Uncovering the truth

NADA SELAMEH doesn’t hold back her opinions on the American media. “I don’t like the way they represent us,” she said. They make the American public attack us. What upsets me is the way they portray Muslim women as being oppressed by their men.”

Before 9/11, Selameh never wore a hijab, the head scarf some Muslim women wear as an expression of modesty. But when dusty burkas became the defining image of Muslim women during the war in Afghanistan, the native of Dearborn, Mich., started wearing a hijab at 26.

“I felt that I wasn’t the female the media were showing as representative of Muslims,” she said.

Ironically, few knew she was a Muslim in the first place. “When I’m not covered, I just blend in,” she said. “But being covered, people know, ‘OK, she’s Muslim.’ But I don’t have 10 kids. I’m not married. I work. I have a master’s degree.”

Before she donned her hijab, Selameh was among the unveiled majority of Muslim women in the West who are less visible than those in burkas.

She was one of about 2,000 Arab Americans, most of them Muslims, attending the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s annual convention this summer. Most women were business casual -- knee-length skirts, slacks and button-downs. Designer T-shirts, low-cut jeans and miniskirts were popular among younger women. Selameh was one of only a handful of women wearing the hijab. Still, she worried that “the face of the Muslim woman” would be that of a “hijabi,” not the hijabless majority.

Selameh has reason to worry. “Veiled Praise” was a recent headline in the New York Times. “What It’s Like When I Wear Hijab” was another in the Lexington Herald-Leader. The headline “Muslim women face decisions on traditional, modern values” appeared in the Boston Globe, accompanied by photos of women wearing head scarves. Add TV images of Arab women in niqabs or columns of Iranian women in chadors -- and it’s hard not to say “covered” when you think of Muslim women.

To most Westerners, “an authentic Muslim woman is always wearing a hijab,” said Asma Barlas, a Koran scholar at Ithaca College whose female-centric interpretations of Islam’s holy book have sparked controversy in the Muslim world.

In reality, most Muslim women in the United States and in Europe don’t wear the hijab, except for worship, because they are members of a secular majority or see themselves as cultural Muslims, identifying more with rai music or rumi poetry than with salah, or Scripture. Still others are devoted Muslims but don’t view the hijab as a prerequisite of spirituality.

To these Muslim women, the hijab is more than an annoying media stereotype. It obscures their independence, outspokenness and career-mindedness.

Without the hijab, “we don’t exist. We’re not allowed to be the face of Islam,” said Laila Al-Marayati, a physician and the chairwoman of the Los Angeles-based Muslim Women’s League.”

An example of the media’s preferred face of the Muslim woman recently appeared in a Seattle Times story headlined “Preserving modesty, in the pool.” The piece featured a group of Muslim women who gathered at an indoor pool once a month to swim. Before swimming, they taped brown paper over the windows so men couldn’t see them. “Because Islam requires Muslim women to fully cover themselves in public,” the story said, “swimming in pools or the ocean is largely off-limits for many.”

The face of Munira Sheriff better reflects Muslim women in secular societies. The recent graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government wore a midline skirt and button-down shirt when I met her.

“A lot of people forget that everybody is allowed to interpret the religion,” she said. “I believe that Islam wants us to be modest. And I believe this midline skirt I’m wearing is acceptable modesty [in the United States]. In Pakistan, I would not wear this because it wouldn’t be acceptable; it wouldn’t be modest there.”

In rejecting the hijab as a defining characteristic of Muslim women, Koran scholars such as Barlas contend that the head scarf is not rooted in theology but in the traditions of male-dominated societies. In her book “Believing Women in Islam,” she argues that neither of the two Koranic verses cited by conservatives to justify the veiling of women specifies a preferred covering. Rather, women should “guard their modesty” and “draw their cloaks over their bosoms.”

“There are many ways in which you can cover your bosom,” a hijab being just one of them, Barlas said. The idea that women have to cover their head and face emerged a few hundred years after Islam’s birth and was based on the belief that women’s bodies are corrupting, a belief unsupported in the Koran, Barlas argued.

These arguments are not confined to academic circles. Muslim moderates around the world hear and talk about them. Last year, Barlas spoke at the annual convention of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, an advocacy group, and spent several weeks this summer in Indonesia talking about her interpretations of the Koran.

“Things are happening,” Barlas said, “but they are slow, and they will take time.”

Barlas’ story -- a Muslim woman seeking to undo centuries of patriarchy infuriates the male establishment, with some wanting her head -- is a good one. But there are lots of smart, opinionated Muslim women in the United States with equally good stories, if only the media drops their veil of preconceptions.