The Film *They Call Me Muslim* follows the story of a muslim, Samah, living in France, and a muslim woman living in Iran. Samah is a student who wants the ability to wear a headscarf at a school where it is banned. The woman in Iran does not want to wear a headscarf or any sort of head covering, but is required to by the Iranian regime.

I would like to provide some details regarding the case law of France’s legislation on the wearing of the headscarf in schools.

In 2004 the French government enacted a law banning the wearing of religious symbols in all government elementary and secondary schools. Many felt this law was meant to target muslim students in France. This law was challenged and appealed to the European Court of Human Rights by two muslim students, which uphold the law in 2008: http://www.dw.com/en/french-headscarf-ban-not-discrimination-says-european-court/a-3850797.

However, a Sikh student appealed to the United Nations, which sided against the French law, in 2012: https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/case-watch-new-perspective-france-s-ban-religious-headcoverings-schools. It is not clear to me what the consequences are of France ignoring this ruling.

I watched a short documentary ,“They Call Me Muslim”, about women’s perspective on wearing a hijab in public. In France and Tehran, women are restricted from their freedom of choice. Muslims in France are not allowed to wear their hijab in public or in universities. The law also prohibited people from wearing other religious attire. However, Jews were allowed to wear their yamakas (round caps) and Christians were still allowed to wear their crosses. This shows that the law specifically targets Muslims and their religious values. I also came across an article awhile back about a Muslim woman being arrested for wearing long sleeved shirt and pants to a beach. It seems that wearing a hijab is not the only problem in France. The country is targeting a whole group of people based on their religious affiliation. Going back to the documentary, the woman in Tehran was forced to wear the hijab. Her resistance to wearing the headscarf has caused her to get in trouble with the law several times. Although this law would be favored for those that are serious about their religion, it can be extremely frustrating for those who are coerced to wear it to avoid charges and arrests. Religious discrimination is still such a prevalent problem today, especially towards Muslims due to the misconceptions about their religion.

Last week, Ashley’s Flora’s Friday Films event featured the movie “They Call Me Muslim” and it led to one of the most interesting conversations I’ve had with my floor-mates. I somewhat liked the movie in that it portrayed types of women with an Islamic background and the idea that there are alway choices. Unfortunately, the movie had sparked an entire discussion on how societies have been manipulated by men. Perhaps, it was just the angry ranting of a couple of annoyed girls late on a Friday in the middle of prelim season. However, we realized that no matter what you do, a woman almost never fits the idea of the ideal. If she’s quiet, they find a flaw in her quiet nature but at the same time if she’s loud and wants to be heard,  they need a way to keep her quiet. Decency is cited as a way to keep women who do not want to cover up to cover everything up yet, other times, when other women are following that definition of decency, that manner is critiqued as well.

There is almost no way out. In our rant, we decided that the movie opened up the idea of freedom. It should be a choice. Wearing a hijab and deciding how religious you are should be left up to you. Who is to judge what type of faith will be accepted? The fact that your choice will be taken away from is extremely disappointing and it has been a feature of life for many women. I’m trying not to write up a feminist rant but, it’s unfortunate how we can’t have control over decisions that affect us directly. For example, in the movie, a professor was discussing how men would see girls hijab and started to pressurize their female relations to do the same. Why is that a trend? How would forcing your daughter to wear a hijab help you accomplish anything? Similarly, why would you force your daughter to take off her hijab if that is what she identifies with?

I have had friends in both positions and, to speak my truth, the girls who are forced have and will take off the hijab the moment they are out of sight.  Likewise, the girls who believe in the hijab and that definition of modesty will cover up in the ways they can.  If it was just the issue of a hijab, a burking, and clothing in general, I might be able to see how men would try to cover up women. I mean we all know how distracting spaghetti straps and naked shoulders are to the male population. However, the issue of decision-making does not end at clothing.  Others are always making decisions for women whether it be for marriage or healthcare.  Regardless of how progressive we think our beloved country is, we treat our women based on the same principles that other societies do but we cover it up by giving examples of countries that have very obvious wrongdoings.

http://blogs.cornell.edu/rosescholarsfall16/2017/03/04/women-societies-…ons-and-religion/

I had this blog post in the fall area by accident. oops!

Last Friday, I watched a short documentary called They Call Me Muslim, which was about the two different experiences of Muslim women in France, a democracy, and Iran, a theocracy. It gave me some insight into the political situation in France, which is very different from that of the United States.

In 2004, the French government instituted a law that banned the wearing of religious symbols in public schools. This law was enacted to maintain the separation of church and state in France. I believe this approach was a radical one. The government is taking away the freedom of Muslim girls to practice an important principle in their religion, but the students aren’t interfering with the government’s role in preventing religious influence. Headscarves aren’t tearing down the wall between church and state.

I’ve read that Europeans generally have a different attitude towards immigrants than most Americans do. The United States is different from European nations because the nation was built by immigrants. And although there are anti-immigrant attitudes in the US, they are not as prevalent as they are in Europe. In places like France or Germany, there is public pressure to maintain the western culture. In the documentary, some of the girls mentioned that the ban of Christian symbols wasn’t enforced. I wouldn’t be surprised that this ban was passed because politicians noticed a  mistrust of Muslims by the public and sought to gain political points.

Last week, Flora Rose screened “They Call me Muslim.”  One of the main controversies the documentary investigated was the effect of France’s legislature that banned wearing the hijab in public schools.  One of the first things that came to my mind is what if the hijab, instead of being a piece of cloth draped around the  head, was a bowler hat.  Then, students in French public schools would be banned from wearing the bowler hat.  I realize that the two hats have their own histories and that the hijab often displays a level of piety in the Islamic religion, but I can’t help but view the physical construction of any article of clothing as being at least a little arbitrary.  This kind of makes the end purpose of the passed legislature also seem a little arbitrary.  The idea of a cloth being somehow wrapped around the head is also a fairly common one.  It makes me wonder if someone wearing a head covering similar to the hijab but for a different purpose, like a Spanish mantilla, would be affected by the law.  Or maybe there is someone who has no affiliation with Islam or any religion but looks outside one day and sees it’s windy and cold.  She looks through her house but can’t quickly find a hat more conventionally worn in France and needs to get to work on time.  So she grabs a scarf or other rectangular piece of cloth and wraps it around her head to keep her ears and face warm.  Is she not allowed to do that because it may look like a hijab?  If she is not allowed, how would federal enforcement even know whether or not it was for religious practice.  This hypothetical person has no affiliation with Islam, yet if she told law enforcement that, there’s not really a great way to prove whether she’s telling the truth or not.  I personally think wearing a hijab doesn’t directly affect others in a negative way and should therefore be allowed in public schools.  Even putting myself on the side of French legislation, though, I can’t think of a good way logistically to enforce the law without having to make some judgements about religious affiliation without substantial evidence.

Last Friday I viewed a documentary, They Call Me Muslim. This film explored how different policies from various countries in the world have impacted the lives of Muslim individuals that live in the depicted countries. One country examined was France. In France, a law was established that did not allow female Muslim students to wear the hijab in public schools. As a result, some Muslim students were expelled from school and others had to go to school without their hijab. One student felt like this law did not allow her to express herself fully. This film highlighted that even in a democratic country like France, that women still struggle to express themselves and what they believe in. Across the world, in Iran, Diana Ferrero, the filmmaker, interviewed a woman who was trying to express herself differently than the individuals in France. Unlike those in France who were not permitted to wear their hijabs to public school, K who lives in Tehran, does not necessarily like to wear the hijab. Therefore, K wears a translucent scarf as a hijab, putting herself at risk of being arrested. These two individuals from different sides of the globe have different views on how they should be allowed to express themselves, although they both depict the right to want to express control over their own bodies. This film brought up very controversial topics and stressed that women should be allowed to express themselves.

Last week I went to the Flora Friday Film night where we watched the 2006 documentary film The Call Me Muslim. Despite its short run time of less than 30 minutes, it was by far the most thought provoking film of the Flora Friday Film nights so far. The Call Me Muslim interviewed two Muslim women from very different countries. Samah, an 18 year old Syrian girl living in Paris, France, and “K” a 20 something college graduate living in Tehran, Iran. Samah chooses to wear a hijab despite French law prohibiting it in public schools, while K chooses to resist Iran’s law that hijabs are absolutely mandatory.

Going into the movie my initial thoughts were that laws regulating religious garb or religious behavior in any way is unethical, and my view hasn’t changed. However, seeing all the interviews and different perspective in They Call Me Muslim, I have a better understanding of the two sides of the debate and see how someone could take either side of the debate.

As a non-muslim who has lived in the United States my whole life, I probably missed a lot of socio-cultural context that other viewers in Rose may have picked up on. One audience member commented that they thought comparing K and Samah’s dilemmas was misleading because the two laws and societies are so different. This was surprising to me, because I thought there was a clear likeness in the two laws that tried to control a citizen’s religious behavior. I wish I had asked for clarification on his comment, maybe there are nuances that I missed. Regardless of my experience level or exposure to the subject, the question of banning or making hijabs mandatory seems like a fundamental ethical choice. In my opinion, Iran should not require the hijab, and France should not ban it in public schools. Both laws infringe on a person’s religious freedom. Whether or not the incentives to wear a hijab are positive or not is a separate and irrelevant discussion. No matter why someone chooses to wear or not to wear a hijab, they have the right to make the choice themselves.

In the film “They Call Me Muslim,” I found very interesting perspectives. In a western country, a young teen wanted to wear a hijab as a choice. In another country where women aren’t given the freedom and rights western countries give, a mother didn’t want to wear it. What I found hard to comprehend was that France, being a “free” country, oppresses a woman’s right to wear a hijab by calling it oppression of women. I see this in itself as a type of oppression. We have fought for women’s rights for years and are still continuing to do so. It is a women’s choice if she wants to wear a headscarf as respect for her religion. This is called freedom of religion,  a right many western countries seem to be proud of.  It is ridiculous that in the 21st century, women still have to fight for their rights. For a country to call itself a democracy, it needs to respect every person, not just the ones who comply with societal norms.

The short film “They Call Me Muslim” sought to shed light on a garment called the hijab, which are worn by Muslim women as a way to demonstrate devotion to their religion. And while it seems like the choice to wear the hijab or not should be defined by the religion, rules in Iran and France say otherwise.

The first half of the documentary talked about a college student in France and how, during her younger years, she was prohibited from wearing the hijab because France had wanted to ban religious symbols from public schools. Like many of the other scholars present at the discussion as well as the girl being interviewed in the documentary, I felt that there was a hint of discrimination towards the Muslim religion despite France trying to make it seem like it’s a universal policy. The show mentioned that people were allowed to wear religious crosses while the Muslims couldn’t wear their hijab. Is wearing the Christian cross not a religious symbol? But while these issues arise in France’s public schools, it seems that on the private or university level, these problems do not exists. And for this girl, wearing the hijab was a symbol of her dedication to her beliefs.

The latter half of the documentary revolved around a woman who lived in Iran. And contrary to France, Iran required that all women wear their hijab at all times. Interestingly enough, the woman felt that wearing the hijab did not show her dedication to the religion, but rather she did it because she had to follow the rules. She described of an instance wear the Iranian police force had arrested her because they saw that she wasn’t wearing a hijab. A few scholars, including myself, thought that it was interesting when she described that “after a few days, everything was okay”. It was as if something occurred behind the scenes, but she couldn’t say anything about it.

Overall, it was interesting to watch a film about two very opposing opinions about the same religion. On one hand, you have individuals who willingly follow the customs of the religion when they are oppressed, yet you also have individuals who refuse to follow the customs when forced to wear it. It seems as if the enforcement to do one or the other is causing more and more people to take a stand for themselves and an argument can be made for either side.

To begin, I don’t have any intention of arguing a point, I just wish to discuss what I saw and what I thought. ‘They Call Me Muslim’ is a short documentary (directed by some UC graduate student studying journalism) that portrays what are suggested as two seemingly opposite situations concerning the hijab and it’s symbolism as either expression or oppression.

In the first half, the context provided is France and it’s ban on wearing religious symbols in public schools, and the focus is on a girl who chooses to wear the hijab in order to practice her religion. Although she chose to begin wearing it at an early age, I wondered if she would have been made to wear it at some appropriate age if she hadn’t chosen to. Although this half of the documentary only showed the perspective of this one girl’s family, I think it’d be safe to say that different Muslim families in France would have varying opinions on enforcing that women wear the hijab. I believe it was some university scholar or government official being interviewed, who said that the policy sought to accommodate those who might choose not to wear the hijab. The scenario he proposed was that if some Muslim women wore the hijab, conservative Muslims would use them as examples to encourage women in their lives, who might not wish to wear the hijab, to do so. Someone mentioned afterwards that it was also stated that no Muslim women were invited to discuss this policy when it was being made. However, I felt that whether there is a policy or not, some issue concerning the hijab would be present, since it seems to be somewhat controversial.

In the second half, the focus is on a woman living in Iran who loosely follows the religious law that requires women to wear hijabs, not because she subscribes to Islam but rather only to abide by the law. Witnessing her lifestyle, it seems she doesn’t follow the religious laws established in Iran simply because she doesn’t consider herself a Muslim. From the perspective provided by the documentary, it seems that her freedoms are being infringed upon because of Iran’s theocracy. This woman isn’t the only case where Iran’s theocracy could be considered oppressive to women, as was seen recently in the Women’s World Chess Championship held in Iran. Some of the top women chess players in the world chose not to attend in protest, as they would have had to wear hijabs in order to compete.

In any case, I feel that if one believes that France’s policy be retracted, one should also think it appropriate for Iran to stop enforcing the hijab. In both cases, it seems clear that arguments can be made that rights are being infringed upon, whether religious or social.

Last week’s Rose Scholar movie They Call Me Muslim depicts the lives of two women who wear the hijab in two very different cultures. One woman lives in Paris and chooses to wear her hijab despite France’s secularization policy. The other is a woman living in Iran who refuses to wear her hijab which is required in order to enforce modesty. This is against Iranian theocratic law that imposes Islam in all areas of life. The film shows that the policies both women are challenging are not enforced equally, but are equally restrictive for these particular women. For example, France’s policy has forced Muslim girls to take off the hijab in school, but does not forbid crosses for Christians or skullcaps for Jews. In the case of the Iranian woman in Iran, Muslim women are able to go to the mountains and take off the hijab to experience freedom. In my opinion, the question is not whether or not the French secularization policy or the theocracy in Iran should be allowed. The question is whether a certain group is being singled out, and what can be done in order to make such discrimination stop. Why is the French secularization policy focused only on Muslims as opposed to other religions? This policy definitely is based on fear because of threats of terrorism, but this fear should not translate into law. More recently, France has continued enforcing its policies because of the burquini debate. It was interesting to note, that in both women’s cases, the hijab is used as a symbol of power. It empowers one woman to refuse to take it off and the other to refuse to put it on. It gives the women a choice of whether or not to wear it, and in making that choice, the women are asserting themselves. It made me question what articles of clothing or accessories give women in our less-restrictive culture such power?

I was able to watch, Flora’s film They Call Me Muslim. The film followed two women’s lives in France and Iran that had two different perspectives on what it was to them to be Muslim. It was filmed between December 2004 and January 2005.

In France, they have a democracy, they passed a law that banned the Islamic headscarf. This created an outcry in the Muslim community. The Muslim community makes up 10% of France’s population. 800 Muslim students were affected, 47 of them expelled.

The first woman was an 18-year-old named Samah. She had been wearing her headscarf since she was 14. When this law was passed she was still in high school and she felt that her identity had been violated. The Hijab makes her feel confident because she feels that a woman is an object that needs to be hidden.

In Iran, they have a theocracy, which forces the women to wear the Hijab. To rebel and also protest, the women have been able to wear the hijab in different ways.

The second woman is K, she is a mother of two and she feels that she should be able to wear what she wants. She smokes and she dances which are two things that the religion shame. While in her home she was wearing a tank top and shorts and said to the camera, “They call me Muslim…but do you see me as a Muslim? What do you have in mind for a Muslim person?”

This film showed the two different perspectives of what it meant to be Muslim. I felt that if they wanted to they could have included more women from different places to make more of an impact on showing what being Muslim meant to these women while also educating others.

This past Friday I attended a showing of the documentary “They Call Me Muslim” filmed in 2006. While the film is from over a decade ago, I found the topic very relevant considering the quantity of misinformed rhetoric that is currently circulating in our culture in regards to Islam.

The film focused on two parallel narratives of women involved in a controversy over the wearing of the hijab. Samah was a college student living in France where the law forbid her from wearing the hijab inside public educational institutions. On the other hand, “K” was living in Iran where the hijab is required for women who are in a public setting. In each case, the women wanted to do the opposite of what the law mandated them to do. During our group discussion after the film, I realized we had not all taken away the same message from the film, with some seeing it as portraying the French laws as potentially beneficial for society. For me, however, the overarching message of the film was that any regulation by a government on the wearing or not wearing of the hijab is a restriction of women’s right to express themselves and their beliefs.

Regardless of the film’s stance on the French restrictions, I felt that it spread a positive message by showing two Muslim women with differing beliefs and circumstances. When I attended the campus teach-in on Islam recently, one of the speakers emphasized that an important part of increasing understanding of Islam is highlighting the diversity of Muslims. For me this film was an important step towards achieving that goal.

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.

This documentary made me again think that there is such a wide variety of ideologies between people who believe in Islam. The narrative of the film started by showing how banning hijab in France in public school has had deep effects on Muslim women. A relatively large group of women became deprived of the right of getting an education because this policy. Even though in some interviews with the French authorities they claimed that this law will prevent Muslim woman from being dominated, it did the exact opposite of making them more suppressed.

After interviewing Muslim women in France (which is secular country) who thought their freedom was taken away from them by the ban, they showed an interview with a Muslim woman from Iran (which is a theocracy) who thought that being enforced to comply with the society’s Islamic values had taken away her freedom. These two interviews had a lot of contradictions in their scenarios and what I thought was that it is not a good way of thinking, comparing these two. These two people were from completely different Islamic backgrounds and that was one of the reasons they had different experiences with Islam: one was a Sunni Muslim from Syria (Being Sunni was obvious from the way she was praying) and the other was a Shia from Iran (majority of population is Shia). These people did not have the same the same historical backgrounds and they did not live in the same societies. The problem is that our understanding of the world is relative and we learn in context. As a person who has lived in Iran before I thought I would relate to the second person better. Despite that I thought that I must try to understand the first person’s issues from her own perspective. After watching this film, I wished that we could have better understandings of people’s ideologies.

This Friday we watched the documentary They Call Me Muslim. The film included two Muslim women, Samah, living in France, and K, living in Iran, with opposite government policies and different opinions on hijab. On the one hand, the French administration banned hijab-wearing in public schools on the ground of promoting secularism; and Samah genuinely believes the teachings of Quran and decides for herself to wear hijab. Samah questions whether the government could associate freedom with veiling. On the other hand, the Iranian government requires every female to wear traditional hijab. K does not like the idea of wearing hijab, resisting the policy by wearing hijab in alternative ways that do not fully cover her hair. K questions the idea that women tempt men and should cover themselves with hijab; instead, K thinks it is not a women problem but rather men’s.

This film has provoked lots of questions: what is freedom? what counts as a religion? Is someone considered to be free only if they are not bound by any religious doctrines? Personally, I do not think hijab itself is a symbol of oppression but rather a cultural and religious expression. As Lila Abu-Lughod suggests that for Muslim believers, wearing hijab is an expression of modesty and demonstrates higher social status for women. Moreover, as Samah’s mother mentions in the documentary, hijab could just be a fashion statement (and I do think the silky and colorful veils Samah wears in the film look very nice). In this sense, hijab is no different than high heels or chokers–they are items that one wears to perform their identity as a woman. Thus, I think that the French administration should not police the meaning of hijab for its citizens. In my opinion, if some girls feel pressured to wear hijab because their classmates question their identity as Muslims, it is better to address anti-bullying policies in general rather than specifically targeting at a certain ethnicity. Furthermore, I question government’s ideology which authoritatively associated individual freedom with secularism. As many ethnographic studies have pointed out, science is the characteristic of modern/western society rather than a universal trait. In other words, while our society is organized around the belief of science, other societies are organized around their own beliefs. Moreover, Clifford Geertz points out that religion serves to maintain social solidarity and offers means for humans to make sense of the world. Thus, while we view beliefs other than science as religion, others view our belief in secularism as religion. Consequently, the idea of secularism is essentially separating one religious belief (in this case, Islam) from another (in this case, science), rather than preventing region from intervening non-religious affairs.

I believe sometimes power creates binaries to establish modes of hierarchy; and in this case, the religious and the secular are coined by power dynamics to legitimatize prioritizing secular ideologies over religious ones. If we blur the boundary between the secular and the religious, our lives might be more free and more livable.

References:

Abu-Lughod, Lila. “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others.” American Anthropologist 104.3 (2002): 783-90. Print.

Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic, 2000. Print.