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Why do Muslim women wear Hijab? |
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Why should women
wear it?
The first reason for wearing hijab, then, is that it is a command from God. Religious Muslims - like any other religious people belonging to any revealed religion - don't feel comfortable in deliberately disobeying God! If some Muslims, despite of the semantic clarity of the Qur'anic verses, still think that this ruling is not mandatory, this will not alter the message. We can have some Muslims who unjustly or ignorantly deny the illegality of drinking alcohol, eating pork or even committing major sins like stealing, fornicating… etc. This does not mean that such things are permitted in Islam! In Islam it is very easy to detect or judge whether a certain ruling is mandatory or not, by going back to the major sources of Islamic legislation. This we technically name as ‘shari'a’. Those sources are the Qur'an, the Holy Book of Muslims, and sunnah, which is the sayings and guiding acts of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), as stated in authentic books. So, simply this is the very same case with hijab. Notice that this ruling of hijab, is highly esteemed among Muslim women, despite the big pressure of most regimes in the Muslim majority world to forbid it. Sometimes it is forbidden by force or women are discouraged from wearing it. The issue is seen as a means of secularizing or globalizing the Muslim states! This is, in-fact, except for two or three Muslim countries, which encourage their women to observe this ruling or at least "let it go". The rest are on a savage war against it. Turkey is the outspoken example of such hostility, but the other regimes are not less hostile, albeit silently, towards it. Despite this fact you can find Muslim women insisting on wearing it, even if it costs them their jobs and social status ... In fact, there is wisdom behind this heavenly command of hijab and behind Muslim women's challenge to wear it. It is that in the Islamic culture - like many other cultures - the idea of women's respectability and virtue is related, among other things, to the propriety of their dress. In Christianity for example, nuns cannot show up without their hijab. Also, regular ladies wear it while attending masses, which is a reflection of self-admission that God wants to see them this way! Also, as far as I know, in Judaism, the most religious faction amongst Jews, namely The Hassidics, have their strict rules about covering women’s bodies. Even in secular societies, some women judges have to cover their heads, during sessions, as a way to show their dignity and self-respect. Remember that your own puritan American society, before being swept over in the 1950s, by this permissive value system, used to look with embarrassment to any woman going out to the street without her hat! Mini skirts only appeared recently together with the secular and atheist style of life that some people in the west - and the East as well - chose for themselves. You can also tell that hijab is the way Islam neutralizes a woman's stereotyped role as a mere female, by inciting the society to deal with her as a human being away from her "extra feminine powers"! No wonder then that the majority of Muslim women refuse to let their ‘mill go with all winds’ and that they insist on keeping their Islamic identity. This is regardless of the consistent unfair criticism and sometimes satire against it. They wear hijab, not only in submission to God's order, but also because their inherent moral code is in full harmony with its philosophy. |
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