I’ve started to see more and more children wearing hijabs while out with their parents in Melbourne. I’ll leave this post devoid of my views on it and simply ask you, is this ok? How do you feel about it?
We gave Michael Jackson a hell of a time for parading his children around in masks and with blankets over their heads, should we be as worried about this religious practice? Is it ok to be oppressing children from such a young age, especially with regards to their sexuality, which I’m sure infants pay little to know attention to otherwise?
It seems a lot of people justify this by saying “it’s part of their culture, therefore it’s ok”. Are we just holding it as a taboo though, fearing that any criticism thrown the way of Australian muslims will be taken as racism?
Anyway, I’m interested in getting a discussion going about this and genuinely want to know your views.
To my mind this is high up the list of child abuse. These children may not understand their sexuality yet but they are at the stage in their development that they are absorbing information at a phenomenal rate and creating their world view. If these girls are learning that their bodies should be hidden (and the boys that they should not see the girls) they are both going to find it nigh on impossible to reject that on rational grounds later as the inhibition will have been formed at this impressionable stage. No-one will have to tell them to cover up, they’ll find it impossible to uncover.
Children learn stuff organically and that is the headrest to unlearn when you get it wrong – I was 4/5 when there were big oil strikes in Arabia and suddenly London was full of wealthy Arabs at the same time as trendy young things in hot pants with flowing long hair. So, as a child I was surrounded by these two extremes of the female form. I never really thought about it much til I was watching a documentary in my twenties where an Iranian woman was showing someone around Tehran. As the reporter was female she was able to go home with the girl and meet the family at which point the girl took off the head part of her attire and I caught myself thinking, “Wow, she’s not THAT ugly!”. Only then did I realise that I thought all Arab women were so ugly they had to hide themselves! I didn’t even know I thought that as it was something I worked out when very young and it filed under “no need to question”, and it makes sense to a child’s brain – if the people showing off are really beautiful and proud of their lovely bodies, the ones covering up must be ashamed to be ugly. It took me literally years of determined rational thought to shake that core belief that whatever was under the cover it was probably better off there. It’s sadly humorous, btw, that this is the exact opposite of the religion-cultural reason for covering.
As for the argument that I have heard about it ‘just’ being a symbol of faith, a) I don’t think anyone should be allowed/encouraged to wear a symbol of faith until they are old enough to actually have a faith, b) it is my understanding that the Koran (or maybe the Hadiths?) says that a girl should take the hejab on entering pubity, c) a cross or star of david is just a symbol and can be worn without implying anything about the flesh of the wearer to the wearer or others, and d) things that hide the face and arms inhibit communication (only 7% of communication is verbal, over 50% is body language including facial expression and since our relationships are all built on communication, these garbs actively dehumanise women and mark them out as second class, dependant, citizens; to do this to such a young child is obscene.
(don’t get me wrong, I’m not just having a pop at Islam here but this particular disturbing act is committed in it’s name. I can pop at other religions on other questions)