Lauren Booth – Naked Society And Muslim Women

			ban the wearing of a bias in school. You've raised it. And I'd forgotten how surprising that is
today. You've got teachers who see it as their duty to proselytize to converge. Muslim kids. If we
are very good to look at, then we are stripped of our dignity. Oh my god, I think I'm a misogynist.
This is a really deep podcast going into society and politics in places hope you enjoy it. It's no
exaggeration to say that in their quest to malign Islam, some in the West target Muslim women, her
position within the family, her place in society and of course her dress are placed under the
microscope. And like colonialists in the days of empire, her emancipation is seen to be a means to a
		

			greater Islamic reformation. In recent days, France's Minister of modesty will be banned from
schools. Apparently a piece of clothing is an affront to fence secularism, and yet again, another
sign of separatism. In the UK former Prime Minister Boris Johnson likened burqa wearing Muslim women
as those that chose to look like letter boxes and bank robbers. young Muslim women are subjected to
a barrage of what can only be called propaganda, producing their religious dress and promising to
liberate them from their religion. Now to help us understand how this works, and to caution against
some of the extremes by which the community can handle this onslaught. I am delighted here on the
		

			thinking Muslim to invite the writer and activist Lauren booth. Lauren booth is a broadcaster turned
activist and author. She is known for her principled activism on Palestine and regularly comments on
Muslim affairs. And she is also the author of his memoir in search of a holy land, which is
available on Amazon and all good book shops. I think in fine. Lauren, I'm amazed that you've got a
recommendation here from Nicky Campbell, a fascinating read. I couldn't put it down. I mean, Nicky
Campbell, often is characterized as someone who doesn't really have a good word to say about Islam
and Muslim women. How did you how did you get that? So that Miley come rahmatullahi wa barakaatuh
		

			Weissmuller, mela Rahim. Thanks very much for inviting me. I wanted to come on the thinking Muslim
podcast for quite a number of years now. I really enjoy your content and your interviews. Nicky
Campbell. Yeah, that was you've raised it. And I'd forgotten how surprising that is and how it
started. So about five years ago, we were having a spat on Twitter, because he had said something so
obnoxious, that I just had to really pull him up about it. We'd worked together previously, radio
five, we've got on well in my former incarnation as a non Muslim broadcaster. And yesterday, say he
said on Twitter, right, he said, I would, it was about the burqa not being allowed in France. And it
		

			was, you know, really, we knew that a ban towards hijab ban towards the veil, all of these things
were coming up in France, and he said, I would rather my 15 year old daughter went mostly * on a
beach than she covered up like that, and I'm sure you use something like look like a letterbox or
but it was really obnoxious. And so a lot of Muslims underneath had commented, and I just put that
on my on my feed look that is out of order. It's a disgraceful thing to say it's awful on your
daughter, it's Islamophobic. It causes all kinds of problems. You have no idea about this, and you
actually have no right to put your foot into this. And I said, everybody who agrees with me bombard
		

			Nicky Campbell Right now, within the hour, his Twitter feed had almost crashed with furious Muslims.
Just, you know, really going at it and saying, Take this down, take this down. So he got in touch
with me in the DMS and he said, Lauren, I'm being harassed online, because of you. I said, No,
Nicki, you're being harassed online, because if your obnoxious views he said, Okay, that says maybe,
could you call off your attack dogs? I said, Don't call my people dogs. And but what I might do, and
then he said something, he said, I thought Islam was about being polite. And I'm like, they
		

			he's pulled it'd be nice card and are what would the Prophet do? said, You know what, if you're
feeling harassed, I will ask people to tone it down. But you and I need to talk. So we got into a
discussion. And I tried to make him see talked about the hijab, and he asked some really good
questions. He said, can you advise me, and it led to, when my book came out, I said, Nikki, I feel
you should read this. As a friend, we've come to a kind of very warm impasse.
		

			And I'd like to send it to you and he read it. And I said, he loved it. And I said, I'm going to use
your review on the front. Is that okay? He said, Lauren, go for it.
		

			So it just shows that you'd be people don't like to think of themselves. Nobody wakes up in the
morning goes, You know what, I'm really going to annoy you.
		

			Today, I'm really going to pour hatred out. They're not if they're in any way ethically, morally not
bankrupt.
		

			And they have half a mind, you know, for for what words mean. They want to be talked around. So
let's engage. That's my message. Now I provocatively use the word onslaught against the Muslim women
or against womanhood in my introduction, and I suspect many may dispute but this is hyperbole.
		

			How do you assess the current discourse surrounding Muslim women?
		

			Well, I look up. First and foremost, we use our own experiences as jumping off points. And I know
for certain that there are arenas where I am and my views, legitimate, well informed journalistic
views have no space anymore. Because I dress as a Muslim. Really. Yeah. So I used to work part time
for the BBC, I used to do reports on Sky News, or mommy in the newspaper reviews, etc. And when I
put on the hijab that ended overnight, that's not a coincidence. And that is experienced, more
importantly, of women across Europe, there is something that the European Union, and there, the
parliament there, in a report has accepted and acknowledged, it's called the triple bind. So if
		

			you're a Muslim woman in Europe, you've got your degree, and you want to go into the workplace, you
have these three factors against you, one, you're a woman anyway. Two, you're in hijab, and three,
if you have a Muslim name. And that means that that three has pretty much three strikes, and you're
out. And that is a real difficulty. It's a real prejudice. And that's what we've been facing for a
long time. Recently, we're talking in the week where the French Ministry of, of Education has banned
the buyers in schools or ban the wearing of a buyers in school.
		

			And that follows, you know, a series of bans a ban of the face veil, in in France and on streets as
a fine for someone who wears a face veil. In fact, in fact, I remember, they even passed a law which
prohibited Muslim women from asking for a female doctor, potentially, they would get a fine if they
requested a female doctor. So there is this obsession and of course, in France is a ban on the hijab
as well in public buildings. So there is this obsession with women's dress in France and across
Europe, what lays what lays behind what lies behind rather these this obsession? You know what, I'm
going to agree with that, but I'm actually going to extend it to a socially unwell society, right?
		

			Because I was on a plane yesterday, coming from Istanbul, we were waiting for our plane, actually,
everything had been backed up. And I got into a conversation with a woman who lives in France. And
she said, and I was saying exactly what you're saying, What is this obsession with women's dress?
She said, hey, it goes deeper than that. She her friend had taken her six year old son to a swimming
pool. And he had long shorts on. And they said, No, you can't come in. Why not? Because you have to
wear Speedos. And she said, Are you seriously saying that my six year old should be in budgie
smugglers don't even think about what that means.
		

			And that's an obsession with a sexualization of the human body. Yeah, and a minimal amount of dress
so that everybody is accessible to everyone else. So on the one hand, if you're French, sorry, if
you're Muslim, and you're living in France, you know, it's about being Muslim. But if you're a
French person who wants a different level of modesty, you also know that there is a catchment area
where you are different from the rest of the society. So there's a sickness that that really causes
that society does focus on the Muslims there. But it goes deep into every arena. I mean, to me,
France is a failed state, it's a failing culture. When you actually have to put a gun to a woman who
		

			is modestly dressed on a beach and tell her take your clothes off. You've lost your mind. And when
you're telling children, little boys, you can only wear a strip of material like this or not come
swimming, you are really in an unhealthy situation. Now the online space and generally popular
culture is a very confusing place, I think, for Muslim girls or young Muslim women in particular.
		

			And I've got a daughter and I think that, unlike maybe my son, she is impacted by a barrage of
confusing messages about a Muslim nurse about a hijab.
		

			About the obligations of wearing certain types of dress. And it just seems to me that there is this
deliberate attempt to target Muslim girls in particular. And to, dare I say, to try to read or try
to make them move off the path of, of Islam. And am I exaggerating? This is what what's your, what's
your perspective on this matter? And ask how old your daughter is. She's now 20. So 20 Yeah, so
she's made her decisions. But all of that time, probably from the age of eight, she will have been
really hyper aware of being different in the public space, different at school, spoken about not
spoken to othered. All of those things are a really dynamic and drive a lot of girls into saying I
		

			can't do this. Most mothers have Muslim girls, say in the UK right now, specifically, they will meet
a point when one of their daughters will say to them in her job, perhaps at 13, I don't know if I
can do it tomorrow. I just want a day off. And at that point, you realize that that society is
social engineering, the Muslim community by
		

			criminalizing the young men, there are more new laws in the last 20 years focusing on young Muslim
men and Muslim areas to make men less successful boys less successful, you know, Muslims are dire in
education. And yet we can get 30 for a 16 year old Muslim girl got 34 GCSEs at A and the young men,
you know, don't worry about them, let them fail. But the pots of gold that go to Birmingham, are for
secularized Muslim women women's groups, by the way. So you have that big draw if I want to be
successful, the Muslim, the Muslim women's groups that the government likes, are all led by non
hijabi women, and a not diverse, and we've been saying this for a long time, come on, let us be
		

			represented even in our own communities. So I would say actually, brother, that's it's gone so far
into making us insecure, that you're beginning to see workspaces run by Muslims. And I've had this
specifically with
		

			convert sister who was sacked, or no, she was told by the Asian men she worked for who are Muslims
don't wear black all the time. It really puts off the customers. She's a convert to Islam, trying to
be modest in her way and learning her face, told by Muslim bosses, you the way you look is putting
off white customers. Right? I mean, where do you go with that? Right and why why what you're, you're
intimating that there is a, an atmosphere that has been created, deliberately created, to shoehorn
to push Muslim women in a particular direction. I mean, can you speak to that? What, why is this
atmosphere being created?
		

			I think it's a it's clearly an insecurity in our society, about the strength of what our culture is.
And when I say our I say, all of us as British people, right, you know, when you go abroad, and
you're like, Well, what is Britishness? This has been something that conservatives have wanted to
ask us for the last 20 years. What does it mean doing British? There's been lots of jokes about it.
I mean, for me when I was 20, you know what it meant? It meant ska music. bacon sandwiches are
always a biller. And yeah, Notting Hill Carnival that that was Britishness to my grandparents that
would be apart from the bacon sandwiches and absolute and Massimo, right. Yes. So that what is being
		

			British doesn't allow yet for a diversity of experiences, and that's making everybody insecure. I
mean, you've got Rishi Sunak, who has agreed to have an immigrant shoulding ship on the Thames in
order to, to go along this anti diversity, this fear of foreigners movement, I mean, that that that
really speaks to an insecure environment, doesn't it? Yeah. Let me ask you about the hijab in
particular, because of course, but back to you know, my daughter when when she was growing up, she
had conflicting messages from everywhere about the hijab, to the degree that you had, what seemed
like people who were being very much sponsored by central government, or at least sponsored by NGOs
		

			that were linked to separate central government discouraging her from wearing a hijab. There's a lot
of noise out there, about what is the appropriate what is the correct Muslim dress. Now, of course,
I know that some Muslim women find it very difficult to wear the hijab and you know, that's not what
I'm
		

			speaking to her, but I also know that there is just general confusion that probably has never been
in Islamic history. I suspect most of Islamic history, Muslim women generally knew okay, this is the
requirements of, of Islamic dress. How does the Muslim girl navigate this noise that seems to be out
there, which is discouraging her from worshiping Allah. So first thing we have to do is to really
look at who we are following. So each of us has our own individual timeline. Have you ever been
shown some somebody in your family or said, Oh, here's my Instagram feed, and you're like, That is
weird. What is that? It's like going into somewhere really strange. Some sometimes my husband will
		

			log in to his account for some reason on my laptop, and I'll end up going through his feed for half
an hour. Okay. Why is it in Arabic? Why is it so weird? Kind of military trolling my husband? It's
so different. So their worlds are very, very different. So number one, you have to look at who are
you following? Is it hyper centralized popstars? Is it? Joker's on Instagram? Is it women who cover
and where are you taking your face from? So none of us can legitimately say that we're going to be
as women taking our face from a woman who looks like she's in the Barbie film. All right, that would
be like, okay, okay. Haroon Yahia tried it a few years ago, that strange cult leader in Turkey, he
		

			surrounded himself with blonde women, hyper sexualized, and said, This is the dean and everyone
went, Yeah, yeah, you've lost your mind. So if you're a young woman, and you're saying, right, on
the one hand, I might like this pop music, and I like these shows on Netflix and that, right? That's
just social culture. But when you come to the dean, you're not gonna go to netflix. Right? Because
you know that that's outside our dean. So when you put him here's a little thing you can try
		

			saying the straight to your daughter and young women out there, put into Google, female Muslim
scholar, not influencer, not celebrity or personality. Okay, we're talking about people who teach
the actual deep and the basics, the building blocks of our Islamic Deen. Yeah, none of them will be
uncovered.
		

			Now, if these women know, the prophetic model, and the Quranic model of expectations, and they're
paid and endorsed to teach this by the Obama, by the Obama, then surely, that's enough. For me, I'm
a very simple person, I have to be honest, I don't need complexities. I do something simple like
that. And I say, you know, you're Dean, you're teaching me and you're all covered, then that tells
me all I need to know. Right? Yeah. That's a very, very good sound piece of advice. I think.
		

			There is a, an argument or a discussion, but seems to have gained currency in recent months, and
maybe even recent years about reinterpreting the Islamic texts, according to according to modern
standards, and one such strand of discussion is that maybe some of the Sahaba would run a lie Lee
May Allah reward reward them immensely for for their efforts and their struggles. Maybe some of the
Sahaba had in inverted commas and misogynistic mindset. And so when they conveyed Hadith, they
conveniently conveyed some Hadith, which would today be regarded as misogynistic, for example, I
don't know, Hadith word that places, you know, the man's responsibility to be at the head of the
		

			household, for example, is that misogynistic? Or is that common sense? Well, so they call that
misogynistic? Yeah. I mean, so I remember there was a Twitter and again, Twitter is in the real
world. And I think that's what your what you said in the previous answer. But yeah, in one Twitter
discussion, there was some discussion about Abu Huraira or de la Juana be someone who was, you know,
misogynistic, and in the sense that he conveyed some Hadith which the particular person disliked. I
mean, how would you address this sort of reinterpreting Islam from the modern lens? The first The
first thing to note is there has definitely been a deliberate collaboration of a certain type of
		

			Hadith, telling people how to behave in interpersonal relationships between men and women. And it's
Salafi publishing. And it has been very successful in the last 35 years in telling us one, version
one very harsh bye
		

			Basically unlivable, I would say to up to a degree version of what it is to be a man and a woman in
a marriage and marital and housing relation, you know, a family relationship. So there's been that
editing.
		

			Most of us don't have
		

			the Arabic, the the thick, the Sharia knowledge to delve into these matters. Who would I be right
now to give my even if I precede it with, in my humble opinion, on the on these very deep matters, I
follow teachers and each one of us, each of us needs to find a teacher. And above all, our
connection to Allah to Allah, our prayers, our salah, our liquor, this is our connection to the
truth of the deen going and doing some search and saying it's all rubbish. Because I've seen the
light I had a man come up to me, funnily enough, a lot. A lot happened in the last few days at
Istanbul airport, apparently, he came up to me and he said, Oh, you're a convert to Islam. I know
		

			some truths about the Quran. And I said, Oh, he said, I said, Where you from? He said, I'm a rocky,
I said, Are you a chef? He said, Well, it depends what you mean by Chef. I said, Well, shake is
someone who, who learned from someone who learned from somebody learn from somebody that from the
Prophet peace be upon him. He said, Oh, I know more than them. I said, then you're very arrogant. He
said, Well, I'm walking away from this. I said, please do. Right. So
		

			I think we need humanity. And I think we need guides.
		

			What do you think about the current as I know, you live in Istanbul, and maybe you've been immune to
what's been going on in the West in the last probably couple of yours. And it's a discussion about
womanhood, and discuss about gender and its discussion about trans women and their status in
society. And again, that's one of the complexities that we've found, we've had to navigate around as
Muslim parents as, as just Muslims in this community, like how, you know, of course, we are
minorities. And we we have to somewhat navigates lots of complexities and challenges. And as you
said in an earlier answer, it is it sometimes is a very, it's a very, it takes a lot of bandwidth to
		

			be a Muslim in the West, you've got to, there's so much on the road, and you've got to just think
about lots of things. But anyway, this, this issue about women who does has come along, and it's a
difficult subject to broach, I mean, how would you? How would you approach what's going on here in
the West in recent years? First of all, I'd like to say, I am still a journalist, and I'm married to
a journalist. So if only we were out of this awful, you know, the stuff that you're hearing the
question being asked, What is a woman? And people say, well, it's someone who thinks that they might
be and can be if they choose would be to where not to wear but me, you know, adult, female human is
		

			quite a simple answer to come to really.
		

			We're looking at the erasure of women.
		

			There's no doubt about erasure of erasure. It's quite a hard statement, I can get explained that,
would you? Okay, well, I'm gonna go back to the fact that eight first of all, let's start with women
who are aging. Alright, I worked at I worked in I've worked in TV for 30 years now. And about round
since the last 20 years, a host of TV presenters from the BBC, have complained about this female
presenters over the age of 40, saying, hang on, I was ahead of three current affairs show. Suddenly
I was ditched. And the BBC has had to pay out record damages to a number of women. Because this
society, not the Muslim society, but this secular society judges women, based on their appeal, I
		

			just got off a plane how many times I mentioned in planes today, I think I'm still in the airport.
		

			I was for our viewers, you were stuck in Istanbul two days.
		

			Yes, obviously had an impact on me, but I was the way that women are used. We if we are very good to
look at, then we are stripped of our dignity and put on posters next to a water bottle going by this
it's pure, you know, and it's filthy. And it's horrible. And I had to look for like, you know, four
hours at this and eventually I took it out was on the seat back and just turned it round. And there
was a man sitting next Mr. Do you mind if I just take that out? Turn it round, because I did not
want to look at it a naked woman so we're very visual as women in British society and European
society if we're attractive or near naked, if you're aging. You can feel already redundant, ignored.
		

			I live in Istanbul. The women there are increasingly having
		

			duck lips, terrible amounts of Botox. They're looking ill. And so along with asking what is a woman?
How should we look is an obsession to everybody in the society. And so when we have the guts, and
the serenity, and the sheer, unbridled guts to say, I'm not showing you anything today, Oh, yeah.
And you won't be seeing me tomorrow, either, you're just gonna get my face. And what I say, that is
such a powerful statement.
		

			So your, your, your argument is about the hijab, in a way it it liberates women, in a sense, but it
		

			makes them into less of a * object, you know, a, someone that should be admired for their beauty.
And that's it to someone who one needs to engage with on an intelligent level. But again, the
counter argument about by many in the West would be well, where do where does that exist? I mean,
you live in Istanbul are women in hijab treated, you know, in in that way, that idealistic way that
you present one? Second, I'll give you a couple of examples. I where I lived in Qatar in 2015. And
the first time I went there, I remember being, you know, you go to the airport, and there's the
woman's line, and I was taken out by the soldier, and he goes, Oh, the customs officer, he goes over
		

			here, madam. And there's nobody there. And I walked through like royalty, and I'm like, okay, and
all the men are queuing over there. And then I go shopping, and I have my bags picked up and carried
to the car. And even now I go, I went to Qatar for the World Cup. And my husband, who's a lovely
man, by the way, he always complains that when we go to Qatar, I expect to be treated like a queen
afterwards, because I see the women in the airport, and I'm and they're just wafting along in black,
you know, and their husbands or their sons, or other people are carrying things. My husband he
carries most things. I still carry something. And I'm like, take my bag, you know? Because it does
		

			it elevates us and gives us a break. i There is a lot of beauty out there. Does this happen all the
time? In Turkey? No. But you know what? Your job is have a superpower. We have superpowers told this
by an alphabet by Albanian girls who don't wear hijab. They said, You know what, when we see you in
the street, it's like you're gliding along. And we want and it's like you're you're surrounded by
light, and you have a superpower. And so as a hijab wearing woman, you have that that extra meter of
space. You're either beautifully invisible, because it's quite nice to be invisible in the street.
Or you're just you know, you're left alone. Men don't press against you men. Men stay back a bit.
		

			And that's a nice experience. Because I've had the other one. Right. I've been the woman in the in
the shoulder. There was there was a BBC presenter who came to visit me after I accepted Islam. She
said I can't believe you're the same Lauren, that I met at the election party eight years ago. I
said, Oh, whatever I said I'm sorry. She said, I would describe you as the the woman with the
biggest mouth and the shorter skirts. Yeah, that would have been me. Right? And nobody space, no
respect from the men
		

			is very different in her job. Mashallah. It's a bonus. It's a bonus.
		

			So you live in Istanbul? And anecdotally, it seems to me that more and more Muslims have decided to
leave the West and to move to Muslim countries like Qatar or to Kuwait or to Istanbul. I think in
Istanbul, we've seen you know, a probably I mean, last time I was there, I saw a growth in a number
of Westerners, Western Muslims who have decided to, to live in and most of them say they, they just
had enough of the the criticisms they get in the West. They've had enough of the racism, maybe they
get on Islamophobia, but also they fear for their kids.
		

			It's now common for Muslims here to think about if not moving to a different country to think about
pulling their kids out of school. I mean, where do you stand on this discussion about how intense
it's become an education and just general society towards Muslims? You know what it's really
interesting for 10 years, 10 years a friend of mine called an ISA. She's an educator, masha Allah,
she has been raising the alert. You don't know what's in the books. She has been on these education
groups that I'm on she's like mums. Wake up, asked to see the books on your kids curriculum. What
age not 11 Not 10, seven and eight asked to see them. And when you asked to see them, the teacher
		

			say you don't need to
		

			Who are now increasingly you can't see them. In case you you protest, because it is such disgusting
content in children's books at schools that they cannot show it on the news, the same nightly news
that shows dead bodies and bombs falling and explosions and horrendous things going on, cannot show
the books that are being given to our four and five year olds. This interestingly, this is a sign of
a failing society. There was a study done in 1936 by a British academic, and he found the same
trigger points for each failed civilization that he studied. Yes, rise in androgyny. Liberal not
liberation of women. I forget the word, but it's basically no protection of the women. Right. And
		

			the sexualization of society, a rise in homosexuality. All of these things are happening. It's a
dire situation. And I totally understand Muslim families wanting to leave it is I thought about 10
years ago, actually, rather than that. And I still do that if you really wanted to get the Muslims
out of Europe. And you couldn't kill them like the French did with the Algerians just 30 years ago
and then through their bodies or 40 years ago, through them in the same I was a biller
		

			that what you do is you just make it a little bit unlivable. A little bit unlivable. Let's say, in
France, you can't have halal meat at school. Why is that? No halal meat you have to eat pork if
you're at school, or go without? What if we ally? No, they don't like * with outside marriage, the
Muslims? How about we talk about that all the time? And how about we force we say to their children,
homosexuality is an option. And we we do that at a young age that that is kind of social
engineering. Now, I'm not saying this only affects the Muslim community. We're not paranoid. This is
a devaluation of the human spirit across the spectrum. But it really is helping us leave. And I
		

			think it's a good leave. I think it's a good a good thing. We should yeah, I think we should we
should leave the sinking ship. And we should be building up our countries and offering an
alternative, which is what the ottoman and the alanda Lucien society's did was say, hey, come over
here. We've got beauty here. We've got fairness here. We've got a way that you can move up the ranks
in society, you're not trapped. And for that reason, hundreds of 1000s Millions perhaps of
Christians came and lived in our Muslim communities and the Jewish community thrived for centuries
there.