DUBLIN – The concept of something ‘foreign’ being exotic, new or appealing may have come to an end in Ireland, says Sr Susan Jones, a member of the Dublin City Interfaith Forum.
The chaplain, was a guest at ‘Being Me: Muslim Women Defying Stereotypes’ a one day conference held in Dublin, last weekend.
The series of workshops and presentations was organized by Muslim Sisters of Eire a women’s group, running since 2010.
The charity’s core team are Irish born converts to Islam, who run weekly activities to feed the poor in the city center. As well as carrying out activities covering areas such as spirituality, education, diversity and integration.
Sr Susan, an educator, spoke to AboutIslam of the changing attitudes she noticed in Irish students.
Sr Susan Jones, Pastor, Educator
“From my experience of teaching, what I found was that there’s a lack of interest in exploring the differences that there are between people and what makes you ‘you’ with your culture, your tradition, your faith,” she told AboutIslam.net.
For more than a decade, she has observed a backwards slide towards a sense of superiority, which would have been recognizable to Africans and Indians, under colonial rule.
“There’s more an atmosphere of ‘I want you to be like me’. It might be to do with globalization and in Ireland we are so influenced by the American culture. So even our ‘Irishness’ what does that mean now?”
Millions of women, in cities across Europe, actively make ourselves semi invisible and ‘different’ as we go about our daily business, at work, shopping, sitting in the waiting room next to you at the dentist. In our long shirts and skirts, our hair covered till we get home, we may be Muslim, we may be Jewish, we are occasionally, Catholic nuns.
The neo liberalist view dominating European politics implies that this level of modesty is so out of synch with mainstream cultural expectations seeing it negatively impacting the very social coherence of society.
One-sided Rhetoric
Like the students Sr Susan comes into contact with, the rhetoric of ‘my way or the highway’ has besieged the corridors of power, posited as a replacement for multiculturalism and plurality.
Darren Coventry-Hewlett is a member of An Garda Siochana, Ireland’s national police and state security service, working with the Bureau of Community integration and Diversity.
He also describes himself as a spiritual person whose journey has so far included interest in both Buddhist meditation and Islamic prayer. He spoke of a trend taking root in sections of Irish society.
“When someone says, ‘You’re alright you are’ or ‘You’re okay, you’re like us’ this is ‘validating’ your (Muslim) existence in a nation. You don’t need validating, your self expression is as valid as anybody else’s on this island!” he told AboutIslam.net.
To cheers and applause from the mostly hijabi audience, he motioned to his dark blue uniform saying wryly:
“This is my hijab.”
Darren Coventry-Hewlett, An Garda Siochana
There is a logic behind Muslim women covering our hair and our bodies in public which goes far beyond avoiding the male gaze. It relates to the deeper qualities of modesty, the internal quest for God’s love.
Way of Life
As Muslims, our faith shapes our lives far beyond the walls of the mosque or the corners of a prayer room. Islam IS our daily routine from when we wake to pray to the final prayer before sleep. Its endorsements affect our interactions, our choice of food, past times, social venues, friendship groups.
Modesty, as just one part of this beautiful and complex layering of ethics applies to a way of being, traditionally less loud, less self aggrandizing, more reserved than the reveal-all social media cul
ture can allow for with its Twitter bullies and Facebook trolls.
Up until the mid-20th century, the demure figure of the Muslim woman, out of reach, mysterious, held an orientalist appeal in political circles.
Meaning, it was found to be old-fashioned, yet charming, it was romanticized, sensualized.
This as Edward Said explored in his brilliant dismantling of that trend, had its own set of problems. As does any system which aims to stereotype a diversity of human experience into a convenient slot, allowing groups to be both pushed outside the norm and stigmatized for their differences.
The European Court of Justice ruled in March that employers across the EU can apply internal company rules to ban all visible religious symbols, including crosses, turbans and the hijab.
On the ground in Ireland, this means companies can now write clauses into their Human Resources contracts which could lead covering women already on the staff to face the decision: remove your scarf or be fired.
Muslim Sisters of Eire will need more from multi-faith groups than the attendance of their conferences. In order to have a chance of successfully lobbying companies to protect the rights of Muslim women in the workforce or indeed seeking employment, they need coherent, cross-cultural, support, now.