Authenticity – a reminder
“I am Me. In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me. Everything that comes out of me is authentically mine, because I alone chose it – I own everything about me: my body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions, whether they be to others or myself. I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears. I own my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes. Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By so doing, I can love me and be friendly with all my parts. I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know – but as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles and ways to find out more about me. However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically me. If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought, and felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that which I discarded. I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, and to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me. I own me, and therefore, I can engineer me. I am me, and I am Okay” ~ Virginia Satir
Hijab/niqab – expression of empowerment & evolution?
For a while now I have been following intensely the public debates in Norway on a few Muslim women/girls wearing the niqab. I would like to make clear that this is an old debate which I am growing very tired of but one which I cannot withdraw from following. Yes, the appearance of the niqab in Norway (and therefore the debate about it) is rather recent. However, the rhetoric used and issues raised from both sides of the debate are almost – if not completely- identical to the rhetoric and issues raised in the hijab-debate which emerged a few years back; namely individual choice, Islamism, extremism, sexual freedom, gender equality and so on.
Public debates on wearing Islamic symbols have come to stand for all dilemmas of Norwegian national identity in the age of globalization and multiculturalism: how to retain Norwegian traditions of gender equality and democratic citizenship in view of the pressures of multiculturalism generated through the presence of second generation migrants with Muslim background. Rather than discussing what I think about religious garments, I would like to reflect on how the emergence of the hijab and niqab in Norway – and in Europe – is transforming both the subjects in question, as well as the liberal-democratic society.
For me the interesting question is not if girls and women bearing the hijab/niqab are oppressed or not (because this is something one could never know!), but rather what exactly is the meaning of the girls’ and women’s actions? Is wearing the hijab/niqab an act of religious-spiritual observance, or one of rebellion, or one of cultural defiance, or of (adolescent) acting out to gain attention and fame? Are the girls and women acting out of fear, out of conviction, or out of narcissism? It is not hard to imagine that their actions may involve all these elements and motives.
From the interviews I read with girls wearing the hijab or the niqab in Norway, it is clear that the meaning of wearing these garments is changing from being a religious act to one of cultural defiance, increasing politicization and most importantly, to an identity-marker. Ironically, it is the very egalitarian norms of the Norwegian state that bring these girls out of the patriarchal structures of the home and into the public sphere, and give them the confidence and the ability to resignify the wearing of the garments. It is precisely the realities of Norway’s democracy that has transformed Muslim girls and women from so-called ‘passive subjects’ into ‘public actors’. Although some Muslim girls and women struggle to retain their traditional identities, whether they choose it or not, as females they also become empowered in ways they may not have anticipated – publishing their opinions in the form of literature, voicing their opinions in the news, appearing on TV, demonstrating on the streets, and so on. For those who believe that wearing the hijab/niqab and being a public actor are not opposing realities, therein lies a very important cultural resignification of the use of the hijab and niqab. This perspective is largely ignored by the Norwegian society. Where is the oppression in the act of talking back to society?
I believe there could be a big learning process in this, for both the larger Norwegian society and for the Muslim girls as well. While it is important to learn not to stigmatize and stereotype as ‘backward and oppressed creatures’ all those who accept (also involuntarily) the wearing of what appears to be a religiously mandated garment, the girls themselves and their supporters have to learn to give a justification to their actions in the public sphere. In claiming respect and equal treatment for their practices, they have to clarify how they intend to treat the beliefs and practices of others, while actively inscribe new meanings to their actions – both vis-à-vis the Norwegian society as well as the Muslim (male) community. In my opinion, this process is one of empowerment and evolution, not backwardness and oppression.
In The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling, Nilüfer Göle claims that in many other parts of the world Muslim women are using the veil as well as the niqab to cover up the paradoxes of their own emancipation from tradition. Taking into account this perspective, to assume that the meaning of their actions is purely one of religious oppression limits these women’s own capacity to inscribe the meaning of their own actions and, ironically, re-imprisons them within the walls of patriarchal meaning from which they are trying to escape.
More and more we see examples of how the covering of one’s head/body, which in Islam as well as other cultures/religions is an aspect of women’s modesty and also, more darkly, an aspect of the repression of female sexuality that is viewed as threatening, is being reinterpreted as a private act of faith, as well as an expression of moral freedom. These are rights which are protected by the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. When girls and women present the wearing of the hijab and niqab as an aspect of their identity and self-understanding as a Muslim and a person, they transform the traditional associations of these garments and call for democratic iteration and cultural resignification.
As citizens of liberal-democratic states, we all have to learn to live with the otherness of others whose ways of being may be deeply threatening to our own (and this also goes for those who wear the hijab/niqab). How else can learning and evolution take place, except through such encounters in civil society? Principles of the liberal democratic state need to be challenged and rearticulated in order to enrich their original meaning – otherwise we would witness stagnation. It is only when ‘new’ groups claim that they belong to a society from which some worldviews have been/are excluded that we come to understand the fundamental limitedness of democracy and freedom.
The Pictograms of Migrants
Migrations and Mobilities: Citizenship, Borders, and Gender, edited by Judith Resnik and Seyla Benhabib, features a pictogram by the artist group kollektiv migrantas, made up of four migrant women, Irma, Florencia, Marula and Alejandra. Migrantas works with public urban spaces as its platform, and aims to make visible the thoughts and feelings of those who have left their own country and now live in a new one. Mobility, migration and transculturality are not the exception in our world, but are instead becoming the rule. Nevertheless, migrant women and their experiences remain often invisible to the majority of our society, and migrantas focuses on highlighting issues of migration, identity and intercultural dialogue from a gender perspective. Their work incorporates tools from the visual arts, graphic design and social sciences. Members of the collective, mostly women who have themselves immigrated to Germany, develop the projects with other migrant women in a horizontal dialogue. Migrantas has exhibited in Buenos Aires, Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne.
Too much talk about women & Islam?
Today I attended a dialogue-meeting/debate in Oslo organized by Minotenk (minoritetspolitisk tenketank). The topic on the agenda was “Muslim women and Liberation”. My first impression when I entered the hall was: Where are the men? There was a clear majority of women attending, and one could say that this is something totally natural since the topic is about women. But I do not see that as natural at all. Rather, I see that as the problem. For how is it possible to talk about women if we do not talk about men? It is like clapping hands with one hand only. There was a tendency during the debate to either mark men as perpetrators and take on the role of the blamer-victim, or to take on a defensive role and refer to the loving husbands and fathers (which of course almost every person would claim that they have).
The important questions for me are: why is the topic of women and sexuality in Islam so contentious? Why not men and sexuality? Why not both equally? Not just in debates on Islam, but in mainstream media and academia across cultures and religions, it seems as though issues of sexuality are mostly – if not only – related to women. Women are at the center of questions regarding sex, choice and freedom. Is it possible that in these very women-centered debates that we re-construct male dominance by taking out masculinity ideals from the picture – an ideal which stands for rationality instead of sexuality? Is it not precisely the masculine suppression of sexuality which affects the lives of so many women? In that case, more importantly than talking about Muslim women, is to talk about Muslim men – what would they think about a woman’s sexuality?
I missed these questions from the discussion. Rather, I was encouraged to ‘think for myself ‘ and ‘fight my own battle’ – as if having circa 200 girls and women in the hall was not enough proof of that! Although I believe it is extremely important to look at sexual oppression, I experienced the focus on sex and sexuality during the debate as severely limiting to other vital aspects of any woman, such as her intellect. Isn’t that part of ‘liberation’? Are we sexualizing the woman and naturalizing male sexual dominance, when we mainly talk about women and sexuality during a debate entitled “Muslim Women & Liberation”?
Moreover, during the debate there was too much of a focus on religion – Islam – instead of looking at women oppression (and male oppression for that matter) in a more holistic sense. Muslim women are not just embedded in Islam as a religion and ideology, but also in other discourses such as ethnicity, nationalism, class and gender. Social and economic power relations and other cross-cutting social divisions are crucially important in defining any concrete identity or categorization (in this case, ‘Muslim’). These social divisions have organizational, experiential and representational forms, which can have implications on the ways they are linked to other social relations and actions. Thus, ‘Muslim’, ‘woman’, ‘(im)migrant’, are social categorizations which are not reduced to each other and have different ontological bases, but they are articulated in concrete social relations - for example in the relation between man and woman, husband and wife, father and daughter – in specific places.
The relation I would have to my father here in Norway (and even more specific, in Asker) would be completely different than the relation I would have to him if we were still living in a predominantly Muslim country – even though he would be Muslim in both cases. The very fact that we are ‘immigrants’ in Norway plays a crucial role in our perception of ‘woman in Islam’. Lena Larsen, Norwegian-Muslim academic, claimed that the debate on women and Islam in for instance Teheran or Cairo is on a completely different level than here in Norway because “we are so busy defending ourselves from becoming Norwegianized”.
I agree with Lena Larsen, and I believe this is exactly why the focus on sex and sexuality when speaking of women has become so important in Norwegian-Muslim debates. Sexual liberation is precisely that which defines the ‘Norwegian woman’ – the very core of what makes up national identity in Norway. Thus, it is not too surprising that debates on Muslim/immigrant-women circulate around sexuality, while other equally important aspects of women’s lives are ignored.
Instead of repeating the all-too-common ‘you have the right to think for yourself’ (which to me sounds like a defense against the Norwegian majority rather than a ‘right’), isn’t it high time that we start discussing how men view (a woman’s) sexuality? Or should we just turn a blind eye towards masculinity ideals, and preach the Muslim woman to ‘fight her own battle’?
The migrant home: a political space
Since this is my first post on this blog, I would like to start off with what is occupying my mind nowadays – and that is my MA-thesis. The preliminary title is “Twisting Identity & Belonging Beyond Dichotomies: The Case of Second Generation Female Migrants in Norway”.
The research topic is personal, and to me it is highly related to peace. As a second generation female migrant in Norway (that is, a second generation in my core family) the world often seems to be dichotomous. My home feels like one contentious-filled space, and ‘Norway’ feels like another. Because of this feeling, I have always believed that my home or ‘my culture’ and Norway are polar opposites. This has created a lot of tension and conflict in my life – who am I? Where do I belong? Having only two separate options to negotiate my identity from considerably limits my own potential to fully live and be in charge of my life. Somehow my life has been controlled by others – by other people’s expectations (and these manifested more in my mind than in real-life).
I realized that this life experience is not just something personal or private. It is highly political as well. My home is not just a cultural space; it is a political space, too. Feminist theories have truly opened my mind in recognizing that what most academic and political discourses on migrants operate on is a dichotomy – a separation between the private and the public space (see for instance Private Selves, Public Identities by Susan Hekman). In the case of (im)migrants in Norway, ‘their’ private space is marked with ‘culture’ in political and social discourses, while the public space (‘Norway’) is constructed as culturally neutral (see for instance Kultur og Generasjon. Tilpasningsprosesser blant somaliere og tamilere i Norge by Fuglerud & Engebrigtsen). This reminds me of the modern-liberal construction of the private/public dichotomy where emotions, feelings and relations are seen as irrelevant and thus consigned to the private (where women ‘belong’), while the public is ruled by rationality (the masculine ‘principle’) - and is thus ‘culturally neutral’.
It is therefore not too far-fetched of an assumption to claim that my experienced identity conflicts have a lot to do with the constructed separation between the private and the public. Thanks to Norwegian mainstream media and politicians of all colors, I realized how much I have contested my ‘culture’ – because ‘culture’ has seemed so constricting! Outside my home, life seemed so much more ‘liberating’, because it is ‘culture-free’. But if I cannot be comfortable in my own home, then what kind of liberty is there outside? As a migrant, I feel that as long as I do not feel comfortable with my identity at home, I cannot feel comfortable with my identity in public – and vice versa.
Apparently, this is a huge topic which I only briefly touched upon in this first post. But I draw the line here. This blog will be dedicated to twisting dichotomies and looking at all the in-betweens in many issues, especially ‘identity’ and ‘belonging’.
