SHAFAQNA-
Qur’an says:
” O Prophet! Tell thy wives and thy daughters and the women of the believers that they let down upon them their over-garments; this will be more proper, that they may be known and thus they will not be given trouble; and Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.”(33:59)
Clothing is one point, which distinguishes between mankind and animals. It helps people become more familiar with cultural characteristics of an ethnic group, or with those belonging to a region.
Variety of clothing has three considerations to cover the body, to embellish the appearance, and to represent an idea.
Islamic hijab being covering for women protects them from harassment, and is the signal of Islamic culture in Muslim and non-Muslim countries.
The kind of hijab appropriate for women is the scarf and covering of the whole body, with the exception of hands (from wrist to fingers), and face. Hijab serves as the touchstone of vice and virtue in the society.
It promotes decency and honor to the woman, bringing tranquility upon society.
Among the elements, which guarantee and safeguard decency, chastity, honor and societal tranquility, nothing is more effective than the manner by which different genders live a life consistent with their primordial nature. With respect to this, the mode of dress in the female gender is a vital issue.
The Islamic veil – the hijab – is one of the issues which is exploited by the enemies of Islam in order to wage a campaign of insinuations and malicious propaganda against noble Islamic precepts. These campaigns are epitomized in writings and media reports, which try to evade and misrepresent the reality, embedded in the Islamic hijab and its vital role in creating a healthy society.
Under whatever guise or pretext they appear, these campaigns are motivated solely by the desire to create a base for capitalism, which promotes the culture of consumerism and nudity, so that women can be turned into objects of lust or instruments in the advertising industry.
Realizing the richness of Islamic culture and how potent it is in resisting the encroachment of alien culture, especially that which promotes nakedness, the West wages an intellectual and propaganda campaign claiming that Islam deprives woman of her basic rights by putting her under the veil. Beyond that, they argue that even if observing the hijab is not forced, it is motivated by social, psychological and economic factors.
All these evasions of facts and misrepresentations of realities are too feeble to eliminate the Islamic hijab within our society; at times, hijab even attracts non-Muslims. The reality is that Islamic dress has its roots in divine commandment.
The Almighty God, Who knows the nature of His creatures, commanded believing women to observe the hijab. The wisdom behind Islamic dress is nothing other than to create a guarantee for security, decency and honor for women, and tranquility for the society.
When the Holy Qur’an requires women to observe the Islamic veil, it has equally asked men to cast down their eyes and guide their private parts such as to avoid unlawful behavior. This indicates that the Qur’an’s aim is to create a sound human society, whereby nudity and indecent acts would not hold sway. The fact that women are commanded to avoid exposing their beauty to men who are not their husbands, fathers, brothers, sisters… shows that the objective is to avoid moral decadence. It also helps a great deal in avoiding temptation for men, who are thereby not distracted from their social responsibilities.
It is crystal clear that in societies where decent women’s dress is disregarded, daily, hourly, or even every second, we hear horrific tales of rape and other atrocities against women. In such societies, the female gender has been relegated to the background, reduced to the level of an object of lust, and made into an instrument of advertising. Capitalists promote and encourage the culture of nakedness, for their products will not sell without a partially naked woman shown either using the product or advertising it with her attractive, but indecent body.
The West will not allow decency for women, because it deprives them of both sex and money, which are made into gods in Western society.
The hijab is Islam’s manner of saying that women are more than objects of lust and instruments for making money. They are to be honored and respected, primarily as mothers and centers of families. This does not impose inhibitions on women, but rather promotes their social, economic, and cultural role in the society.