Once Upon A Time: How Did Muslim Women In Northern Arakan Regress Into Dark Age?

Aung Naing Lin, Opinion

Global Arakan Network December 5, 2025

Muslim Women in Northern Arakan, Then and Now (photocrd)

A few weeks ago, a photo series called “Once Upon A Time” went viral. Old black-and-white pictures showed Muslim women in northern Arakan wearing the same ein-phyit htapin and tiny blouses that Arakanese women loved. Same hairstyle, same thanaka on cheeks, same easy smile. No one needed a label to know who was who. That was daily life: one people, two faiths, zero walls.

Then came the next slide in the same series. Today’s pictures. The same villages, the same faces, but now many women and girls are wrapped in black from head to toe. Only eyes show. Some girls are completely covered, even the eyes hidden behind mesh. The contrast hits like a slap. How did they fall from colour to darkness in just forty years?

The answer is not a mystery. It has a date, a source, and a price tag.

Starting in the early 1980s, big money from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf landed in northern Arakan. Containers of cash, scholarships, loudspeakers, new mosques built in concrete instead of wood. Young men were sent to Pakistan and Madinah, came back with beards down to their chest and a new rule book. The gentle village Islam that spoke Arakanese version and ate moderate crosscultural food suddenly became “wrong.” The new version said women must disappear from sight or the whole community would burn in hell.

Money did the rest. Families who put daughters in full black cover received monthly rice sacks. Families who kept girls in school received nothing. Madrasas opened overnight; regular schools closed for girls. A father who let his daughter ride a bicycle was shamed in Friday prayers. A mother who wore flowers in her hair was called a bad Muslim. Slowly, fear replaced freedom.

Refugee Woman in Bangladesh (photocrd)

Today a twelve-year-old girl in Buthidaung or Maungdaw cannot choose her clothes, her friends, her future. She cannot play outside after afternoon prayer. She cannot continue school past primary level in most villages. If she falls sick, she often waits until the male relative feels like taking her to a clinic. Marriage is arranged the day she bleeds for the first time. Refusal is not an option.

Meanwhile, the loudest voices defending “Rohingya heritage” live in New York, London, Washington. They post the beautiful old photos, collect donations, give TED talks about tolerance. Not one word about the black tents that swallowed their sisters. Not one question about where the millions of Gulf dollars went. Silence when a girl is married at thirteen. Silence when education dies. Silence when laughter is declared sin.

Those old photos are not decoration. They are evidence. Evidence that Muslim women in Arakan once lived with the same dignity and joy as their Arakanese neighbours. Evidence that religion and local culture can walk together without anyone being buried alive in cloth.

The regression was not natural. It was engineered, funded, celebrated. And the people who show you the pretty past owe you the ugly truth about the present. Until they speak that truth, the fairy tale stays broken. And thousands of little girls keep paying the price.