This is in response to the Lila Abu-Lughod recommended reading ("Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and its Others"). While I didn't agree with every single point in the reading, as someone who is also from a developing nation I do understand where she is coming from. The author did make some important points, namely when she pointed out: "One of the things we have to be most careful about in thinking about Third World feminisms, and feminism in different parts of the Muslim world, is how not to fall into polarizations that place feminism on the side of the West".
This article I've shared, "The Pink Hijab" by Robin Wright, was published in The Wilson Quarterly. It showcases how an Egyptian woman, Dalia Ziada, has been fighting for what she believes in, and she has been doing it wearing a hijab, not because she is forced to but because she chooses to. A survivor of female genital mutilation, she prevented her 7-year-old cousin from undergoing the same trauma. A 2005 United Nations report discovered that 97% of Egyptian females between ages 15 and 49 had been subjected to some kind of FGM.
Dalia joined the revolts against Hosni Mubarak when she was 29. A leading activist among the "pink hijab" generation, which refers to "young women committed to their faith, firm in their femininity, and resolute about their rights", she feels that her scarves are the most interesting part of her wardrobe. This generation is redefining what it means to wear a hijab - it is now "a declaration of activist intent rather than a symbol of being sequestered".
The article also focuses on a new political chic in the Arab world:
"The new chic has been fashioned by a yearning for change that is at once democratic and indigenous. The restless young chafe at old ways and old leaders, but many who turned out in Cairo’s Tahrir (“Liberation”) Square this year do not aspire merely to imitate the West. They reject militant jihad and the rigid formulas of the Salafis, yet they fervently embrace their faith as a defining force in their future. They want new systems that are both fully representative and true to their religious values."
However, I did notice a comment in response to this article: "A dangerously naive and superficial view of what hijab represents. Not a word about the brutal social pressure to which those few Egyptian Muslim women who still resist hijab are subjected daily. Not a word about bare-headed women who were also very active in the revolution. It is also perverse to defend women's rights and at the same time to extoll hijab as a kind of 'social armor' and 'equaliser'. Why are women supposed to pay an entrance fee in the shape of hijab to be able to be active and visible socially? How can you advocate for women's rights while at the same time you uncritically accept the rules laid down by conservative Muslim men?"
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