“Why don’t you wear the hijab?” “Your neck and ears are showing, you know that’s haram right?” “You shouldn’t expose yourself like that, your beauty is only for your husband!” “You should tone it down a bit, you can’t be so outgoing! What will people think?”
Truly take a moment to let those words sink in. Degrading and hypocritical, these are among the many phrases thrown at Muslim women by Muslim men; too caught up in their own ego and privilege to realize the irreversible damage these words can inflict.
A toxic mentality that’s been worming its way through Muslim communities through every generation brings to the light the biases that still exist against women, despite Islam being a religion that grants equality between the sexes. This goes to show that these standards, rooted in ignorance and the negligence to teach boys to respect girls from day one, is an issue concerning the mentalities existing within Muslim cultures, and not the religion itself.
“O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of God is the most righteous of you. Indeed, God is Knowing and Acquainted.” (Quran, 49:13)
Some Muslim men, whether they realize it or not, are raised with far more freedom than their female counterparts. Patriarchal beliefs are to blame for this unbalanced approach in raising children. Parents fail to realize that by granting their sons certain privileges not extending to their daughters, they’re only adding to an ego-driven personality that grows up believing he will always be the “bread-winner,” and hold a moral authority in dictating the lives of the opposite sex as he pleases. He will feel entitled to say the things he does, twisting and manipulating the ideologies of his faith for his own benefit.
At only thirteen, a boy approached my friend after prayers at the mosque and asked her why she didn’t wear a hijab to public school. When she told him it wasn’t any of his business, he literally began counting off reasons she would go to hell. I found her crying in the bathroom later that evening, and my heart broke in a way I didn’t know was possible. I was absolutely furious — who was he to question her, when I’d find him in the hallways at school planting kisses on a different girl every week?
A hashtag surfaced on Twitter recently, #DearSister, where women around the world shared their experiences of the foul and derogatory remarks from Muslim men they’re tired of hearing.
"#dearsister you can't sin when wearing the hijab it gives off the wrong message to non-Muslims about Islam but anyways I'm off to the club"
— muna? (@sailormunaa) March 5, 2017
https://twitter.com/southiraqi/status/838474257722191872
#DearSister I'll ask for nudes & encourage what I consider immodesty onto other women but god forbid my wife/sis/daughter act like that.
— ⚰︎ (@Afgeezy97) March 5, 2017
https://twitter.com/SassNStarlight/status/838451010871812096
https://twitter.com/hijabispeaks/status/838502093564575748
It’s high time Muslim women stopped having to constantly defend themselves against sexist comments from their own brothers in Islam. This religion, feminist in all its glory, is over 1400 years old and yet some of its followers can’t seem to acknowledge that women aren’t just wives and daughters, but people too, and deserve to be treated as such.
Perhaps the next lecture at our local mosques shouldn’t be about the behavior of the “ideal, pious Muslim woman,” but an ongoing conversation about men finally taking responsibility for their actions and treating their sisters in Islam with honor and respect.
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