Our moral superiors are very concerned about the right of Muslim women in Western countries to cover their heads. Barack Obama has affirmed this: “Moreover, freedom in America is indivisible from the freedom to practice one’s religion. That is why there is a mosque in every state in our union, and over 1,200 mosques within our borders. That’s why the United States government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab and to punish those who would deny it.” — Obama, Cairo, June 4, 2009

But what about the right of women and girls not to wear the hijab or any other head covering, and to go out with faces unveiled? Who is speaking up for the rights of Aqsa Parvez, whose Muslim father choked her to death with her hijab after she refused to wear it; and of Amina Muse Ali, a Christian woman in Somalia whom Muslims murdered because she wasn’t wearing a hijab; and of the 40 women who were murdered in Iraq in 2007 for not wearing the hijab; and of Alya Al-Safar, whose Muslim cousin threatened to kill her and harm her family because she stopped wearing the hijab in Britain; and of Amira Osman Hamid, who faces whipping in Sudan for refusing to wear the hijab; and of the Egyptian girl, also named Amira, who committed suicide after being brutalized for her family for refusing to wear the hijab; and of the Muslim and non-Muslim teachers at the Islamic College of South Australia who were told that they had to wear the hijab or be fired; and of the women in Chechnya whom police shot with paintballs because they weren’t wearing hijab; and of the women also in Chechnya who were threatened by men with automatic rifles for not wearing hijab; and of the elementary school teachers in Tunisia who were threatened with death for not wearing hijab; and of the Syrian schoolgirls who were forbidden to go to school unless they wore hijab; and of the women in Gaza whom Hamas has forced to wear hijab; and of the women in Iran who protested against the regime by daring to take off their legally-required hijab; and of the women in London whom Muslim thugs threatened to murder if they didn’t wear hijab; and of the anonymous young Muslim woman who doffed her hijab outside her home and started living a double life in fear of her parents, and all the other women and girls who have been killed or threatened, or who live in fear for daring not to wear the hijab.

When will anyone stand in solidarity with them? Women who don’t wear hijab in Muslim countries are far more likely to be victims of violence than hijabis in the West. Who speaks for them?

“ISIS stones five women to death for not wearing the veil, says Mamouzini,” by Abdelhak Mamoun, Iraqi News, August 18, 2015 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):