“This woman who sees without being seen, frustrates the colonizer. She does not yield herself, does not give herself, does not offer herself.” (Frantz Fanon)

The Colonizers and the Colonial Puppets have always been together, assisting each other, calling anyone with a dissenting opinion, backwards and regressive. They have always alluded that the Western values are superior, and that the world should simply submit to it, without questions. The Colonial history of Algeria, and the battle of Algerians against the tyrannical anathema are well known. One of the tools used by the French tyrants to “free” the Muslim women, was by forcing them to take off their veil. But little did they know that you cannot free the LIBERATED.

A Martinique-born psychiatrist and anti-colonial intellectual, Frantz Fanon has extensively written about the Post-Colonial Theory and how much it frustrated the French Colonizers to see the veiled Muslim women in Algeria. His words are still relevant as we see even today, how the West and its puppets are so concerned about a small piece of cloth. For many Muslim women, it’s a silent protest against Western “standards of liberation”, against objectification and commodification. It’s their way of asserting: “Enough! I don’t want to be looked at in that way anymore”. That is how they row against the popular tide of narrative that “you’ll be empowered only if you unveil”, and that’s a protest against the colonizer’s subjugation of her beliefs.

Fanon stated that French colonial doctrine in Algeria was as follows:
“If we want to destroy the structure of Algerian society, its capacity for resistance, we must first of all conquer the women; we must go and find them behind the veil where they hide themselves and in the houses where the men keep them out of sight”.

As a member of the Algerian National Liberation Front, Fanon considered women’s ill-treatment by the French colonial tyrants as a weapon to colonize the country as a whole. For him, it was impossible for the colonial power to conquer Algeria without winning over its women to European “norms”, and moulding them into its definition of “empowerment”.

To destroy the fabric of any society, one must destroy the morals and values of the society, and the seedbed for that, are mothers. This is why Feminism attacks motherhood, as it was significantly influenced by the Colonial mindset. Rebecca Latimer Felton, the first female senator of the United States of America, feminist and suffragist, was a White Supremacist who openly called for the lynching of blacks. White Supremacist attitude has radically influenced even the Post-Colonial Feminist thinkers.

Destroying the root of the family structure, which is motherhood, is inevitable to destroy the women. Interestingly enough, those who “advocate” against the veil, do so under the disguise of freedom, when in fact the veil was instrumental for the battle against oppression during the Algerian resistance.

How ironic is it that the ones who are vehemently against the Hijab often say that they do it to “free the women from patriarchal and archaic practices”, claiming that women are forced to wear it—while their preferred “solution” is to force the same women to not wear it. Their inconsistent and contradictory arguments show us that the issue has little to do with the veil itself, but everything to do with the rejection of the popular and dominant ethic called Liberalism.

As with new movements growing within the strands of the feminist paradigm, “White Feminism” still attacks the identity of the Muslim women, as they simply do not fit into the West’s imagination of what an “empowered woman” should look like.

Radical Feminists and their rooted “West is always the Best” kind of servitude, attacks the veiled woman because of deliberate ignorance of the religious and cultural significance of the veil, and promotes blatant racism towards non-white women.

The connection between removing one’s clothing and “freedom” has no doubt widened the gap between Muslim women of colour, and the feminist creed. This has a lot to do with the feminist scholastic tradition too.

Feminism still promotes the deception that women of non-white cultures and ethnicities need rescue from their “archaic” practices, often by the standards of white western men even, to the most part. Talk about how European colonialism is still shaping our modern world. Historians and academic scholars suggest that Colonial Feminism is an outgrowth of European Colonialism. It presupposes that the Muslim world must be freed through the superior, civilized, and enlightened West. The “white man’s burden”.

A colonial French poster distributed in Algeria read: “Aren’t you pretty? Remove your veil”

During the Algerian War of Independence in 1958, mass “unveiling” ceremonies were staged across Algeria. The wives of French military officers unveiled a number of Algerian women to make people think that the Algerian women are happy to adopt European values.

The modern-day ex-Muslim movements that primarily focus on “freeing” Muslim women from all forms of Hijab, shows us the same slave like attitude towards the West. This idea that Muslim women need saving, can be traced back to well-choreographed unveiling ceremonies in 1958 by French colonial generals who gathered women who never wore any kind of veil before, to take off their veil!

Today, the ones who are deliberately trying to create a political turmoil, should know that just like your colonial masters failed in the past, you will also fail. We don’t believe in Nationalism or Tribalism or Sectarian Politics, and our Patriotism is NOT docile.