Anne
There’s something about a headscarf on Megan Woods that makes me laugh. Yes, terrible, I laugh. On Ardern it’s a cringe. On Nasrin, I’m upset, bewildered, angry.
Nasrin’s dedication as a human rights lawyer, activist and supporter of the movement to free Iranian women of the hijab has made her a target of silencing, persecution, cruelty and imprisonment – for god knows how many years. This is her life. Her actual life.
The injustices that form Nasrin’s story should be priority conversations in every political jurisdiction, they should provoke sanctions against Iran, and overwhelm the feminists.
But feminism is remarkably silent on the issue of Nasrin.
We see complacency here too, every time the Prime Minister – not known to be of the Muslim faith, pulls on a headscarf on occasions deemed suitable. She receives praise for doing this, is copied and adored. And the hijab controversy is lost in her shadow, obscuring the people who care and want it fixed.
We can accept the right of women to choose the hijab but is an international feminist icon, esteemed for compassion, kindness and the puritanical flogging of virtuousness, the right person to be endorsing its enforcement?
It depends what head covering means to the individual. For Ardern it’s tokenism. For me it’s dis-empowerment.
You see, having suffered a devastating head injury, I am very head aware. My head is my wellspring, it generates my whole self, my capacity to think, remember, process information and take action. It is the epicentre of my cognitive, mental, physical, emotional and spiritual being. It determines my sense of self, allows me to define my style, my needs, my reckonings with the world. It means everything to me. It is me.
The wilful covering of the human head is a damnation against humanity. That is how I see it. I would never use my head as a billboard of oppression or to mimic that which I am not.
But there Ardern went on Thursday, pressing elbows, shaking hands with a few special people and COVID-19 be damned, hugging a few special people as she worked the crowd in all her finery on the grounds of Al Noor mosque.
Amid the sadness, memories were fortified with the welcoming of a plaque, another milestone on the journey of grief and coping but although it was time to honour and remember the dead, the ceremony was not an entirely solemn reflection. There was an element of theatre about Jacinda, and goodness only knows how many of those excited followers managed to nudge themselves and jostle for position to star in one of her famous group selfies.
At precisely twenty-one days until the General Election and a few hours after Grant “Robbo” Robertson told a man in a MAGA hat that he did not have “and never would have the intellect or courage” of Jacinda Ardern, Al Noor’s speech of the day savagely demanded laws against ‘hate speech’.
When it comes to terrorism, we really have to wonder how on earth hate speech laws are supposed to stop a madman on a mission armed with an arsenal of guns? Quite clearly he hasn’t taken any notice of the law that says ‘do not kill’. Why would he adhere to word law?
Draped in her cloth of choice, with her entourage scattered eloquently and enough press in attendance to capture the moment, Jacinda made a commitment. Yes, unheard of. But ‘yes’ she said, yes, yes, absolutely her government will restrict words and works that cause offence. With gladness she appeased the woke and their troubled identity, victim-led can of worms. Sexual orientation, religion, disability, colour, ethnicity, gender. Trans-women in women’s sport. Gone with the Wind. Absolutely.
Resolve is what she exhibited. But not when it came to Ihumatao or cannabis.
What did Thursday bring for Nasrin? Recent reports speak of her illness, her hunger strike in protest against poor hygiene in the prison, her weakened heart, her worried family. It is impossible to imagine her battles, her scars, her thoughts of the future. Impossible to know what keeps her sustained.
And with Nasrin in mind, I pause to wonder if the intellectual and courageous powerhouse otherwise known as Jacinda Ardern actually realised her pretend hijab was doing double duty? On the one hand, it gestured respect to the Muslim women of Christchurch, and on the other hand, it undermined the horror of Nasrin’s situation.
Well at least meagre mortals such as myself have the wherewithal to make a stand on this issue. I don’t believe it’s necessary to wear a headscarf at a public Muslim memorial; I can comfortably extend genuine and sincere support to anyone regardless of their religious adornments if they respect my trousers, jacket and loafers.
I close – if I may, with the observation that during the very same week Ardern scattered petals of compassion, kindness and solidarity with Islam, a young woman sat alone in a quarantine dorm, coping with the death of her mother. She was forbidden a visit by the State, and like so many others sacrificed a final holding of a hand, a sweet ‘I love you’ and ‘goodbye’. The enormity of this ordeal will remain with this woman as the death of a parent is always remembered by its context.
But “Jacinda the Kind” shook the headlines with earnest reverberations promising to drive another stake through our fragile civil liberties (like the COVID-19 Response Act was not enough) while Meg Woods clapped in unison from underneath her dumpy frumpy headgear. Interestingly, nobody in these times of ‘hate speech’ and ‘cultural appropriation’ noticed that these white, Kiwi, head-scarfed women – in the crux of an election campaign – were quite possibly exploiting a massacre, and Islam.
It took Judith Collins’ appalling reference to her husband to gain traction on weaponising. “My husband is Samoan,” she said. How dare she say such a thing.
And with that, a throng of social warriors wailed with indignation and proved how trite their worries really are. And this is why I write about brain injuries. And this is why I write for Nasrin.
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