During this summer’s visit to Six Flags Great America, I was prepared for the bikini-clad girls with short-shorts pulled down low, the shirtless boys with white tanks tossed across their shoulders, not to mention the matching families in khaki shorts and neon green tees.
I was not, however, prepared for the burqas.
My jaw dropped as the family approached me: two fathers in tidy slacks and polo shirts walking alongside two women (presumably) draped completely in black, peering out through slits. One set of hands poked out of long sleeves to push a stroller, while the other set held the hands of two small kids.
As my eyes went from the women to the men, a rage boiled up inside me. In my mind, I was witnessing walking bondage, humans trapped beneath black cloth.
I have never considered the hijab (head scarf) oppressive, simply because I find the scarves and their wearers to be elegant and lovely—and because they do not cover a woman’s face. But to me, the burqa and even the niqab, which covers the face to a lesser degree, communicate an oppression that no woman in the world—let alone in Great America, the amusement park or the country, should bear, and certainly would never choose.
So imagine my surprise when I heard a young, modern Muslim woman named Nadia defending her choice to wear a niqab and cover her face in public at CNN’s Belief blog.
“I’ve never seen anybody interview a Muslim woman and ask her if she’s oppressed,” Nadia says. “Or if she feels oppressed for wearing what she wears, or if she’s oppressed in her home.”
Nor have I. Neither have I asked a Muslim woman. I can blame my assumptions on the Taliban and my open-jawed reading of Half the Sky, or the protestor’s images of a veiled woman being stoned for adultery. Nadia says these images are not valid in America. She has never met a woman forced to wear the veil.
In fact, far from being oppressed, Nadia maintains, she is more respected and taken more seriously by men because of her choice to cover her face and body in public. “You often see in many societies women being objectified because of how they look or being disrespected,” Aliya, another young Muslim, told CNN. The hijab helps “force people who may be otherwise unwilling to take the focus off of our physical appearance.” Ultimately, though, Nadia says that she chooses to cover to feel closer to her creator.
Nadia raises some valid points: Certainly we Christians hold modesty, as well as taking women seriously, as a virtue. But I can’t help wondering about Nadia’s view of the Creator. If women of all shapes, sizes, and skin tones want to be heard and accepted fully, we cannot continue to play into the notion that beauty or sexuality cannot go hand in hand with intellect and wisdom. As a blonde, if I color my hair to be taken seriously, don’t I just add to the longevity of the Dumb Blonde jokes? If nursing mothers continue to sneak out of interesting conversations to hide away to feed their babies, doesn’t it just fuel the flames that scorch the world with their “mommy brain” lies? If women, in the fullness of their God-given beauty and sexuality, are ever to be taken seriously, we must do it as we are created. Which leads to the bigger problem with Nadia’s conclusion.
Women are made in God’s image. God gave us faces—lips, tongues, cheeks, eyes—and breasts and legs and shoulders that presumably reflect and glorify him in some way.
Yes, in our broken world our lips and breasts and legs are viewed and used improperly, to allure the wrong person or to “distract” men. But how does hiding our womanhood away honor the God who made us fearfully and wonderfully with these parts?
When I think of a veiled face in particular, I can’t help wonder what is lost when one’s countenance is invisible to the outside world. Think how much we learn and understand about one another through our faces. When Jacob and Esau reunited after decades of bitter separation, Jacob experienced grace when he saw Esau’s kind, welcoming face that was “like seeing the face of God.”
As a Christian, I love Nadia and her Muslim sisters in whatever choice they make regarding hijabs, niqabs, or even burqas. As a libertarian and an American, I defend their right to feel close to their creator in almost any way they see fit. But frankly, as a woman made in the image of God—and as a woman loved by God—I struggle to understand how it could ever be better to hide our faces and our selves away.
Caryn Rivadeneira is a writer, speaker, and mom, and the author of Mama’s Got a Fake I.D. as well as a book forthcoming from Tyndale House. She has written for Her.meneutics on fathers, Mother’s Day, spanking, happiness, and pregnant Olympians.
