Hot waters

I am already in hot waters for my previous post. An anonymous commenter has left a long and vitriolic response, accusing me of, among other things,having a simple understanding of the Middle East, harboring 1920s nostalgia, and also shallowly hierarchizing the region.

I respectfully disagree with all such characterizations of my views. First, I cannot understand how I could be accused of having a simple view when the main point of my post was to call for a more nuanced understanding of the region and the headscarf issue. I never said headscarves are good, or the Middle East needs no debate. On the contrary, all I did was to point out that people in the region have been debating this issue for awhile now. There was a push, starting in the 1920s, throughout the region, to get rid of headscarves in the name of modernity. In some places this led to a backlash (Iran), in other places it more or less stuck (Turkey). Yet in another places like Egypt, while there has not been an exact backlash, there has been a resurgence of women covering up. So you might have situations where the mother was not covered when she was young and the daughter now is.

What I object to are the presentations of the issue as if Islam and the Muslim World are stagnant and static entities that are only now having to face challenges, however meek, about the headscarf issue. That is not true. If we want reform in the region (and I think my anonymous commenter and I agree on this issue), we have to understand why the first attempts of reform failed in most cases and what caused the backlash. This is not 1920s nostalgia.

Also, far from hierarchizing the region, the point I was trying to make was that Turkey has to compromise some individual liberties in order to get (religiously observant) women to take off their headscarves. So simply applauding people who say things we like is not going to accomplish much. Even if they were serious, accomplishing the goal of fewer headscarves takes more than talk. Getting there might at times conflict with the goal of fostering more liberalization and democracy. That is all I was saying. I think at the end it comes down to what your priorities are.

Just in case it was not clear, I do not cover my head, neither does my mother, nor my grandmother. As a secular Turk, I have benefited from the system in Turkey. That does not preclude me, however, from trying to understand the point of view of those who have made other choices.

As for the challenge issued by the anonymous poster, I think the answer to that question depends on how one defines the status quo. I might say more on that later.