![]() ![]() The hijab also increasingly assumed importance due to the association of the woman’s body with community honour. The female Muslim population would henceforth be divided by a hijab into two categories: free women, against whom violence is forbidden, and women slaves, toward whom transgression is permitted.” She adds,“Imposing the hijab/curtain that hides women instead of changing attitudes and forcing ‘those in whose heart is a disease’ to act differently, was going to overshadow Islam’s dimension as a civilisation.” Slaves would continue to be harassed and attacked in the streets. Mernissi laments, “The veil represents the triumph of the Hypocrite. ![]() The Prophet wasn’t in the position to extend the same protection to the weak and vulnerable section of women as he could to those belonging to the tribal aristocracy. The harassment of women in Medina had brought the city to the brink of civil strife. That will make it easy for them to be recognised, and not molested.” The next two verses condemn and warn the ‘Hypocrite’ and “those with a disease in their hearts” that if they didn’t stop molesting and slandering these women, the Prophet would rise against them, expel them from the city of Medina or seize and kill them. Juxtapose this with the Quran’s verse 33:59: “O’ Prophet, tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers that they should draw down their shawls ( jilbab) over them. Veiling was thus not only a marker of aristocratic rank but also served to differentiate between ‘respectable’ women and those who were ‘publicly available’. Female slaves and prostitutes were forbidden to veil and faced harsh penalties if they did so. The Assyrian empire had laws detailing which class of women shall veil and which shall not. Aristocratic women in ancient Mesopotamia, as in the Sassanid and the Byzantine empires, wore the veil as a sign of respectability and high status. One, the seclusion and veiling of women have been a mark of royalty and nobility in many societies since ancient times. Second, 7:46, says that on the Day of Judgement, a hijab will separate the saved and the damned.įatema Mernissi, a Moroccan feminist Islamic scholar, wonders how a word like hijab, with a strongly negative connotation of exclusion from spiritual access and divine grace, became a symbol of Muslim identity. One, 83:15, which, while talking of the Day of Judgement, says about the disbelievers: “No indeed! On that Day they will be screened off from their Lord.” Here, “screened off” is a rendering of the word m ahjoob, that is, the one on whom hijab has been cast. The saint had two verses of the Quran in mind when making this supplication. It is quoted by Ali Ibn Ahmad al-Nisaburi in an annexe written for Persian scholar Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari’s Tafsir-ul Quran. God, if thou must torture me with something, don’t torture me with the humiliation of the hijab,” said sufi saint Sari al-Saqati of Baghdad sometime around the 8th century CE.
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