Asra Nomani: Virginia Department of Education officials are treating p...

What we are saying is we have to be smart about the ideology that is putting this idea into the world that a woman must be defined by her idea of modesty, that she is the vessel for honor in a community. And I believe that we have to be very pragmatic, too, about the consequence of this. Women in Iran and Saudi Arabia are jailed, punished and harassed if they don't cover themselves legally, according to the standard of those countries. So the consequences for many women is oftentimes very dark.

Asra Nomani

smart believe country

When we think about Islamic feminism, it is not just about women's rights. It's about a more progressive and tolerant expression of Islam in the world for all people. Women's rights is one aspect of it, it's not the end-all, but I also think that the women's issue is the strongest entry point that we've got to challenging extremism. You raise a woman's issue and you get the backs of the conservatives up against the wall faster than just about any other issue in our community. It's the fastest path that we've got to making change happen.

Asra Nomani

islamic wall thinking

The hijab or a variation of the word shows up eight times in the Quran. And it never means headscarf. And so what's happened is that the identity of a Muslim woman especially is being equated to this piece of cloth on her head. And in that ideology there's a very fundamental assumption that people need to think very deeply about, which is do you believe that a woman is too sexy for her hair?

Asra Nomani

sexy mean believe

I was born in 1965. When I grew up in India, there was no expectation that a good Muslim woman wore the headscarf. But what happened when I came here to the U.S. and the emergence of the Saudi and Iranian theologies in the world is that the headscarf became the hijab and the hijab is now the idea that is synonymous with headscarf.

Asra Nomani

india expectations ideas

You celebrate a person's life by living your life fully.

Asra Nomani

live-your-life celebrate persons

There is a fundamental flaw in interpretations of sharia that say a woman or man should be punished for sex outside of marriage.

Asra Nomani

flaws men sex

Talk to me 20 years ago and I had a complete sense of illegitimacy as an American Muslim. I felt like I wasn't authentic. But I don't understand and I don't believe or subscribe to this idea that I don't have a right to speak as a Muslim because I'm an American. Being Muslim is to accept and honor the diversity that we have in this world, culturally and physically, because that's what Islam teaches, that we are people of many tribes. I think the American Muslim experience is of a different tribe than the Saudi Muslim world, but that doesn't make us less than anyone else.

Asra Nomani

believe people thinking

One of our greatest challenges here in America is that pogressives don't always stand with the progressive Muslims because in the interest of freedom of religion and civil liberties and political correctness, they don't want to offend cultural choices by Muslims. I know that people have gone to these interfaith sessions at different mosques and they see that the women end up in the basement, but they don't want to challenge anyone because they think, "Oh, well this is your way".

Asra Nomani

choices people thinking

Very interestingly in a movement that I call now the hijab lobby, sadly promulgated by women that some of us refer to as Muslim mean girls and their friends, are trying to put out this meme that we are denying women their choice.

Asra Nomani

mean-girls choices trying

What we argue in the piece is that the headscarf has become a political symbol for an ideology of Islam that is exported to the world by the theocracies of the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia. Just like the Catholic Church in the 17th century did religious propaganda to challenge the Protestant Reformation, these ideologies are trying to define the way Muslims express Islam in the world.

Asra Nomani

iran government religious

We're talking about everybody's free right to have choice. And so what we're also getting are interesting messages like you really need to obey the command of Allah and put a scarf on your head. And what we caution well-intentioned Americans and others to think about is whether the scarf matches their own values related to issues of honor and shame.

Asra Nomani

issues talking thinking

It's true that in a lot of western feminist movements, you see women working singularly from men. Suffragettes and the women's rights movement in the 60s here, but when I think of the Islamic feminist movement, I think of a lot of men who are very much standing with the women. It really feels like in equal numbers. Women are catching up in the field because we were not given access to knowledge and encouraged into these studies and so these men are helping us and empowering us. They are men of conscience who are fed up with this assumption that they're entitled.

Asra Nomani

islamic men thinking

I think that we don't have, here in the Middle East or in Africa, as much threat to our physical and economic livelihood as women in other parts of the world. But the continuum is the same. The pressures on women to fit into a certain image of a good Muslim girl is the same. The controls and rules are the same, but there are different degrees of it. So, in America, a father will threaten a daughter that he will disown her if she marries the American boyfriend and in Pakistan she faces acid thrown on her face. The power dynamic is the same, it just expresses itself differently.

Asra Nomani

daughter girl father

Personally I get so much of my inspiration from women in other countries, so I don't feel like American women are the leaders and I don't agree with the notion that Americans can accomplish more or do more. But I do think that what we can uniquely do here in America is mobilize and galvanize a lot of these ideas and resources. It's a war of ideas. We, Islamic women, are very well supported in this country by institutions, academic and nonprofit, that are already in the field endorsing women's rights and tolerance. The women in other communities have been the pioneers in this work.

Asra Nomani

inspiration war country

We don't believe we are too sexy for our hair.

Asra Nomani

sexy hair believe

As you can tell I don’t have horns on my head, right, but nonetheless I am now being [characterized] as a traitor, to my own liberals as an idiot, names that I can’t even repeat on air.

Asra Nomani

us

But you know none of that matters to me because I’m getting more responses than in my 30 years in journalism from people who are saying, ‘Thank you,’ because they too are fed up with the polarization.

Asra Nomani

us

He is insensitive at times with what he says and his proposals are tough, but they reflect a reality of concern people have about an issue that’s killing people from Orlando to Paris.

Asra Nomani

us

I would have come here to speak to just one person, to me, it is simply a victory to stand before you.

Asra Nomani

latest-headlines

I am a liberal Democrat and for the first time ever, I voted for [a Republican] Glenn Youngkin for governor. … And CNN, all these people [in the media], they are trash-talking us. I am a Muslim woman of color and I'm telling you, we are not White supremacists. If this is what a White supremacist looks like, then … all of you need a timeout.

Asra Nomani

Virginia Department of Education officials are treating parents as if we are fools, it’s only because of the vigilance of Virginia parents that the Department of Education realizes that its plans to gut math in the state in the name of ‘equity’ is a national embarrassment.