Iraqi Women Wait To Be Photographed In Portrait Studio
What strikes me first when I think about this image is the ‘disparity’ between the clothing the women are wearing, as they wait in this portrait studio for their photographs to be taken, and how (it seems) the majority of Iraqis choose to be represented in perpetuity (in portraits). More to the point: the women in this photo wear the hijab in public, but (if they’re like the men and women who’ve been photographed here in the past) will likely choose to portray themselves as ‘Western’ in photographs.
Consider for a moment that how we dress in public is an ephemeral act of self-representation, but the act of being photographed (when it’s a willful, planned act) carries the illusion of permanence. The former says, “This is what I chose to wear.” The latter says, “This is who I am.”
Why, a Westerner might ask, the divided view of ‘self?’
Survival, I would argue. Because prior to the U.S. invasion, most Baghdadis (in my experience, working there for two months prior to the March 20 invasion) identified themselves (in their choice of clothing, and sometimes in thought and values) as ‘Western.’ But the downfall of the secular government brought with it the rise of (what is usually described as) fundamentalist ‘elements’ (shall we say) who targeted women who dressed as some Americans would dress. They’ve also targeted women who hold ‘professional’ positions, such as physician or attorney, and women who publicly exhibit independence (such as driving a car; one Iraqi woman told me she now relied on her brother to drive her to work, for fear that she’d be dragged from her car and beaten, if she were seen driving).
Women adapted.
In the West, we have a stereotypical vision of Iraqi women—covered, isolated, inscrutable—and this illusory stereotype is what they became (to the eye), in order to survive. But how they think of themselves—how they want to be seen by those they love, how they want to be remembered by their friends and their family, as the history of who they were, and how they wanted to be seen—dresses itself up like we do.
When I was a student, I was dressed like a modern girl and I wore long shorts. That is part of the past. There is fear in the streets. You cannot go out in the streets. You are looked at as if you come from another age. If there are any militias on your street, they will tell you to go back home and dress decently. — Yanar Mohammed, founder, Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (quoted in Guernica magazine, May 2007)
It makes me very sad to think of this. To see what I think it means (there are other possible interpretations, and certainly more complex ones). It means they’ve been forced to cloak themselves in a stereotype—one that in part is responsible for Americans prejudging them as ‘primitive’—in order to survive one of the immediate consequences of their newfound ‘freedom.’
I should also point out that wearing the hijab (or any form of covering) can, in and of itself, be an ‘exhibition of independence.’ It is, in some cases, purely a matter of freedom of choice, as this article about Cincinnati-based attorney Roula Allouch demonstrates. Allouch is a U.S.-born Muslim who notes that for her (and for others), the headscarf is a “matter of faith.”
U.S. citizens (the majority of whom profess to be Christians) would be more protective of this form of religious freedom if, for example, the government attempted to ban public displays of crucifixes. On April 11 this year, France set a new precedent for religious intolerance in the West when the government officially banned women from wearing the “full veil” in public. Women convicted of this ‘crime,’ according to the New York Times, face up to a year in prison and up to 30,000 euros in fines (about $43,000 U.S. dollars).
The Times states that the ban grew out of statements by André Gérin, the former mayor of Vénissieux, France, who alleged that the burqua and those who wear it are “separatists” and a threat to the nation’s democratic government. The irony, of course, is that the French citizenry banned this particular exhibition of the freedom of religion ... in order to “protect” democracy.
The absurdity of this logic should be familiar to any American who remembers one of the more quotable phantasmagorias of the Vietnam War: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” The quote was attributed to a U.S. Air Force officer (in a Feb. 7, 1968 Associated Press story by Peter Arnett) who attempted to explain why the Air Force had decided to bomb the village of Bến Tre, killing civilians and suspected Vietcong alike.
It’s an argument we’ve heard often—a kind of metastatic outgrowth of fear and paranoia that begins as ethnic intolerance (or other forms of discrimination) and has terminated many times in this and the past century in concentration camps and mass graves. These epidemics—with the latest taking root in the War on Terror—spread from the core argument that in order to preserve our freedoms, we must prohibit people from exercising them. Usually, this sickness is targeted at a particular group (giving, let’s say, smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans); but the War on Terror has the unique characteristic of suppressing the rights of all people, with little restraint on government intrusion on the private lives and political or secular activities of the citizenry.
Citizens of so-called ‘democratic’ nations should be wary of this kind of ‘fix,’ which is akin to arguing that in order to prevent heart disease, we must first accept cancer. Neither the veil, nor the crucifix are threats to personal freedom; but banning those forms of religious expression (which are also forms of free speech) or otherwise discriminating against anyone who has either the courage or the conviction to follow his or her conscience is a threat—not just to a particular form of government, but to humanity itself.