Jill Rees: Welcome Press

Turkey is a Moslem country, with over 98% of the population Moslem. It’s a Moslem country in the same way that England is Church of England, that is to say that everyone is a Moslem but that doesn’t mean they all practise all that strongly. The Call to Prayer is ubiquitous, but most people ignore it, indeed hardly hear it any more.  Many of the women wear the headscarf, although whether for extremely religious reasons, for fashion, or so that men don’t hassle them is different in each case. But if a woman works in a public service, she is obliged by law to take the headscarf off, and to bare her head, and women find this incredibly offensive.

Since it is only women who wear the headscarf, the laws and obligations pertaining to them, affect only women, and where oppression is in place, it is the oppression of women, and not of Moslems. This is an important distinction, which might enable us to understand the true nature of this issue, becoming as it is an international one. France, like Turkey, has secular regulations against wearing the headscarf in government buildings and public posts.

The law is actually ostensibly against all religious symbols, but everyone knows it is really only Islam that worries everyone, and then only how women express Islam. This prejudice against the headscarf is an attack on the liberty of women, and not Moslems.

When I was a child in the north of England in the 1960s it was still de rigueur for women to wear a headscarf outdoors, and especially was considered a sign of a good Christian woman with moral standards. This is the sense in which Turkish women who wear the headscarf choose to wear it. Gradually, along with hats and indeed church-going, the headscarf has slowly died out in the UK among Christian women, and appears to have disappeared even from memory.

Women in Islam have many freedoms that other women don’t have, such as the right to keep their own property, and women in non-Moslem countries are largely unaware of this. I imagine that Western men don’t want their own women to find out about it, lest they start claiming their property back! Whatever the rights and limitations available to women in Moslem countries may be, women in other countries in the present time seem to have the worst of all possible worlds.

From an early age, girls have to be passive and to look cute. As teenagers, they are ogled at and perved at by strangers throughout their daily life, and the headscarf takes this inconvenience away. On the other hand, is it impossible for men to act appropriately towards young women, whatever they are wearing? It seems quite strange to women that men declare themselves to be unaccountable, and, although they often claim that they are the stronger sex, unashamedly lack  self-control when it comes to harassing women.

In Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, and possibly other countries too, the men are completely in control of themselves and hold women in the highest esteem. In these countries, women will not get looked at askance, whether they are wearing mini skirts, piercings in their faces, showing their mid-riff, which is in fashion currently in the North, colouring their hair…Whatever their appearance, they are treated equally.

These countries nevertheless have unequal situations for women in the workplace, where salarial and promotional inequities have still not been vanquished, yet the social attitude is one of being accepted as free citizens. In those countries, women are able to walk around unmolested, drink alone in bars, eat alone in restaurants, use public transport, go to the cinema and walk home at night without fear. In all the northern democratic countries, it is perfectly acceptable and not even unusual for a woman to decide to live on her own, instead of marrying and having children. She can rise to managerial level at work, and have free relationships with men on her own terms.

Of course, all is not perfect, for in these nations too, the remnants of historical racism are sadly still apparent. In order to be harassed there, it suffices to wear the headscarf! In the countries which have bought into Bush’s ‘Axis of evil’ principle of world politics, to wear the headscarf is akin to an act of terrorism.  It is odd that, in the countries where fewer people are Moslem and where the headscarf is relatively rare, the right to wear it is more defended than in Islamic countries!

The UK has a long history of religious tolerance dating back to the time of Martin Luther, when Protestants were systematically burned in other European countries. Although there were outbreaks of violence and oppression in the UK too, Queen Elizabeth I ensured that Protestants and Catholics alike are protected in the UK. Later, the Protestants themselves split into many churches, such as Methodists and Baptists, and all were afforded protection in the UK.

In the 1960s the Sikh population of Uganda were expelled by Amin Dada, and many came to the UK. They so inspired the people of the UK by their kindness, politeness and genuineness, that when the issue of wearing the turban came up, the UK was extremely receptive. Sikh men grow their hair in honour of God, and tie it with a turban worn high on their heads.

Many of the new immigrants worked as bus conductors, which required the wearing of a cap as part of the uniform. Sikhs asked to be excused from wearing the cap, as they could not fit it on over their turban. The UK agreed, and from that moment the wearing of religious symbols and clothing has been held as sacrosanct in the UK. Although certain workers have been asked to remove the full burka, such as an infant school teacher as it was deemed necessary for the children she was teaching to see her mouth to aid their speech, generally the headscarf can be freely worn everywhere.

So the odd paradox remains: that in the UK where the headscarf is noticed and frowned upon, women have the right to ear it; yet in Turkey, a Moslem country, women must bare their heads for school and public sector jobs.

In primitive tribes the iconic wearing of various items of clothing and accessories has an imbedded meaning, surely as we become more modern, the wearing of the headscarf as other forms of unofficial dress, should be regarded fairly indifferently. As men are no longer required to wear a suit and tie, even for quite official positions, surely it makes no sense to kick up a fuss about the headscarf? Let us stop attaching such importance to appearance, and trying to control what people wear, although it is mainly women who are still subject to this type of oppression.

Freedom for the individual is an essential part of a modern democratic nation, and Turkey, in its attempt to become acceptable to the West as it struggles to enter into the European Union, has yet to grasp this most liberal of concepts: that there is nothing to fear but fear itself. The enlightenment of modern democracy lies in the right of the individual, and in respect for the individual. One’s religion is entirely a matter of individual conscience, and as the Moslem nations become more modern, people’s attitude to the wearing of the headscarf will become more and more indifferent. This can only be beneficial both to Islam and to secular society.

1272 words ©Jill Rees 16 July 2008

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Tags: Fashion, hair, headscarf, Islam, Moslem, secular, secular government, Turkey, woman