Below is the latest newsletter from the Tennessee Council for Political Justice.

Newsletter #193 — Pat Shea, CEO of the YWCA Betrays Women and Puts on a Hijab

Some women say their hijab represents religiously mandated modesty.

Some women say their hijab is a political statement.

Some women say they are forced to wear a hijab.

Pat Shea, a non-Muslim, voluntarily put on a hijab during a mosque sermon on “Domestic Violence/Compassionate & Honorable Treatment Towards Women in Islam.”

Pat Shea is the YWCA CEO and operates the largest domestic violence shelter in the state of Tennessee. Does Shea know that the hijab is a source of violence to Muslim women worldwide and in the U.S?

Muslim women have been killed for refusing to wear a hijab. For example:

• 2007 — Canada, murder of 16 year old Aqsa Parvez choked to death by her father with the hijab she refused to wear
• 2014 — in Somalia, woman murdered for refusing to veil
• 2015 — Iraq, five women stoned to death for not wearing a hijab
• 2015 — India, father kills his four year old daughter for not wearing a hijab at dinner

January 2015, a non-Muslim woman living in Muslim-majority Bangladesh murdered for not wearing a hijab

Muslim women have been threatened with violence for not wearing a hijab. For example:

• 2011 — Britain, woman is threatened with death by her cousin for not wearing a hijab
• 2013 — Sudan, a woman faces whipping for not wearing a hijab
• 2014 — Pankisi Gorge, a brother stabs his sister for refusing to wear a hijab
• 2015 — Missouri, a high school student dragged her from her classroom and assaulted by a relative for not wearing a hijab

Enlightened Muslim women in 2015 reject people like Pat Shea putting on a hijab

Self-described “mainstream Muslim women” living in the U.S., many of whom were born in countries where sharia law governed, have rejected the misogynistic Islamic call for women to cover themselves. They reject Western women showing “solidarity” by participating in “Wear a Hijab” day and interfaith imitators tying on the headscarf.

In fact, these adult Muslim women explain that hijab doesn’t even mean 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.”

These women understand that if Muslim women living in the West are free to choose hijab or no hijab, patriarchy in Islam which is supported and perpetuated by political Islamists, will cease to dominate.

Political Islamists like Remziya Suleyman and Kasar Abdullah Bigdawidi (pictured above with Shea), are Muslim activists who have promoted Islamist Muslim Brotherhood organizations like CAIR and the Muslim Students Association. They assert absurd hijab positions like the hijab gives them more rights than American women allowing them to be judged by intellect, not looks.

Suleyman even admitted that she didn’t start wearing a hijab until 2008 when she coincidentally also started lobbying in the Tennessee state legislature. With all the rights she asserts afforded by wearing a hijab, her Islamic community still maintains her first duty is to find a husband and complete her “deen” (subjugation).

Shame on Shea

Kasar Abdullah Bigdawidi is the token Islamist on Shea’s YWCA board, so Shea, true to leftist hypocrisy, let herself be used for Kasar’s political purposes even though the YWCA claims to be an advocate for women’s rights.

When YWCA CEO Pat Shea put on the hijab she professed to upholding the Islamic laws that knowledgeable Muslim women understand keep them in a second class status.

The Muslim Brotherhood CAIR lawyer Zahra Billoo says “[t]he flag of Islam is our women who wear hijab.” The hijab is a symbol.

So is the Nazi salute.