The Best Thing A Girl Can Be In This World, Is A Beautiful Fool

I read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald sometime in 2013. I loved the book and I loved the movie. It was a beautiful story and at the time, I was still a naive little girl with fire in her veins. I was just discovering what kind of person I wanted to be and at the time, I had recently found a word for the kind of woman I was and it was feminist. For me, feminism is an obvious choice for every woman. I couldn't be anyone or anything else, coming from where I was coming from.

The Hausa society, like most societies out there (including the supposed deplorable "western" societies), is not an egalitarian society. The intellectual Hausa man (and woman) would like to make you believe the society is one that is not misogynistic. That in fact, is an Islamic society that gives women their rights as stipulated within the boundaries of shari'a. Unfortunately, that is not true. The Hausa society is one of the worst societies to be a woman in. It is bubbling with toxic patriarchy that is not hard to see, even when peeping from outside. There are so many unjust gender roles that guide who a woman should be and what she can and can't do (most times, unislamic biases) which do not in any way or form apply to men. If there is any more inegalitarian, misogynistic, and unaccommodating of feminist intellectual thought society, I do not know about it (or rather, do not know enough to comment about it) as I am only familiar with my own reality.

In Chapter 1 of The Great Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan says to her friends, Nick and Jordan what she hopes for her daughter.
"I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool. "

At the time, I thought of Daisy herself to be a fool. The character, beautifully played by Carrie Mulligan embodied Fitzgerald's idea of a woman with foolish aspirations. It was a weakness for me, to wish such an unfair aspiration for one's daughter.  The older I got, the more I saw life through the eyes of Daisy. If you have read the book, you will know Daisy is a woman whose entire story revolves around a man (or two men...or one man...depending on how you read the book). The naive feminist in me couldn't bring myself to not read Daisy's character without admonition and judgment. A lot has happened and a lot has changed and most of all, I have grown up and Daisy might have been onto something.

It will be dishonest of us to talk about our realities without acknowledging how our personal stories affect and shape who we are and how the thoughts that fester in our brains got there. Ideas are seeds that grow. To separate my experiences from my story would be a dishonest starting point.
I was raised in a family of women. I have 3 fierce sisters (one older and two younger) and one brother. I was not raised in a community of women who asserted themselves and chased big goals. I did not have around me, any woman who lived the life I wanted to have for myself. If anything, I wanted to be far away from all the women I knew. I did not know any woman who worked in a big office or held a big position outside of the home (and even within the home they are often second class officers). It all seemed a weakness to me. 

Little did I know the patriarchy does not make sense and what seemed to me like weakness was in fact, something else, something that runs deeper than I could ever understand in one lifetime. Oppression is systematic and it is ingrained deep into our society. It is easier to surrender at the beginning of a battle that you know is already lost. I always thought, because I went to University and had the freedom to choose my career path as a teenager, that I could separate myself from toxic patriarchy. As I like to think my father a self-made intellectual, I believed I could be separated from his own primal upbringing which includes an ideology of male ownership (or guardianship) over women. Now I wonder if my circumstance would be different if I have had 3 brothers and one sister instead. 

Today I see Daisy for a compassionate mother. How could she not wish for her daughter to be a beautiful fool? A beautiful silent fool. A disappearing fool. A fool who would marry a rich man and silently accept the role society has carved out for her (errmmm sign me up). An easy life. How could she not want to protect her daughter from the curse of wanting more for herself? That I think is mercy. For those of us unfortunate enough to want freedom and a voice, I will be honest with myself and all of us, we are in for a life of misery.

The Patriarchy is nothing but a system of control. Everywhere, within the boundaries of the Hausa community, there is someone telling a woman to be silent, attempting to control her, hide her, make her less of a person. If it is not the father, then it is the father figure or the male scholar or the husband. The moment a female gets married, the major advice she is given is to obey and honor her husband who is the head and she well...the anus. Marriage has become an institution of oppression and toxic patriarchy. Too many women are in unhappy marriages today because they are afraid to leave. Mathematically, a woman's strength is directly proportional to how much disrespect she can accept, silently. Polygyny has become a tool used to punish and subdue women. A man's self-worth on the other equation is directly proportional to how many women he can control at home. Young girls and old women are being raped and murdered daily while simultaneously getting shamed and bullied into silence. Yet, the Hausa community has the audacity to feign surprise at the seemingly climbing rate of divorce. Young women are growing up to know they want a better bargain than their mothers and grandmothers, young women are rescinding the silence of their mothers. Young women are understanding that financial freedom is the key to mental liberation. Women have been robbed of their confidence for years, so much so that where does one go from there? What happened to marriage as a partnership where both spouses honor and respect one another? Women have been made to believe that they are incapable of knowing who they are and what they want without the guidance of egotistical men. I paraphrase Dr. Shehnaz Zindebad here where she says, in her youtube vlog on Islam and gender: The idea that women are emotional and to be emotional is believed, in the case of women, to be a bad thing, is what makes women illogical and inferior to men. This is used as a basis for a lot of society's oppression towards women. The patriarchy accuses women of being so inherently jealous (whilst ignoring the fact that male jealousy is often a very violent and threatening thing) whereas, male jealousy is very much validated within the patriarchy that laws are written to honor and protect male jealousy. In all societies everywhere, men are allowed to control women exclusively to protect their jealousy. How could one wish to not be a fool when knowing all of this and demanding the freedom to choose, to break free from the shackles of a system of control, and to have a voice is an endless fight? A lifelong fight.

I would like to say this is a situation that is only prevalent within the less educated echelons of the community but it is not. The educated intellectuals are only so evolved and in tune with the egalitarian ethos until their egos flair and they are faced with a powerful and assertive woman. Then they begin to ask where her male guardian is. Or begin to spew words like "I have one like you at home" meaning they have a wife whom they oppress at home or who does not even know she is being oppressed. Women like Amina J Mohammed are looked upon with a questioning gaze that asks where her male guardian is and how she was "allowed" to get to where she is. Words like "allow" and "permit" are the primary language that surrounds the institution of marriage ala patriarchy. It may seem like it is protection for women but really it is not. It is simply oppression.
Even within our institutionalized religions, women are said to be inferior and "lesser people" although, within the Islamic context, the Qur'an says to choose the mother three times before the father. It is suffocating and overwhelming when you know your rights and demand them but keep getting robbed and punished for demanding and asserting it. There doesn't seem to be a way out. Only fools do not know their rights and so do not know to demand them.

The Egyptian feminist writer, Mona Eltahawy said: 'To the girls of the middle east, Be immodest, rebel, disobey, and know you deserve to be free' and I agree with her to an extent. Women cannot politely demand to be heard as it does not work. The only way a woman's voice would be heard is if she vehemently refuses to shut up. If you cannot be the fool that Daisy hopes her daughter to be, then one could choose to rebel like Mona advises. Regardless, the patriarchy would still have no respect for the fool or the rebel. In its eyes, both are secondary humans who have to fight for their right to exist as full humans with the capacity for independent thought. Both are subject to being treated as children who are incapable of making rational choices. Isn't it infuriating and sickening that the patriarchy gives the male child authority over the mother? Isn't it unjust that female children's confidence is always kicked down while male children's confidence is nurtured and encouraged?
Realistic feelings of confidence and positive self-esteem affect how you think and act, how you feel about others, and how successful you are in life. Parents' attitudes are crucial to children's feelings about themselves, particularly in children's early years. When parents provide acceptance, children (girls) receive a solid foundation for good feelings about themselves. If one or both parents are excessively critical or demanding, or if they are overprotective and discourage moves toward independence, children (girls) may come to believe they are incapable, inadequate, or inferior. I use girls in bracket because male children do not face the stifling of independence at the level that females do. Lack of confidence prevents women from being assertive and reaching great heights and that is the primary ingredient for raising a fool.

I wish foolishness could set women free but to be very honest with you, that is simply burying one's head in the sand. Was Daisy successful in raising her daughter, Pamela to be a fool? Did Pamela end up having an easier life (doubtful)? I have no clue.  I'll have to wake F. Scott Fitzgerald from his eternal slumber to ask him for the second part of the book.

#ArewaMeToo: A Hausa Normalised Culture Of Abuse

In Solidarity with our sisters fighting the good fight with the #MeToo movement!

A friend was lamenting late last year about how the sanctity of marriage has been bastardised. "Our hausa communities are rife with divorce." he cried. Fortunately or not so much, he came to me.

This year started out for me with the #MuteRKelly documentary. It is a crime documentary like no other because it is still on going, and then this nightmare came home. Over the last few weeks, harrowing details of abuse experienced by women/girls at the hands of men hit the twitter streets. All of the perpetrators of these violence against women have been people who claimed to have "love" for the victims. Trusted people even within homes. This shocked Hausa twitter. The verses for and against hitting women from the Qur'an were shared (we are still debating the autonomy of women). It was not the occurrence of the abuse itself that was so shocking, it was the why, the who, the i cannot believe it, the what did you wear, the why make it public.
One twitter user shared her story about the abuse she experienced at the hands of a previous lover. This began a domino effect on the streets of twitter which is still gaining momentum. To first of all understand the magnitude of this twitter user, Khadija's (@the_brown_one) story, is to understand the gravity of what she had done. The story came out to slap us in the face. To slap me in the face. The stories we keep hearing and sitting on top came to glare us in the face. We all knew her abuser, Lawal Abubakar (since deactivated his account), be it on twitter or in real life, that was the wave. What we did not know were the brutal details of how he turned Khadija into a property to be owned and destroyed if could not be had. Khadija is not alone. The outpour of support from women who shared her pain was a sight. These stories started vomiting out of accounts we have followed for years and did not know the trauma the humans behind the handles were living. It shakes up your idea of reality and you are left questioning who is around you.

I have never felt safe. Be it in Nigeria, be it abroad. We were often told as children that men are dangerous. My mother's fears involve us getting attacked by men, killed by men, raped by men, abused by men. I do not remember a time when these worries did not follow my mother everywhere. I remember telling her one time about getting attacked while in University and she was ready to end my education and bring me back home. The fiction is in the belief that my mother can protect the four of us when there are billions of men out there everyday getting taught to take up space in a woman's life. These men are never taught to take responsibility for their actions and you can see it in almost ever other nigerian household. Hausa people love image. Maybe it goes the same across other cultures but i am only aware of the culture i live in. We are often more concerned with the illusion of normalcy than normal itself. It is best to make it look like everything is fine than to invite the gaze of curious eyes and wagging tongues. So we accept the culture of abuse that allows and normalises the men we have allowed into our lives to unquestioningly commit acts of violence against women. (Abusers count on the silence of their victims to continue terrorising victims.)

When you hear stories of abuse in hausa communities. LOL, you don't hear stories of abuse in hausa communities. You hear whispers, a word hear and there. The tears are often washed and dried behind closed doors. He beat her once. It happened once. He raped her. You hear them take her back, marry her off to him. She goes back because she has nowhere to run. We assume these things do not happen because we do not talk about them. They only happen in the "west". That is why the abuse of women is so prevalent within hausa communities. When Khadija reposted her story (previously published in 2017 on her blog) on twitter, i saw bravery and i wept for her pain. The thread was riddled with a lot of women asking her what took her to his place. As Oh Captain! My Captain!,  Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi said, we all breathe misogyny. From all the stories, all the abusers were enabled by friends and family that did not see the cause for alarm because well, it is a woman being "corrected"---probably. One common trend by enablers is to claim women are influenced by western agenda. We have normalised abuse so much in Nigeria and the statistics of the abused becoming the abuser are out there. Not too far from reach. There is so much abuse in the homes, in the schools, in the streets. The discussion must never center around the circumstances of the victim. Trusted family members violating young boys and girls and threatening them into silence. I dropped out of Islamiyya because my teacher flogged me for going to a boarding school and forgetting some of my memorised Qur'an verses. I never went back and i never memorised the whole Qur'an. The abuse is endless and these all shape up our lives. We carry these burdens with us.

Returning back to my friend, he spoke about how young Nigerian women were not ready to stay in committed relationships anymore. "Women are not patient anymore", "Women don't want to marry anymore", "Women want rich men". As impassioned as i was, i wanted to have a conversation.
"Can you blame them? women are tired?" I asked.
He could not understand it. Tired of what? he asked. At my cousins wedding, the most prevalent unsolicited advice that was dumped on her by well-intentioned aunties were "Bari, na bari" (stop, i have stopped, in literal English). These 3 words have been drilled into the skulls of Hausa girls since time immemorial. The husband is supposed to be able to "discipline" his wife. Men are told to "control" their women. Women are asked to "ask for permission" from men to simply be. He could not understand it. We are all poster boys for the patriarchy,  I continued.
Our communities are rife with the romanticisation of the subdued woman. The woman who takes it all and does not put up a fight, like our mothers. Men are often told at a young age, that the world is theirs for the taking but the woman is a homemaker. Even between children, male children are allowed to be aggressive and often times, violent while female children are often raised to be empathic and patient so they are less likely to be violent and aggressive. Consciously or unconsciously, these indoctrinations shape up our outlook on life and who we decide to become. The words we encounter daily take up plenty space in our lives.

The age of information is a beautiful age. What a time to be alive, really. The male and female dynamic has been defined right before we were born. The roles carved out. Our mothers found it that way. Women are often forced, to settle into roles that do not in fact benefit them. Education came to change the face of the game. Young hausa girls and women are connecting with each other and other women across the world. What we found is that we share a common suffering as women. Violence against women is prevalent across the globe. A UN publication in 2018 reported, "Approximately 15 million adolescent girls (aged 15 to 19) worldwide have experienced forced sex (forced sexual intercourse or other sexual acts) at some point in their life. Out of these, 9 million adolescent girls were victimized within the past year. In the vast majority of countries, adolescent girls are most at risk of forced sex by a current/former husband, partner or boyfriend. Based on data from 30 countries, only one per cent ever sought professional help". The age of information threw at us tools to detect the problems in our society yet, the solutions have taken up so much time to actualise. The age of the subdued woman is dead, I tell my friend. He thinks women are against men and i tell him to begin asking the women around him why they "suddenly" want to change the status quo. What is the status quo? Who wrote the status quo?

There are many angles to look at the normalisation of the oppression of the hausa women from, especially when religion and tradition have been used as a weapon to keep women quiet. That is why i find much bravery in the #ArewaMeToo stories. Whenever these stories break out, the outrage and fake concern is usually towards the victim. Every female victim has been asked, why were you there? what did you wear? what did you say or do or did not say or do? When men are abused, nobody asks what were you doing there or what did you wear?
We have to change the narrative. As long as men are not taught to not be abusive, violence against women will continue within our communities. We must teach empathy and compassion. We must respect that women cannot be owned and if we must, we will keep fighting for our autonomy until we cannot. These stories will follow us and haunt us. We can choose to close our eyes to the menace that traditional values have instilled into us, or we can choose to keep expressing fake moral outrage whenever these stories hit home.

I say to the victims sharing their stories. You are not alone. We are all in this fight together. To the ones who cannot speak out, healing happens in waves. Take your time. Forgive yourself. It was never your fault and it is still not your fault. If you need help or need to talk to someone, there are plenty of us out there rooting for you.

Resources

HELP HOTLINES

• Lagos State Hotline (08137960048) for Domestic and Sexual Violence
• Women’s Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative, (WRAPA) +2348188699961, +2348172125692, +2347063807887

References

1) UN, Ending Violence Against Women, 2018.

http://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures

2) Olu A, Temitayo I. O .Gender and political participation in Nigeria: a cultural perspective. Conference: 3rd Toyin Falola Conference, At Durban, South Africa. 2014

3) https://darknessandblues.wordpress.com/2017/08/20/that-day/

Burned Tree

Did you think

You were made of blood and bone,

Daughter of the sky,

When the women you came from,

Dug the ground with their nails,

And gave life to the stars?

Do you forget,

How your mother raised,

Lions and jaguars,

Slept of her feet,

To break the ground in two,

So you could walk?

What wonder,

Within a woman’s chest,

When she can stand on her feet,

Feed the world with one hand,

And balance the universe,

With the other.

Like the burned trees,

With the blackened skin,

Still standing under desert suns.

Even in death,

The mushrooms find life,

Within her womb.

How Do You Say Gender Based Violence and Consent In Nigerian?

There has been a lot of conversation regarding gender roles, sexual assault and gender based violence in Nigeria of recent. This is in no way because these issues are new problems that are riddling and corrupting our society, this is because a problem that has pervaded our society for ions, is finally being acknowledged.

The Emir of Kano State, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi plans to enact a policy that prevents men whom cannot afford to keep multiple wives at home from getting married to more than one wife. This in itself makes sense, Emir SLS has seen the effect of polygamy in our communities when it is not done right, how women are most of the time, unwillingly pushed into living very difficult lives due to the fact that their men keep marrying more wives and having more children. As the Emir, SLS stepped up to protect his people. He also plans to enact a law that protects women in situations involving domestic violence by making domestic violence a punishable offence which directly contradicts this belief: “There is a deep cultural belief in Nigeria that it is socially acceptable to hit a woman to discipline a spouse ”(Wikipedia). He has acknowledged the fact that domestic violence is a big problem in Nigeria. However, this has not been sitting well with a lot of Northern Nigerian clerics. Too many of them have come out to vehemently oppose the law. Emir SLS has of course, not been deterred. The plan still stands.

As many of the clerics who have come out to oppose The Emir’s law said, this new policy will allegedly change the law of the Qur’an. One cleric whose name I refuse to mention said in an article (paraphrased), that men must take the law of their homes into their hands and it is up to God to judge them (in reference to domestic violence). In all of the articles I have read, what these clerics claim is that God will judge a man if he does not do right by his wife but a woman will be judged here, on this earth, by the hands of man. You understand how hypocritical, misogynistic and just plain wicked that is?

Nigeria is a heavily misogynistic society, whether we like to admit it or not. By admitting that sentence, I am in no way implying that other countries are any less misogynistic, the world is a pretty misogynistic place but the focus of this write-up is Nigeria, where laws and policies affect me and the people I love directly. Too many Nigerian men have cried out that the law banning men from marrying multiple women (if they cannot afford to) is against the sunnah of Muhammad S.A.W whilst ignoring the fact that each one of Muhammad’s wives was well taken care of. The common trait with if not all but most clerics, is to dissect the sunnah of Muhammad S.A.W and then pick and choose whatever fits into their lifestyles. That which does not fit is ignored and it is backed up by “religion cannot be interpreted in the same way as it was in the time of Muhammad S.A.W”.

Another instance that has my mind all mangled up is the issue of consent that does not seem to be a conversation in Nigeria. The show Big Brother Nigeria has been back on television for a few months now. Regardless of our morality clause that judges the show, we have to admit that the show is a show watched by millions of Africans. Even if we ourselves do not partake in increasing viewership for the show, the show does find it’s way into many households and remember, the TV/internet is this generations main source of information. I digress. A few weeks ago, a participant of the show was disqualified (thumbs up to the show for that) because he directly or indirectly assaulted a housemate while she was asleep. Believe me, the responses I got from both men and women regarding this issue still freezes my blood. I will add a few conversations that had me the most shook up.

“ Me: It does not matter if the world knows he likes her or not, as long as she did not give him permission to get into her bed and do whatever he did, it is a violation of her right to privacy at her most vulnerable state (sleep).

Colleague: If she did not like what he did, she could have woken up to stop him(ignoring the fact that some people are actually deep sleepers). I’m sure she enjoyed it. ”

“ Colleague: But he likes her, everyone knows that. It is not like it was a stranger that got into her bed. He should not have been disqualified. (Ignoring the fact that she has made it explicitly clear that she did not like the accused)

Me: It does not matter. He did not have her permission; he should not have gotten into her bed and touched her. That is sexual assault.

Colleague: *laughs and calls me an “activist” * ”

“Colleague (female): I feel bad for the man, he had such potential.

Me: You are literally sympathizing with a possible rapist.

Colleague: *laughs nervously* ”

What I took from these conversations is this, the topic of consent is not discussed in Nigeria which is directly related to the misogyny I mentioned earlier. A woman’s body is free for the taking as long as it is “right there”. There is a difference between a Yes, a No and a No Response. A lack of response is not a Yes, it is not consent, it does not give any man, any right to a woman’s body. I am now more terrified of Nigerian men than ever. The heavy sympathy the accused man received all over the Internet left my jaw hanging.

We have begun discussions about gender-based violence; soon…we should have this conversation on a national scale meaning, the National Assembly (even though we all know the amount of testosterone in that dome makes doing the job the Assembly was created for i.e. enacting laws that affect the general populace, actually impossible).

Unless more women study and discuss Islamic jurisprudence and work with the way our laws affect women in today’s society, men would continually make us victims of their interpretation of Islam as it is been done today.

We must talk about consent; we must educate people about consent. We must protect our women from the wickedness of ignorance. After the scene aired, the show was quick and swift in their response to disqualify the accused, which was highly admirable considering the kind of society we live in. Even other housemates were quick to isolate the lady who was the victim here.

We live in a society where a victim receives no emotional support but an accused receives heaps of it. This must change. This is not the society our ancestors sacrificed for.

xoxo

Sayonara

Boobs And Brains

This is one article that has been on my mind since the beginning of this year and I am glad it took this long to write. I will explain.

I have always been conflicted when it came to how I presented myself to the world. I always believed and still do that what I put on my body says a lot about how I feel about myself. I cannot wear a hijab because I do not feel like a hijab wearing girl in my heart and I cannot walk around in a bikini because I do not feel like a walking-around-in-bikini girl.

So as a female entering into an almost exclusively male dominated world of technology (I am a software developer for those that don’t know), I was conflicted when it came down to how I presented myself to the world.

Image Source: http://www.cafepress.com/+big-boobs+blankets

“Not too much lipstick, I do not want them to think I am shallow”, “No heels, so I do not look like all I know how to do is dress up”. I found myself equating how I looked with my intelligence. I wanted to be taken seriously as the only female engineer at my office. I pride myself on my ability to evolve and unlearn the misogynistic ideologies that I have been indoctrinated in. It took me a whole year to pause and realize that I did not have to choose between looking/feeling beautiful for myself and being intelligent/good at my job. With or without my attire, I am beautiful and intelligent and that should be enough. I remember Chimamanda Adichie’s TED talk where she talked about how she was conflicted about her attire on her first day teaching. I have watched this particular TED talk at least 10 times and it never occurred to me that I too was doing exactly what Adichie did on her first day lecturing.

It is naturally assumed that beautiful women are not intelligent. Women in the modelling industry are assumed to be shallow and dumb, which often times reminds me of Tyra Banks and her show America's Next Top Model and whey she had a college edition. It was to break this stereotype that beautiful women are not intelligent women. 

This year, America almost had it’s first female president and amidst all of that debacle, I was noticing how Hillary Clinton’s wardrobe was carefully chosen. Her team always chose attires that people would consider “serious” and there was not much in the way of accessorizing. Do you see the pedestal they put women up on? I bet none of the other male candidates had to worry about how they looked, heck, Trump did not even have to sensor what he said but alas, the people chose. It took me until the end of the year to understand that I still had more unlearning to do.

Growing up, I remember I myself, looking at other women who loved to dress up as inferior to me intellectually. Most of the time, they were not. I was conditioned to think that due to the way society judged women. Today I have little sisters who are growing up to be very confident, smart and daring women. One of them told me how she would be a kick-ass humanitarian lawyer and look “as bom as Amal Clooney” while doing it and you know what, that is just fantastic. Smart and stylish women run the company I work at, I am learning that intelligence quotient and beauty/style are not mutually exclusive. Women do not have to choose between looking good/feeling confident (I believe these go hand in hand) and having a high intelligence quotient. I know very beautiful women who deliberately dumb themselves down so as to seem more appealing to men. 

We must begin to unlearn this the moment we awaken to the realization that we are living by misogynistic ideals. 

For Those Women

This one is for those women
those who bend their backs for men
who come home at night
smelling like darkness and the forest
breathing like hunting wolves
this is for those women
who at 18 years old
we call them antys
because they have walked through the clouds
their hair turned grey from
dancing with the cold
for those women who close their eyes
knowing that even in dreams
they are the women that women
like you and me
look through
do not see
do not greet
for those women who became women at 12
who look out for brothers
brothers that were sat and told
"you are the man of the house"
yet these women never become
women of the house
never receive glory or pensions
expected to not whimper when the world
becomes a little too heavy
slouching their posture
for those women whose bellies are stretched
from carrying us
too many times yet
we are not acquainted with their intestines
do not say Thank You
do not say Forgive me
do not say I see you
this is for those women whose eyes
are black holes
swallowing up pain like
it was not matter
carrying their sorrow in their skin
like cells
for those women whose mouths are graveyards
of buried words
haunted memories
i pray
i pray i do not carry a woman
in my body when i am woman
enough
there aren't enough bones to break
in my body enough to hold a woman in
enough to hold the wrath passed from my blood
to my blood
this is for those women who give birth to daughters
that become women before they can walk
who break their hearts praying still
for daughters, they know
they know only a woman
can hold a woman.

On Burkinis and Bikinis

There is this unhealthy obsession with the bodies of women. Muslim women in particular. The thematic discussion regarding women’s bodies is always in policing what Muslim women can and cannot do with their own bodies supported by a strict interpretation of religious texts and a botched sense of liberalism.

Right from time immemorial, Muslim women are forced to have to choose between covering up and not covering up, making the Islamic ruling on hijab/headscarves a black and white affair whilst ignoring the grey area. Due to a patriarchal interpretation of Islam, women of the Islamic faith have often found themselves having to choose between wearing the hijab and not wearing the hijab with both choices been politicized.

Muslim women are stuck--going forward, a liberal western society that claims they refuse to integrate and--moving backwards, meeting a religious society that claims they are forcing westernization upon themselves hence losing their virtuousness and the essence of being “flowers” (or whatever metaphor they use to describe the reasons behind forcing women to cover up).

The recent Burkini (a type of swim wear Muslim women wear to the beach instead of swimsuits) ban in France is no different from the forced hijab in Iran. What differentiates forcing women to cover up and forcing them to not cover up? Whilst in the process of this discussion, the ability to choose which is a fundamental aspect of being human has been removed for the Muslim woman hence, absolving her of her humanity meaning, objectifying her.

Whether it is in Iran or in France, the politicizing of Muslim women’s bodies is the biggest play in the disappearance of women. You cannot help but wonder why there is an excessive amount of fuss over a piece of clothing.

The forced hijab in Iran is a political act to stifle women. If you force women to hide behind a veil, you force them to remain in their place (usually at home without any real influence in governance or leadership), and if you force a woman to take of her hijab, you force her to literally have to hide at home and not be out in public space. Here is the part where some of you would ask “Well why don’t they take it off?”. It is not as simple as that.

The hijab is a lot more than a political/religious symbol, to some women, it is a spiritual act of worship. Women who choose to wear the hijab do so in accordance with the wives of Prophet Muhammad S.A.W whom were deemed the most pious of all women, they choose to protect their sanctity with a hijab, to cover their body while in the presence of people whom were not immediate family. To some women, it is an empowerment tool and taking that away from them is taking away their power over their body. It is a violation of human rights. The hijab is no different than the scarf nuns wear. If a woman can wear a bikini to the sea without humiliation, why can't another woman wear a burkini to the sea without humiliation? Double standards? 

This hijab discourse has polarized Muslim women into two different ideological positions. To accept the hijab is to be extremist and to reject the hijab is to be secular/western. This is the part where we insert a grey area where a woman can both be Muslim+not wear the hijab and also Muslim+wear the hijab yet still active members of the society.

The west wonders why Muslim women do not integrate when an inclusive environment for the successful integration of Muslim women into their communities is not created. The recent burkini ban in France if anything, has set the west back hundreds of years. In 2016, where western women are granted the freedom to walk the streets wearing close to nothing, Muslim women have being rejected the freedom to be fully covered, citing “security” concerns as supporting grounds. 
This is the absolute hypocrisy of secularism and we should all be rightly outraged.