Two weeks ago, an 18 year old NY Muslim woman, Yasmin Seweid, reported being attacked by three drunks who called her a terrorist and tried to steal her hijab. Today, it turns out that she fabricated the story in order to cover for being out past curfew. She is now facing various criminal charges.
The blogosphere is predictable in its reactions. Liberals are arguing that one false report of anti-Muslim behavior does not obviate the fact that it is “rampant.” Conservatives are arguing that people are lying to create division and undermine Trump’s victory. Many are denouncing this young woman of “false flag” and other nefarious intent.
What’s lost in all this is that she’s just a kid. A kid who strayed outside the strict boundaries imposed by her family and feared her father’s retribution. She is reportedly dating a Catholic boy, drinking, and staying out past curfew, and if we take a moment to contemplate what we know about teenagers, we can easily see how she’d latch onto whatever opportunistic excuse she could concoct in a moment of fear to avoid her father’s wrath.
Wrath, it seems, that includes (as the NYPost reports) having her long hair shorn.
There is something big missing from this story and these reports. What you are not seeing, hearing or reading is the outrage from the Social Justice movement about how she, an adult woman, is subject to her father’s backward and repressive beliefs. About her having her head shorn as punishment. About how her family’s wrong in objecting to her acting like countless other young American women who, we’ve all been told, have been brutalized under a repressive patriarchy for as long as this country has existed.
Parents since time immemorial have exercised “my house my rules” authority over their kids. This story certainly fits that vein, and I am not going to presume to speak on behalf of either the father or the daughter. However, busybodies since time immemorial have presumed to take sides in such matters, and the Left, feminism, and women’s liberation have long stood on the side of daughters who want to have greater autonomy. This autonomy even extends to the right of minors to have abortions without parental consent or notification, so it’s hard to imagine that they’d be accepting of a father’s punishing of his adult daughter by shearing her hair down to buzz-cut length (again – there’s no confirmation of the haircut being meted as punishment, but activists have acted on much flimsier coincidences).
Sadly, this mirrors a shocking silence from the Left regarding what Westerners aptly see as repressive, subjugating and even barbaric practices against women taught by strict and radical forms of Islam. I’ve written about feminism’s silence on Islam here, here, and here. While stoning for adultery and for being raped, and Sharia laws regarding being accompanied in public, driving a car, and the like haven’t found their way to America, things like honor killings have. More broadly, female children of Muslim parents don’t seem to have feminists championing for them. It would seem natural and expected that women’s rights groups would be vocal in their opposition and denunciation of the strict religious mandates that young Muslim women face, especially given their support of, for example, birth control access to the point of demanding that Catholic organizations provide it as part of their health insurance coverage for employees.
Alas, it doesn’t seem destined to be.
Social justice has demonstrated that it prioritizes certain grievances groups over others. There is a grievance hierarchy, and recent history has made it quite clear that Islam ranks very high in that hierarchy. Higher, apparently, than feminism and women’s rights, as the Left’s silence on Ms. Seweid’s fear of and possible punishment by her father.
The Left has long claimed defense of victims and the oppressed as its bailiwick. This would be a golden opportunity for it to affirm that claim, especially given the Right’s focus on Ms. Seweid’s lie as a political act rather than that of a frightened teen. The story just broke, so I might actually be happily surprised in the next few days. However, I doubt it. I expect what we typically see in such matters: silence.
Who will stand for the rights of young Muslim women in America? Who will push back against the repressiveness imposed by religious families, repressiveness that runs contrary to Western precepts of liberty? Who will tell them that their parents do have the right to practice the religion of their choice, but that those rights do not supersede their own rights to, as adults, live the lives they choose?
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I already saw quotes from CAIR that just because this was fabricated we should still be diligent about all the other anti-Muslim attacks. It’s just that I am not seeing them.