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The Crusades are back, and this time around the battlefield is women’s bodies

Saturday October 01 2016

When will there come a time that women’s bodies are not the battlefield on which wars of culture are fought? Every day a piece of news emerges about the latest affront: The issue of the hijab.

I suppose a feminist should have a hardline position about the issue of covering oneself for modesty. Islam is hardly the only religion that encourages this; some varieties of Catholic nuns go about with their hair concealed (yes, nuns do come in different flavours) and there are Judaic traditions that also encourage the covering of a woman’s hair. And so on and so forth.

The only position that makes sense in this case is that of non-coercion. There are many, many reasons for what people wear and why they wear it. While I am under no illusion that it is all merrily consensual, as a cultural relativist it is hard for me to promote one set of sartorial values over another absolutely. This is making it hard to watch the swelling movement against the hijab and burkini in Europe.

Of course this is part of a nationalist reaction against immigrants from the Middle East and those who are Muslim. In the past couple of decades, the media has managed to conflate terrorism with Islam to such an extent that there are people out there who genuinely think they are the same.

The image that has stuck with me and refuses to let go is that of a woman sat on a beach in Nice, France while two male police officers hover above her. She has been told to take her head covering off while her children look on. How confusing it must have been: What had their mother done to deserve such treatment? Has this incident harmed them?

It made me consider all the many times tourists in Zanzibar and on the coast have blithely ignored local culture by wearing clothing that is revealing in a conservative culture. The offence is much worse during the Holy Month and each year, we hear stories of women being stripped or beaten for their apparel. In either case, was it okay to take it out on the woman? No, of course not.

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But while it wouldn’t harm a tourist to throw on a polite shawl when walking around Stone Town, the lady in the hijab was facing a different kind of prejudice. When we reveal too much, we can always conceal again, but to be revealed against your will? That’s a disempowerment with considerably more violence behind it.

Contrast the silhouette of a French man in riot gear standing over a woman and her child with those of women living in areas that have been liberated from extremist control joyfully burning their hated coverings. Without an anti-Islamic, racist context, these images next to each other would tell a very different story.

In spite of the media’s visual indoctrination, I am of the opinion that the majority of people who do evil deeds tend to wear bespoke suits and exquisitely crafted leather footwear. Either that or military uniforms.

Highly educated people who probably know what to do with a fish knife and/or how to source an untraceable load of Kalashnikov rifles. People who believe so fervently in serving their country that piloting craft to drop bombs on populated areas is just “part of the job.”

Middle managers in the arms manufacturing industry who are just trying to make enough to pay the mortgage and get their kid through an increasingly expensive tertiary education system.

Women in hijabs are not the world’s greatest problem. The fact that a mere handful have been suicide bombers is barely worth noting, to be honest, and nobody has any business bullying a woman about her clothing choices. Yes, the history of enmity between Christian Europe and Islam is a very long and storied one. What is unexpected is to see elements of the era of the Crusades come back to haunt us.

Elsie Eyakuze is an independent consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report, http://mikochenireport.blogspot.com. E-mail: [email protected]

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