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That is not the only thing that makes me uneasy

I’m also uncomfortable with the guidebook’s soft sell to children on the hijab. One book recommended to elementary level children is “Hats of Faith,” which features nine different head coverings linked to Christians, Jews, Sikhs and other groups, and which suggests that the hijab is identical in principle to these other forms of head gear.

But it isn’t.

Head coverings in most other cultures arise organically over time, and may or may not be linked to a belief system or to modesty. But the hijab is a modern invention, and only came into common usage with the Iranian revolution of 1979, when it was imposed on women, and even girls in primary school, to embody Iran’s turn from a West-friendly nation to an Islamist, West-hostile nation.

Since then, the hijab, as well as the niqab, although worn by some women for modesty, has been widely acknowledged to signal a commitment to political Islam amongst significant numbers of hijabis. The hijab has also featured as the trigger in honour-motivated crimes against girls and women, most tragically here in the 2007 death of teenager Aqsa Parvez, whose refusal to wear the hijab sparked the family plot that led to her death.

It is disingenuous to suggest that the hijab is anodyne

It is therefore disingenuous to suggest that the hijab is as anodyne an accessory as a kippah or an African turban.

Normalizing the hijab for young girls, as it happens, is a “thing” in children’s literature, a topic I have been researching for the past few months. I was particularly disturbed by a Canadian book called Tilt Your Head, Rosie the Red, targeting seven and eight year olds, in which an independent young girl who likes to wear superhero capes (feminist empowerment), turns her cape into a hijab for a day so a Muslim girl in her class wearing a hijab won’t feel excluded. I would have liked the book if the young Muslim girl had tried turning her hijab (female disempowerment) into a superhero cape for a day in return, but that didn’t happen.

By the way, that book was written by Rosemary McCarney, Canada’s Permanent Representative to the UN for Global Affairs. Perhaps McCarney’s next so-politically correct gig can be chief executive officer — or rather, managing executive officer — of the TDSB.

National Post

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