In a since-deleted tweet, Alicia Keys seemed to be praising the sex-appeal of a niqab — a head covering worn by Muslim women for modesty purposes. In response, a Muslim woman explains why sexualizing a niqab is offensive.
Here’s what Keys tweeted.
Here’s what’s missing from the gooey tweet extolling the diversity and beauty: in many countries where women are required to cover up with a hijab, showing one’s leg in such a manner would result in severe punishment.
In a series of tweets, Shireen Qudosi, who has authored articles for The Federalist, explained why Keys’s post is severely tone deaf and offensive to Muslim women like herself.
If you lived in a niqab-wearing society, and showed that leg, you'd be severly beaten. Signed, a Muslim woman.
— Shireen Qudosi (@ShireenQudosi) March 28, 2017
You do Muslim women ZERO favors when you push a cloth terrorists and fundamentalists have forced women to wear
— Shireen Qudosi (@ShireenQudosi) March 28, 2017
In an interview with Faithwire, Qudosi had more to say on the matter.
‘I’m a Muslim woman who holds on to what’s beautiful about my Eastern heritage, while also forging a new American Muslim identity,’ Qudosi told Faithwire in an email. ‘When Alicia Keys romanticizes the niqab under the banner of diversity, she promotes the most savage and barbaric Arab tribalism that sees women as something to be possessed and contained. When I see good-intentioned people call primitivism beautiful, that’s as offensive as someone saying American slave history was ‘beautiful and diverse.’
[. . . ]
‘America is built on diversity, but not all ideas are equal and deserve sanctuary — especially those that don’t mirror American values,’ she continued. ‘The niqab has no place in American society. It should never be entertained let alone glorified.’
In hijab-wearing societies, showing leg is dangerous for women, Ben Shapiro of The Daily Wire writes.
Here’s the fact: in the countries in which women typically wear the niqab, like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iran, a woman who exposed her leg the way the woman does in this photo would be criminally prosecuted. In Sudan in 2015, nine women were flogged for wearing pants. In Indonesia last year, a Muslim woman was flogged for standing in close proximity to her boyfriend. A few months ago, Saudi Arabia arrested a woman for taking a photograph without her abaya.
