OCTOBER 21 — Although there are so many more pressing problems facing the country right now, I just really need to say this about Alicia Izharuddin’s article on the tudung. 

The replies that I have read so far were all so fixated on “choice” and “agency” and woman’s choice is the (only) underlying key to the defence of the tudung.

That’s great, you know. Except Alicia’s article was never about choice to begin with!

To be fair though, I thought Alicia could have been more coherent and clearer with her point on the history of the tudung, so that people wouldn’t misunderstand her as being “anti-tudung”.

Alicia was talking about the rapid infiltration of the tudung worn by Malay women after the Iranian revolution in 1979. The influence of the Ayatollah in bringing about an Islamic state spread throughout the world, including the Malays in Malaysia, which was facing a unique concern about their girls at the time.

Alicia drew her arguments from a famous article written by Aihwa Ong in 1992, “The State versus Islam: Malay Families, Women’s Bodies and Body Politics in Malaysia”.

To understand this better, it would help if we could situate ourselves 40 years ago.

Women were not accustomed to being far removed from their families. The men have always felt that they need to protect their women and protecting their women they did, as the women were almost always at home and didn’t need to go anywhere as their main responsibilities were at home while the men were out earning a livelihood.

Malaysia was in a state of rapid development as it was a newly independent country from its colonial masters at that time. Men and women flocked to the cities for work, but women were the ideal workforce because their wages were lower and factories wanted to keep their profits high.

These women typically work at electronic factories, hence the nickname “minah karan” given to them, as mentioned by Alicia in her article.

As many women left their kampungs, not only were they far from where the men have always been able to keep a watchful eye on them, they now have disposable income for themselves and this gives them a new-found independence from their caretakers back in the village.

This made society, the men particularly, very anxious about their daughters in the cities. Who is taking care of them? Who is protecting them? Who is policing their behaviour with nobody to watch over them?

The Malay women were visibly displaying a shift from adat and customs and formed modernised Malay communities, as what we typically see in old Malay movies from the ’60s-’70s.

The visibility and independence of women made society nervous about the moral choices that women make. Society needed something to “control” the behaviour of their women as they participated in the capitalist economy.

The fact that Malay women then had acquired more independence and financial security led to the regulation of Malay women’s bodies and sexual purity, somehow unmarried women’s sexuality “defined the collective identity of kampung men” (Ong, 1992:262).

This is what Alicia meant by a sort of “fetish” for Malay women with the tudung, a behaviour akin to obsession with what is associated with purity of moral.

Aihwa and Alicia both attempted to explain the rapid takeover of the tudung attire on Malay women in Malaysia, because the tudung was historically a very rare sight among Malay women only until very recently.

Alicia’s article was never interested to discuss the choice taken by women to wear the tudung, it was an objective historical look at what construed a drastic change of wardrobe.

At the same time, Alicia wanted to highlight the often sidelined voices of the non-tudung Malay women, resisting the pressure to conform to society’s interpretation of what a woman should wear. 

I am inclined to agree with Alicia on that part. You know why? Because every time I see tudung women upload their photos on Instagram, they get praises and compliments from society.

But the moment a non-tudung Malay woman uploads a picture of even her most normal attire, she would get a lot of backlash asking her to cover up and people praying for her to receive hidayah (guidance).

It is very clear who gets most socially pressured from society just over a headscarf. It is definitely not the women wearing the tudung. This is 2015, cases where you are not hired because you wear the tudung are practically unheard of anymore.

This is why the focus on “choice” was misled. How can any woman truly make a free choice about her clothes when every tiny thing about her attire is endlessly discussed?

Even tudung women now get backlash whenever her tudung attire was “not right”. People endlessly commenting at clothes that are “too tight” or “too revealing”, unfit for the image of tudung women.

Men are not subjected to this pressure because no matter what they choose to wear, nobody gives unnecessary attention to it.

Until we stop being obsessed about what women choose to wear or not wear, women will never be able to choose out of her own will.

The way I see it, we don’t have to be too sensitive about the non-tudung condition of Malay women in the past.

It was how it was, the tudung was not a dominant culture back then but it is now — there is nothing wrong with studying this phenomena objectively in academia.

Now here is my take on the debate: I think the tudung versus the free-hair women is an artificial fight. 

 Women need to stop fighting among ourselves over a piece of cloth, because women going against one another is exactly what strengthens the patriarchy interpretation of morally right behaviour.

 I am a Malay Muslim woman in Malaysia and I wear the tudung, and I constantly feel the pressure and endless policing of my body. This fight from the tudung and non-tudung sides of the debate only escalates this already huge pressure.

 The fight for women’s rights and agency goes way beyond the history of the tudung. In fact, we might need a “her”-story version of it, but let’s save that for a later debate.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Malay Mail Online.