What's Hip, Colorful, and Annoys Judges?

The Detroit Free Press’s lightweight weekend insert, Twist featured a cover story on “Hip Hijab: A Blending of Faith and Fashion.”

Being the Free Press, what should have been a light fashion feature story had to do some duty as a propaganda piece for the progress of Jihad. Twist writer Patricia Montemmuri quotes Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, director of the Center for Arab American Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, telling us that “Muslim women…aim to command respect for their faith by wearing the hijab.” In this context, this is rather a poor choice of words. It’s that “command to respect” their faith that is causing all the problems, both here and more and more in Europe.

Still, I don’t expect Professor Abdulhadi to see it that way. As an academic she’s all about “structural inequalities,” and fostering “tolerance” and “fairness.” This is why she sees the hijab not only as “an assertion of identity ... a sign of distinction and definition,” but also “sometimes a sign of defiance.” Naturally, we can only wonder whom it is Muslim women are trying to defy, because the article doesn’t say—or ask. It’s a safe bet they aren’t trying to defy their husbands.

I have no particular problem with women wearing veils. Until the sixth grade I lived under the violent regime of Dominicans in very unhip veils, and, though I still don’t care for nuns much as a class, they don’t actually scare me now that I’m bigger than they are. Whatever their problems were, they weren’t caused by veils, which they've long since ditched, anyway. Nor do ladies in designer hijabs worry me much. If Muslim women find a way to make then fashionable and hip, good for them.

Yet what always strikes me as odd is how something as intentionally harmless and noncontroversial as a fashion piece about headscarves has to be offered as a challenge to the nonMuslim community as a “command for respect," “a sign of defiance.” Why is it so hard to understand that this continual goading of nonMuslims is causing the very dislike for their religion Muslims claim they regret so much?

As another example, the Free Press ran another story on Sunday about a Hamtramck judge, Paul Paruk, who dismissed a small-claims lawsuit when the female plaintiff, Ginnnah Muhammad, refused his request to remove her niqab while she testified before him in his courtroom. The niqab is a scarf and veil that show nothing but a woman’s eyes, as seen in the Free Press photo above of Ms. Muhammad. For those of you out-of-towners, Hamtramck is Dearborn's sister city in dhimmitude.

Judge Paruk apparently feels that being able to see the face of a witness, and not just hear her voice, is a critical element in fulfilling his fact-finding role. This makes sense, since appellate courts, even when they have trial transcripts to review, routinely defer to the trial court’s findings as to witness credibility. After all, it is the judge or jury who actually see the witness live as he or she testifies, and can better read the witness’s demeanor.

But naturally, poor Judge Paruk will not be let off that easy. The Free Press framed the lead by citing how Ms. Muhammad felt “a judge forced her to choose between her case and her religion.” Of course, there is nothing in the story to suggest that Judge Paruk ever demanded that Ms. Muhammad had to renounce her faith in exchange for hearing her case, nor is there anything to suggest that removing her veil would result in automatic excommunication. All signs are that this was simply one of those instances where a Muslim woman felt compelled to use her covering as “a sign of defiance.” It just so happened that in this case the Judge had the power to defy Ms. Muhammad right back. Maybe that's why the Free Press thinks it's news.

Of course, Dawud Walid, spokesman for the U.S.-based terrorist organization CAIR, was asked to comment for the article. He said the usual inapposite things about Ms. Muhammad’s civil rights and the need for “greater sensitivity toward the growing populace in that municipality,” that is, the growing number of Muslim immigrants. You know, the usual yada-yada.

But I could sense Walid’s heart wasn’t in this one. Maybe that’s because it was only a small-claims case, rather than a terrorist trial where the freedom of a genuine homicidal menace was at stake. And besides, Ms. Muhammad is only a woman. Under Sharia law, her testimony would only count for half that of a man’s, anyway. (But she would get to keep her veil on!)

Still, Walid just has to raise the issue of “greater sensitivity toward the growing populace in that municipality,” so I have to mention that every single resident of “that municipality,” Hamtramck, regardless of race, creed, sex, age, or health condition, must be subjected five times daily, (starting at dawn), to the Muslim call to prayer broadcast over loudspeakers. Now that’s what I call a “structural inequality.”

Anyhow, the loudspeakers were turned on in 2004, when the al-Islah mosque began the broadcasts in defiance of the city noise ordinances, then got the city council to knuckle under, as dhimmi city councils tend to do. The residents held a referendum to stop it, but lost on a very low voter turnout. It didn’t help that the president of the city council admitted they wouldn’t stop the practice anyway, even if the majority population didn’t approve. And the secretary of the mosque, who may or may not have been wearing a hijab when she said it, defiantly said the broadcasts wouldn’t have stopped regardless of the outcome of the vote.

I have no idea if Judge Paruk happens to live where he is awakened each morning by the muadhdhin reminding him that Allah is the Greatest, (or rather, reminding the ummah, since Judge Paruk is an infidel and cannot expect any help from Allah). If he is awakened each morning this way, then when it was time to hear Ms. Muhammad's case he might well have been grumpy from lack of sleep, or chafing from the insensitivity of the growing Muslim populace of Hamtramck toward the majority nonMuslim residents.

Or maybe he just wanted to gaze for himself upon the defiant face of Hamtramck’s future.