The film screening last Friday of the documentary They Call Me Muslim was interesting and insightful. However, another Rose Scholar, Piragash, has pointed out in his blog post already, there are a few shortcomings of the film.

Let me just say what I liked about the documentary first: it gave us an interesting perspective and it definitely exposed me to cultures/thoughts/ideas that I don’t really get to hear about in my day-to-day life. I thought the women they chose were interesting and independent.

As for the shortcomings of the documentary… as Piragash said, the juxtaposition of the two women were kind of weird. They tried to frame the documentary as “two sides of the same coin,” when in reality, a women living in a theocracy in Iran is very different from a woman living in a democracy in France. The topic of the hijab just felt like a topic of convenience to make this juxtaposition work, when in reality, they could have highlighted women’s oppression living in theocracies or even women’s oppression in what we consider “developed” or democratic countries like the U.S. or France. Those would have been better juxtapositions then two women from two entirely different backgrounds from two drastically different countries and putting them as part of a 30-min. documentary. Perhaps the juxtaposition would seem more appropriate given more context, but in a 30 minute film, that’s near impossible.

I will say, however, that the women’s stories were interesting and I enjoyed listening to their reasons for wearing or for not wearing head coverings in their religion. I particularly admire the second women in her acts of defiance–it definitely takes a lot of courage to do something that can result in legal repercussions and I appreciated how she mentioned that if showing her hair/head “tempts men,” then “that’s their own problem.” Though a different scenario, it kind of reminded me of high school dress codes in America–how girls’ shoulders must be covered so it “doesn’t distract the boys.”

The last thing I want to touch on in this blog post is something entirely different from what I mentioned before. I would just like to touch on the French lawmaker’s words on how banning headscarves/religious symbols “protects” the women. I feel like this is a classic example of men making laws regarding women (not unlike abortion laws in the U.S.), and of course, it is problematic because they are making decisions on issues that don’t even pertain to them.

Even though the juxtaposition in this documentary leaves much to be desired, one thing is clear: the oppression of women around the world is still a huge problem. Regardless of the society you live in, whether it be a democracy like France or a theocracy like Iran, if you are a woman, decisions you make about yourself is not always yours to make, and we still have a lot of ground to cover before we reach true equality.