Stylish Clothes for the Modern Day Muslimah

Holly Rhue wrote in the northernvirginiamag.com about 22-year old Sana Mahmood, the George Mason University (GMU) business student who “is making stylish modesty more accessible to Muslim-American women” through her online Veiled Beaut brand – clothes for the “modern day Muslimah.”

Appealing to “feminism,” the Merriam-Webster’s 2017 word of the year, Rhue quotes Mahmood that the American fashion industry “wrongfully affirms that a woman’s influence must only lay within her appeal and physical features.”  Mahmood’s Veiled Beaut is a “complete line of stylish hijabs and a full-blown humanitarian effort.”

But feminism as defined by Merriam Webster’s dictionary, “the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men,” is the antithesis of what burkas and hijabs represent.

If appeal and physical features were not important in a woman’s influence, then why bother to make stylish burkas and hijabs, and why bother to use heavy makeup?

For the fashion-conscious western women, it is hard to imagine the hijab and the burka, a tent-like item of clothing that conceals any human shape, as stylish.

Western women cannot understand how a burka is sold as an expression of modesty when in some Muslim countries women are forced to wear it, beaten or jailed if they are seen or caught in public without a burka and a hijab. Even foreign female dignitaries who visit Muslim countries are expected to wear a hijab in public.

We see clothing in the Western world as a way to cover our bodies for warmth in winter and for coolness in summer.  We have uniforms but these are hardly designed to conceal the human form. Some clothes are stylish, some are just practical; some are too revealing and others cover more. Some are odd, some are inappropriate, some more modest, and some are creative. People wear what they like and are comfortable in, not what theocrats order them to.

Often nuns’ habits are compared to wearing burkas and hijabs but the comparison is absurd. Nuns wear habits because they want to serve God and this is their way of doing it. Nobody forces them to put on a habit or lashes them in public if they don’t.

Creating “stylish hijabs” and “kimonos” (I thought kimonos were Japanese), Rhue explains that “through these products, Mahmood hopes to shift the paradigm on how the world sees female empowerment and social justice.” So liberals now equate female empowerment and social justice with colorful burkas and hijabs with tassels and other decorative embroidery.

Seriously? Wearing a burka and a hijab is female empowerment and social justice? On what planet is being whipped, jailed, and beaten for not wearing a hijab or a burka in public female empowerment? Is it social justice that Muslim women are considered half a human in a court of law? And how is that expressed in a tent-like item of clothing which they are forced to wear?

Seeing the dearth of products for the American Muslim market seeded Mahmood’s idea to target Muslim-American women and their needs.

Do we have a Christian-American market and Christian-American women needs? We do because this country, despite of what liberals tell us, was founded and populated by Christian Americans. But, unlike liberals, we don’t like to hyphenate people; we refer to all our citizens as Americans regardless of religion, race, and sex.

Rhue describes how Mahmood “went to great lengths to find a manufacturer with high safety standards and ethical treatment of employees.” Who knew that American manufacturers did not have safety standards or ethical treatment of their employees?

Mahmood “selflessly” donates 10 percent of Veiled Beaut’s annual profits to Helping Hand, “an organization that feeds, clothes, shelters, and educates orphans in Jordan.” Sounds like a generous humanitarian cause. “Islamic finance is based on the profit-sharing principle and requires investment in ethical causes or projects.”