On Monday, I wrote about World Hijab Day during which non-Muslim teachers in public schools adopted the religious practice of hijab, wearing the head covering that some Muslim women wear voluntarily and some are coerced into wearing. Hijab is a controversial practice even among Muslims, many of whom see it as a symbol of a form of political Islam called Islamism that oppresses women.

World Hijab Day and other public school events expose the hypocrisy of “progressives” when it comes to their responses to Islam as compared to their responses to theologically orthodox Christianity.

Hypocrisy #1: Modesty and chastity

While “progressives” heap scorn and ridicule on school districts that enforce dress codes that prohibit skimpy skirts and décolletage-baring tops, “progressive” teachers don hijabs in solidarity with Muslim women whose religion requires them to protect their modesty by covering their hair and sometimes their entire bodies from the top of their heads to the tips of their toes.

While “progressives” mock conservative Christians for their commitments to chastity until marriage, they demonstrate their solidarity with Muslims who believe that “a woman’s honor lies in her ‘chastity.’”  Muslim women Asra Q. Nomani and Hala Arafa inadvertently expose the hypocrisy of “progressive” American women when they describe the beliefs foundational to hijab:

[T]he “hijab “is a symbol of an interpretation of Islam we reject that believes that women are a sexual distraction to men, who are weak, and thus must not be tempted by the sight of our hair…. This ideology promotes a social attitude that absolves men of sexually harassing women and puts the onus on the victim to protect herself by covering up.

“Progressive” American women who believe women have no responsibility for the sexually abusive actions of men don hijabs to demonstrate solidarity with a religious practice that holds women responsible for men’s abusive actions. “Progressive” American women who march in the streets wearing clitoris costumes and “p*ssy” hats, reveling in the words of Madonna who offered to perform a sexual act on any man who voted for Hillary show solidarity with a religion that covers women from head to toe to prevent men from being tempted.

Hypocrisy #2: Religious persecution

Nazma Khan, who created World Hijab Day in response to being called names for wearing a hijab, asserts that it’s an effort to end discrimination and foster religious tolerance—both noble goals.

That said, is it the role of public school teachers to teach students about solidarity with any religious tradition or political goal, let alone a controversial and divisive one?

In his book Save the World on Your Own Time, Professor Stanley Fish disputes the notion that teachers should “advocate personal, political, moral, or any other kind of views except academic views.” Fish contends that teachers are not hired to do things like “produce active citizens, inculcate the virtue of tolerance, redress injustices, and bring about social change.” In Fish’s view, these are tasks properly left to “preachers, therapists, social workers, political activists, professional gurus, [and] inspirational speakers.” I would add parents to that list.

But if fostering solidarity with persecuted groups is part of the teaching responsibilities of public school faculty, why are they not fostering solidarity with the most persecuted religious group in the world: Christians.

The one religious group in America that “progressives” deem worthy of mockery—including even savage mockery—are theologically orthodox Christians. So, why do “progressives” detest theologically orthodox Christians so intensely?

They hate them primarily for three reasons:

1. Christians believe that absolute, objective, transcendent truth exists.

2. They believe that homoerotic activity is immoral.

3. They believe that marriage has a nature central to which is sexual differentiation.

Guess what? So do the majority of Muslims—including even moderate Muslims.

World Hijab Day reveals the hypocrisy of Leftists who hold theologically orthodox Christians in disdain because of their historical Christian beliefs regarding sexuality while participating in an event to show solidarity with the Muslims who hold similar positions.

In a 2013 Huffington Post piece on the persecution of Christians worldwide and especially in the Middle East, liberal Dr. Kelly James Clark, who heads up an interfaith organization decries the silence of the Western media and the U.S. Government:

In early November, German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that Christianity is “the most persecuted religion in the world.” Although met with predictable criticism, Rupert Short’s recent research report for Civitas UK confirms Merkel’s claim—we may not want to hear it, but Christianity is in peril, like no other religion….Short shows that “Christians are targeted more than any other body of believers.” Short is the author of the recently published Christianophobia: A Faith Under Attack. He is concerned that “200 million Christians (10 percent of the global total) are socially disadvantaged, harassed or actively oppressed for their beliefs.”

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Why has the tragedy of Christians in the Muslim world been ignored? Short blames this on the media’s fear that criticizing Muslims is tantamount to racism. I attribute it as well to secular media’s lack of interest in and sometimes even scorn for religious belief.

Western media must overcome its fear of criticizing Muslims and its disinterest in religious belief. Religious liberties are the most fundamental human liberties….In countries where religious liberty is conspicuously absent, one is likely to find a host of other liberties threatened as well.

Last February, New York State assemblyman Democrat David Weprin proclaimed his unwavering commitment to religious liberty in his endorsement of World Hijab Day:

With hate crimes against Muslim-Americans tripling in 2016, it is important we take this moment to stand together with our fellow Americans on World Hijab Day. Rooted in the American principles of religious freedom and liberty, the World Hijab Day movement seeks to end the discrimination and judgment that comes with wearing a hijab.’

…All Americans of all faiths should be allowed to freely exercise…their religious choice without the fear of violence and bigotry. 

It’s refreshing to hear a Democrat passionately endorse religious liberty. Perhaps Weprin will support the right of Christians in wedding-related businesses to decline to use their gifts and labor to serve a type of event that offends the God they serve. These business owners are encountering far worse bigoted persecution than being called names—though they experience that as well. They are losing their livelihoods.

From their religion of secularism—that is, faith in and worship of secularist assumptions about human nature and man’s relationship to the world—“progressives” arrogate to themselves the right to exercise their religion freely, including in the conduct of their businesses. But “progressives” deny that right to those whose religion includes belief in God. So, while clothing designers can refuse to serve a person based on the designers’ opposition to the beliefs of the person’s spouse, bakers are not permitted to refuse to bake an anti-wedding cake based on their opposition to same-sex anti-weddings. And remember, unlike “progressive” clothing designers who refuse to serve a person, these Christian bakers are happy to serve homosexuals—just not bake anti-wedding cakes.

Hypocrisy #3: Prayer in public schools

Leftist hypocrisy is revealed not only through World Hijab Day but also through the accommodation of  Muslim religious practices in public schools. For example, in addition to some Glenbrook South High School teachers wearing a Hijab all day on Feb. 1, the school provides a prayer space for Muslims as does Glen Crest Middle School in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. In a diverse and welcoming society, such accommodations seem reasonable.

But if those accommodations are reasonable, why was there such vociferous “progressive” opposition to the law passed here in Illinois mandating a moment of silence in public schools that specifically states that it “shall not be conducted as a religious exercise but shall be an opportunity for silent prayer or for silent reflection on the anticipated activities of the day”?

When I worked at Deerfield High School, this moment of silence was a blindingly quick 7 seconds. A student inclined to pray couldn’t make it much further than “Our Father who art in Heaven” before they were hustled on to more pressing homeroom issues like, well, often nothing.

And yet many “progressives” oppose even that, evidently fearing that allowing 7 seconds of silence during which students may pray constitutes the establishment of a state religion. And yet, non-Muslim teachers wearing hijab all day is a religiously neutral act and providing Muslim students with prayer rooms is constitutionally hunky dory. Curiouser and curiouser.

In a radio interview in Dec. 2016, Professor Massimo Introvigne, Director of the Centre for Studies on New Religion, stated that “[religious] intolerance is the antechamber of discrimination which then in turn is the antechamber of…persecution.” He further shared that “between 500 and 600 million Christians…cannot practice their own faith in complete freedom.”

The United States is rapidly moving from intolerance of Christianity to discrimination. While “progressives” twist themselves into a Gordion knot to show deference to, compassion for, and solidarity with Muslims, they regularly and openly demonstrate disdain for Christians. The vitriol directed at conservative Christians in the culture results in Christian children feeling embarrassed to share their beliefs. Would public school teachers show their solidarity with theologically orthodox Christians by wearing crosses visibly for an entire day, or would that be a bridge of tolerance too far?

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February 1, 2013 marked the first annual World Hijab Day, which was started by Nazma Khan, who emigrated from Bangladesh to the U.S. when she was 11 years old.

“Social activist” Khan tells her story of being called “Batman” and “ninja” in middle school for wearing a hijab (i.e., what is commonly mistranslated as a Muslim “headscarf”). She entered college after 9/11 where she was called “Osama bin Laden” and “terrorist.” From those experiences, Khan concluded that “the only way to end discrimination is if we ask our fellow sisters to experience hijab themselves.”

On World Hijab Day, non-Muslim women and non-hijabi Muslims (i.e., Muslim women who don’t wear hijabs) are urged to wear a hijab for a day “in recognition of millions of Muslim women who choose to wear the hijab and live a life of modesty.”

So, in solidarity with Muslims, misguided non-Muslim teachers and students in public schools around the country adopted the religious practice of hijab all day on Feb. 1, including schools right here in Illinois.

Peg Mannion, community relations coordinator for Glenbard South High School in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, described World Hijab Day as a “a student-led” effort that some teachers participated in and which aligns with Glenbard’s commitment to be a “culturally inclusive learning environment.”

In contrast, World Hijab Day at Richards High School in Oak Lawn, Illinois was a teacher-initiated event:

As the news of President Donald Trump’s travel ban on seven Muslim nations was breaking Jan. 28, health teacher Allison Williams was learning through Facebook that Feb. 1 had been designated World Hijab Day.

The juxtaposition of the two events gave her an idea. What if teachers in the school that has District 218’s highest population of Muslim students wore hijabs for the day? On Monday morning, she emailed school officials, only to learn that French teacher Kelly Karstrand had already done the same thing.

According to the Chicago Tribune, more than 20 teachers, most of whom were not Muslim, wore hijabs on World Hijab Day.

While Richards High School history teacher Joyce Cruse claims that the “movement is not about politics,” both she and history teacher Rahaf Othman mentioned Trump’s immigration “ban” in connection to their decision to wear a hijab.

Here are two allegedly “non-political” statements, the first from Williams, the second from Cruse:

“The election of this president has made a lot of our students feel not only that their president is against them but that maybe a lot of others are too—more people than they originally thought.”

“The day after the election one of my students said his father sat the whole family down at the breakfast table and told them, ‘I want all of you to be careful about how you behave and what you say because this man hates us.'”

Despite claims of Khan and fans of World Hijab Day, it is unavoidably political as revealed in a controversial Washington Post essay written by two Muslim women prior to World Hijab Day 2015 and titled “As Muslim women, we actually ask you not to wear the hijab in the name of interfaith solidarity.” Here is an extended excerpt from the commentary by journalists Asra Q. Nomani and Hala Arafa who suggest that World Hijab Day is both political and offensive to many Muslims:

Last week three female religious leaders—a Jewish rabbi, an Episcopal vicar and a Unitarian reverend—and a male imam, or Muslim prayer leader, walked into the sacred space in front of the ornately-tiled minbar, or pulpit, at the Khadeeja Islamic Center in West Valley City, Utah. The women were smiling widely, their hair covered with swaths of bright scarves, to support “Wear a Hijab” day.

The Salt Lake Tribune published a photo of fresh-faced teenage girls, who were not Muslim, in the audience at the mosque, their hair covered with long scarves….

For us, as mainstream Muslim women, born in Egypt and India, the spectacle at the mosque was a painful reminder of the well-financed effort by conservative Muslims to dominate modern Muslim societies. This modern-day movement spreads an ideology of political Islam, called “Islamism”….

We reject this interpretation that the “hijab” is merely a symbol of modesty and dignity adopted by faithful female followers of Islam.

This modern-day movement, codified by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Taliban Afghanistan and the Islamic State, has erroneously made the Arabic word hijab synonymous with “headscarf.” This conflation of hijab with the secular word headscarf is misleading. “Hijab” literally means “curtain” in Arabic. It also means “hiding,” ”obstructing” and “isolating” someone or something. It is never used in the Koran to mean headscarf.

…

Born in the 1960s into conservative but open-minded families (Hala in Egypt and Asra in India), we grew up without an edict that we had to cover our hair. But, starting in the 1980s, following the 1979 Iranian revolution of the minority Shiite sect and the rise of well-funded Saudi clerics from the majority Sunni sect, we have been bullied in an attempt to get us to cover our hair from men and boys.

…

To us, the “hijab”is a symbol of an interpretation of Islam we reject…

…

We have seen what the resurgence of political Islam has done to our regions of origin and to our adoptive country.

As Americans, we believe in freedom of religion. But we need to clarify to those in universities, the media and discussion forums that in exploring the “hijab,” they are not exploring Islam, but rather the ideology of political Islam….

In the name of “interfaith,” these well-intentioned Americans are getting duped by the agenda of Muslims who argue that a woman’s honor lies in her “chastity” and unwittingly pushing a platform to put a hijab on every woman.

Please do this instead: Do not wear a headscarf in “solidarity” with the ideology that most silences us….Stand with us instead with moral courage against the ideology of Islamism that demands we cover our hair.

Due to the dust-up that ensued following the publication of their essay Nomani and Arafa wrote a short follow-up essay for the New York Times that offers a view of hijabi oppression that few Americans see:

Saturday night at the Dar Al Noor mosque in Manassas, Va., near Civil War battlefields, a girl of about 7 sat cross-legged in a dimly lit back corner of the prayer hall in the cramped “sisters’ section.” A tinted waist-high glass barrier separated the girl from the spacious “brothers’ section,” where about 50 men listened intently to a Saudi preacher who ignored the “sisters.”

The girl’s hair was entirely covered by a scarf, per the mosque’s guidelines for “proper Islamic attire….” As mainstream Muslim women, we see the girl’s headscarf not as a signal of “choice,” but as a symbol of a dangerous purity culture…that has divided Muslim communities in our own civil war, or fitna, since the Saudi and Iranian regimes promulgated puritanical interpretations of Sunni and Shia Islam….

…

This purity culture covers, segregates, subordinates, silences, jails and kills women and girls around the world. Recently, in Bareilly, India, a father killed his daughter, 4, smashing her head against the floor when her scarf slipped from her head during dinner. In Ontario, a few years ago, a man strangled his 16-year-old sister when she defied their father, including by refusing to cover her hair. In November, a former University of Missouri instructor dragged a female relative, 14, out of school “by the hair” when he discovered she hadn’t covered her hair. Today, in Iran, friends of the journalist Masih Alinejad dodge batons as they shoot photos of themselves, hair bare, in a campaign Alinejad started, #MyStealthyFreedom, to protest Iran’s mandatory headscarf law.

Last month, after writing an essay arguing the headscarf isn’t Islamically mandated, we received verbal abuse from American Muslim leaders and academics, calling us “despicable,” “clinically delusional,” “Satan” and “dajjal,” the Muslim equivalent of anti-Christ.

But we believe women have a right to wear–or not wear–the headscarf. To that end, we heard from Muslims from Malaysia to Minnesota who told us again and again: “Thank you.”

No matter what our non-Muslim public school teachers think about hijab, no matter what their intentions are, it should be clear that their acts of wearing a hijab to demonstrate solidarity with hijabi Muslim women is a divisive, political act.

While American taxpayers ponder the wisdom of non-Muslim, public school teachers adopting a Muslim religious practice—controversial even among Muslims—for an entire day every school year, I’ll leave you with this troubling endorsement of World Hijab Day:

[U]ntil I heard about world hijab day, I didn’t know much. After reading what Islam is about and why women wear hijab, I decided to convert….I would’ve never learned about Islam if it weren’t for world hijab day. http://worldhijabday.com/2836-2/

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