Friday, May 17, 2013

Turkish Female Journalist Receives Death Threats for Removing Hijab

Daniel Greenfield 

According to Hijab, Burka and Niqab apologists, wearing one is purely a matter of choice for a woman. Except the only place that it’s really a matter of choice is in a non-Muslim country.
Rabia Kazan, a Turkish female journalist and author of a book about prostitution in Iran, describes the stifling experience of being forced to cover up and the threats that came after she chose freedom.
Arguing that there is no verse for wearing headscarves in the Quran, Kazan has faced heavy criticism also in her country due to her thoughts. Her own father attacked her house with stones.
I FELT FREEDOM WHEN I TOOK OFF MY HEADSCARF”
“During the first years of wearing a headscarf, I used to feel like my head was stuck up inside a nylon bag, and I heard humming. I had those fearful moments when the needles came loose, wondering if the needle would prick my throat. So I would at times take off the headscarf secretly when my mother was not watching. But one day when I got caught by my mother she subjected me to an unforgettably painful beating.
30 years later, when I decided to uncover my head, another battle started. It was very difficult. Radical Islamists got very furious when a covered and well-known writer decided to uncover her head. I heard harsh insults and received death threats.
When I came to America, first of all I started to swim to my heart’s content… It was such regret for me not to have done it for so long that I didn’t want to get out of the swimming pool before I swam for two hours every night…

I suffered from vitamin D deficiency since my skin didn’t get enough sunlight by then and this normally causes serious illnesses, weakness and mental fatigue. I sunbathed a lot. Then I tied my hair in a pony-tail and played tennis under the blue sky with my white tennis clothes on. I cannot tell you how good it felt. Then I fulfilled my dream of growing nails and putting on red nail polish, which was a personal remembrance to me. I had met a woman in my trip to Iran who was forced to put her hands into a bag full of insects just because she had put on red nail polish… Whenever I put on red nail polish, I still remember that woman with sadness…
Now I am free and believe that God has no problem with the hair on my head, He will not burn me in his Hell for this reason, He holds us with much more mercy and kindness than we think, and that being “a good person” is much more important than wearing a dark veil.

Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com
URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/turkish-female-journalist-receives-death-threats-for-removing-hijab/

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