Mick Hartley

Today is World Hijab Day: slogan, "veiled in strength".

New York Governor Kathy Hochul "acknowledges the bravery, nobility and strength of Muslim women around the world who make the personal decision to wear the hijab." 

And if they make the personal decision not to wear the hijab, in Iran or Afghanistan for instance, they'll get beaten and imprisoned. Maybe tortured. Maybe killed. Such nobility. Such strength.

Khadija Khan at Spiked:

The hijab, a type of head covering, is used by Islamic regimes around the world as a tool to subjugate women. From Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to Afghanistan and Iran, the hijab symbolises women’s oppression. It represents a misogynistic ideology in which women are conceived as sexual objects to be concealed from men.

So you might think that Western progressives would be more than a little critical of the hijab. But incredibly, that isn’t the case. On the contrary, today many are eagerly celebrating World Hijab Day. No doubt they will even present wearing the hijab as a form of female ‘empowerment’.

This is liberal hypocrisy at its cruellest. Hijab laws and customs sustain a gender-based hierarchy. That’s why so many brave women in Iran have been trying to challenge their own nation’s hijab law. But rather than support their struggle for freedom, Western liberals have largely kept quiet.

Not wearing the hijab is "offending religious morality" according to the mullahs in Tehran and the Taliban in Afghanistan. It's the same for Muslim women everywhere – a sign of subservience and oppression. 

Yet these stories and many others like them have been met with silence by Western progressives. These people claim to be on the side of female victims of male oppression – except, it seems, when the perpetrators are Islamists. They call out all manner of male behaviours in the West as sexist – from ‘manspreading’ to ‘mansplaining’ – yet they are silent when it comes to the most egregious examples of violent misogyny in Islamic societies. The double standards here are off the charts.

A much-needed conversation about women’s rights in Islamic regimes is being brushed under the carpet. Indeed, self-described progressives appear to be more concerned with not upsetting Islamist bigots in the West than they are with the plight of the women living under Sharia law. In the eyes of the politically correct left, those women in Iran fighting to liberate themselves from religious fanaticism are unworthy of solidarity.

Worst of all, those Westerners who do speak out against this misogyny are routinely shouted down. Non-Muslims and even ex-Muslims will be told that they have no right to speak out against Islam. Invariably, they will be accused of being ‘racist’ and ‘Islamophobic’.

Western liberals need to get their priorities straight. Out of cowardice and ignorance, they are effectively appeasing the oppressors of women. They are caving in to the will of fanatics. They are allowing those who routinely violate women’s dignity to get away with it.