Ma Bitar, George Bann

My sister, your hijab is more precious than my blood! My sister, with your veil you are like a hidden pearl! (A banner of Ahrar al-Sham in Ghouta), This is what the Ahrar said, and this is how they packaged their hidden pearls in black cylinders, Packaging has become more legitimate and sophisticated, Veiled women, wrapped and packaged in semi-sealed cylinders, My sister, religion will not leave you vulnerable to decay and promiscuity, Your body and your private parts are a source of pleasure and enjoyment,There is no excess or deficiency in clitoridectomy, Cutting off half of it fulfills the male’s purpose in intercourse, The truly happy one is he who makes others happy, Your happiness is great, my sister! Because you have made the male happy, My sister! He has two testicles, and you have half a clitoris! And what is the problem? Men are in charge of women, so said Ibn Abdullah, and so it remains and should remain, Then, even if ten of God’s men raped you, you would not enter Paradise, What do you have to do with Paradise, where every mujahid is obligated to have intercourse with 4200 virgins who are constantly renewed, according to the calculations of a Saudi sheikh! If I were in your place, my sister, I would ask the sheikh if ​​you had any luck with some men, because why are there women for men? And what about men for women!

The objectification of women is the basis of their possession as an object, where they are packaged, veiled, and hidden like a hidden pearl, The pearl does not ask whether it wants to be “hidden” or not, or whether it wants to be a pearl at all, The pearl does not object and has no opinion or stance, so it is easy to possess it, and its possession is subject to the rules of commerce, There is the new packaged one, sealed with a hymen, and there is the used one, unsealed, Deception is forbidden, and blame is lifted…! Woe, woe to him who sells a used female at the price of a new one! How pure and pristine you are, Kandahar of Afghanistan, listening to the word of God!

In reality, the relationship between male and female in the dominant traditional imagination is one of ownership, From this imagination, the image of the “hidden pearl” was formed, meaning the preserved and concealed one, which appeared on the Ahrar al-Sham banner, This justifies the veiled woman wearing the Sharia-compliant dress as a clean, covered piece of candy, in contrast to the image of the uncovered piece of candy surrounded by flies on all sides, which is supposed to represent the unveiled woman, We must not forget the supreme value given to virginity, which represents the “seal of womanhood.” The non-virgin woman is nothing but a used commodity, Generally, a woman is not owned before she is objectified, Naturally, the piece of candy is not asked for its opinion on being covered, and it has no position or opinion in this regard. The pearl does not ask whether it wants to be hidden or not, or whether it wants to be a pearl at all!

Polygamy is the institution that embodies the relationship of ownership and the fundamental negation of gender equality, It is not for the man who marries more than one woman, that is, he has several hearts in his chest, Rather, the family model consisting of a husband and wives eliminates love as a relationship based essentially on equality, He who marries more than one woman at the same time is not more capable of love than others, but he is more possessive than others. It is known that the rise of love, writing about it, and singing about it went hand in hand with the decline of polygamy in twentieth-century societies in this region. Conversely, it seems that polygamy and the death of love go hand in hand in hand in environments of warlike religion. There is not a single famous example of love in the warlike heritage!

The social analysis of the phenomenon of veiling and militarism is difficult, especially in light of the difference between the causes of veiling in the past and present, There is no doubt that the importance of veiling in the present differs from that of the past, but the confirmed increase in the past decades suggests a link between the establishment of the first Islamic state in Iran and the exacerbation of veiling, especially since Khomeini did not limit its Shiite missionary and military activities to Iran, Khomeini expanded and had four capitals in the recent past, The expansion was mainly military-sectarian, so it is possible to say that the increase in veiling was a phenomenon of militarization, with the acknowledgment that the causal relationship between veiling and militarization is not entirely clear and needs extensive analysis, It is a hypothesis and the future will prove its invalidity or its transformation into a theory.

 The process of objectifying and manipulating the body, then socially executing the woman by raising or dropping her, is not new. It is traditional and has multiple causes, and it may be related to the male’s physical superiority in waging wars, Victory is not shared, and whoever triumphs over the weaker enemy does not tend to practice equality with the weak relative, Plunder is a general condition that applies to every weak person, and because of the weakness of war, the woman has turned into war booty, meaning that she has been subjected to objectification, that is, to something that is bought, sold, and taken captive, In the context of the exchange economy, she can be replaced with something else, for example, two baskets of Hijazi dates, or a camel or a mule, not because she is deficient in intellect, but because she is deficient in muscle, and objectifying her has become a logical result for those who have much muscle and little intellect.

Much has been said in the context of social analysis regarding the phenomenon of veiling, which was previously a kind of partially voluntary social expression, However, the current veiling and its associated practices differ fundamentally from the veiling of bygone days, It is now imposed and more coercive, and it does not represent a response to an underlying social demand, The veil is no longer the distinguishing mark that differentiates the believer from the heretic, It is generalized to everyone, especially in societies that have historically been characterized by executions, such as Saudi Arabia in the past and Iran in the past and present, In other societies, such as Lebanon and Egypt, it may have some function of differentiation and even protest against unjust conditions, It may have a function of belonging in a society that has lost its sense of identity, a nakedness that has become shameful and devoid of earthly legitimacy,Those who have lost earthly legitimacy seek it elsewhere, and when they despair of finding it, they resort to assuming it in the depths of the heavens… the weakest form of faith!