“A chastity belt worn on the head”: There is nothing wonderful about the hijab

While I am still free to do so without penalty, I would like to make what might one day be construed as an Islamophobic statement:

I am very disturbed by a growing phenomenon in the west I would describe as hijab reverence – what seems to me a partly well-organized, a partly jump-on-the-bandwagon campaign among our left-wing cultural elites.

There is nothing wonderful or charming or woman-friendly about the hijab. We are told that women who wear the hijab have chosen it freely. But what free woman would have invented or embraced such an apparatus?

The hijab is not prescribed by Islam, as countless Islamic scholars have told us. It is a cultural custom invented by men in the most patriarchal regions of the planet. In its modern incarnation, it is often a political tool signaling anti-western sentiment.

It must be tolerated, obviously, but it is certainly nothing to be praised or encouraged at the official level in a free country.

And yet the hijab charm offensive is supported at the highest levels of governance with great enthusiasm. As my fellow Rebel contributor Claire Lehmann demonstrated in a recent video, the fashion world has taken up the hijab in a big way.

In one high-density Muslim enclave in Sweden, a sticker recently appeared in a public place, reading, “Women who don’t wear a headscarf are asking to be raped.” Is that really an attitude we want to give the slightest opening to here?