Wearing the Hijab Isn’t Freedom — It’s Submission
Western politicians celebrate the hijab as a form of religious self-expression. Yet they refuse to confront what it says about women.
Back in May, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took the stage in the Bronx in a red hijab, with New York mayor Zohran Mamdani standing behind her. In response to criticism, Ocasio-Cortez claimed she wore the hijab as a gesture of respect for her Muslim audience. It was one instance of what is now a settled consensus. Across the political spectrum—progressive, centrist, and even conservative—Western elites have for decades viewed the hijab, chador, or niqab as just another form of religious self-expression. When the House changed its rules in 2019 to allow Congresswoman Ilhan Omar to wear her hijab on the chamber floor, it was celebrated as a milestone of inclusion. The message was clear: to question the respectability of the hijab is to question the respectability of Islam itself, —and that is bigotry.
There is an obvious double standard in the elite acceptance of the hijab, because , like many other garments and symbols, it represents a set of beliefs. It has a public and readily intelligible meaning. And that meaning o is fundamentally incompatible with the normal liberal Western view of the equality of women and men.
The hijab is not a devotional flourish: in Islam, it is a legal obligation with a stated purpose. The Quran commands women to cover “that they should be known and not molested.” The covered woman is marked as protected; the uncovered woman as available. The command to veil is underwritten by the doctrine of fitna, which treats the female body as an inherently sinful object of lust that must be hidden so that men are not led astray. The veil, then, marks a woman as private and restricted property. When young Muslim girls begin to veil, they are being groomed for docility. There is nothing empowering or liberating about donning the hijab. It is an act of submission.
