Pelosi Wears Hijab; Right wingers bark at moon

Posted by Barbara O'Brien at 8:32 AM on April 4, 2007.

Of all the dumb things to get worked up into a snit about, this one is almost as dumb as Ann Althouse's boob post.

The jolly folks at Little Green Footballs have gone batshit bleeping crazy because Nancy Pelosi wore a headscarf to visit a mosque in Syria. "Pelosi in a hijab!" they shriek.

Hello? Some of us old enough to remember when women were required to cover their hair in Catholic churches. Here's the divine Jackie with that first guy she married outside a church sometime in the late 1950s.



Apparently scarves are still a requirement at the Vatican.



[Update] Speaking of Laura Bush, here's a lovely photograph of her...

visiting the Muslim holy shrine the Dome of the Rock in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City, May 22, 2005.

I'd also like to note that American women very commonly wore headscarves tied under their chins like that all through the 1950s and into the 1960s. I remember wearing them myself; one wrapped one's head when going outside to protect one's bouffant hairdo from wind and weather. Apparently the only woman on the planet who still does that is Queen Elizabeth II, as portrayed below by Helen Mirren in The Queen (which is a lovely little flm, btw).



Nowadays it looks frumpy as hell, but Audrey Hepburn could carry it off.



I can't say that Muslim women never wear a tied-under-the-chin scarf, but from what I see in photographs an actual hijab is usually wrapped rather than tied.



I'm certain I've seen photographs of Karen Hughes and Condi Rice with scarves wrapped around their heads hijab-style while visiting the Middle East, but I couldn't find one to post here. If anyone else can, please leave the URL in the comments.

Tagged as: religion, nancy pelosi, right wing, hijab

Barbara O'Brien has guest blogged at the Take Back America Conference, Glenn Greenwald's, Unclaimed Territory, and Crooks and Liars. She is the "owner/proprietor" of The Mahablog.