Dec 30, 2015

a very different sort of solidarity head scarf wearing

Let me start with a correction. In my last post I used the word hijab when I meant head scarf. I know better, and have been corrected on this in years past by feminist Muslims, but somehow following the media attention around that incident I slipped and used the term hijab that the mainstream media uses. As a translator I loved this explanation of why this is a dangerous slip that supports conservative and anti-woman interpretations of the Koran, as do, the Muslim feminists authors argue, naive empathy experiments to 'walk in her hijab'.

But last week there was a very different, and inspiring, moment of wearing a head scarf in solidarity. Al-Shabab militants, who regularly single out Christians and kill them, pulled over a bus in Kenya. The Mulsims on the bus risked their life by quickly handing head scarfs to the women and helping them to wear them properly so that they could not be singled out. THAT is some brave and powerful head scarf solidarity.

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