I was momentarily amused when the posts first showed up on my X feed. Women were posing with their husbands, who were covered from head to toe in burqas of various shades and colours. Who doesn’t enjoy rebellion against religion?
One of the very first posts on X got hilarious replies. When Shanna—a mid-tier influencer I strongly suspect is a bot—posted a photo with a man covered up in a red sequinned burqa, women quote-tweeted that his visible muscular forearm made them feel lustful and was therefore not modest enough.
“Please cover him up appropriately next time,” wrote Gaby.
In a quote retweet of Gaby’s post, X user @ghayo0da said she had solved the problem.
“This is why I’m so glad I found a modest and pious househusband who doesn’t dare gain the attention of women while he roams the streets covered head to toe… Alhamdullilah,” she wrote.
But the commenters found even her modest man lacking.
“The mesh is too see through I can almost tell his facial features this isn’t modest enough sister he can do better,” read a response.
In my joy at seeing girlies poking fun at diktats, I forgot that we live in the age of Sam Altman, and every good thing is suspect. The photos were AI-generated, and posted mostly by Western accounts on X. Very soon, several white women had posted an image with their fake hijabi husbands.
So, the Viral Spiral of #Hijabiman is inseparable from the culture wars that are the cornerstone of X. Western right-wing accounts are picking up the photos—posted by real women or bots—and writing long posts and threads about Islam’s position on women’s rights.
“Unlike the significant reforms seen in Judaism and Christianity over the past century, Islam has made far less progress on women’s rights,” wrote Shula, whose bio states that she is conservative, Jewish, and a “LEGAL immigrant”.
Many posts are outright hateful. In a bizarre meeting of Trumperica and Tri Nagar, MAGA supporter Toula posted an image of a burqa-clad man walking a pig on a leash.
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‘Men in hijab’, from Iran to Taliban
In 2016, Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad launched a campaign called ‘Men in Hijab,’ asking Iranian men to wear the hijab in solidarity with women forced to wear it every day. Many answered her call.
That was an act of rebellion against an oppressive regime. The recent trend is just another chapter in the West’s ongoing meltdown over Muslim immigrants. This is hardly the first time women’s rights have been weaponised against Islam and Muslims. The US dropped bombs on Iran in the name of—among other things—women’s liberation.
It’s not hard to miss that the trend is, in some capacity, a response to the Taliban government violently enforcing ‘proper hijab’. At least 30 women have been arrested. In a rare public demonstration on 9 June, two people were killed and over 20 were wounded as the Taliban forces violently dispersed the protests.
A recent video, viewed over 28 lakh times in the past 24 hours, featured a woman showing the world through an Afghan woman’s point of view—the thick mesh of the niqab criss-crossing the camera.
“The T [Taliban] people want to decide what they [Afghan women] see and how they see it. But the beauty of the world belongs to everyone,” she said.
Views are personal.