The hijab-oppresses-women narrative is sexist and contradicts surveyed Muslim women

Evidence

“The ‘hijab oppresses women’ narrative is not only racist, it is also sexist,” according to Dalia Mogahed, a former executive director for the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. “To assume a woman’s hijab was forced without asking her is to presume she views Western styles as ideal.” Mogahed also cited several Gallup surveys showing that about 90 percent of Muslims globally believe that hijab is a free choice by the vast majority of women who wear it all over the world. … “Oppression means the taking away of someone’s power and their agency. Yet a woman in a hijab is only covering her body and hair, not her voice or intellect,” she told the New York Times. “A man dressed in a full robe and head cover—like many do in the Middle East—is not said to be oppressed. To say that hijab oppresses women is to say that the source of a woman’s power—but not a man’s—is her body and not her mind.” — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 373

Categorization

• XREF: Directly counters Amani Al-Khatathbeh’s agency argument (location 360) and the empty-seats absurdity; central to the chapter’s hijab-throughline. — connects to: Muslim women’s educational attainment belies claims of universal oppression — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 483; Native informants trace Muslim women’s oppression to Islam’s alleged lack of critical thought — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 476; Western media depicts Muslim women solely as passive victims stripped of agency — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 510 (+9 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 373

Related

• The oppressor stereotype itself oppresses hijab-wearing women. (similarity 0.88)
• Western women’s post-feminist agency is constructed against the figure of the oppressed Muslim woman. (similarity 0.87)
• The Stasi Commission framed the hijab as female subordination and religious isolation. (similarity 0.86)
• The ‘oppressed Muslim woman’ stereotype itself functions as oppression (similarity 0.85)
• Muslim women are simultaneously attacked as threats and pitied as victims (similarity 0.83)
• Muslim women’s educational attainment belies claims of universal oppression (similarity 0.83)
• Western discourse displaces Muslim threats onto obsessing over women’s clothing (similarity 0.82)
• Gendered Islamophobia imposes the most distorted stereotypes on veiled Muslim women. (similarity 0.82)
• Native informants trace Muslim women’s oppression to Islam’s alleged lack of critical thought (similarity 0.82)
• Muslim women alter hijab color to counter oppression stereotypes (similarity 0.82)
• Media coverage of Muslim women collapses them into an oppressed-or-dangerous binary (similarity 0.82)
• The ‘oppressed Muslim woman’ label itself operates as a form of oppression (similarity 0.81)
• Veil-scepticism narratives deny Muslim women agency and ignore reverse coercion (similarity 0.81)
• Hijab-wearing women are caught between self-surveillance and resistance. (similarity 0.80)
• Changing European society, not Muslim women, drove the oppression image (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• The oppressor stereotype itself oppresses hijab-wearing women. #corroborates (0.75)