Muslim Women Are Being Slut Shamed in Reverse

The Viral Meme: Oppsforgot to be oppressed, to busy winning gold medals

I created a meme of US Olympic Fencing Bronze Medalist, and first Olympic Athlete to represent the USA wearing Hijab, Ibtihaj Muhammad for my Fit Muslimah Fan Page, which I dedicate to encouraging Muslim women to live active lifestyles. Oppsforgot to be oppressed, to busy winning gold medals. The meme has since gone viral, shared over 5,000 times off my Fan page alone and others who have taken it and shared it found it quickly going viral from their pages as well.

What was it about this meme that so many people resonated with? Over 100 comments in support of and a some against the idea it tried to convey: that women in Hijab are not oppressed by the act of covering. I see this idea as a form of the delusion of Western ideological superiority. Much of the same mentality that Europeans used to justify civilizing the savages when they came to North America and in contact with native tribes. Its an idea that any understanding of freedom or happiness that differs from Western mainstream ideology is somehow wrong, uncivilized or undemocratic.

For Muslim women who choose to where hijab, it actually completely opposite to this position and instead serves as a symbol of empowerment. For Muslim women living in America hijab serves as a symbol of freedom, a privilege of being American. In many countries, wearing Hijab is not an option but in America we are under no obligation to do so. So when we choose from our own free will, our own self-determination, we are choosing to assert the freedom and the privilege of being American. The very freedom this country was founded upon: The freedom to practice religion as we choose without persecution or discrimination.

Calling Hijab Oppression is the same as Slut Shaming

For decades others has been trying to control womens bodies. What women do with their bodies, what they put on their bodies, how they even walk in their bodies. To me as a Muslim-American that choose to wear hijab, the argument that wearing hijab is oppression is the same as slut shaming. Its a judgment on a womens mind, intentions and actions based on what she chooses to put on her body. When someone says a Muslim woman is oppressed because she chooses to wear hijab its the same as assuming that a woman sleeps around because she chooses to wear a mini skirt. It astounds me how many people do not see the correlation between these two positions.

Of course in some countries, women are forced by law and culture to wear Hijab but the oppression is not the hijab itself. The oppression is the environment. This same correlation can be made for sex workers who are forced to scantily dress, for them wearing a booty shorts and a halter top can be oppression. But that does not mean every woman that chooses to wear a halter top is oppressed.

The idea that choosing to reveal as much as ones body as you choose is freedom, but choosing to cover ones body is some how oppression. The key word is choose. Freedom as its meant to be is choice without oppression. But Muslim women are being told freedom is not really freedom. You are free to confirm to what we define as freedom. You are not free to believe as you choose, to worship as you choose.

The recent incident on the Promenade des Anglais beach in Nice, when four cops forced a middle-aged Muslim woman and mom, to remove her shirt or be pepper sprayed and fined was not just about a ridiculous islamophobic law but it was yet another instance of men trying to control womens bodies.

Trying to control womens bodies has historical precedent throughout the world. In the 1920s women on beaches in the United States were subject to police measuring the length of a their bathing suit to make sure it was long enough in an attempt to legally force women to conform to laws (made by males) that controlled their bodies. Today, as we see in France we are still faced with the same forced conformity and subjugation of womens bodies to the laws (still made by mostly males).

Why isnt feminist standing up for a womens right to wear what she chooses and not be demonized? Is the right for a woman to control her own body limited to non-Muslim women? Is there a different standard of freedom and self-determination once someone changes their concept of God? Are Muslim women exempt from human rights that so called democratic nations are built upon? The truth is hypocrisy is more prevalent than democracy. And oppression disguises itself as freedom.