According to anti-Semitic Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar, the hijab she proudly dons daily as she struts through Congress symbolizes “power, liberation, beauty and resistance.”
She revealed this last week in an interview with Vogue magazine.
“Wearing her hijab allows her to be a ‘walking billboard’ not only for her faith but also for representing something different from the norm,” the left-wing purveyor wrote.
To me, the hijab means power, liberation, beauty, and resistance. https://t.co/mOF2wSZ1Gu
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) March 29, 2019
That she voluntarily chooses to wear a hijab is perfectly fine; America is the home of freedom and liberty, after all. However, her interpretation of her hijab as a symbol of “liberation” and “resistance” does raise some valid questions about whether she knows anything about the Muslim world.
While it’s true she was born in Mogadishu, she’s spent the majority of her life in the United States, and it seems to show in her stunningly naive and oftentimes ignorant rhetoric.
The problem, as noted on Twitter by renowned investigative journalist Sara A. Carter in response to Omar’s defenders, is that in the Muslim world, wearing a hijab or or burka or niqab isn’t a choice. It’s a mandatory obligation/law — one that women aren’t keen to violate.
I lived in Saudi Arabia. I know this very well. It should be a choice – not forced. Try being a Muslim woman who does not want to wear hijab in a nation where it is required and then write me back. I don’t think you’ll find what happens to them very liberating… https://t.co/R8DRNEPNw4
— Sara A. Carter (@SaraCarterDC) March 31, 2019
Last year an Iranian woman received a 20-year prison sentence for removing her hijab during a protest. She got off relatively easy.
Speaking last month with Spiked magazine, Arab-Canadian university educator and ex-Muslim Yasmine Mohammed warned that “[f]or many women in Muslim-majority countries,” removing their hijab “could not only mean ostracism or abuse from your family and community, but also could mean being imprisoned or killed.”
But sometimes even wearing a hijab isn’t enough to prevent punishment.
Case in point:
Recorded last year, the video above shows one of Iran’s Shariah patrols/morality police units beating a woman for reportedly wearing “insufficient” headgear.
Sadly, these sorts of beatings are commonplace in the Muslim world.
That’s why women in Iran are physically beaten for not wearing it.
#FAKEFeminist https://t.co/DXId95lfj7
— Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) March 30, 2019
According to Mohammed, the life of every woman in the Muslim world is constricted by a litany of rules governing what they can wear, where they can go and what they can do.
“It’s not much of a choice in my experience — and my experience is a very common one,” she said. “Generally, when you are seven or eight years old, you start getting told, ‘Look at you, you’re getting older, you’re going to be wearing the hijab soon’. It was put on me at nine years old – that’s a typical age, sometimes it’s older, sometimes it’s younger.”
“I fought against it. I was also made to wear a long dress to my ankles. I could no longer ride a bike, climb monkey bars or go swimming because I couldn’t show any skin. All of a sudden, your childhood is just a dead-end. You’re finished with being a child and now it’s time to be wrapped up in this clothing to protect you from all the men who are going to want to rape you.”
Omar doesn’t seem to understand any of this, perhaps because her perspective is blinded by what one social media user has dubbed “Western privilege”:
Western privilege wrote that quote. I’m thrilled for those of us who have it; we must fight for those who don’t. Women’s modesty laws are empowering when it is the *woman* who decides. Being religious in a free society bears no resemblance to being free in a religious society.
— Sara K. Eisen (@SarKE) March 30, 2019
Celebrating a symbol of oppression for millions of women is not just ‘telling a story’. It’s flaunting privilege and ignoring oppression. My mother ‘chose’ to wear one most of her life, until she was finally free to be free. Chose to wear it, fine. Don’t celebrate it.
— Sophie (@Sophiezszs) March 31, 2019
Try to be Intersectional feminist under sharia conditions in Muslim Countries…and tell us your experience. Good luck!!
— Helena (@marygoldzm) March 30, 2019
Ilham Omar feels no oppression because she lives in a free society, not in a muslime one.
— Ali Utlu ?️? (@AliCologne) March 30, 2019
And for the most Iranian, Afghan and Saudi women the hijab means oppression, suffering and jail.
Stop islamist propaganda!
— Ali Utlu ?️? (@AliCologne) March 30, 2019
Many Iranian women would disagree because in Iran hijab is not a choice. It is a symbol of oppression, stripping women of their dignity. Oppressive backward law created by men!
Without hijab Iranian women can’t attend school, work or go out in public.
They’ll be jailed & flogged.— Saman Arbabi ?️ (@SamanArbabi) March 30, 2019
To my mom who has lived under #ShariaLaw for the past 40 years, #Hijab means subjugation of women; it means that women need to conform to a strict dress code at all times just because some men may desire them at some point if their hair/face is visible.
— شروان فشندی (@GadflyPersia) March 30, 2019
Is it possible though that perhaps Omar secretly condones the oppression of women? Consider that she views her hijab as “a ‘walking billboard’ … for representing something different from the norm,” as noted by Vogue. The oppression of women seen in Muslim countries is certainly different from the norm.
“I grew up in a religious society and my father and grandfather believed that their role was to teach right from wrong. For me, that is how I raise my kids,” she added in her interview with Vogue.
It’s unclear whether her father and grandfather were aware that imprisoning, beating and/or killing women for not wearing certain headgear is inordinately wrong.
Regarding Vogue, four years ago it ran a piece about anti-compulsory hijab activist Masih Alinejad. At the time far-leftists activists reportedly cried foul over the profile. Now that the magazine is profiling a pro-hijab woman instead, activists are reacting quite differently:
When I appeared in Vogue some leftists attacked & said anti compulsory hijab campaigner can’t be in a capitalist fashion magazine. Now they praise @Ilhan .How hypocritical. They have no problem if Vogue is pro hijab. To me fighting compulsory hijab means power beauty & resistance pic.twitter.com/2Frs7IoQNG
— Masih Alinejad ?️ (@AlinejadMasih) March 30, 2019
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