How Tudung/Hijab is killing the Malayu Culture

[duluxe]

http://www.aiseyman.com/2015/07/29/...ore-did-not-wear-the-hijab-before-early-1970/

[h=1]Muslim women in Singapore did not wear the hijab before early 1970![/h]
As proof that the cultural trend of wearing the hijab is a fairly recent phenomenon in Singapore’s history, here are some photos of Muslim women in Singapore/Malaya before early 1970.

In everyday life:
This is a 1950s photograph of a Malay woman carrying her child in a garden

This is a 1950s photograph of an old Malay woman carrying a young child

A photograph of a Malay woman harvesting the grown rice crops

A Photo of Malay Muslim ladies at an event

A photograph taken in 1971 of a Malay lady at the Old Tekka Market


In special occasions:
A photo of a Malay wedding in the 1950’s or 1960’s

A photo of a Malay wedding in the 1950’s or 1960’s

A photo of a Malay wedding in the 1950’s or 1960’s


In film and pop culture:
A still from the 1960’s Cathay-Keris film Tunang Pak Dukun

A still from the 1950’s Shaw film Rachun Dunia

A still taken from the 1948 Shaw film Chinta



From the above photographs, it is evident that before the early 1970’s, the hijab was not part of the Islamic dress code. Then, most Muslim women went about bareheaded or even sporting perms that were popular during that era. Even the more conservative did not wear the hijab, but rather draped a loose shawl or scarf over their head.
The increasing religiousity of Muslims around the region has obviously impacted Muslims in Singapore, as evident from the changes in our daily habits and dress code. While this in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, but we should not be so quick to also import the customs and culture of other Muslim nations, and in doing so, erode away our own beautiful Malayan heritage.

 

[duluxe]

http://www.themalaymailonline.com/m...mahathir-malaysia-undergoing-arab-colonialism

[h=2]Marina Mahathir: Malaysia undergoing ‘Arab colonialism’[/h]
Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir has criticised the “Arabisation” of Islam in Malaysia amid the institutionalisation and growing conservatism of the faith here. The social activist pointed out that that it is very difficult to find traditional “baju Melayu” for women during Hari Raya as Arab attire like kaftans, which are long tunics, became more popular instead over the years.
“This is just Arabisation. Our culture — it’s colonialism, Arab colonialism,” Marina told Malay Mail Online in a recent interview here.
“Kaftans are easy to wear. But what happened to our tradition, culture, everything? It’s lost,” she lamented, pointing out that Malay women below 50 generally do not know how to tie the ‘baju kurung’ skirt so that it falls into pleats and makes it easier to walk in.
The eldest child of former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said Islam’s biggest problem in Malaysia is the fear of knowledge of the religion itself.
“Islam has a very strong intellectual history, but there’s no intellect at all in the way Islam is taught here. We’re taught rituals; we’re not taught about the great thinkers and differences between them,” she said.
“When you read the history of Islam when it first came down, it was about doing away with tribalism... but you now have this thing where you’re wanting to go to a tribe, or else, the other tribes, even though all are officially Muslim, are not allowed,” she added.
The Sunni denomination is the prevalent ideology in Malaysia and any other Islamic schools of thought, including Shia, are considered deviant.
Marina also criticised the authorities for “inventing new enemies all the time”, questioning a minister for telling Muslims to watch out for “Quranism” shortly after Dr Mahathir said the Quran is supreme and that hadiths, which are sayings attributed to Prophet Muhammad, come after the holy book.
“It’s a new ‘ism’. Liberalism, pluralism, communism, feminism, Quranism. But racism, fascism, they don’t include,” she said.
Friday sermons sanctioned by the government have repeatedly warned the predominant Muslim community against philosophies like liberalism and pluralism.
Marina hit out at the government’s repeated calls for Muslims to unite and conform, pointing out that it does not allow room for individuality, while Muslim women are criticised when they go against the norm, citing the K-pop concert controversy where Muslim girls in headscarves hugged the Korean artistes, the female BFM journalist who questioned hudud and women in tudung touching canines at a controversial pet-a-dog event.
“Women always get attacked,” said the women’s rights activist.
“The guys get away because you can’t actually tell, unless they’re in a kopiah and beard and they’re touching a dog,” she added.

 

[duluxe]

Thinking intersectionally about Malay women and the tudung

I have been thinking a lot about intersectionality and women who do not wear the tudung lately and it is not so much because the concept is de rigueur right now as I have been accused of not being intersectional enough in my viral article, Asal-usul obsesi Melayu dengan tudung (The origins of the Malay obsession with the tudung) published in my column in the Malay Mail Online on 15 October 2015.

Within days of the article’s publication, comments on Twitter and emails began to trickle in, then tweets condemning my piece and expressing some distaste towards me flooded my timeline. When feminist countering views to my article began to emerge, they sang a similar tune: that my critique of a culture pressuring Malay women to wear the tudung elided two important elements in the debate; choice and agency.

Fair enough, choice and agency are abstract notions nearly every woman are thought to have, in addition to our ability to reason, rationalise and make decisions. But it is important to note their significance and currency in this debate. Choice and agency in themselves have a talismanic quality; that their very utterance would be enough to end a feminist conversation – her choice, her empowerment, end of story. Women’s choice and agency are a defiant win in the face of a deeply patriarchal culture.

It would be a little bit patronising to suggest that I don’t know the means through which choice, agency, and the patriarchy operate. But having been schooled by said countering views nonetheless, I was still left with an unanswered issue; what about women who do not wear the tudung? Why are they subjected to so much abuse? And more crucially, what makes their abuse different from other women? Will the pressure and public abuse of women who do not wear the tudung illuminate some uncomfortable truths about modern Muslim Malaysia?

To say that all women – whether they wear the tudung or not – suffer patriarchal abuse is to sweep under the carpet the specificities of being a woman who does not wear the tudung and her specific challenges in Malaysia. Because there are differences between Malay women, whether if it is because of their regional and class background, linguistic abilities, academic credentials, and yes if they wear the headscarf or not, we will be impacted very differentially by patriarchy.

A middle class Malay woman in the city who wears the tudung is going to experience sexism very differently from a working class Malay who doesn’t wear the tudung in small towns outside the Klang Valley. Although women’s attire in general is policed in Malaysia, we are policed differently because of our respective social differences. If you wear the headscarf, every strand of hair needs to be tucked away and other arbitrary notions of sartorial modesty may be acquiesced accordingly. Women who do not wear the tudung present a different kind of challenge. Tudung-less non-Malay women move more freely in shorter skirts and short shorts. Tudung-less bodies interpellated as ‘Malay’ will be disciplined differently or diminished altogether.

In Kimberlé Crenshaw’s seminal article, ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Women of Color’, the political specificities of Black women’s activism were either ignored or erased because they were too similar to white women in their subjection to patriarchal sexism, and yet too different because their black identity and experiences of racism. Due to their intersecting position between racism and sexism, their experiences were dismissed or erased entirely in both anti-sexist and anti-racist political action:

The need to split one’s political energies between two sometimes opposing groups is a dimension of intersectional disempowerment [my emphasis] that men of color and white women seldom confront. Indeed, their specific raced and gendered experiences, although intersectional, often define as well as confine the interests of the entire group. For example, racism as experienced by people of color who are of a particular gender – male – tends to determine the parameters of antiracist struggles, just as sexism as experienced by women of a particular race – white – tends to ground the women’s movement (Crenshaw, ‘Mapping the Margins’ 1991: 1252)

In almost similar ways, Malay women who do not wear the tudung and their specific experiences are being erased by the deleteriously non-intersecting view that ALL women are subjected by sexism and misogyny. Malay women who do not wear the tudung are similar to women who wear the tudung because of sexist gender policing they experience. But women who do not wear the tudung are significantly different because of their visibility as women who deviate from normative interpretations of Islam and contemporary Malay culture.

I would like to argue that the experiential specificity of Malay women who do not wear the tudung be addressed along two strands; their gendered subjectivity and Muslim identity. I would argue that unless and until these two strands are addressed as separate spheres of cultural pressures, Malay women who do not wear the tudung will continue to be erased from feminist debates on their bodies, sexuality, and very being.

Malay women who do not wear the tudung may face the same patriarchal policing of their gendered subjectivity as women who wear the tudung in a multitude of contexts; as inferior to men’s inherent ability to lead and dominate the public sphere and discourse. But as Muslims, Malay women who do not wear the tudung face a different kind of policing and subordination. Their very visibility as women who do not cover themselves sufficiently mark them out as Other to the normative articulation of Malay femininity.

Much of the criticism that cashes on the currency of agency and choice adopt the politicised stance of covered Muslim women in countries hostile to the hijab and Islam generally. The position of these women becomes a feminist act because their decision to wear the hijab is expressed as a symbolic resistance to a culture that demand their ‘exposure’ to the secular gaze. Muslim women who wear the hijab in Europe are confronted by the patronising white saviour complex of the militant activist group Femen keen on participating in the enduring crusade of ‘saving brown women from brown men’.

But in Malaysia, the pressure on women is quite the opposite. The cultural and institutional pressure on women to cover may well be a subliminal rejection of the secular gaze and its imperialistic definitions of democracy and human rights. And here I might make a provocative suggestion: the politicised articulation of women who cover for ‘feminist’ reasons, citing agency and informed choice, may collude with the Islamic sphere of action that subordinate Malay women who do not wear the tudung.

So long as the majority group of women – women who wear the tudung (and their being the majority have greater leverage to navigate spaces because of their success in fulfilling normative expectations of Malay femininity) – ignore the differential impact of the patriarchal mode of gendered and religious policing, they will continue to be complicit in the specific subordination of Malay women who do not wear the tudung.

To conclude, I would quote Crenshaw on the political implications of ignoring the intersectional oppression of women at the margins:

Because women of color experience racism in ways not always the same as those experienced by men of color experience racism and sexism in ways not always parallel to experiences of white women, antiracism and feminism are limited, even on their own terms. (Crenshaw, ‘Mapping the Margins’ 1991: 1252)

To think within the parameters of political intersectionality is to argue that gender and religious-based struggles in Malaysia will be limited so long as it does not address the specificities of women who reside within the margins of normative femininity in Malaysia. I would not deny that normative femininity itself is diverse and within it consists of contradictions. However, the same normative femininity – because of its normativitiy and majority status – allows it to be more privileged, more representable, and vocal enough to drown out the differences between women.

Posted on 31 October, 2015 by Angry Malay Woman

 

[Camryn64]

I'm not agree with all this stuff

 

[duluxe]

Young Malay girls in sarong kebaya in Sembawang 1970. Disappearing nowadays, replacing with arabic head wares.

 

[duluxe]

I'm not agree with all this stuff

State you reasoning.

 

[Agoraphobic]

Malays might be seeking to hide themselves behind the veil of Islam for some unknown reason. They used to be more open and progressive before this period. I have Malay friends who seem confused between modernity and Islam. And sadly, they find more support from family and community in the religion.

Cheers!

.......... we should not be so quick to also import the customs and culture of other Muslim nations, and in doing so, erode away our own beautiful Malayan heritage.