Hijabs and Niqābs

I've been wanting to post something about this for awhile, but I haven't really known where to put it.  So, I'm putting it here.

I'll start by saying that I PROMISE picture posts will be coming next.  But there's an issue I really need to talk about first.


I'm living in a Muslim country.  That is to say, although the government is officially secular, more than 99% of Turks consider themselves Muslims.  In any city you visit, you will hear the call to prayer in the morning, at noon, in the evening, and at night.  It's beautiful and inspiring.  It's routine.  It's home for millions of people.

Not every woman here wears a hijab.  There's plenty of diversity; while women have to be fully covered in mosques, there's no such rule elsewhere--take for example, on the beach, where many Turks and tourists alike take advantage of the sun.

No one's left out; they manufacture full body swimsuits for the religious folk.

Seriously, I know I'm a total stalker, but they were too cute.

The point being, there's a lot of religious freedom here.  People are pretty much as religious as they want to be, and although they tend to be Islamic, there's been a fair amount of Christian influence in this country.  You can tell by visiting the relics of churches, the House of the Virgin Mary, and other historic sites.


Moving on.  I was talking with my mentor last week--we meet once a week to discuss my progress and have a nice lunch.  Our talks are filled with cultural discussions.  He's a cultural psychologist, and I've done a fair amount of cultural studies (given my East Asian Studies major, the work I've done at Hopkins, and the work I'm doing now), so it's really interesting for both of us.  Religion came up this time, and we talked about how, in both of our countries, understanding religions never really came up in school.  I know I have a slightly broader spectrum than many of my American compatriots because I was raised Jewish in a largely Christian society in a population with a fairly high number of Mormons.  That being said, my knowledge of Christianity and Mormonism on the whole is abysmal.  My knowledge of Islam is limited entirely to what I've learned from reading Life of Pi three times.

I remembered one social studies class I'd taken in high school, though, a class that covered everything from reading and analyzing Silent Spring to memorizing by rote capitals of the world's countries.  This class did have one small unit on comparative religions.  We learned briefly about Christianity, briefly about Judaism, and briefly about Islam (maybe about Hinduism and Buddhism too?  I can't remember).  I remember that some of the facts about Judaism were blatantly wrong, so I'm not sure how good the information was about the other religions.  At any rate, the filter through which we looked at these "foreign religions" could not possibly have been stained more red, white, and blue.  This was the extent of our religions lessons before we moved into human rights.


This is where my teacher, let's call him Mr. L, and my school messed up.


Mr. L assigned us into groups to study different human rights issues.  We were to research them and then debate them with groups who had to argue the opposing side.  We were given tips for how to have a successful debate, types of points we needed to bring up, and we followed a standard debate sheet for how arguments and rebuttals would flow.  Pretty basic high school debate lesson.

But here is where it gets tricky.

My group received niqābs and whether they were appropriate.  It wasn't said in as many words--the official debate was whether it was a human rights violation to have women cover their faces.  I don't remember the details; perhaps we were supposed to research if women were being forced to wear them or if they actually wanted to.  What I do remember was that my group was supposed to argue, basically, that niqābs were not a human rights violation.


I want you to let that sink in for a moment before I move on.


I remember it being a tricky assignment at the time--how was I supposed to argue that?  But, being the Hermione Granger of a nerdy kid that I was, I chalked it up to a failure on my part to do proper research.

No.

The assignment was impossible.  The materials we were given were a bad lesson on comparative religions and a great big, post 9-11 American filter on the entire religion of Islam.  It was obvious from the start that my team couldn't possibly win the debate simply because we had never thought about it from any other perspective.  And if we couldn't think about it in another light there was no way we were about to convince the "jury."

The black and white issue presented to us by Mr. L simplified so many aspects of so many issues it's nearly impossible to list them all:  human rights, world religions, male privilege, culture, the list goes on.



This isn't some sappy story about how the classroom surprised us all and human rights one-upped the American phobias of 2003.  My group lost the debate soundly.

I don't think this lesson was meant to offend, demean, or belittle others.  I think it was a genuine attempt at a human rights lesson--is being forced to wear a particular type of clothing because of your gender a problem?  But isn't that worse?  That my school targeted a particular group for their traditional clothing and looked at it as a human rights violation is more than a little frightening to me.  You don't, for instance, see Americans debating in schools about yarmulkes or the Japanese school uniforms that may or may not objectify women in their society.  My teacher and my school singled out Islam for this assignment.

Seeing this for the first time changed my life and all my opinions.  I wish it had existed before my project.

Oh, p.s., I stole this image from the internet.  No credit taken by me.

But the fact that niqābs were associated with women being beaten by their husbands and having to escape their homes was what won the other team the debate.  And while this does happen sometimes (certainly not only in largely-Muslim countries, I should add), a piece of fabric isn't the cause.

I'd like to point out that this debate took place in a liberal high school (well, liberal by Arizona standards) in a fairly well-to-do Phoenix, Arizona neighborhood.  Mr. L wrote his lesson plan--this debate included.  The school board approved it.  We American children were taught that we were the greatest country in the world and that Muslims were our enemy.  And I'm sure we weren't the only school with this kind of lesson.

This is the material taught in American schools that continues to breed the hate and violence we see against Muslims to this day.

And now I'd like to leave you with a picture for which I can take absolutely no credit:

Thanks, Snapchat, for this truth.

Thanks for reading my opinion.

Doggy Bags for the Turks

          Everyone told me before I left that I was lucky--I wouldn't stand out like a sore thumb (the way I did and will do again in Japan) because I look Turkish!  I've found that they are right.  I look Turkish!  It's great, in a way, because it means that until I open my mouth, people here think I belong.

          Well...almost.

          The thing about language is that it doesn't stop at the spoken word.  I think I can say I did the right thing by looking up body language before I came here.  I learned that the "okay" sign in America is a gay slur here and that the "fig" (you know it as the "got your nose!" gesture with your thumb placed between your first two fingers while your hand is in a fist) means essentially the same as the middle finger does in the U.S.  So far so good!  But, no one told me not to great people on the street.

          We all do it in America.  We're on a nearly empty street and we see a fellow pedestrian walking the other way.  It's polite to give a little nod, a smile, and if you're in a particularly good mood, a quiet, "Afternoon."  In Turkey, no one does this.  In Turkey, if you smile at a stranger, you are flirting with them.

          I flirted with about half the population of Ankara for about half a week before I was corrected on this bad habit.  Oops.

          Then there's just trying to do things that I normally know how to do.  For instance, I'm now sure that big, red sign over the door at the shopping center near my guest house says "push."  I cannot read this sign, however, and boy did I pull.  There's also dithering over which bus stop is the one I need, which item on a menu might be the item in the picture, and those other times when you're a clueless foreigner staring at something trying to make it reveal it's purpose (whatever that may be) to you.

          So, with all that going on, it didn't take me long to realize that because I look Turkish, I'm at a bit of a disadvantage.  In Japan, when I stop and stare at something a little too long or smile at a stranger on the street, it's okay--"She's a foreigner!" they explain to themselves, and walk away, at worst, chuckling at me a little.  Here?  I'm not a foreigner--I'm a rather flirtatious idiot.

          That brings me to today's moment of triumph, however.  It's been my quest for the past week and a half to try to figure out how in the world to get a to-go box without gesturing madly and looking (again) like a bit of an idiot.  The problem was that google translate does a bad job with "doggy bag" or "to-go" or "carry out."  It translates them too literally.  I do not want a bag for my dog or a bag full of dogs.  I do not want the to-infinitive of "go."  Nor do I want to "carry out" a particular task.  I want a box to put my leftover food in.

          Today, I finally thought to plug "takeout" into the google translate box.  The word "paket" shone back at me brighter than a million stars.  That was the word I'd been looking for.  So today, when I walked up to the food counter, I stood proudly and looked very foreign, indeed, when I pointed to the food I wanted and said, "Paket," loud and proud.  I even had the confidence, today, to say "yok" when he reached for the ever-ubiquitous cucumber and got my meal, to-go, without the nasty vegetable.  And I sit here eating it now, typing this blog entry with pride.

          Afiyet olsun!!!  (Bon appetit!)

       

Transitioning to Turkey

So, I’d like to start this blog by giving you a verbal illustration: 

           Imagine a place where innocent people are gunned down in the street every day.  Where there are “murder maps” dedicated to your neighborhood, with big red hands on every section there was a death or a gunshot wound.  Where you and your friends are kept up at night, dithering between whether to call the police, knock on your neighbor’s door, or stay out of trouble and ignore the sounds of the rapes and domestic abuse coming from just outside your home.

            Imagine a place where you cannot walk more than a half-mile in most directions because, since you are a white woman, you will not be welcome.  Where you cannot walk home on your street at night since it is too dangerous and you have to stick to streets with better (or any) enforcement.  Where you can only take certain types of public transportation since people will chase you in broad daylight off of others.  Where you cannot even peek at your cell phone or listen to music in the streets as people are attacked and robbed daily when they do.

            Imagine a place where, as you are walking down the street, the sheer number of homeless people makes you feel ashamed of what you have.  Where beggars stop you and eye you up as you go.  Where children work daily, attempting to wash car windows without permission as drivers stop at intersections and earn a much-needed tip.

            Imagine a place where dilapidated houses mesh cleanly with still-functioning ones.  Where parts of the city, so close at hand to even the richest areas, are abandoned and sloughing away, with no one left to take care of them.  Where you wonder how there are so many homeless people in a place with so many peopleless houses.

           You've just imagined Baltimore.

           Turkey is a country often overlooked by American tourists.  They see all of the bad news and none of the good news about this country, and they do not look behind the veil newspapers have created.  While there are undeniably problems in Turkey (and dangerous places where I certainly would never venture), petty theft accounts for most of their crime.  The protests you've seen on television are largely self-contained; that is, if you don't involve yourself, they won't involve you.  And although there are worse threats (the occasional bomber or womanizer), Baltimore is more well-known for this type of violence than is Turkey.

           Please keep in mind, then, if you choose to read this blog, the U.S. has amply more than its fair share of threats and that it is not inherently safer than Turkey.  Being a safe traveler in either country involves many of the same precautions, the most major one being:  be smart about your safety.

           So, with all preconceptions aside, allow me to give you a proper introduction to Turkey:

           Turkey is a middle-income republic in Eastern Europe.  It was reformed in the 1920s by a man named Mustafa Kernal Ataturk--the name Ataturk meaning "father of the Turks."  He was the founder and first president of the Turkish democracy.  Although Turkey is largely Muslim, its government is secular, and it is easy to see the mix of conservativeness and liberalism that pervades its capital, Ankara.  While some women walk the streets fully clothed, from head to toe, others are far more western in style, choosing to wear shorter skirts and dresses and reveal their shoulders.  The beach towns, many tourist areas, and the university at which I live and work, among other places, have no problems with bikinis, short shorts, and tube tops.  Still, when you enter a mosque, you are required to be fully covered.

This is where Turkey is:

           The school where I live and work is called "Middle Eastern Technical University," or METU for short.  In Turkish, the acronym is different, since it translates the name:  Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi.  When you're taking a taxi or public transportation to get there, you call it "ODTÜ."  It is a very liberal, English-speaking school that was modeled after MIT when it was built in the 1950s.  In fact, METU was built with American funding--it was because Turkey was our ally against Russia!

           Although it is a technical university, since it was modeled after MIT, it includes a psychology department, which is where I work.  The METU Department of Psychology has teamed up with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Department of International Health's Injury Prevention unit to study road safety in Turkey--this is just one partnership amongst ten countries involved in the overall road safety project.

           My specific work is seatbelt use:  do drivers in Turkey use seatbelts?  Why or why not?  What would make drivers want to use seatbelts more?  How does this compare with the other countries under study?

           Of course, while I'm here, I get to travel, see Turkey, and enjoy myself.  Sadly, I've realized I left my cable that connects my camera to my computer in the States, so I'll only be able to post pictures from my phone until I get back.  But don't worry, there will still be plenty to see!