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The 'hijab' or headscarf or -covering has in the West become a point of discontent. For some, a source of pride and an affirmation of self or of religious conviction. First a story: in 1948 on the beaches of Tangiers, then an independent enclave, Lalla Ayescha (eldest daughter of Sultan Mohammed ben Youssef, hereafter Mohammed V, king of Morocco after 1956) appeared in a single, body fitting bathing suit. In this way, the royal house, in a struggle against the French protectorate, was signaling that independence waas coming and that traditional Morocco had to modernize and what's more women and girls had a role to play in the transition from the old ways to the new. The headscarf was not indicted but in the years that followed--the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, the hijab fell without too much fanfare, before the rise of militant Islam. The hijab, as Germaine Tillion explained is an urban phenomenon. And yet, the hijab has not stopped sexual harassment in broad daylight. 'Tainted Veil' throws the debate of the veil on the screen. It takes no sides so much as to give voice to the women, the men and the theologians to wax wise or not so wise on the matter. In fact the Abrahamic religions are not spared either. The Koran mentions the 'veil' in the Sorat al-Nor and al-Azha. Still, the sociologist Fatima Mernissi has clearly shown that modest dress is called for by the Prophet, but not the hijab or the niqab (covering of the face to the eyes). So the evolution of the veil is historical and changing with the shifting sands of time. Some women see it as a protection from the men, from the opinion of neighbors and family, who believe that 'a nail that sticks out get hit on the heat'; other as a confirmation of communion with their god. Others react to this reasoning that a head enshrined in meters of material inhibits the mind and thinking, thereby casting them into a harem of inferiority. They may be believers but the steadfastly refuse to give way to the pettiness of the times. The theologian from al-Azhar maintains a more neutral view, though he favors the hijab being worn. His is a rational argument on the personal conviction of the believer to don the scarf. A secular commentator from Damascus speaks of the ideological influences of the times, as well as the swinging pendulum of ideas that one moment favors modernization and at others a return to the sources of belief. And in the times we live, with the rise of Islamic extremism, the film is a welcome antidote. Ultimately, its conclusion is open ended and very much in the Islamic tradition of free will and rationality in spite of intense social pressures from family and society. Habib Bourguiba understood this well when he became the first steward of an independent Tunisia. His Destour party stood for the emancipation of women from their traditional role, and today, despite all the turmoil in Tunisia in the wake of the Arab Spring,Tunisian women are the most 'liberated'. And in the much 'despised regimes of Hussein's Iraq and Assad's Syria, the role of women was to be envied by what has replaced one and is the object of war in the other. So 'Tainted Veil' is a good mirror for the West who may think they are above the fray, might reflect of the invisible veil they put on their own women's fight for full equality.
