THE
RIGHT OF A MUSLIMAH TO BE RESPECTED FOR HER MIND AND FOR BEING HER OWN PERSON
by
Syarif Hidayat*
 |
| Ziganshina Nailya |
The
right of a Muslim woman (Muslimah) is to be respected for her mind and for
being her own person: A Muslim Woman is Required to Dress a Certain Way When
She Goes Out in Public. For a Muslim woman, her modest dress is an expression
of a universal sisterhood. An Islamic dress also liberates the Muslim woman,
and she is then automatically respected for her mind instead of her body.
Simply
put, she retains her dignity! It is like saying: I am a respectful woman. I
am not for every man to look at, touch, or speak to. I am protected, exactly
like a precious white pearl which, if touched by everyone, will become black
and dirty.
Sports
hijab gives Muslimah more flexibility
Geraldine
Woessner
in her article titled “Sports hijab gives Muslim women more flexibility”
published in http://muslimvillage.com with source from AFP
writes “Letting out shrill cries,
several young women in a Montreal taekwondo class kicked their way through the
exercises, not a hair out of place as they were demurely covered by an Islamic
sports hijab.” Their religion prohibits these female athletes from showing off
their firm physiques, or their hair. Yet Western society also frowns on the
wearing of traditional Muslim headscarves in sports competitions.
So
Iranian-born Canadian designer Elham Seyed Javad came up with an idea to marry
the two worlds and allow young girls and women to take part in physical
activities while also adhering to strict Islamic rules. And the order books for
the 27-year-old’s start-up are fast filling up with calls for her head
coverings arriving from around the world including Japan, Germany and
Australia.
The
company iQO Design is now eyeing a lucrative contract to supply the Iranian
women’s football team, with the aim that they will be worn during the next
Olympic Games. The idea came to the young designer in 2007 after five young
Muslim women were thrown out of a Montreal taekwondo tournament because their
headscarves were deemed by the sports federation to be dangerous.
Seyed
Javad, who was studying industrial design at the University of Montreal at the
time, was outraged but instead of protesting decided to find a solution. At
school, she designed a slip-on hooded t-shirt made of stretch fabric. The
university immediately seized on its potential: its agency for commercializing
its scientific discoveries and inventions filed patents for the sports hijab on
her behalf in Canada and the United States.
Made
of a fabric that moves perspiration away from the body, the garment slips on
like a balaclava and is tied at the back. “It’s much less hot, and it stays in
place,” says trainer Gaelle Texier. And, she adds, it doesn’t mess up your
hair. “It’s a compromise,” said taekwondo student Asmaa Ibnouzahir. “It allows
us to play the sports we enjoy, that we were doing but were forced to quit.” The
university’s commercial unit, Univalor, said it has even greater potential.
“Of
course we looked to market it to young Muslim women in sports, but also for F1
racing, go-carting, and hospital operating rooms,” said Univalor’s Thomas
Martinuzzo. It is not just for athletes, he explains. An Australian
policewoman, for example, recently started wearing one as part of a trial. “My
goal is to separate the religious connotation from the sports connotation,”
said Seyed Javad. “So when other organizations approach us, it’s very positive
because the religious aspect is not linked to the garment.”
The
so-called ResportOn is currently sold for 63 dollars (44 euros) over the
Internet. Each prototype is designed and sewn in a Montreal studio, adapted to
suit the particular circumstances of each customer. But Javad is already
dreaming big, and hopes one day to sell the garment in sports stores
everywhere. Since the ResportOn first went on sale in November interest has
skyrocketed, attracting attention from 170 cities around the world.
The
start-up behind it has also partnered with an investor and recruited a sales
representative in Iran. The company is now pitching its wares to hospitals and
racing drivers, as well as people with dreadlocks who want to keep their prized
hairdos in place even when out on the sports field.
Hijab
no barrier for Muslim athletes to excel
Veiled
female athletes in the Middle East are overcoming different challenges to excel
in various sports fields and shatter western stereotypes about their hijab,
culture and religion, a recent research at Northwestern University in Qatar has
revealed. “Female athletes in the Middle East face pressures that include
family, religion, politics, and culture,” said the research cited by Trade
Arabia website. “These issues often take place over use or nonuse of the hijab,
the traditional head covering for Muslim women.” The research, “Muslim Female
Athletes and the Hijab”, is the result of a year-long cooperation between
Northwestern sociologist Geoff Harkness and his course student Samira Islam.
It
found that veiled Muslim athletes managed to excel in sports fields, overcoming
a unique set of challenges with regard to the ‘hijab’ which is not faced by
their Western counterparts. Based on interviews with female athletes and their
coaches at Education City, the study found that sports were often an empowering
experience for young women.
The
report is a part of ongoing research that Harkness is conducting on female
sports participation in Qatar, as the country prepares to celebrate its first
National Sports Day on February 14. “There are a number of misconceptions about
people from the Middle East, especially women,” Harkness said. “One benefit of
this type of sociological research is that it can help reduce some of those
stereotypes and paint a more accurate picture of what life is really like
here.” Samira, an undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar, is
herself a basketball player who helped in collecting outstanding data that
supported the whole project.
“Because
Samira was a basketball player at CMUQ, she had unique insights into the world
of female athletics in Doha, and had established rapport with many of the
players whom she interviewed and observed,” Harkness added.
“That,
along with her natural curiosity and tenacity, resulted in outstanding data
that was key to the entire project.” The research was published in the latest
edition of Contexts Magazine, a publication of the American Sociological
Association.
Shattering
Stereotypes
Seeing
sports as an empowering experience, veiled Muslim athletes in the Middle East
managed to shatter western stereotypes about their religion and hijab. “Middle-Eastern
women are often lumped together as representing a collective whole, but this
could not be further from reality,” Harkness said. “Indeed, many nations in the
region are populated by expatriate women from other parts of the Middle East,
as well as countries such as India, Sudan, and Ethiopia, making the notion of
monoculture preposterous.” Going through different competitions, many sports
icons were celebrated as a role model for young Muslim athletes.
Those
models include Fatima Al-Nabhani, an Omani tennis player and Bahraini sprinter
Roqaya Al-Ghasara, who was fully covered and wearing a hijab when she ran and
won at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
“Both
women not only serve as role models for aspiring female athletes from the
region, but also shatter Western stereotypes,” says the report.
Islam
sees hijab as an obligatory code of dress, not a religious symbol displaying
one’s affiliations. Physical Olympic sports such as rugby and taekwondo allow
Muslim women to wear the headscarf in competition.
Yet,
the football governing body FIFA has a ban on the wearing of hijab on pitch
because of overly strict concerns over safety.
Hijab
shined during Beijing Olympic Games in 2008 when many Muslim women athletes
broke Western stereotypes, proving that donning the hijab is not an obstacle to
excelling in life and sports.During the games, half a dozen veiled Egyptians,
three Iranians, an Afghan and a Yemeni were competing in sprinting, rowing,
taekwondo and archery.
French
rapper stuns fans with Islam and hijab
 |
| Mélanie Georgiades, known as Diam’s |
Ramdane
Belamri
in an article titled “French rapper stuns fans with Islam and hijab” published
in http://english.alarabiya.net writes
“Amid
a nationwide debate in France surrounding attitudes towards the Islamic veil,
or hijab, a French rapper has surprised fans by announcing her conversion to
Islam and choosing to wear a headscarf”.
Mélanie
Georgiades, known as Diam’s, has gone through what onlookers have described as
a “complete transformation” from an image she had prior to 2009. Since 2009,
Diam’s had been unusually absent from the mainstream rap scene, prompting more
than three years of controversy over her whereabouts, despite making the odd
public appearance with her scarf. But
recently the French rapper made her first television appearance with her new
image.
Diam’s
appeared in an exclusive TV interview with French TV station TF1, to talk about
a past experience with drugs, including hallucinating narcotics, and being in a
mental asylum until she discovered the “serenity of Islam.” The rapper said the
religion was introduced to her by coincidence, when she saw a Muslim friend
praying. Diam’s, said she has been married for over a year and is a now a new
mother, moving far away from her drug-relate past.
In
her TV interview she said her “conversion to Islam was the result of a personal
conviction, after understanding the religion and reading the Holy Quran.” When
asked about wearing the hijab in France, a country which has banned the niqab,
she said: “I believe that I live in a tolerant society, and I don’t feel hurt
by criticism, but by insults and stereotyping and ready-made judgments.”
Asked
by her host about why she is wearing a hijab while many Muslim women don’t wear
it, and don’t find it to be a religious obligation, she answered: “I see it as
a divine order or a divine advice, this brings joy to my heart and for me this
is enough.”
Stardom?
Diam’s
said that by converting to Islam she gained comfort, adding that stardom
doesn’t fit in with her life anymore, adding “this has warmed my heart, as I
know now the purpose of my existence, and why am I here on Earth.” Diam’s
criticized the media which photographed her coming out of one of the mosques in
France, wearing her Hijab and looking at her mobile, preceded by a man in a
training suit, which many believed to be her husband.
Discussing
how her life was like before her conversion to Islam, Diam’s said: “I was very
famous and I had what every famous person looks for, but I was always crying
bitterly alone at home, and this is what none of my fans had felt.” She added:
“I was heavily addicted to drugs, including hallucinating narcotics and was
admitted in mental asylum to recover, but this was in vain until I heard one of
my Muslim friends saying ‘I am going to pray for a while and will come back,’
so I told her that I want to pray as well.”
Recalling
that moment, Diam’s said: “it was the first time that I touched the floor with
head, and I had a strong feeling that I have never experienced before, and I
believe now that kneeling in prayer, shouldn’t be done to anyone but Allah.”
French
TV channel TF1 swiftly takes down Diam’s video
Morocco
World News
in an article published in www.moroccoworldnews.com says “Less than 24
hours after the French TV channel TF1 aired an interview with the French former
rap star Diam’s, where she speaks movingly about her conversion to Islam and
about the meaning Islam gave to her life, the French channel decided to remove
that video from YouTube. As soon as the interview was aired on the TV program
7-8 on Sunday, the video of the interview was posted on YouTube and went viral.
In couple of hours, the interview was among the most shared ones on Facebook
and twitter.”
Muslims
around the world discovered how Diam’s, who was at the peak of her career,
decided all of a sudden to drop her glamorous life and take a step that would
change completely her life. In the midst of the propaganda machine in western
countries, where Islam is depicted as a religion of extremism, terrorism,
violation of human rights, of the rights of women, etc., this video came to
shed light on the true message of Islam, spread by a former start, who reached
happiness after embracing this religion.
“That
is not what I discovered. I discovered a religion of wisdom of nonviolence, of
peace, of sharing, of kindness. It is the religion of Jesus, Moses, Abraham,
Salomon and of all the prophets. Why do people make it look like that? Under no
circumstances can we find it normal that innocent people are killed in
terrorist attacks”, Diam’s said during the interview.
Many
wonder if TF1 would have taken the same step had the same video been of someone
defaming Islam. “TF1 is afraid to let people watch this video because it reflects
the reality of Islam,” said Siham Naym, a Moroccan young lady from Rabat. A
simple search for TF1 on YouTube yields more than 32,000 videos, which the TV
station never bothered to ask YouTube to take down, on the pretext that they
infringe on its copyrights. By striking contrast, it immediately moved to
ensure that Diam’s’ video is taken down on the grounds that that video
“infringes on its copyrights.”
The
TV show in which Diam’s revealed her conversion to Islam, was watched by a
record number of 5,7 million people, which, according to the French version of
the Huffingtonpost, was the channel’s highest rating in six months.
Islam,
a religion of tolerance
Diam’s
said that she moved to Mauritius to read the Quran, and have a better
understanding of Islam, discovering during her retreat, the tolerance of Islam.
When asked by her host about her views on Islam, and those who commit all the
murders and atrocities pretending to be doing it in the name of religion, she
answered: “I think we should differentiate between the ignorant and the
knowledgeable, and the ignorant should not speak about what he doesn’t know,
Islam does not allow murdering innocent victims the way we see it nowadays.”
May
Allah give our women the ability and the correct guidance to cover their bodies
according to the Shariah.
Ameen!
(HSH)
Bibliotheque:
2.http://muslimvillage.com with a source from AFP
6.http://www.moroccoworldnews.com
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