Hijab

Hearken!

O Woman! This jingle jangle is the clink of your chains!

What an old and rusty clink!

As if it has continued to ring for thousand of years of history till

this day. under the dominance of the systems devouring the blood of humanity,

Throughout the decadent society in which you live,

In the depth of your thoughts, wishes and tastes, and even your decisions, These chains, which have pierced from your skin into your flesh, Have gone deep into your brain and soul and bruised your Self, Behold! Hearken to their sound!

In the continuous whispers from morn till dark, around the house, (busy) with cooking pots, sweeping the floor, Amidst the factory wheels turning by your laborious hands, In the fields developed by your hands bound in tatters, and stooped back, There, in the office where you work and are consumed, Even where you learn or teach, Under that stinking layer of rouge which you rub on your face, In the side of the multicoloured garments you put on as a means of ostentation, In your thought, while you are thinking.

Throughout your life, in your destiny, if you look truly, you have never been the one really deciding about it.

Beside the insults, discriminations which you have to bear in different ways in this decadent system, How should I tell you that these chains have not only deprived you for soaring to heights, but also crushed all the people of your land under their pressure, Of course, all the people of your land, your countrymen, the oppressed creatures, who suffer and are tormented, robbed and plundered, yet their human wants are not supplied.

Of course, O Woman!

Whom thousands of years of decadent history have kept in chains,

Whose self has been wounded by the scourges of oppression of prevailing systems, Who throughout the history, in one way or the other, has been the slave of the economic powers;

O Woman! whom the religious despotism of several thousand years, in every age has, in one form or the other, kept in black claws of superstitions and groundless fears, Who has always been subdued by man;

Now at this height of awakening and freedom when the people of the world are straightening their backs from under the bloodstained boots of oppressors, are revolting and are. triumphant:

Wait a bit! Wait a bit!

And from the depth of this dark night,

Which is nearing the dawn,

From beyond the cries of the deprived, the hungry and those in debt, From beyond the chains fastened round the feet of the seekers of truth, Of course, and also from the depth of history, one thousand and four hundred years ago, From the depth of the long night which had brought the whole world under the cover of its darkness, You have linked (the people) with God.

And now that you have accepted Islam as a system of life and an Ideology,

Also accept hejab,

And under its vitalizing dress recreate yourself and get a new life.

With this bold negation have no fears.

What do you possess which you are afraid to lose,

Except a personality crushed under the load of thousands of years of contempt and chains which have hindered your movement, your journey, your flight to new heights?

It's nothing! It's nothing!

The legacy of this history made of rogues,

The corrupt and cruel regimes of two thousand and five hundred years with autocratic and bloodthirsty leaders and enslaving economic systems, And thousands Of years of religious despotism swayed by the traders of faith, How all these elements have changed you, your sex quality, your culture, your feminine character and your capacity to work!

You are nothing ! Your are nothing !

But a woman who adds passion to bed,

A doll which through its characteristics weakens determination, A commodity found in abundance in the private chambers of rulers and the common street harems, A domestic prisoner who from morn till night is put to drudgery in the isolated portions of the house and busies herself toiling, A slave who in lieu of minimum wages by her labour brings maximum profits to the landlords and mill-owners, Or rots in the expanse of the bureaucratic establishments, And lastly in every institution of a decadent society, in one form or the other, is despised and exploited.

Of course, this is what has been imposed on you.

The dirty culture they have framed for you,

The income they have fixed for you,

As if throughout the history all its autocrats and rogues, with hundreds of sabres drawn, have made you their target. Come and seek shelter in Islam and be safe, be strong, be armed.

With what ? With its laws, its universal outlook, its anthropology.

Yes, with Islam in toto, including indeed, its hejab system. Now that you have accepted Islam, also accept its dress, and throw away this cultural yoke of female exploitation imposed on you. Which dress ? What type of dress ?

Do we mean the dress which has been imposed on Islam by feudalism or Capital ism with the help of the tyrant rulers, With all those restrictions, contempts, but of course with an Islamic form Or a prison, a cloth which alludes to the large prison of house, society and your history ?

What difference does it make, whether it is a (head) kerchief, a loose garment or a chador, under which you may suffer unlimited contempt ?

Where you may be free to do whatever you like, dress yourself as you like, think as you like, even be more anti-Islamic than any infidel, be devoid of belief in God, or be without any cover ? No, never!

The free and unrestrained dress of the imperialist, capitalist or colonial systems, which places you uncovered before the eyes of the people, stupefying the brains, weakening the intentions and negating the higher values,

Or the Marxian dress whose limits are so much indefinite and incomplete that it cannot change into a protector of your total features, into a complete revolutionary base against the decadent systems and values of atheism, sex, beauty and pleasure.

No, no! None of these dresses, but only the Islamic dress to the extent it Is prescribed by the Islamic ideology which humanizes and liberates man.

It has no special form, no particular colour, neither black, nor yellow, brown, blue, red or orange, No, all these details are to be determined by the requirements of time, even social, economic, political conditions and specially the indigenous culture and tradition of your own land.

It is not a prison ?

Then, what is it ?

It is a sanctuary of concealment and chastity.

It is a message.

It is a weapon, or a stronghold.

A sanctuary of concealment and chastity which not only shields you in its cover and hides your physical features and bestows upon them perfection.

Your characteristic features, after all, are not confined to body and sex alone.

But it also covers the divine substance of your being a woman, The substance which bestows upon you the capability of being a mother, a sister, a beloved spouse, The substance in whose bosom the most admirable values are produced and become meaningful, A sanctuary which protects you from all sorts of disgrace, contempt and exploitation, Disgrace and contempt which are sometimes contained in the covers of praise and admiration in the verses of poets and pieces of vain artists, and sometimes on the tongue of the street vagabonds, while at times they are expressed and analyzed with the help of the capitalistic and imperialistic sociology, But how naively you have pleased yourself with such disgrace! Islam, however, introduces with this dress for you some other criteria for your identity.

After all Islam does not demand beauty from a woman.

It does not ask for an illusive appearance.

In the society, it does not demand the physical, sensual and feminine features.

No! No!

It rather demands from you belief in God, trust in Islamic identity, truthfulness, search for truth, pure human feelings, in short, faith, noble deeds and piety.

Islam demands from you your existential value, and not sensual value.

It is your faith, your practice which brings about and establishes a progressive society based on the belief in One God, and not the physical and sensual features which are the elements of a decadent, pollute and Satanic society, or a society whose political, economic and social system as well as its leadership is opposed to the form liked by God, where a few men and women, young and old. are devouring one another, and considering themselves to be beasts wriggle with each other with the least human feelings and sentimental attachments, and from above, in the words of Our'an, a few "satiated and opulent", bloodthirsty people watch with pleasure, and by sucking their blood, the juice of their youth and life. give perpetuity to their power and pelf. Their examples are most of the societies of today, including your own.

Now, that you have come to recognize Islam, come to believe in it, also accept its dress. But beware, your hejab alone is nothing. It can be a shell without a kernel. When you come to face the Islamic teachings in a superficial manner without paying due attention to its depth and content and have a shallow and merely a reactionary approach in accepting every word of it, every precept and every political social and economic consideration, your hejab would be nothing more than affectation.

''When you adopt a series of Islamic rituals through your intellect, without a belief in the depth of your heart, you follow some claims without actually translating them into conscious and persistent practice, although at the same time from head to toe you are governed by all the frailties you have suffered throughout history, in other words, the same lack of self-confidence, lack of vigilance and lack of decision about yourself and your society. the same submissiveness before falsehood and oppression. the same self-defeatedness, indetermination and thoughtlessness vis-à-vis the man, with the same feminine, deviating ostentation of the dark ages (of pre-Islamic period), but somewhat in the intellectual way and this time you appear wearing the holy Islamic dress.

Your hejab may be something you have inherited from your family, when this dress has been conventional in your family as a custom, habit or uniform, without your having an iota of thinking about the responsibilities of wearing this holy dress. In its shelter you may think whatever you like, you may attire yourself in whatever way you like, adorn yourself and at the same time carry under it all the feminine weaknesses imposed on you.

Adopted from the book : "Beauty of Concealment and Concealment of Beauty" by : "Zahra Rahnavard"