Whether liv­ing in the Mid­dle East or Africa, in Cen­tral Asia, in Pak­istan, in South­east Asia, or in Europe and the Amer­i­c­as, Mus­lim women tend to view the fem­i­nist movement…

The Islam­ic revival sym­bol­ized by the cur­rent resur­gence of the hijab is often con­sid­ered as an attempt of Arab Mus­lims to restore their pride and iden­ti­ty which have been repeat­ed­ly under­mined by col­o­niza­tion and eco­nom­ic retar­da­tion. Man has always had a con­ser­v­a­tive ten­den­cy and reacts against which is new and unfa­mil­iar with­out real­iz­ing whether it is good or bad for him. Some peo­ple still think the Mus­lim women insist on wear­ing hijab which is the ​“very sym­bol of the oppressed sit­u­a­tion because they are enslaved by the tra­di­tion and are not suf­fi­cient­ly aware of their lam­en­ta­ble sit­u­a­tion. ​“If only”, they prob­a­bly think, ​“the move­ment of the wom­en’s lib­er­a­tion and inde­pen­dence awakes those wom­en’s mind, they will take away the hijab.”

Hav­ing been on both sides of the veil, I can tell you that West­ern male politi­cians and jour­nal­ists have no idea what they are talk­ing about when they blame Islam for child brides, female cir­cum­ci­sion, hon­or killings and forced mar­riages. A care­ful read­ing of the Qur’an shows that just about every­thing West­ern fem­i­nists fought for in the 1970s was avail­able 1,400 years ago to Mus­lim women, who are con­sid­ered equal to men in spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, edu­ca­tion and worth. When Islam offers women so much, why are West­ern men so obsessed with Mus­lim wom­en’s attire ? Even British gov­ern­ment min­is­ters Gor­don Brown and John Reid have made dis­parag­ing remarks about the niqab, and they hail from Scot­land, where men wear skirts.

Clar­i­fy­ing mis­con­cep­tions about the require­ment of four wit­ness­es for rape in Islam­ic law. Get an in-depth under­stand­ing of Islam’s view­point on rape, its pun­ish­ment, and the true needs for evi­dence. Debunk com­mon myths by explor­ing the detailed insights today.

The fol­low­ing is a doc­u­men­tary pro­duced by a group of stu­dents Mul­ti­me­dia Uni­ver­si­ty Cyber­jaya, Malaysia, fea­tur­ing opin­ions from var­i­ous Mus­lim women about how they feel about the hijab (or the tudung as it is known in Malay) and streamed from YouTube. It por­trays a very good side of Islam that is rarely shown to a West­ern audi­ence. We feel that this doc­u­men­tary does a good job of dis­pelling the mis­con­cep­tion that Mus­lim women are ​“oppressed” when the donn the hijab.

Most of the con­ver­sa­tion was done in Bahasa Melayu, but it is sub­ti­tled in English.