by Cristina Campos
Daily Lobo
Wearing a hijab represents submission to God, not to men, a Muslim woman said Thursday.
Associate Professor Jytte Klausen from Brandeis University focused on the Muslim headscarf ban in France in the last lecture of the Islam and Europe series.
About 100 students, faculty and community members attended the lecture in Woodward Hall.
She spoke about discrimination Muslim women face for wearing the hijab as part of their religion and culture.
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Klausen said European women have been adopting the headscarf as a symbol of identity and in defiance of the attacks on the Muslim way of life.
This is part of a growing feminist movement, she said, because women are developing more political strength.
"Women are joining political parties that are more sensitive to the underdog," she said.
The underdogs are Muslim women, the objects of political persecution in countries such as France for wearing the hijab, a symbol of their culture, she said.
Klausen spoke out against the French law banning all obvious religious symbols, such as the hijab, the Jewish skullcap, large Christian crucifixes or the Sikh turban.
She said Muslim women are not only targeted as teachers and administrators, but also as young girls.
The French minister of internal security and local freedoms said the decision to ban the wearing of headscarves was made to ensure the respect for the French tradition of secularism, not against Muslims, according to a statement on the French Embassy Web site.
One man in the audience asked if the headscarf was a mark of submission to Allah or to man. Another audience member, Sandra Akkad, a Muslim woman wearing the traditional hijab, responded.
"The wearing of the hijab is explicitly written in the Quran," she said. "No two scholars will argue that it is based on submission to Allah and not to man. It is the Islamic culture and not the demands of popular misconception."
She said many Muslim feminists don't understand why the hijab is seen as a symbol of oppression when Islam is a culture with an emphasis on equality between the two sexes.
"It is not just a display of our faith, but a religious obligation," said Connie Yaqub, another Muslim in the audience. "To ban it would be equal to insisting a Jew to eat pork or a Catholic not to go to mass."
Klausen said women wear the scarves for many reasons, and it is not for others to judge them.
