When the Other Is One of Us: A Letter to Start a Conversation

For some time now, we have been seeing signs of change in the corners of our everyday lives, a change that does not show itself only in people's clothing.

Amount - in the type of party going and receiving a party, in the form of relationships, in the style of spending leisure time, in choosing the type of travel, in what things we have brought into our homes and what things we have left out, in our relationship with religious occasions and even in the meaning of some obligations and taboos for different generations.

A family may still consider themselves religious, but do not consider keeping a dog or cat in the apartment a problem. A young man may participate in the Ahl al-Bayt mourning ceremony, but his style of clothing or social relations do not resemble the image of a "religious person" that the generation before him had in mind. It is possible for someone to go to the mosque on the nights of Qadr and a few days later, go to a mixed party with the same friends. It is possible for a family to live in the month of Muharram with the same devotion to Imam Hussain (AS), but consider Tasua and Ashura holidays as an opportunity to travel to the north. Or someone should not fast, without considering himself separated from his faith, prayer, Ahl al-Bayt or religious memory of his family.

I am not saying this to judge whether each of these behaviors is right or wrong. There may be serious differences of opinion among us about many of them; About some, even religious and moral differences. But my problem in this article, before these behaviors themselves, is the way we face a person who has found a difference in part of his lifestyle from what we have accepted.

Perhaps one of the most important cultural changes of our time is this: people live in society who can no longer be easily placed in the same old categories. It is not possible to say with certainty that they are "insiders", nor can they simply be considered "outsiders". They still have belongings, but their lifestyles have changed; They still have religious memories and emotions, but in some behaviors they have distanced themselves from tradition; They may still shed tears for Imam Hussain (AS), but in some parts of their lives, they do not have the same choices that we expect from a pious person.

Where exactly do these people stand in this society?

And perhaps the more important question is, does the religious society only have room for those who have already conformed to all its rules? Or can it be the home of those who are still questioning, doubting, choosing, distancing or even returning in relation to these rules?

In this article, I do not intend to have a jurisprudential discussion about the hijab ruling. I have neither such claim nor expertise. My discussion starts from another place; From the moment a human being, with a different appearance than what we expect, enters the space that we consider to be our own.

For example, let's imagine a woman who enters a religious council or assembly wearing a different dress than usual.

At that moment, a small but important thing happens. He can still be an "addressee" for us; A woman who has come to hear, to see, to talk, to mourn, to pray, or even just to be present in a space where she feels a sense of belonging. But it is possible that our gaze, before hearing her speech, turns her into an "object": a woman who does not wear a hijab, a woman who should be talked about, pointed out, made meaning of, or made others notice her.

The difference between these two views can make a difference between the way of dealing. In the first, he is still a human being who has entered an assembly; In the second, before we know anything about him, he has been reduced to a behavior.

And this is where the issue of dignity comes into play.

The Quran does not say that dignity is only the share of those who live rightly; He says: "We have mercy on the children of Adam"; We gave dignity to the children of Adam. This interpretation leaves at least one serious question in front of us: if we condition the dignity of a human being to the extent of his compliance with our own desirable behavior, what remains of the dignity that the Qur'an speaks about human beings?

Of course, this does not mean that any religious norms are invalidated. The religious community has the right to have its own values, to speak about them and even to be sensitive to their preservation. The problem starts from the point where we don't make a difference between the correctness of a norm and the correctness of any method we use to deal with the violation of that norm.

It is possible to consider hijab as a religious matter and at the same time, we do not consider any kind of look, remark, humiliation or confrontation with a woman without hijab as religious. Just as we can be against fasting without depriving a person who does not fast of the right to dignity or the possibility of conversation.

This distinction is not simple; Because usually when we consider something to be right, we gradually assume the way we deal with its opposite is also right. As if the destination is right, any way we go to it will be right. However, in the religious tradition, the way of invitation and dialogue itself is also relevant: "Pray to the Lord's mustache with wisdom, and preach goodness, and argue with them, it is good." And in another place, we read about the Prophet: "Even if you were eloquent, your heart would not overflow."

These verses make us at least think about one thing: when faced with someone who is different from us, do we only think about "what should be said to him", or do we also think about how to speak to him so that it is still possible to hear?

This question is not only about hijab.

Maybe one day the problem is a young person who has distanced himself from his religious family in his lifestyle. The other day, someone who traveled on a religious occasion and ignored the "sanctity of that day" from the eyes of those around him. Or someone who participates in mixed parties, but still does not consider himself a stranger to faith and spirituality. Or a family whose lifestyle has found serious differences with what previous generations called "right life".

In all of these cases, it's not just about what he does. Another issue is how we see him.

Or a person whose relationship with this culture and this faith, although complicated and full of contradictions, has not been completely severed?

Perhaps one of our mistakes is that we know belonging only in its complete and uncontradicted form. It is as if someone has to accept all our patterns to be considered "of us", or if he deviates from this pattern in some part of his life, he no longer has a place in this "us".

But real life is not so tidy.

People are not a collection of consistent and consistent choices. A person may be deeply traditional in one part of his life and behave completely differently from tradition in another. One may live with some religious rituals and not with others. It may be that his relationship with religion is neither a complete "yes" nor a complete "no"; Rather, it should be something between memory, emotion, belief, question, habit, protest and belonging.

Maybe this is where the concept of "other" gets a more serious meaning for us. The other is not always someone who stands outside our borders. sometimes others, right among us; In our family, in our university, in our workplace, in the same board that we go to. Someone who still belongs here, but is no longer exactly like us.

And perhaps the most difficult form of encountering another is this "close other".

The assignment is clearer with the alien. We see its distance and know that it is different. But someone who still has a part of our memory, emotion and culture with him and at the same time distanced himself from some of our patterns, makes us think again about our own boundaries.

Board, meanwhile, is just an example; But it is an important example. Because in such an atmosphere, the issue is not only a woman's clothing. The issue is how a religious community reacts to a person who may still feel a part of belonging to the same community but has distanced himself from it in his way of life.

Do we want him to come in only when he has become like us?

Or can we leave room for him so that if something is going to change, that change goes through dialogue, experience, reflection, and choice, not just shame and rejection?

Of course, this question is not one-sided. Maintaining the dignity of another does not mean denying his individual responsibility; Just as a religious invitation does not mean taking dignity from someone who has not yet been associated with that invitation. Not every behavior can be exempted from criticism under the name of "lifestyle" and not every criticism can be imposed on people in the name of "religion".

The border between the two is exactly where the conversation becomes difficult.

Perhaps it is important to ask ourselves when someone is different from us, do we still see him as an audience or do we gradually turn him into an object of judgment?

Does our reminder give him the opportunity to think or just expose him to the eyes of others?

Do we see his presence in a religious space as an opportunity for communication or a sign of "another" entering our territory?

And most importantly, can a religious community be so sure of its truth that, in order to preserve it, it does not have to eliminate all differences before hearing them?

This article is not going to answer these questions for the reader. Maybe even its value is that it does not have a final answer. Because the issue we are talking about cannot be solved by a decree or an instruction. We are faced with changes in lifestyle, in generations, in people's relationship with tradition and in the way they belong to religion; And these changes cannot be understood just by labeling.

We started the discussion with the woman without hijab in the board, but the issue is bigger than the hijab.

The problem is that in a society with a religious background and identity, when a part of the people no longer live exactly according to traditional patterns, what ratio should be established between "maintaining identity" and "accepting difference"?