Elham Manea is a Yemeni-Swiss writer, professor, political scientist, and human rights activist, known for her activism against political Islam and her advocacy for women’s rights. In 2006, she published an article entitled “Take Off the Veil!”, in which she defended women’s freedom of choice and challenged the imposition of the veil as a supposed religious obligation. Her public positions have also exposed her to threats and intimidation.
This is an invitation to you, my Muslim sister, to take off the veil. A sincere invitation. It is not malicious. It is pure. It does not seek to defile any part of you. Nor does it seek to encourage you to moral depravity. Rather, it invites you to exercise your reason and to use it by yourself. You and your mind are sufficient on your own. There is no need to search through books and history. There is no need to delve into the writings for the opinions of the commentators. That is why I ask you, as I speak to you, not to be afraid of me. I ask you to listen to me and reflect on my words without doubting my intentions. Afterwards, you are free. Free in your decision. Free in your destiny. Free to do as you wish. You are your own mistress. You alone. No one has guardianship over you. No one but you. Put on the veil afterwards, or take it off; I will respect your decision, whatever it may be. In the end, the decision must be yours.
So let me prepare the ground for this invitation of mine. I said in a previous article that wearing the veil actually began in the Islamic world with the Iranian Islamic Revolution, which imposed the veil on women after the clerics succeeded in turning the tables on the middle class and the leftist factions, who had paid with their blood to rid themselves of the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Nevertheless, because that revolution represented the first genuine uprising in the region, it appeared to many as a model to emulate, both the revolution itself and the clothing that women there came to wear. (Naturally, the media at the time ignored the women’s demonstrations that took place in opposition to the imposition of the veil, but that is another story.)
Added to this was another well-known factor: the oil boom that enabled the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and some of its wealthy figures to provide financial support for the dissemination of Wahhabi Islamic missionary culture, as well as to establish a huge media machine that proclaimed morning and evening that women’s veiling was a necessity. These traditions of Islamic missionary activity became intertwined with the thinking of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Arab and Islamic political branches that emerged from it, allowing a new way of thinking—a strange way of thinking—to spread throughout society, changing many behaviors and ways of thought.
Thus, the cradle in which the issue of women’s veiling was born was political in nature. Two countries, whose political elites rule in the name of religion, seek to spread their model while at the same time affirming the legitimacy of their existence, and each imposes on its women the wearing of the veil, regarding it as a symbol of religious devotion, whether those women wish it or not. Whether those women wish it or not! And there is also Muslim Brotherhood thinking, whose ultimate aim is to attain political power. But because it justifies its ideology through religion, it was also necessary for it to present a model of “Islamic behavior” consistent and compatible with that ideology, and “dress” was a central part of it.
I therefore return to say that the nature of the issue of women’s veiling is political, no more and no less. Purely political. But the justification for it, and the effort to convince women that it is obligatory, has taken three forms: the first two are human, and the third is religious. The first says that when a woman wears the veil, she covers her feminine charms and thereby protects the man from temptation. The second says that by doing so she contributes to establishing a virtuous society. The third says that the essence of this call is religious.
The first justification assumes that the Arab man is a lustful animal, a man who must be avoided because he cannot control his instincts and sex dominates his thinking. Therefore, he cannot be trusted, and the woman’s private parts—of which there are many—must be covered in order to protect him from the devil within him. This is a prejudicial and unfair assumption about the Arab man, whom we have known as a brother, a father, and a husband, and whom we have also known as a human being. Because he is capable of treating a woman as a human being, not as an object of pleasure. Because he is capable of controlling his instincts despite having them and being aware of them, just as a woman is capable of doing so. Because, as a woman, when I deal with him, I assume that he is a human being. A human being who respects me.
In the same vein, the first justification contains a prejudicial assumption about women themselves. It portrays a woman as nothing more than a sexual vessel, as a private part, not as a human being, not as a noble being or a rational person, but as something in which everything arouses sexual instincts: her voice, her hair, her body—all of it supposedly disrupts the man’s being. It overlooks the fact that a woman can earn the respect of a man and those around her through her conduct and the way she treats others, not through a head covering, an abaya, or a shawl. Through her behavior. Through the way she treats others. Through her self-respect.
The second justification, by contrast, assumes that there is a connection between wearing the veil and establishing a virtuous society, and according to this logic, a virtuous society is one in which its members do not have intimate relationships outside marriage. Yet this is, to say the least, a mistaken assumption. Societies that have imposed the veil and insisted on segregation between the sexes are not, in reality, those in which sexual relations outside marriage are least common. On the contrary. We find that forced segregation has in fact led to the emergence of homosexual relationships, just as wearing the veil by girls in many Arab and Islamic societies has not prevented some of them, as indicated by certain published investigations and studies, from having love affairs outside marriage. They then usually resort, like others, to hymen-reconstruction procedures.
As for the third justification, it assumes that religion has taken a decisive position on the issue of women’s veiling, even though the religious texts that exist are, in reality, broad and open to interpretation, and have always been so. And you are capable of reading the texts yourself; you do not need an intermediary. You will see that they are not only broad in meaning, but also open to multiple interpretations. Yet we have decided to narrow the texts and tailor them to interpretations dating back to the Middle Ages.
And if you want the truth, the third justification—that religion itself imposes the veil on women—is in fact the weakest of these justifications, because we did not hear this claim until the late 1970s, and we did not see it put into practice until the orthodox interpretation of Islam became dominant in the Arab and Muslim world.
This is the reasoning on which I base my invitation to you. I present it to you, asking you to reflect carefully on my words and on what I am asking of you. I am not asking you to stop praying. I am not asking you to stop fasting. I am not asking you to stop believing in Almighty God. Rather, I am asking you to take off your veil.
Your hair is like mine; it is not a sexual symbol of which I should be ashamed. Your body is like mine; it is not a stage for lustful fantasies. Your body is like mine; it is something I respect and take pride in. You are like me, a noble human being, with my hair, with my body. You are like me, capable of being “virtuous” in conduct and in the way you deal with others, without a veil covering you. My behavior is what defines me, not a piece of cloth. Be whatever you wish, my lady. I will respect your decision, whatever it may be. But in the end, be yourself. A woman. Not a private part.
Dr. Elham Manea – Yemeni-Swiss
