who in a world of any justice would not even have to think about sex.  And all in the name of money.   Statistics on rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment are all alarming in Canada.  The hijab allows a woman to work against this mess by asserting her refusal to be treated as an object.  It asserts and represents her desire to be recognized and treated as a human being with a brain and soul, and her insistence on celebrating and prizing her beauty by refusing to share it with everybody.

Benefits to men of hijab

It is a strange double standard in our society that although women can rightfully complain for unwanted sexual advances by men that take away from their right to comfort and peace of mind, men who complain of the difficulties in going through life with his sanity and morality intact while surrounded by half naked women parading their bodily treasures for all the world to see are told to "deal with it," and "look away if you don't like it." Imagine if we told a sexually harassed woman to "deal with it," rather than offering a reasonable solution whereby the unreasonable affronts to her peace of mind could be removed. It is easy to say such things to men, but the fact remains that they are men, and wired in a very different way from women in regards to their sensitivity to such sensory overload.

Walk in the streets of downtown Montreal in the summer and all you see are half-exposed breasts, short skirts, exposed midriffs.  Turn to the left, you see it, turn to the right, you see it.  Look up, and you see half naked women on a billboard, or on a bus advertisement, or in the metro.  Yes, it is absolutely granted that it is a moral requirement on men to restrain themselves.  But is it reasonable, or even human to expect any man who wants to keep his wits about him on a July afternoon to walk around with his eyes fixed on the sidewalk?  This is the sad reality for those men who attempt not to be ruled by sex in our society.  A widespread application of the principles of hijab, both externally and internally, allows for an environment of peace and sanity where people can walk the streets and keep their wits about them.

Hijab as feminism and the excesses of contemporary feminism

Hijab forces people to treat a woman as a thinking human being.  It is interesting to ponder where the idea came about that a woman is more free if she goes around practically naked?  A good principle to use in such deliberations is that of asking “qui bono” - who benefits?  Is it women, or is it someone else? 

The reality is that she is living out the objectification of women by men and advertising agencies.  Advertising and media prey on, nurture, and even create women’s insecurities about looks, weight, breast size, etc, all to sell billions of dollars worth of products.  The statistics on women with eating disorders, women who are suicidal and depressed, the amount spent on Cosmetics in North America, Canada, the amount spent on diets, on breast surgeries, on plastic surgery in general are astounding.  Is this women’s “liberation?”

  There is a lot of talk in feminist circles of “empowerment,” with basically everything being seen as empowerment.  There is a lot of propaganda about this.  Some feminists claim that women can empower themselves through stripping naked, or selling their bodies as prostitutes or by posing nude.  To these morally and intellectually bankrupt individuals, she is empowering herself by taking mastery of her sexuality.  To any reasonable person this should clearly sound insane, given that these “professions” are ones that most demean and use women for financial gain, most typically, the financial gain of men.  Islam, in contrast, empowers women by preserving their dignity and calling for their treatment as thinking human beings.

 These sorts of professions are male dominated ones that cater to the lust and most perverse fantasies of men.  They objectify women, reducing them to a collection of body parts.  Even when the woman makes large amounts of money for this, is this in any way a fair return for her forfeit of her dignity as a human being?  It is indeed one of the great triumphs of the forces of evil in the past half century that women have been sold, en masse, on the idea that their willing enslavement, achieved through the relinquishing of their dignity, all for the entertainment of men’s desires, is the highest expression of their freedom and of their identity and value as women.  May God lift us from this madness.

Those Who Would Try to Ban Hijab

There is a spirit of gross hypocrisy present in those who claim that our country values personal freedom, including freedom of religion, yet at the same time, try to limit the ability of women who choose to implement certain standards of modest dress as a required aspect of their religion.  We walk through the streets and see people practically nude, with tattoos and chunks of metal skewering their bodies, all in the name of fashion, and this is perfectly O.K., but heaven and earth will fall if a woman tries to dress to a high degree of modesty?  What are the motivations of the people who launch such attacks against the rights of women to wear hijab, as we see in France, Turkey, Tunisia, and other nations?  One can be certain that the motivation, behind the public façade, has very little to do with preserving values of “freedom.”  One can be certain that some much darker intentions are involved.

                         Part One           Part Two           Part Three