Beyond the burqa

It’s Not About the Burqa
 

Mariam Khan (ed)
 

Picador
 

256 pages, Rs 699

Mariam Khan, the editor of this selection of essays by Muslim women of colour who live in the West, sets the tone of this book in her introduction. “Muslim women are more than burqas, more than hijabs, and more than society has allowed us to be until now,” she writes. “We are not asking for permission any more. We are taking up space. We’ve listened to a lot of people talking about who Muslim women are without actually hearing Muslim women. So now, we are speaking. And now, it’s your turn to listen.”

And if you do care to listen — or more accurately, read — then this book provides many insights into the lived experiences of Muslim women who try to navigate Western societies, while remaining true to the tenets of their faith. And while the title of the book assures us that It’s Not About the Burqa, many of the essays in the book do, in fact, deal with the issue of hijab, and the inability of Western society in general, and Western feminists in particular, to see beyond it. The world these Muslim women inhabit seems unable to look behind the veil that some of these women have chosen to wear — and that leaves them feeling both unseen and unacknowledged as people with agency.

My favourite essay that deals with this subject is the one written by Mariam Khan herself, provocatively titled,  Feminism needs to die. Ms Khan describes how she came to identify as a feminist, but how feminism (or ‘White feminism’ as she terms it) fails to stand up for Muslim women like her who choose to wear the hijab. “I am tired of being asked about the way I dress as a Muslim woman…These people are looking for ways to tell me I am not a feminist. Those people want to tell me how oppressed I am,” she writes. In her view, “feminism as we know it needs to die so it can stop building walls, so it can develop and move forward to nurture a sisterhood of Intersectional Feminists.”

Another interesting take comes from Afshan D’Souza Lodhi who writes movingly about being a “kinda Muslim, fat, South Asian hijabi” who is gay, and has an on-off relationship with the hijab. “The period of wearing hijab and not wearing hijab didn’t exist in isolation. I didn’t just wake up one day and become a non-hijabi. There were transition phases,” she explains. The world, she says, constructs a “hijab binary” that doesn’t allow for complex, contradictory people to exist. And she was a walking contradiction: “a queer Muslim”.

Except that Ms Lodhi no longer sees that as a contradiction at all. She no longer sees Islam and queerness as oppositions. And she constantly reminds herself that just because people don’t accept her doesn’t mean that Islam or Allah won’t. So, now Ms Lodhi is fearless in embracing both her faith and her sexuality. You can hear that bravery in her voice as she proclaims, “I’m done engaging in conversation with people who don’t understand that human beings are complex. That I can wear a hijab and a dress. That I can be queer and Muslim. That I can exist.”

As the women who people this book constantly remind us, while the hijab or veil may be the first thing the world sees when it looks at Muslim women, there is a lot more to their lived experiences. Hence the essays in the book are about so much more than Islam and the veil.

Some are about the immigrant experience, that strange feeling of displacement you feel when you are both from a place and yet not of it. There are others that emanate from South Asian culture, where patriarchy is solidly entrenched and the family honour is heavily invested in the bodies of women. Others are about such tricky subjects as trying to have a love life outside of the bonds of a marriage (that would render the sex “halal” rather than “haram”).

One of the more interesting essays is by Sufiya Ahmed (titled The First Feminist) who grew up seeking validation in the life story of Khadija Bint Khuwaylid, the first wife of the Prophet (they married when she was 40 and he was 25), who was both a divorcee and a businesswoman.

The essay by Amna Saleem (Shame, Shame, It Knows Your Name), that explores the concept of “shame” and “honour” within south Asian communities, will resonate with every woman, irrespective of her religion or colour. “Ultimately, at its creepy centre,” she writes evocatively, “misogyny against Muslim women is just two sides of the same grubby coin. Zealots to the left of me, racists to the right, forcing the rest of us into the middle with their nonsense.”

Whatever the subject matter, the one theme that runs through all these essays is that of being “othered”, of being seen as something exotic and foreign, as someone who doesn’t really belong. It is that sense of alienation that gives this book its power.