So I was sitting in the living room watching Oprah yesterday with my four sisters, and Oprah was talking about marriage traditions all over the world. She was conducting an interview with two women from Cairo, Egypt. One was veiled, and the other was a liberal woman who refused to wear the veil. Oprah asked them about the reality in Egypt, “Are there people having premarital sex in Egypt?” “Yes, a lot.” replied the liberal woman.
Well, this drew a collective gasp from my sisters. They immediately turned to me and said, “She’s lying!! What she’s saying isn’t true!”
I just looked at them. “Well,” one said, “That’s Egypt. Egypt’s different from here. Maybe there are some people there but here it’s extremely rare.”
I still just looked at them with my eyebrows slightly raised. “Really!” they said, “She’s just a liberal…she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
“Really.” I said, and gave them a pointedly skeptical look.
And the closest one slapped me in the face! Not hard, even at all. Just a playful slap, which they do to each other all the time. It didn’t hurt me…it actually made me feel more like part of the family to be honest. Then she shook her finger at me and said, “I’m worried about you.” I just laughed, a lot.
I love these girls so much already, but I still don’t really understand their view of the world. I guess that’s what I’m here to do.
Oprah went on to ask an interesting question – is there tension between veiled women and women who are not veiled? Of course not, said the woman wearing the hijaab. She said that the hijaab is a choice that women can make to be more pious. She claimed that a woman should be concerned with her own piety instead of judging others. But when asked if she thought that the unveiled woman was less religious than herself, she said yes.
The non-veiled woman said that for her, the hijaab has no spiritual meaning. The fact that she doesn’t wear the veil doesn’t make her any less spiritual. She said there is a definite tension between unveiled women and those who wear the hijaab. A woman may not tell another to wear the veil, but it is important not to forget the undeniable power of passing judgment, especially in societies where connections and status are important ways to make your life successful.
Without passing my own judgment on whether or not the hijaab is a good or bad thing, (because the truth is I really don’t know) I will say this much. Most of the time, I think the idea that women are controlled by men is deceptive. We control each other more often than not, and in very subtle ways and much more effectively than any way men can control us. I think the hijaab has very little to do with men, in reality. We should keep that fact in mind.
The Oprah episode was from 1/13/10, and was called “Marriage around the World.” You can read more about it here.
