by Qanta A. Ahmed
New York Post
  September 3, 2011

http://www.islamicpluralism.org/1881/un-twisting-the-veil

 

 

[CIP Note: This op-ed was written  by Dr. Qanta Ahmed in response to a disturbance at Rye Playland, an amusement  park in Westchester, N.Y., on August 30, in which 15 people were arrested.  The incident arose when members of a Muslim visitors' group organized by the  Wahhabi-lining Muslim American Society alleged discrimination against Muslim  women who were prevented from boarding rides while wearing loose, flowing hijab.]

Tangling with the Muslim headscarf  is no child's play, as this week's unpleasantness at Rye Playland proved all  too well. There are lessons here both for Muslims and non-Muslims.

Muslims in America are free to  express their religious identity, and today often choose to do so by adopting  the hijab (a headscarf that covers only the hair and exposes the face) as a  badge of devotion. Ignorance in many camps has helped this become intensely  polarizing.

Though headscarves have come to  symbolize Muslim identity in the post-9/11 world, the Koran does not in fact  specify a particular garment for veiling. Yet, in an era of rising Islamic  neo-orthodoxy, such inconvenient scriptural anomalies are often overlooked by  Muslims ourselves.

On the other hand, many mistake  headscarves for a symbol of female oppression; in fact, they are a tool of  liberation for many Muslim women -- allowing them to move freely in the  public space.

While many Muslim women are  compelled to wear the hijab in Muslim-majority nations (by legislation in  Saudi Arabia; by community pressure in parts of Northwestern Pakistan and  Afghanistan), Muslim women in America are empowered to do as they choose.

The unfortunate episode at Rye  Playland highlights the intensely knotted feelings these newly iconic swathes  of fabric elicit. Park operators, concerned about insecure scarves becoming  entangled in ride equipment, restricted access to veiled women. Their concern,  they explained, extended to all headgear -- baseball caps and kippas are  equally prohibited.

I must tell you, both the hijab  and the niqab (a face veil) can be quite limiting. Wearing a veil (as  the law required) in Riyadh, Jeddah and Mecca, I found it certainly can  impair peripheral vision. I was at risk whenever crossing a road -- and, like  other less experienced veil-wearers, I found that floor-length veils often  left me tripping on escalators and stairs.

Still, as The Post has reported,  other amusement parks try to accommodate the scarves. Yet new reports tell us  that several deaths in amusement parks have been explicitly linked to  strangulation by entanglement.

The great irony here is that the  appalling Rye Playland affair came immediately after the month of fasting,  discipline and spiritual introspection enjoyed by observing Muslims during  Ramadan. Just who provoked the scuffles is immaterial: Islam demands the  Muslim fulfill a spiritually prescribed duty to society (whether  Muslim or non-Muslim), in addition to our duty to God and to self.

In short, part of being a good  Muslim is therefore being a good citizen -- which means not yielding  to indignation and outrage as some of the Muslims in Rye did. How foolish  many must feel, now that we know that Playland had warned the tour operator  of its policies.

By rapidly assuming the default  "victim role," they were following the lead of "Muslim  advocacy" groups and witless liberal medialogues, who remain equally  oblivious to our serious Islamic duties to preserve society. Yet these echo  chambers, in amplifying the shrieks of entitled demands, merely create chasms  between Muslims and non-Muslims.

More and more often, at the close  of the 9/11 decade, claims of Islamophobia rise from both Muslims and  non-Muslims. Park officials are thus miscast as a villainous, fundamental  affront to Muslim identity. An incensed, hyper-reflexive Muslim American  psyche predictably reacts poorly, illogically and unIslamically to  authorities -- themselves antagonized by the playing of the "victim  card."

Without missing a beat, the  opportunist Council on American-Islamic Relations has already leapt to make  accusations of "disproportionate force" without assessing the  contribution of Muslims to the fracas.

Americans: Muslim or not, please  don't stumble over this gnarled spin of Islam.

Now, more than ever, as Muslims we  need first to understand before we seek to be understood. As Muslims  in a non-Muslim-majority country, one that valiantly safeguards our religious  freedom, the onus is on us -- not a park ranger, police officer or  politician. Muslims must take the first steps in a direction of greater  mutual insights, including more nuanced expressions of Islamic belief.

Understand: This scuffle was not  about headscarves or disproportionate force. It was about disproportionate  Muslim sentiments. Accepting this humiliating reality requires adult  self-introspection and courage. And, as all adults know, self-introspection  means sacrifice -- perhaps even missing the immediate thrill of the ride, instead  trading it in for the long, slow haul towards disentangled clarity