Here is still more trumped-up victimhood propaganda. It’s much more likely that the only real reason why Fakhruddin Ahmed’s wife might not be able to leave the house is because he hasn’t given her permission to do so. Islamic law stipulates: “The husband may forbid his wife to leave the home…because of the hadith related by Bayhaqi that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, ‘It is not permissible for a woman who believes in Allah and the Last Day to allow someone into her husband’s house if he is opposed, or to go out if he is averse'” (Reliance of the Traveller m10.4).
Much more commentary interspersed below.
“My wife won’t leave home alone thanks to Trump’s anti-Muslim hysteria,” by Fakhruddin Ahmed, Star-Ledger, October 15, 2017:
Hijab or headscarf-wearing women are disproportionately impacted by the anti-Muslim hysteria President Trump’s rhetoric and incitements has engendered. Hijab is a mystery to most Americans.
“Do these women wear it when they are intimate?” some wonder. (No, women take their hijab off as they enter the privacy of their homes.) Women aspire to enhance their spirituality by donning the hijab. However, those who think the hijab makes women obsequious do not know Muslim women!
Fakhruddin Ahmed leads off with a rhetorical straw man, trying to make any opposition to the hijab appear ridiculous. “Do these women wear it when they are intimate?” Does anyone ever really wonder that? It only seems to appear in Muslim and Leftist apologetics for the hijab, such as this egregious video from Vox.
Muslim Americans do not compel their womenfolk to wear the hijab, nor do they consider women not wearing it less Muslim. It is the woman’s choice. American society pressures women not to wear it. Those who do, consider it feminist, liberating and empowering. Hijab covers the head, not the brain, they stress.
“Muslim Americans do not compel their womenfolk to wear the hijab.” Maybe, but Muslims in the U.S. don’t have a different version of Islam from that held elsewhere, and elsewhere, multitudes of women have been compelled to wear the hijab. Has Fakhruddin Ahmed heard of Aqsa Parvez, whose Muslim father choked her to death with her hijab after she refused to wear it? Or Aqsa and Amina Muse Ali, a Christian woman in Somalia whom Muslims murdered because she wasn’t wearing a hijab? Or the Muslim woman in Italy who was raped and beaten by her husband, and forced to wear a burqa? Or the 40 women who were murdered in Iraq in 2007 for not wearing the hijab; or Alya Al-Safar, whose Muslim cousin threatened to kill her and harm her family because she stopped wearing the hijab in Britain; or Amira Osman Hamid, who faced whipping in Sudan for refusing to wear the hijab; or the Egyptian girl, also named Amira, who committed suicide after being brutalized for her family for refusing to wear the hijab; or the Muslim and non-Muslim teachers at the Islamic College of South Australia who were told that they had to wear the hijab or be fired; or the women in Chechnya whom police shot with paintballs because they weren’t wearing hijab; or the women also in Chechnya who were threatened by men with automatic rifles for not wearing hijab; or the elementary school teachers in Tunisia who were threatened with death for not wearing hijab; or the Syrian schoolgirls who were forbidden to go to school unless they wore hijab; or the women in Gaza whom Hamas has forced to wear hijab; or the women in Iran who protested against the regime by daring to take off their legally-required hijab; or the women in London whom Muslim thugs threatened to murder if they didn’t wear hijab; or the anonymous young Muslim woman who doffed her hijab outside her home and started living a double life in fear of her parents, or all the other women and girls who have been killed or threatened, or who live in fear for daring not to wear the hijab?
“American society pressures women not to wear it.” Really? Where? The hip, cool Leftist intelligentsia celebrates the hijab. Western feminists defend the hijab. So where is this pressure coming from?
Hijab is a symbol of modesty, privacy, and perpetual prayer. It is not a defiant religious statement. The Qur’an (24:30-31) implores Muslims –men and women — to lower their gaze and guard their modesty, and advises women to draw veils over their bosoms and not flaunt their beauty. While many women fulfill the Qur’anic exhortation by wearing the hijab, most men avoid wearing religious garb.
“While many women fulfill the Qur’anic exhortation by wearing the hijab, most men avoid wearing religious garb.” Why the dichotomy? Fakhruddin Ahmed doesn’t explain it, but actually it is because the hijab is a manifestation of a woman’s responsibility to prevent men from being tempted by her appearance. If they’re tempted anyway, and she is molested, it’s her fault — hence honor killings.
Women wear the hijab to discourage unwelcome prying eyes from male strangers. Although the hijab reflects a desire to be left alone, ironically, it makes the woman more conspicuous — and a target: Hijab-wearing women are the easiest to identify as Muslims, and bear the brunt of anti-Muslim prejudice.
Hijab-wearing women are the targets of verbal abuse, racial slurs, and taunts, such as “ISIS terrorist!” “Go back home!” Sometimes the attacks are physical, such as snatching away of the hijab exposing the woman’s hair, or punching the woman. In May, a substitute male teacher was charged with a hate crime for ripping off eight-year-old Safa Alzockary’s hijab in a Bronx school, injuring her eye.
Not surprisingly, Fakhruddin Ahmed’s account is misleading. The teacher must have been a white racist Trump supporter, right? Wrong. The teacher’s name is Oghenetega Edah, and he is black. Nor was his action some out-of-the-blue manifestation of “Islamophobia.” The New York Post reports: “The girl was misbehaving in class and sitting in the teacher’s chair without his permission. So the teacher tapped her on her arm to get her to move. When she wouldn’t, he threatened to take the scarf, cops said. ‘I’m taking it off,’ he said as he pulled the Hijab off her head, causing an injury to her right eye, according to cops.” So is Oghenetega Edah a bad teacher? Yes. Should he have pulled off Safa Alzockary’s hijab? No. But this is more an incident of poor classroom discipline than of “anti-Muslim hate.”
After enduring eight days of silent hostility and cold stares, and the Muslim and Syrian refugee bans, Rumana Ahmed, a hijab-wearing Obama National Security Council appointee, left Trump’s White House, according to a 2017 article she wrote in The Atlantic.
Here is Rumana Ahmed’s Atlantic article. It’s a classic piece of victimhood posturing, but she says nothing about “silent hostility and cold stares” in the Trump White House. Her article is all about how she opposes Trump’s policies, which made her a poor fit for his NSC anyway. She says: “I had to leave because it was an insult walking into this country’s most historic building every day under an administration that is working against and vilifying everything I stand for as an American and as a Muslim.” It was an insult, but she says nothing about any Trump staffer insulting her, and you can be sure she would have if any of them had done so.
Two American heroes were murdered and another injured on a Portland, Oregon commuter train on May 26, when they came to the assistance of a hijab-wearing 17-year-old Muslim girl who was being verbally assaulted and physically threatened by a 35-year-old white supremacist. The best and the worst of America were on display on that train. To express their gratitude, Muslim Americans raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the families of the three heroes.
In reality, the Portland killer ranted against Jews, Christians, and Muslims. He said: “You don’t like it? You got a problem with what I’m saying? F*** all you Christians and Muslims and f****** Jews , f****** die. Burn you at the stake… f****** die.” But the establishment media did not note that he included Jews and Christians in his hatred, and reported him as “Islamophobe.”
On June 18, another 17-year-old hijab-wearing teen, Nabra Hassanen, was murdered by a 22-year-old man, as she, along with a group of hijab-wearing women were heading toward a Virginia mosque for morning prayers after eating the early morning meal Suhoor at a fast-food restaurant in preparation for the day’s Ramadan fast. As the assailant got out of his car swinging a baseball bat, all her friends ran away. Hassanen, wearing the traditional long dress abaya, tripped. The man bludgeoned her to death with the baseball bat and dumped her body in a pond near his apartment.
The killing of Nabra Hassanen was a heinous crime, but the killer was not an “Islamophobe,” he was a deranged thug, and he did not kill her because she was a Muslim. Police found nothing to indicate that this was a hate crime.
Fear of such life-threatening encounters is persuading some Muslim women not to wear the hijab. On Dec. 16, 2016 USA Today related the story of Melissa Grajek of San Marcos, Calif., who stopped wearing the hijab after a man snatched away his son, who was playing with Ms. Grajek’s son, and said, “I can’t wait until Trump is president because he’ll send you back to where you came from.”
Here is the USA Today story. Is there any witness to this incident besides Grajek herself? Even if it did happen, it’s just some lout. People are rude and obnoxious to other people every day; it doesn’t make the news.
Because of the increasing threat that the hijab poses to women wearing it, many Islamic scholars are expressing the opinion that under these adverse circumstances, it is permissible for Muslim women not to wear the hijab. To protect themselves, Muslim women are also signing up for self-defense workshops, buying pepper spray, taking firearms training, and applying for permits to carry concealed weapons….
Carried to the extreme, tendencies toward seclusion and segregation can result in non-integration and Muslim ghettos, which have incubated Muslim terrorists in Western Europe. We, as Americans, should not let that happen here.
If there are going to be Muslim ghettos in the U.S., it will be Muslims who establish them. Last year, the former head of Britain’s Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), Trevor Phillips, said that Muslims refused to assimilate. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said: “Assimilation is a crime against humanity.”
The Qur’an says to Muslims: “You are the best nation produced for mankind. You enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong and believe in Allah.” (3:110) Meanwhile, it says of unbelievers: “Indeed, they who disbelieved among the People of the Book and the polytheists will be in the fire of Hell, abiding eternally therein. Those are the most vile of created beings.” (98:6)
Why would one of the “best nation,” who “enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong,” want to integrate into the society of “the most vile of created beings,” who do not?