Mariam Khan - Its Not About the Burqa

To Amelia and Elah.

robe-like dress or cloak

all praise and thanks be to Allah

outer garment covering the body and face, with a mesh grille or window across the eyes

sandals, usually made of leather

the people and culture of South Asia and their diaspora

prayer

a piece of cloth wrapped around the legs and tied at the waist, resembling baggy trousers

long shawl-like scarf draped across the head and shoulders

al-Fitr religious holiday marking the end of Ramadan

Eid al-Adha religious holiday honouring Ibrahims readiness to sacrifice his son

acts of obligation

gunah fault, crime, sin, guilt

sinner

records of events in the life of the Prophet Mohammed

permissible under Islamic law

form of hair removal known as sugaring

forbidden by Islamic law

meaning partition or curtain, colloquially used to refer to a scarf that covers the head

person who wears the hijab

mosque leader

God willing

essential oil derived from botanicals

long, loose outer garment that covers the entire body

long tunic

loose collarless shirt falling either above or below the knee

full ankle-length skirt worn at formal or ceremonial occasions

God has willed it

mosque

Islamic cleric; in Pakistani culture often used in a derogatory way to describe religious leaders who manipulate the masses

a school that teaches Islamic theology

Muslim woman

self, soul, consciousness, ego

marriage contract

outer garment covering the head and face, but not the eyes

judge who administers Islamic law

the central religious text of Islam

the Islamic holy month of fasting

loose trousers

general term for a traditional outfit worn by men and women in various styles, comprising the salwar and the kameez

Islamic law, derived principally from the Quran and the hadith

mens formal coat-like garment

social and legal practice, custom and tradition following the example of the Prophet Mohammed

chapter of the Quran, each divided into verses

community (the idea that all Muslims are of one body)

a mandatory charitable contribution; the third pillar of Islam

In January 2016, the Daily Telegraph reported on a private conversation in which David Cameron said he considered Muslim women to be traditionally submissive. The response to his comments was anything but. Photographs of Muslim women holding up placards explaining exactly how they were not #TraditionallySubmissive spread across the internet. These women were everything from war survivor to PhD student, from mother to doctor. As I watched it all unfold online, I realized that I was always hearing things about Muslim women. Things about who we were and who we were supposed to be and how we were supposed to act.

When was the last time you heard a Muslim woman speak for herself without a filter? Or outside the white gaze? On her own terms? Or outside the narrative built around us by the media and governments? If Muslim women are to progress in society, if Muslim women are to be treated with respect, then its so important that we challenge the narrative built around us. Its pretty obvious, isnt it? We should be the authors of our narrative and identity; we should be the ones speaking about us.

Its Not About the Burqa brings together Muslim womens voices. It does not represent the experiences of every Muslim woman or claim to cover every single issue faced by Muslim women. Its not possible to create that book. But this book is a start, a movement: we Muslim women are reclaiming and rewriting our identity. Here are essays about the hijab and wavering faith, about love and divorce, about queer identity, about sex, about the twin threats of a disapproving community and a racist country, and about how Islam and feminism go hand in hand. Every essay in this book is unfinished, because each one is the beginning of a very necessary conversation.

By using the word on the front cover of this collection of essays, its frustrating that even now Im having to engage with a narrative that Muslim women never created. Burqa is a word that has been politicized, and has become synonymous with Muslim female identity: its just another element in the narrative written around us by others. By engaging with this narrative I hope to dismantle it from within. Muslim women are more than burqas, more than hijabs, and more than society has allowed us to be until now.

We are not asking for permission any more. We are taking up space. Weve listened to a lot of people talking about who Muslim women are without actually hearing Muslim women. So now, we are speaking. And now, its your turn to listen.

Mariam Khan

A young Muslim woman wrote to me recently to tell me she had reviewed my book, Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution, which I published in 2015. In the book, I take a look at womens rights in the Middle East and North Africa in the wake of the Arab Spring revolutions in the region. Like much of my work, it critiques misogyny in my culture and faith background, and calls for social and sexual revolutions alongside the political revolutions of the Arab Spring in order to liberate women from all forms of oppression.

I clicked on the link the young woman sent and read that for a long time she had been scared to read my writing because she had heard that Mona Eltahawy is too loud, swears too much and goes too far.

Too loud, swears too much and goes too far.

What a great book title that would make, I thought!

I understood that those descriptors had all been meant as insults. I knew that they were meant as warning signs intended to stop other readers from coming closer. And I knew that for many people they worked. But I took them as compliments.

Too loud, swears too much and goes too far sounded just about right. I was proud!

Women are supposed to be less than, not too much. Women are meant to be quiet, modest, humble, polite, nice, well behaved, aware of the red lines. They are supposed to tread softly and within their limits.

Patriarchy demands that of all women, but the more women fall within intersections of oppression, the more they are expected to live by those demands, and Muslim women are especially vulnerable to what I call a trifecta of oppressions: misogyny (faced by all women), racism (faced by women of colour) and Islamophobia (faced by Muslims).

Muslim women are caught between a rock an Islamophobic and racist right wing that is eager to demonize Muslim men, and to that end misuses our words and the ways we resist misogyny within our Muslim communities and a hard place: our Muslim communities that are eager to defend Muslim men, and to that end try to silence us and shut down the ways we resist misogyny. Both the rock and the hard place are more concerned with each other than they are with Muslim women. They speak over our heads literally and figuratively. Our bodies what parts of them are covered or uncovered, for example are proxy battlefields in their endless arguments. It matters little what we women think because ultimately, both the rock and the hard place agree on and are enabled by patriarchy.