Azadi
Powerful international figures started to support the "women, life, freedom" movement, women cut pieces of their hair to protest any outside control of women's appearances and expressed their stand against any system that's putting women under pressure because of their own personal choices.
Many people had their say about the topic and rightfully so. The only group that seems to be missing the point is the one that I seem to belong to - the practicing, hijab wearing Muslims. It seems like we have fallen into the trap we blame others for falling into - the trap of outside appearances.
Hijabis throughout the Western world have been loud and vocal about general misunderstandings regarding their outfit. "Don't judge a book based on its cover", "don't look at what's on my head, be interested in what's inside of it", "my head belongs to me", "men should stop dictating women what to and what not to wear" are only a few of the countless slogans fighting against misconceptions such as hijab is a symbol of the suppression of women, hijabis are generally undereducated and cannot contribute positively to the society, women only wear hijab because they are forced to and a liberated woman will never do it and so on. The past decades saw modern, highly qualified women rise above the stereotypes and prove that women can do whatever they want and dress up any way they choose - even including the hijab. Hijab can even be a sign of freedom here in the West where we need to fight against the "suppressed women" stereotype, where in some countries women do meet some discrimination because of their headscarves, like in France for example, and where women's liberation movements have at least a century old history.
At this point we like to mention that in our own history however, in the Islamic golden age women enjoyed all the freedom Western women had to fight hard to obtain. We talk about Fatima Al Fihriya, who established the first university, Maryam Al Asturlabi who was a great scientist and we daydream about this utopian society where science and arts and culture and education and human rights and development and overall enlightenment characterised the religious way of thinking. We embrace it, it's our refuge and go-to solution - if there's anything wrong with the society, Islam, meaning the Islamic golden era surely has an answer to it.
It's all true, but to get the complete story, we need to see other aspects of it. The world is not only comprised of the middle east of the middle ages and present day west. We should not be blind to what's happening in other parts of the world - namely those parts that used to be the most enlightened and where now terrible things are happening in the name of Islam.
Obviously no philosophical thought or its founder is ever responsible for the terrible way people later used and abused it. Marx doesn't have the blood of the millions killed during forced work in Siberia by the Soviet regime, nor of those free thinkers tortured in cellars in Budapest or other Eastern European cities. Jesus peace be upon him is not responsible for the killing of native American children in church schools in Canada or for anything the Catholic Church as an institution or some of its members ever done, nor Buddha is for the blood - monks in Myanmar. So it's clear, the Iranian regime's crimes can in no way be justified by the teachings of Islam and they do not make it something evil.
But we are talking about people here.
A nation, 85 million people were told the past over 40 years that Islam means the state can decide how women should dress, the state decides who you can invite to your home and what kind of music you can listen to, the state has to know everything and can make decisions about your own private life. All that in the name of Islam.
We know religion is a good advice, we know there's no compulsion in religion. We know that the basis of a deed to be acceptable by God is that it should be done for Him alone. Not for the father, not for the neighbour, not for the society, not for the state. For God only. It means that any pressure is useless, unnecessary and without reason as the deed done as a result of a pressure no matter how beautiful it may look, will not be done for God, therefore losing the main condition of an acceptable good deed.
But the people of Iran don't know this. They were systematically brainwashed into thinking that Islam equals state terror, male chauvinism and thought police. That it means you have no right to decide what kind of life you want to live, the state has already decided that for you and if you are not perfect in it, you will be tortured or even killed.
All that in the name of God.
They have every right to rebel against it. Even to hate it.
It's not their fault.
We as practicing Muslims should not judge them. We should stand by them. No, not "to show them what real Islam is, so that they can change their minds about it".
No. We should stand by them because they are suppressed and traumatised people who need support.
We should march with them when they protest against enforced hijab and we should recognise that we want the same thing - our own authority.
Things are not what they are. Who am I to decide that my own view is the correct opinion and someone else's is false? When we talk about something, we add our personal perceptions to the objective facts. When I talk about Islam, I mean lofty ideas about freedom and equality, rights and responsibilities, embracing family and personal endeavour, all beautifully balanced. It has also changed the past 20 years, at the beginning I believed in a community that doubles as a big family, now I only see a few people who trying to avoid major conflicts by looking away if someone did something outrageous - leaving people alone whose rights have not been given.
But fundamentally, I see Islam as my relationship with the Creator of the universe. I see His guidance in everything I go through and it increases my understanding of love. I have left everything that's been done as a result of fear and perfectionism and pressure because I believe they taint the love - connection God created the universe of.
My views stem from my knowledge of a dictatorship I grew up in - and the knowledge that God cannot be anything similar - and later my research of the nature of the soul. I have come to the conclusion that the nature of the soul is pure love and it can only be reached through love. Anyone in possession of any knowledge and wisdom will only operate through love. God, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe does not need to use force and pressure, and would not require anyone to betray their own souls He had given them.
It's not necessarily the way others view Islam.
Many people consider it rules and regulations.
Who is right?
Is there one right way?
I think people have their own right to interpret things their own way.
And if people have been abused by something, the best we can do is to believe them and stand up against every tyranny.
Out of love. God's way, I believe.
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