Anne Applebaum of Slate wrote an article discussing the hijab issue in Turkey and the recent attempt to sue the not-sufficiently-secular government that has unbanned it in public universities. I wrote about this before, arguing that no government has the right to dictate citizens’ fashions, and I was jubilant when hijab was unbanned, and I still am.

If you read Applebaum’s article, and you must in order to understand this post, you will find that she has practiced deliberate picking and choosing for arguments, quotations, and situations to suit her point, all the while neglecting to show counterarguments which are equally, if not more, valid. This sort of calculated coverage is not only biased, but extremely harmful as it leads recipients to form an impression which is on the whole charged with bias and twisted facts.

Then she referred to Muslim women as ‘Islamic‘ women. What is that? Is the English dictionary so vast and diversified so as to equate Muslim with Islamic now, and later with Islamicist with fascist with terrorist? Evidently, these subtle(!) and gradual substitutions serve a political goal to fragment and demonize. Applebaum certainly had an agenda writing her article, and her very choice of words reveals it.

According to the article, the “enduring significance” of the hijab is striking. Really? Is it any more “enduring” than the significance of Jesus or the Holy Trinity, the Yarmulke, or karma in Hinduism? Simply put, people will always carry out parts or all of what their religious beliefs dictate. Other people may feel threatened by that, and that’s the politics of it.

Applebaum laments her “Anglo-American bias” which so naively portrays the veil as a choice, then she proceeds to argue that “Fairly or not, in certain Turkish communities, a head covering in fact marks the wearer not just as faithful but as a believer in a particular version of Islam. Fairly or not, the head scarf carries with it, at least in Turkey, partisan connotations, as well as a suggestion of the wearer’s views of women.” As a woman living in a predominately Muslim country, and who is directly exposed to hijab, I opt for the ‘Not Fairly’ bit in Applebaum’s argument. An outsider may never learn the inner workings of a society as diversified and complex as Turkey, and to blindly support forceful implementation of secularism on the expense of basic human rights is to demolish any ‘liberal’ affiliations one claims to have.

She also hints, not so implicitly, that veiled Turkish women are less achieving than non veiled ones. “Wives of the current Turkish political leadership wear head scarves, that most of them donned the scarves after their marriages, and that most of them never worked or studied again after they wed.You can see why women who want something different might feel threatened.” Hmm. That may be because they were BANNED from studying at public Turkish universities until recently, and what ever happened to Applebaum’s “Anglo-American bias” and “personal choice“?

This polarization of Turkish, and Muslim, women as ‘veiled = uneducated, underachieving’ and ‘not veiled = educated, overachieving’ betrays Applebaum’s attempt to conceal her biases. It is an indication that people who claim to be liberal do make the very mistakes that they try to avoid, they go to extremes to protect concepts like secularism and in doing so, endanger the values and liberties they fight for.

Applebaum’s xenophobia emerges at the very end of her ill-researched article when she says “And if, someday, this argument comes to our shores, let’s not be surprised by that. In the end, the head-scarf debate isn’t about a wisp of fabric but about the viability of secular Islam itself.” This reveals that it is more of a question of Us vs. Them than a question of basic liberties and expression. It is not about secular Islam per se, it is not about oppressed Muslim women forced to wear the veil, it is not about their education and career prospects, it is not even about Turkey, for crying out loud! It is about the blatant fear of this argument coming to “our shores,” and that the free, liberal, advanced, educated, achieving West must be prepared to fight this ambiguous piece of cloth which conceals “The Other.”

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.