There was a controversy a couple months ago that I found very funny. Keep in mind, I live in Iraq where murdering a your daughter because you think she had sex is guaranteed a limited sentence legally. So partially I think addressing this is silly. Another part of me thinks Western liberal feminists and Western Muslims need to hear this.

So a few months ago, Vogue released its first Vogue Arabia edition with Gigi Hadid on the cover. There are definitely annoying things about this magazine. The editor of Vogue Arabia at the time (who is now changed) was Deena Abdulaziz who is literally a princess in Saudi Arabia. Walking around in fashionable Western clothes and editing a magazine about a lifestyle that maybe 5% of Arab women can afford while the Saudi royal family is committing crimes against women, Yemeni people, and religious minorities in the Gulf is really obnoxious. I don’t like this magazine and I don’t think it accurately represents the average Arab woman at all, though it isn’t meant to.

I had this entire post formatted with pictures, but probably because of my bad internet connection they’re not working. So, here is a link to the cover of the magazine and here is a link to a photograph inside with Gigi Hadid and her hair covered.

Almost immediately, as they do, the liberal feminists started saying angry things about the images. I had saved some screenshots and again added them here, but tumblr is not allowing me to use photos, so here is a link to a Buzzfeed article with some tweets.

Now, let’s clarify some things about Gigi Hadid. Her father is a Palestinian Muslim who moved to the United States when he was a child. Her sister Bella has said she is “proud to be a Muslim” and that her father “was always religious, and he always prayed with us.”

Here is a photograph of the Hadid sisters protesting Trump’s Muslim ban in New York City.

So these accusations of Gigi Hadid “not being a Muslim” are not completely true. It seems she does has a Muslim family background and was raised (at least partially) in the religion. She is also not completely politically inactive on behalf of Muslims or Arabs as these people are claiming.

She cannot “appropriate” Palestinian or Arab culture because she is Palestinian-American, and the last time I checked, political activity is not required to have an ethnicity. Neither is walking into every room and saying “I am X ethnicity” to warn everyone if you want to do something cultural.

I don’t want to focus too much on Gigi Hadid though, because this post isn’t about her as a person. It is about the contradictions and hypocrisy of liberal feminists regarding the hijab.

Liberal feminists and Western Muslims shout, very loudly, that the hijab is a choice. They love to shut down any criticism of the garment by condemning those who criticize that choice. I’ve never said and I don’t believe that women should be forced to wear or not wear something. I will defend the right of women to wear or not wear what we want to around the world. We’re subjugated no matter what we wear, though differently in difference places. Wear what you want. Make your own choices. Just don’t expect me to defend everything you do or call it empowering because you, a woman, decided to do it.

So, if the hijab is a true and free choice then why are liberal feminists criticizing Gigi Hadid for choosing to wear it? Either it is a choice that women can make at will, or it isn’t. You can’t have it both ways. Once you start drawing limits on women who can and cannot wear the hijab, you remove your argument that it is a woman’s choice to cover or not cover as she chooses.

Now, I understand the annoyance with your religious garment being used on the cover of a hyper-capitalist magazine. Like I’ve already said, I’ve got a lot of problems with an elitist publication like this. However, once you say that wearing the hijab is a choice, and demand criticisms of that choice to be silenced, you have also lost your ability to criticize others who make that choice.

If it’s really a choice, then Gigi Hadid’s motivations don’t matter. Nothing about her matters. If someone has the true free will to make a choice and we respect that choice, then we don’t have the luxury of examining her motivations.

If you believe women should be allowed to do something because they have a bodily right to it, then you cannot place stipulations on that choice. For example, you cannot call yourself “pro-choice” regarding abortion for women if you think that abortion should only be permitted under some circumstances or some motivations. If abortion is really the choice of the woman, then it should be completely irrelevant if she was raped, if she is married, if she cannot afford a child, or if she just does not want to carry that pregnancy. Her choice is her choice and once you put requirements or stipulations with that, you remove the choice.

If the hijab is truly a choice, and a choice that women make freely and must be respected for, then it cannot matter whether they cover in order to please God, or their families or communities, or whether they feel it’s culturally important, or whether they’re afraid of getting attacked, or whether they’re trying to sell magazines.

If the hijab is a personal decision, then it doesn’t matter who does or does not wear it, or why. You cannot place arbitrary rules on the practice but then demand the rest of us go along without examining them. As soon as you say that other women must wear the garment for certain reasons, or must make a certain commitment to wearing it all the time, you are admitting that it isn’t an open choice. If your clothing is a personal choice then its meaning can only be important to you. The actions of other people cannot change that.

It’s wrong that women who wear the hijab are “attacked, shamed, and threatened” in some parts of the world. It’s also wrong that women who don’t wear the hijab are attacked, shamed, and threatened in other parts of the world. And, it’s wrong that women are attacked, shamed, and threatened for wearing clothes that reveal certain parts of their bodies. It’s wrong that women are blamed for being raped if they are wearing revealing clothing just as it’s wrong to blame a hijabi for an attack on her because of her clothes.

But, we see revealing clothing on magazines and advertisements all the time. Where are the comments on how strippers and prostitutes are shamed for what they wear? Where are the comments on how women dressing like that and walking alone would be attacked, and then blamed for the attack? Where are the comments on how women could be arrested or even killed for dressing like that in some parts of the world?

If the hijab can be “liberating” and “empowering” just like wearing showing skin can be (according to liberal feminists) then you cannot have the double-standard. Either women should be unquestionably celebrated (or at least left alone) for how they dress, or they should be open to criticism for how their clothing reflects on other women and the state of society. Either women can wear the hijab as they choose, or they can’t. You cannot have it both ways.

You also cannot use the phrase “actual hijabis” without admitting that there is some set of rules and requirements for wearing the hijab, and therefore it is not a free choice. I am assuming here an “actual hijabi” is a woman who always covers in public or when there are men around who are not part of her family, which is the commonly-accepted obligation. A free choice cannot include such a limiting and un-free ultimatum.

Again, if women must wear the hijab on all of these occasions (which are importantly male-centric) in order to wear it at all, then wearing the hijab is not a choice. If women cannot set their own conditions for how, when, and why they choose to cover then you admit that the hijab is not a complete choice but a set of social requirements that must be specifically followed. If the hijab is a choice, then there can be not set of requirements to make that choice legitimate.

To the hijabis who insist they wear the hijab as a personal choice and do not criticize other women for their personal choices: good for you. I do support your choice to wear what you want (though I don’t consider this empowering) and I hope you can support me in doing the same.

But you need to realize that Gigi Hadid is not a threat to you. I am not a threat to you. Women who criticize sexism within cultures that demand women dress a certain way are not a threat to you. Patriarchy is the threat and by refusing to acknowledge this patriarchy and its effects on how women are forced to behave in society, you are enabling the threat.

I live in Iraq, where women who remove their veils can be beaten to death by their families, and the government allows this. Part of my country is occupied by ISIS, which requires women to cover head-to-toe and rapes, enslaves, and murders women who don’t follow every rule or their specific type of Islam. My country borders Saudi Arabia and Iran, where women are forced to cover and sometimes even stoned to death for “adultery” if they are raped.

To me, the hijab is a symbol of extreme patriarchy, the possession of women, male violence, jealousy and domestic control. I fear every day that as political Islam grows in Iraq, I might be forced to legally cover tomorrow. In some parts of my country I have to cover to blend in or I could be raped or killed.

And still I defend your right to wear it. I might question your motivations for doing so, but I don’t believe that the hijab is a free choice. I don’t think most things that we as women do are free and uninfluenced choices away from patriarchal control or immune to criticism, including many of the things I do.



In a patriarchal system, the choices we do have are still subject to that patriarchy and we should examine them, the same way in a capitalist system, the choices we do have are still subject to capitalism and we should examine them. We don’t have to like patriarchy or capitalism to acknowledge they influence us.

Either the hijab is a choice, or it isn’t. If you want the right to wear it without criticism, you must give every other woman the chance to do the same thing. If it is really a personal choice, then what the rest of us do with it should not change its meaning for you. If you don’t want me to question that choice for you, then you can’t question it for other women.