“The subject of sitr or covering is far more nuanced than we have been led to believe. The spectrum of opinion is far more vast, tolerant, and permissive than most have imagined in their wildest dreams.” With this, Morrow (or Ilyas ‘Abd al-'Alim Islam), a prolific Canadian convert to Islam, opens the small but also vast topic of Islamic strictures on the need for women to cover up. His definition of hijab makes his own view evident: “the religious prison created for women by men inflicted with numerous psychological and theological diseases, including ignorance, arrogance, and polytheism.”
As this impassioned definition suggests, Morrow takes a dim view of much Islamic practice and, as a modern Westerner himself, seeks “to realign Islam with the Qur’an, since the former has outrun the latter.” Getting female clothing right has a central role in that effort. Toward that end, Morrow marshals evidence to show that accretion over the centuries has turned a simple Qur’anic command to cover the genitals into a major element of the faith. Scripture “tells believing women to protect their vaginas and vulvas. In other words, to remain chaste. It by no means commands women to wear the hijab, burqa, chador, or niqab, and to cover themselves from head to toe.” But misogynists, “who fear and hate the power of female sexuality and seek to suppress, subjugate, and control it, the solution is to seclude women, cover them in potato sacks, or bury them.” More specifically, “The spread of the invented neo-hijab has gone hand in hand with the spread of radical Islamist ideology.”
Among the most interesting chapters of the book are two that survey the views of twenty-three “qualified and competent” modern Muslim men and twenty-four equivalent modern Muslim women on the topic of hijab.
Morrow does not spare “weak Western nations” from his anger, rightly calling them “too cowardly to defend their secular values and human rights, [they] hav[ing] empowered and emboldened conservative, retrograde, and radical Islam. ... Terrified of being denounced as ‘Islamophobes,’ they act as the allies of radical Islamists rather than stand on the side of moderate and secular Muslims.” Too true.
