Islamic feminist author defends the headscarf

Oct 25, 2008, 17:09 GMT

Turkish students shout slogans in support of wearing head scarf, in front of Istanbul University, which does not allow headscarfs, Istanbul, Turkey, 19 March 2008. EPA/TOLGA BOZOGLU

Frankfurt - Turkey's ban on wearing headscarves in public institutions such as universities is a form of oppression over women, according to an Islamic feminist novelist Cihan Aktas, 48.

An intellectual who is both a feminist and a devout Muslim is a combination so startling in Turkey that Aktas said reviewers and the media had initially refused to take her seriously.

In an interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, Aktas set out the views she has developed in a 25-year career writing about the difficulties of being an observant Muslim woman today.

Aktas wore a loose scarf draped over her head and a colourful ankle-length dress to the interview at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

'My father was a teacher and I grew up in a house full of books and had already decided as a girl to become a writer,' she said.

'I've written about 25 books,' she said, adding, 'Maybe it is more like 30, but there are a few I wish now that I had not published, because I was very young at the time, very rash, and they don't have enough discipline to them.'

Her oeuvre includes two novels and eight books of short stories, collecting three prizes during her literary career. A ninth book of short stories is being published this month, she said.

Her latest work is entitled The Close Stranger and is about Iran, a country where she and her husband often live for short spells. He comes from Iran, where his family is part of the ethnic Turkish community. She has also written a book about Iranian cinema.

None of her books has been translated into any other language in its entirety, but extracts have appeared in Italian, German and Persian.

She has antagonized Turkey's secularist elite, writing books with titles that include Covering Up and Society, and Oppression of Women Students, attacking the notion that the scarf is a sign of women's backwardness or subjection to men.

'I adopted the scarf at the age of 20, after I completed my university degree,' she said. 'I wanted to be a good Muslim.'

Aktas, also defends the scarf as a cultural tradition in Turkish society, saying, 'Turkey is not a Western society.'

She said Turkey's rulers had allowed neither philosophical debate nor the principle of majority rule when trying to abolish scarves.

'They ignored women's rights, pluralism and participation by society,' she said feistily.

This year, there was heated debate in Turkey on the issue. The government passed legislation in February opening the universities to women wearing scarves. But the secularists appealed, and in June, the Constitutional Court ruled the law out of order.

Aktas still insists the scarf is a woman's right to choose, adding that some women in Judaism and Christianity cover their heads too.

'No man ever insisted that I had to wear a scarf,' she said. Aktas argues that large numbers of intelligent, educated women want to wear the scarf as their own expression of their religious commitment.

'There is a wave in Muslim society of young people wanting to learn about their religion.'

'I believe that when the state decides over women's bodies in this way, it is a system of oppression over women,' she said. Aktas added that she did not want to make the scarf compulsory.

'I argue that every Muslim should decide for herself whether or not to wear a scarf,' she said.

Her stance has brought her hate messages from radical secularists but also from religious hard-liners.

'I've had nasty e-mails from both sides,' she said. 'Regrettably, the internet creates opportunities for uneducated and cowardly people.'

Aktas spoke with humour of her long fight to prove herself: 'For a long time the media and critics who are mostly leftist ignored me, because they could not imagine that a woman in a scarf could possibly be a writer.'

She said her twice-weekly columns in the daily newspaper Taraf and her books had established her, but going against the current meant she still had to work harder than other writers.

'I've had to struggle against hostile criticism, but it has not made me pessimistic. I believe in my responsibility as a writer. I believe in my work. A writer is always writing for the future, and time will sift the best work,' she said with a smile.