News:

The UK is presently in the midst of a heated political debate initiated by the Home Office Minister Jeremy Browne who is encouraging the government to consider the banning  the Niqab. On the 16^th of September Minister Browne stated; ".....there is genuine debate about whether girls should feel a compulsion to wear a veil". The debate over banning of the veil was initiated after Birmingham Metropolitan College reversed its previous 8 years ban on Niqabs.

Comment:

The Liberal Democrat MP's staunch anti-Islamic position is echoed by fellow MP's with Tory backbencher Dr Sarah Wollaston, writing in the Telegraph Newspaper a day earlier that veils were "deeply offensive" and were "making women invisible". The widely asserted assumption that Muslim women need rescuing from being forced to practice Islam is one of the cheap political tactics often employed by desperate politicians internationally in order to create Islamophobic hysteria and distract the internal population from their own political failures or win cheap votes. The fact is Muslim women are fully aware that the western nations they live in give allot of assistance in turning their back on the Islamic points of view and yet statistics show that it is the younger well educated Muslim women who see through the black cloud of popular liberal culture that covers every part of the world and reject the fanatical pressure to conform to a viewpoint of success that is driven by company profits feeding off women's unhappiness and insecurities. The idea that Muslim women are forced to cover is one that represents the exact opposite of the reality It is western values that Muslim women are being forced to accept when divisive discussions on Hijab bans, Halal meat or any other Islamic policy is placed in the firing line. This trend represents a continuation of the Orientalist tradition, which automatically discredits any non-Eurocentric political entity, in order to elevate its own substandard position. The fact that Muslim women in France, Tunisia, across Europe, Africa and beyond, prefer Islamic politics over liberal secular values is proven when we see Muslim women taking their cases to European Courts of Human rights and other legal bodies and how they suffer great consequences, even death, in order to defend their Islamic identity.

The recent example in Birmingham Metropolitan College is a case in point when a 17-year-old girl started an online protest against the Niqab ban. She stated at the time that the veil ban was embarrassing and that it "upsets me that we are being discriminated against. I don't think my Niqab prevents me from studying or communicating with anyone...." The online petition against the ban was signed by 9,000 in 48 hours showing the immense solidarity and sympathy Muslim women have for the struggle to defy the negative consequences of being Muslim women in liberal democracies as these statistics reflect a powerful message that Muslim women refuse to submit to the will of Secular fanaticism with its oppressive laws that criminalize, marginalize and punish Muslim women for exercising their own free-will when they see no hope for real success under the double standards and false promises of liberal-secularism and Capitalism. When faced with such debates like the banning of Niqab, Muslim women are reminded that Islam is the only truly stable viewpoint in life, free from contradictions in policy. It is a political system that provides women with social and economic security unprecedented in the world's history. Women were not forced to abandon their public roles due to the pressure of exposing more of their physical attributes. In the Islamic social system, women are valued for their inherent qualities of womanhood, that of being a mother, wife and daughter. Their success is defined by the content of their character not the cutting edge of a plastic surgeons knife. In an Islamic system a women is encouraged to fill her mind not her wardrobe and her happiness is not measured by the approval of other people but by the approval of her creator. In this way we can see that the real danger and obstacle Muslim women's progress has its origins not in Islam, but western political systems that are enforced globally. It is the removal of these alien viewpoints in our lands, not the removal of the Niqab that should be the critical point of debate internationally. Allah (swt) speaks of the struggle for Islam in Suran As-Saff verse 8;

يُرِيدُونَ لِيُطْفِئُوا نُورَ اللَّهِ بِأَفْوَاهِهِمْ وَاللَّهُ مُتِمُّ نُورِهِ وَلَوْ كَرِهَ الْكَافِرُونَ

"Their intention is to extinguish God's Light (by blowing) with their mouths: But God will complete (the revelation of) His Light, even though the Unbelievers may detest (it)."

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by

Imrana Mohammad

Member of the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir