''The outer space beings are my brothers. They sent me here. They already
know my music."
- Sun-Ra (Jazz musician, 1914-1994)
Uproar over the niqab continues and a just few days ago an eighteen year old
woman in France actually bit a police officer who tried to arrest her for
wearing Muslim garb. Frankly, I’m surprised there hasn’t been more biteyness
over this issue as the niqab has turned into a shrill political obsession among
the middle classes who have little better to do than wonder ‘Is this good for
women?’ (WITHOUT ASKING THE WOMEN INVOLVED on both sides of the argument) and ‘Can
a woman wearing a niqab really be a citizen of society?’ (when it is laws such
as those passed in France that effectively bar women donning Muslim garb from full
citizen rights). The experience of listening to a debate about Muslim women
that is so distanced from real human-to-human dialogue with Muslim and
ex-Muslim women has been both frustrating and surreal. Everyone wants to talk
about them but few want to talk TO them and make sure they’re getting real
human perspectives from both sides of the argument.
I’ve basically liked two pieces on this issue, one by Padraig Reidy of Index
on Censorship (http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2013/09/niqab-asking-people-wear-veils/) and
the other in Vice Magazine (http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/the-great-niqab-debate).
Amazingly, Vice took the time to talk to women who aren’t white and don’t live
on a side-street off Upper Street. Wowzers.
I’ve made a conscious effort to NOT write lots of pieces for my blog on
this issue, but it’s hard to say nothing. The level of the debate has been so
low I didn’t want to contribute. Also, I’m a woman who’s a bit ‘ethnic’ and was
raised Muslim, so few days pass without me getting a little annoyed by a
dismissive article in the press. Being from a certain background can mean that
you’re constantly up against situations where, if you intervene at every point,
you find yourself defining your own identity in a purely defensive way. As a 35
year old woman who’s living my own life (and was never, ever beaten into
wearing Muslim garb) I think I want my writing to be defending what’s right but
also breaking into new ground. Surely the privilege of being 2nd
generation means I can dream beyond certain pre-destined cultural roles? I hope
so. Dreaming is pretty much my favourite pastime, and thus the kid’s book I’m
writing at the moment isn’t a diatribe on the niqab but a fantasy novel called
Tribe of the Snow Leopards. Magic, furry creatures and sequined headdresses galore.
When I was growing up life was kind of boring and not much fun but I liked
writing and often dreamt I was flying on the back of a robot through the back streets
of Eltham. My father’s abuse defined the family landscape, and while I loved
school and daydreaming in the park I was continually informed that what was
'out there' was 'Western', 'bad', and a place where I'd never be accepted. Stay
and be abused, leave and they’ll corrupt you. Being a wizard seemed a great way
to make my own world that wasn’t Muslim or ‘Western’ but just everything I
needed it to be… my true native land.
Precisely for this reason I was so excited when I learned of Samira Ahmed’s
interviews with Asian women from the suburbs, revealing a similar obsession
with other-worldliness in the shape of David Bowie. When I came across her BBC
Radio 4 documentary 'I dressed Ziggy Stardust', like an image-hungry urchin I
wanted cry out ‘They’re like meeeee!!!!!!’. Well, sort of… Like me, Samira grew
up in the suburbs of South London, where the South Asian diaspora was rather thinly
spread in the 80s and where the far right had gained some confidence on the
streets. The BNP headquarters were shut down after a rather excellent ANL demo
in ’94, but the memory of those brats who killed Stephen Lawrence (they were
known to be involved in a BNP-related gang) was unpleasant enough. I remember my mother coming home from Sainsbury’s
saying 'I saw them! They were on the other side of the street and they kept
looking at me a laughing and spitting on the ground!'. She said all this in
Urdu so I had to have it repeated a few times before I copped on. She meant, of
course, the killers of Stephen Lawrence, walking free after the trial. I sat
with her for a bit, drank tea, saw her get on with things after a while, and I went
back to reading my awesome novel. It by Ursula Le Guin novel and it was awesome
because it detailed the life of this kid who didn't seem to have a place in the
real world until he discovered his magical powers. HE WAS A WIZARD!!! Wow. I
loved every word. Words were my magic and they whizzed me off to worlds that
just seemed nicer and more empowering than the real one around me.
Unsurprisingly, I grew up to adore the likes of David Bowie, Kate Bush and
Natasha Khan, people who grew up in the suburbs and made their own identities.
I was reminded of Samira again when I looked at the Guardian Guide a week
ago and nearly wet my pants because Khan (AKA Bat for Lashes) was on the front
cover. I went straight to my computer and listened to all three albums, ‘Fur
and Gold’, ‘Two Suns’ and ‘The Haunted Man’. Sometimes the outer-world experiences
of Khan and Sun-Ra are a refreshing take on dealing with ‘difference’. Khan is
better known for her glittery, shaman-like image than the fact that she has a
Pakistani Muslim dad and was expected to have an arranged marriage. She was
saved by her parents' divorce, but one listen of 'Sirens' summons a picture of
the monsters (and men) that still haunt her imagination. It’s no coincidence
that while creating glittering, far-out artistic identities for herself Khan
has had to cut off all with the Pakistani side of her family. But she’s also
not defined by what she thinks of Islam or race. She’s defined her own
narrative. One minute she’s naked on an album cover carrying a man on her
shoulders (she decided against hair-removal and make-up for the photo shoot);
another she’s a Native American wizard. It makes you think. Sometimes the best
way to be a woman is ignore Caitlin Moran's book and do whatever the fuck you like.
Carrying various kinds of oppression on your shoulders when growing up can
definitely engender an intolerance for being told what ‘women like you’ should
be thinking or doing or writing about or singing about...
Every time I read yet another tedious piece by Alibhai- Brown or Keith Vaz, or get a request for my opinion on the niqab, I wonder 'Is this the only crap we get to talk about? Is this what
they want to publish by people like me?'
The debate so often defines difference as disadvantage and utterly fails to consult the 'disadvantaged' themselves. By these rules women from my background must be the subject, never the authors of our identities, doubly disadvantaged by the dominant narrative of two cultures. Do I want to be a pawn in that sort of world? I'd rather fly to Pluto, dressed as a shaman. All hail the 3rd Space.