The Easy Targets

I miss having Hiba as a colleague here at FtB. I fully support her taking her writing in the direction she wants, and I have no doubt she’ll continue to be successful at it, but I miss her blogging. I miss the nuance she brought. I miss the confrontational truths. I miss the challenge to break down our behaviors and really understand them.

I miss this sort of thing.

Side-by-side photos of Hiba Krisht, one with hijab, one with bare hair and shoulders. Text in post.

Feminism is defending Muslim women who wear the hijab for whatever reason against shaming or attack.

Feminism is not categorically denying that the hijab can be coercive, body-shaming, slut-shaming, restrictive, or psychologically crippling.
– Hiba Krisht

Ex-Muslims of North America posted this to their public Facebook group a couple of days ago. Some of their readers had a problem with the statements. Actually, they mostly had one of three problems.

  1. They were women who appeared to be reading painful statements that had been said to them instead of Hiba’s words.
  2. They were men who stopped processing language at the word “feminism” and started expounding.
  3. The majority, mostly white men who don’t appear to be ex-Muslim, appeared to want to shame or attack Muslim women in hijab.

I have a great deal of sympathy for the first group and don’t feel any need to address the second beyond “Bless their hearts.” The third group is an example of a problem we keep coming up against in activist circles. They need to be addressed because they claim that what they’re doing is activism. It isn’t.

Attacking or shaming women who wear hijab for wearing hijab* is like attacking people for not reporting being raped despite the perils of reporting. It is like attacking people for staying in a war zone despite the hazards refugees face. It’s like telling black Americans they’re terrible if they haven’t gotten the police to stop killing them. It is like attacking poor people for eating the food they can find and afford.

Yes, I know we see people do all these things. They’re still all terrible behaviors. They still all add to the burdens of people activists claim to be trying to help.

They’re also still all shitty activism.

All of those behaviors go after the people with the least power to change the bad situation. A woman who takes off her hijab doesn’t change the legal system under which she lives by taking it off. People who report rape don’t change cops’ attitudes about rape by reporting. People don’t fix discrimination against refugees by demanding refuge. Black people die while pleading for their lives. Poor people don’t end food deserts by traveling to buy food.

What happens to people under those circumstances is increased danger and trauma. Coordinated political action and resistance can change things, but that’s harder for people to find the time and heart for when everyone around them is telling them they’re terrible. If you attack and shame individuals for being oppressed, you become just one more barrier hindering whatever fight they’ve got in them.

Real activism, effective activism in these circumstances is going after the systems of power that keep these people oppressed. That’s much harder work, of course. Standing in front of those systems as an activist is intimidating, sometimes disheartening. But that’s where the work needs to be done, no matter how much easier it is to “stand up to” someone those systems have already softened up for you.

“What if I don’t have access to fight those systems?”, I hear people ask. “What if the only people I have access to are the victims?” Yeah, that sucks, doesn’t it? Helplessness and powerlessness aren’t pleasant feelings.

Still, many of those people you can reach, those people you want to be able to attack and shame, do have the access you lack. They even have ideas for how to use it, being far more familiar with the systems of oppression than you are. That gives you a couple of choices. You can support them as they do the work they have the knowledge and access to do. Alternately, you can stand with the systems oppressing them to keep attacking them, since they are, after all, the easy targets.

I know which would be my choice.

*Assuming you disagree that attempts to reclaim or recontextualize the hijab are subversion in themselves, as I assume these commenters would had they heard of the idea.

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The Easy Targets
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8 thoughts on “The Easy Targets

  1. 1

    A lot of it is a difference between I guess “theoretical” versus “practical”? In theory or as an abstract idea, attacking hijab might seem like a good idea. After all there’s oppression and sexism involved in the requirement of hijab. From a practical standpoint, hijab is also wrapped in culture, family, religion, etc. and people are demanding women sacrifice all of those things to make a symbolic political stance that in many cases carried orders of magnitude more risks than rewards.

    When you’re ignoring the needs of the people you’re making demands of in the name of “helping” them, what you’re really doing is making your activism about what YOU want and what makes YOU feel good about the world.

  2. 2

    Attacking the hijab from the position of a western non-Muslim person, however, trips over an intersectional axis and gets all tangled up in imperialism and white savior narratives. Even “in theory,” it’s a bad idea, unless the theoretical model is an idealized world without a contentious history of the west meddling violently in the Middle East on the presumption that Our Ways Are Better.

  3. AMM
    3

    Attacking the hijab is IMHO shooting at the wrong target.

    The problem isn’t the hijab itself. After all, if it were a western fashion fad rather than a long-standing custom in certain non-Western societies, would we be having this conversation. (Note that a “custom” is essentially a fossilized fad.)

    The problem is the compulsion. As such, prohibiting someone from wearing the hijab is just as objectionable and invasive as compelling someone to wear it. The conservative muslim leaders who want to compel it and the French politicians who want(ed?) to ban it were both invading women’s lives to further their own agenda.

    (BTW: which blog did Hiba run? I don’t recall seeing that name on any of the current blogs. Or is Hiba a nickname, and she often goes by something else?)

  4. 4

    Hiba wrote Between a Veil and a Dark Place, though much of the time she blogged before coming to FtB, she used the pen name Marwa Berro.

    There are other things wrong with hijab, like the gendering of modesty and the idea that women are responsible for men’s “lustful thoughts”. Still, those aren’t universal even among people wearing hijab, and I would have a great deal of difficulty coming up with another piece of clothing specifically coded female that doesn’t have seriously problematic associations.

  5. AMM
    5

    I certainly think that the hijab can be critiqued. However, people can have their reasons for wanting to dress “modestly” that aren’t solely about society forcing them to do so. Just as a woman’s choice to take her husband’s name can be critiqued, yet she may have her own reasons for doing so that aren’t about society expecting it.

  6. 6

    Out of curiosity, does anyone have any idea where her newest writing has gone? Her original blog is private, and last I checked I couldn’t find her anywhere. I was concerned. Ex-muslims and feminists are two groups who can face serious threats, and this has all been totally mysterious. I found a professional site for her just advertising translation services. I dunno.

  7. 8

    The problem is, you sometimes have to stop the easy targets in order to protect the one rule for all principle. Here in Belgium we expect teachers to not discuss or show their political or religious affiliations while teaching. You may think this rule needs amending, but that is not what anyone is advocating for. What people are advocating is that we should allow/defend muslim woman wearing a hijab while teaching as an exception to the general rule. I personally don’t think that would be a good idea.

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