Since 1970, April has been designated as Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month in the United States. From that time until now, each year we have witnessed a worsening situation for women in this regard. Every year, the US president officially announces the start of this occasion with a statement. In his 2024 statement on this matter, Joe Biden proclaimed: "More than half of all women and nearly one-third of all men in America have experienced sexual violence. The rate of sexual violence is even higher for people of color. Survivors have faced this violence wherever life happens – at work, at school, at home, and online."
Misogynistic West
We are currently witnessing that Western civilization – including the United States – is grappling with a chronic epidemic of sexual misconduct against women. According to contemporary scientific studies, this crisis stems from the widespread dehumanization and devaluation of women in Western societies – an issue referred to in academic research as the "objectification and sexualization of women." The escalating statistics surrounding this crisis indicate that the efforts of Western societies to address this epidemic have proven futile, to the extent that, despite these attempts, we are witnessing a worsening situation for women in the West in this regard day by day.
In addition to the lack of safety for women in public and private spaces, various Western institutions, including workplaces, the military, police forces, prisons, universities, schools, media, sports environments, and cultural-recreational settings, are in a fragile state due to the pervasive prevalence of sexual assault. Experts describe the "prevalence of sexual assault" within these institutions as "one of the most destructive indicators of persistent gender inequality."
The West: An ailing civilization
The West, this ailing civilization, is afflicted by an epidemic of dehumanizing women, and the lived cultural experience of Western countries reveals serious harm to children under such conditions to the extent that concerns about the sexualization of children have found widespread reflection in reports from scientific associations, scholarly research articles, and books by experts. In this vicious cycle, each generation faces circumstances more dire than the one before. Marriage suffers due to an objectifying view of male-female relationships, leading to the proliferation of uncommitted, disposable, and unethical relationships outside of norms and morality. If a marriage does occur, it will be unstable, and with the rise of divorce and unstable families, other social harms increase as well.
In such a culture, women are taught that their appearance – measured against a sexualized standard – is the most important aspect of their identity. Western civilization has grown addicted to the profits derived from this vicious cycle, though ultimately, the staggering costs resulting from this trend are deemed as its “side effects.” Scientific studies on the objectification and sexualization of women demonstrate that in societies where this issue has become widely established, violence also becomes entrenched in men. Consequently, women’s value diminishes in their perception, and men, while viewing them through an objectifying lens, consider themselves entitled to exploit women. This phenomenon is evident in the behaviors of many men wielding economic, political, or cultural power in the West.
What’s the solution?
It must be noted that Western civilization is suffering from a miscalculation: on the one hand, it insists on preserving and promoting a toxic culture in which the objectification of women has become normalized, while on the other hand, it seeks to create a society free of sexual violence against women without addressing this cultural ailment.
Scientific studies pertaining to the relationship between the objectification of women and sexual assault indicate that, just as the suffering and pain of women in the West due to sexual violence have been depicted, there is a yearning – at least among the scientific elite of Western countries – to find a way out of this situation. Moreover, as more exploration is conducted into solutions for this predicament, increasing evidence underscores the reality that the liberal system based on materialism and self-interest offers no solution to escape this situation.
Scientific studies on the objectification and sexualization of women increasingly clarify that Islam is the only system of social interaction capable of reducing these “destructive indicators of gender inequality” to their bare minimum, while adopting a preventive approach to eradicate them at the societal level. The uproar from major powers surrounding the hijab can be seen as an attempt to conceal the findings of studies that stand at the cutting edge of contemporary knowledge on this issue – findings that affirm Islam’s progressive perspective on the standards for healthy relationships between women and men in society.
Hijab: A symbol of Islam's social interaction system
Years of Islamophobia and Iranophobia have kept Western women away from the solution to this problem. However, the events that unfolded in Gaza after October 7, 2023, showed that the young Western generation has a mental readiness to break down the walls of colonial and capitalist propaganda.
The awakening observed among the general populace of Western countries regarding Palestine, particularly among the youth, is a sign of a deep transformation in the West, moving beyond the phenomenon of Western supremacy. Western youth are in the process of moving past the civilizational ailment of dehumanizing other human societies. The spirit of this transformation carries within it the potential capacity for the West to transcend this affliction of supremacy in cultural domains as well, especially regarding women’s issues. Statistics and scientific studies, all of which are tangible and observable in the lived experiences of individual women in the West, demonstrate the reality that Western civilization holds no superiority over other societies in the field of women’s issues.
What’s more is that this tragic experience has engendered a reality replete with suffering and hardship for both women and men. If women in the West come to realize that there is no reason to regard the Western experience as superior when it comes to the treatment of women in society, and that there is evidence of a fundamental problem in the dehumanization of women, it will pave the way for a significant cultural transformation.
Just as the keffiyeh today serves as a symbol of the West’s transcendence of supremacy in political spheres, with Western youth chanting "We are all Palestinian,” it can be anticipated that the hijab, too, will emerge as a symbol of the demand to move beyond the objectification of women in the West—a cry to reclaim women’s dignity, humanity, and value in society. The hijab can transform into a key term for global solidarity among women against a century of the degradation of women by the capitalist and imperialist (self-superior) Western system. Moreover, articulating Islam’s dignity-enhancing approach will pave the way for a global escape from the pandemic of objectification-driven violence against women.
Imam Khamenei has clarified this matter on numerous occasions: “Some say that the hijab hinders a woman’s growth and advancement. No, it is the other way around because hijab prevents those useless ostentations that prevent a woman from moving forward. Today, we have thousands of great and prominent women in various scientific, practical, social, political and technical fields, all of whom are living by wearing a complete hijab. Well, when we look at women in this way, their role in the family becomes also prominent: Their role as a mother, a wife, the lady of the house and the like. This is what is becoming less and less important in the west. The family is declining in the west.”
“Wherever hijab is taken away from women, wherever they push women towards bareness and nudity, security is taken away primarily from women and secondarily from men and the youth. To preserve a healthy and secure environment wherein women can pursue their tasks and men can carry out their responsibilities, Islam has set hijab as an obligation: hijab is an outstanding obligation by Islam and its advantages are as I described.”
What will prove effective in this regard is the creation of a public movement aimed at breaking the Western propaganda siege in the area of hijab, centered on understanding contemporary scientific studies. These studies demonstrate the reality that Islam’s social system regarding the hijab is among the scientific and psychological-sociological miracles of Islam.
It is not far-fetched to imagine that in the not-too-distant future, we may witness a situation in the West where the hijab becomes a symbol of the struggle to reclaim women’s dignity and overcome the current oppressive order. Much as the keffiyeh is wielded today in the West as a symbol of the fight for Palestine’s freedom, so too might the hijab be broadly adopted in grassroots campaigns as a symbol of resistance against the oppression of women.
(The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Khamenei.ir.)
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