The Austrian president Alexander van der Bellen proposes that
all women should wear a hijab to show solidarity to Muslim women in Austria and to "
fight Islamophobia". As a parallel he cites that the Danish started to wear the yellow David's Star to show solidarity to Jews in their country during Nazi occupation.
This is an embarrassingly twisted view, for several reasons.
First of all, van der Bellen references a myth. The Danish king or Danish people did not start to wear David's Star in solidarity to Jews. Anyone can quickly check this with
Snopes. It did not happen.
 |
When a religious symbol is used in a
situation like in this Alamy stock photo,
that is what vilifies its meaning.
Otherwise, no one cares. |
Secondly, wearing hijab is a person's own choice. Whatever perception people have about what the hijab means is largely decided by how the wearers themselves behave and express their religion. As a religious symbol, European law should be neutral about it. But as it's a person's own choice, it's rather insulting to compare the voluntary wearing of hijab to a situation where Nazis would insist that people of certain race must wear a mark to enable persecuting them based on that race. Nobody should be proposing a persecution of people based on voluntary wearing hijab. In fact, even the Nazis did not require Jews to wear the star in Denmark.
(At least I hope the wearing of hijab is voluntary, and not instigated by fear of reprisals and violence.)
Finally, I can only wonder why van der Bellen proposes that Austrian
women should start wearing hijab in solidarity. Wouldn't it make a lot more sense if Austrian men, and Alexander himself in particular, would start with that solidarity?
