Am I meant to take this seriously?

by Jacinta Nandi

I am having an argument with my Berlin friend Marianne about Kopftuchtürkinnen, aka Headscarf-Turkish-Girls.
“And then,” drawls Marianne sarcastically, “this, like, Kopftuchtürkin gave me a leaflet about human rights in Iran. And I looked at her, and I thought: am I meant to take this seriously? From you? From a woman with so little sense of self that she would cover her hair? Just so she won’t get, like, raped? Do me a favour!”
Marianne is my oldest friend in Berlin. She is also the most feminist person I know. She could eat Germaine Greer for breakfast, eat her and spit her out and then piss on her naked body. Stuff like that. And if there’s one thing Marianne hates, it’s Kopftuchtürkinnen.
“You don’t think they have the right to wear a headscarf?” I ask her politely.
“They have the right. They have the right to come here, and do what they want. Marry who they want, cook what they want. But they don’t have the right to be taken seriously, Jacinta. You put the headscarf on – to protect you from rape – and you dehumanize yourself – you willingly dehumanize yourself. Fine. I respect that, I respect your religion, I respect your right to submit to your religion. But do I respect you as a person? No. Do I respect you as a woman? Hell, no. Do I respect you as a feminist? Huh!”
Marianne lights a cigarette, and I look at her thoughtfully. She’s very articulate, Marianne, and my German’s not so hot. Sometimes I think it will never be hot enough to argue with her.
“But it’s only a bit of cloth…..” I say.
“It’s a bit of cloth which is worn to protect against rape!” Marianne spits at me, in outrage. “It’s a bit of cloth which is worn to take away a woman’s humanity It’s a symbol of female submission!”
“But what about nuns?” I say. “What about high heels? You can be a feminist nun, you can be a feminist in high heels.”
“You’re being facetious, Jacinta,” says Marianne in a warning voice. When Marianne says the word facetious I know she is about to start quoting philosophers at me, and once that happens I will have lost the argument forever. So I get in quickly.
“What about a lesbian, with a shaved head? Isn’t she protecting herself from rape? What about foundation? Isn’t that dehumanizing? Don’t we all walk around, looking like shop mannequins, looking like porcelain dolls? I am not saying girls in headscarves look good – they look shit, mostly, especially when they’re wearing black ones with half their foreheads covered up. I am not saying wearing a headscarf is a feminist statement. That is not what I am saying.”
“Not even you are stupid enough to think that,” acknowledges Marianne affectionately.
“But we have freedom in the West. The freedom to dye your hair red or green, to shave it off, to wear a mini-skirt or a dress up like a big hot-dog. That’s what freedom means. And if some people want to use this freedom to cover up their hair – and look shit, I’ll give you that. To look shit, and be hot in the summer, and slightly marginalized by society – how can we say, oh, no, sorry? Dress up like a robot if you want to – put a pineapple on your head if you want to – have tattoos all over your face if you want to – but please. Don’t wrap a bit of cloth round your head so men can’t see your hair. The freedom ends there.”
“Because it’s a religious symbol.”
“I thought it was an anti-rape device.”
“Jacinta…..” Marianne is really pissed off by now, I can tell. “You’re not allowed to teach school with a pineapple on your head anyways.”
“They let nuns teach school. Isn’t that funny nun’s nursey headscarf thingie also a religious symbol?”
“Yes,” concedes Marianne reluctantly. “Okay, so we ban the silly nuns, too. Problem solved. I don’t want nuns teaching my kids, anyhow. They’re all virgins, for fuck’s sake!”
“But if I don’t wear it as a religious symbol – if I’m just a trendy Prenz’l Berg mum having a bad hair day – headscarves are allowed?”
“Yes, because this is not religious.”
“But not all Muslim girls wear them, so they’re not religious either.”
Marianne sighs. “I can’t decide whether you’re being deliberately stupid or not,” she says.
“It’s just a bit of cloth,” I say. “Maybe it’s a religious symbol for them – but for us, it’s just a bit of cloth. Maybe their dads are forcing them, maybe it’s a conscious decision they’ve made. Either way, we force them to take it off – we force them to show us their hair. Let me see your hair, darling! And what do we get out of it? No-one ever got forced to be free.”
“What about when they dress up in that silly beehive outfit?” Marianne snaps. “You’d let them into school dressed up like they’re about to go into a lot of beehives and rescue some bees?”
Now it is my turn to concede something reluctantly. “Nah, I mean, you really can’t go into school dressed up in that shit,” I say. “But a bit of cloth on your head, man. There is a difference.”

Stigmitization and discrimination

The thing is, when Berliners talk about Kopftücher, they don’t mean just any old headscarf. Uh-uh. They don’t mean, for example, the kind worn by trendy Prenzlauer Berg mums, old Russian grannies or really scary pirates.
They’re talking about headscarves worn by Muslim women dressing in hijab. Modestly. Most Muslim girls living in Berlin do not interpret hijab as forcing them to wear a headscarf. But the ones who do  encounter a hell of a lot of discrimination.

Coz the sad fact is that headscarf-wearers are thoroughly discriminated against in Berlin. The neutrality law of 2005 means that Kopftuchtürkinnen are not allowed to work in public service – you will never see a Berlin policewoman, bus-driver or schoolteacher with a bit of black cloth on her head.
And last year a Hartz-IV recipient of Arabic origin was told by her case-worker that she would have her welfare reduced if she refused to take off her headscarf permanently. The argument? No employer would employ a headscarf-wearer, so therefore, with her head covered, she could not be said to be looking for work seriously. Although her appeal was eventually upheld, and the Job Centre apologized profusely, the incident neatly underlines the stigmatisation which confronts headscarf wearers every day.
It was exactly this stigmitization and discrimination that the Antidiskriminierungsstelle, the Berlin Equal Opportunities Commission, tried to address in a brochure brought out in July 2008. The pamphlet simply described the discrimination felt by women in headscarves – when looking for work or accomodation, for example. Although it revealed nothing incredibly surprising, it caused a furore when it was published. Women’s rights activists like Seyran Ates und Serap Cileli queued up to attack the brochure. “The pamphlet doesn’t mention anywhere that Muslim women who don’t wear a headscarf get discriminated against by headscarf wearers,” Ates told the Tagesspiegel newspaper. In Alice Schwarzer’s feminist magazine Emma, the position was clear: “The headscarf is a political symbol – and should and must be banned!”
But the headscarf-wearing girls of Neukölln don’t seem to be bothered much by this discrimination. “What do you mean, discriminated against? You mean like people look at you funny?” Nuray, 17, an A-Level student wrinkles her nose. “It’s true, if you go outside Neukölln or Kreuzberg, people look at you funny, they give you dirty looks. But that doesn’t bother me. I know why I’m doing it – I know I’m clean.”

“Wearing a headscarf is actually about female empowerment,” argues Layla, an older girl, a university student. “I cover myself, and make it impossible for people to judge me on my looks, on my attractiveness. What kind of liberation is it, to have the freedom to walk down the street, and get “checked out” by all men? When I wear a headscarf, I’m safe from all that.”

“But it’s the negative attitude from German society,” says Layla’s fellow student, Banu,a young Turkish woman who doesn’t wear a headscarf, “this tough, hardline attitude, really disapproving – it’s that which is turning the headscarf into a political statement, and not a religious symbol. So wearing a headscarf is a true act of rebellion.”

A bit of cloth

Nobody likes to see girls covering themselves up. They look shit. Women in headscarves generally look unattractive. You have to study their faces before you can tell whether you would like to have sex with them or not. Somehow they all look the same. They don’t look nice. The sight of girls in headscarves – young girls in headscarves, on the U-Bahn, giggling over their mobile phones – is a slightly disturbing, mildly depressing one.

But we have to be honest. Why do we get so upset about young Turkish teenagers, while we remain so chilled-out about all the nuns? When was the last time you got upset by a nun on the bus? What is the difference? Okay, there are fewer nuns around than Kopftuchtürkinnen but that’s not the main difference. The main difference is something-else entirely. We don’t want to fuck nuns. We are not rejected by their headscarf. The hair they are hiding underneath is grey and coarse, not black and glossy. For, the truth is, the headscarf is not really a religious symbol. Really it is just a sexual symbol. And all it says, is: “I do not want to fuck white men. I want to have a Muslim boyfriend. I am not available. Leave me alone, okay?”

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Neukölln, Berlin’s most Turkish district, where headscarf-wearing fifteen-year-olds flit around in wonderbras, skin-tight polo jumpers and figure-hugging white jeans. The headscarf is not protection against rape, it is just a protection against come-ons.

The headscarf is not a religious symbol. By banning it, we turn it into a political one. Actually, all it is is a bit of cloth some girls wrap round their heads. And we achieve nothing by making them take it off -we don’t even make ourselves feel any better.  True freedom can only come when women decide to take their headscarves off FOR themselves.  Don’t let’s confuse sour grapes with women’s liberation.

Jacinta Nandi | August 30th, 2009 | Featured in The Issue: Faith | See more from Notice Board

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