Post pandemic many of us have experienced being out and about “masked”. Did we lose agency? I’m not sure I felt I did. So I’m not sure the veil IS the issue. I’m not convinced it’s the religion, because we all know (I assume) there are Muslims who do not cover, and we know there are Muslims who do who are living happy fulfilling lives. So let’s talk about what IS the problem. Not dress it up concern about bits of material.

Yes, we lost agency. We lost important means of interacting with each other, and it affected society greatly.

But anyway, there are several fundamental differences between wearing a facemask to stop disease transmission and wearing a veil. On this board and thread, the relevant one is: only women wear veils.

What is it you're trying to imply is the problem? I'm not really following the logic. Is it race? Islam is a religion, not a race. Veiling affects Muslim women all over the world. Is that really what you're getting at? That criticism or questioning of Islam is racist?

I get it. You want me to feel I can’t have a different opinion because my thinking isn’t up to scratch.

Opening your mind and discussing things will not hurt your thinking and may help you fight the battle you feel is needed more effectively.

If you actually live and talk to people who have different ideas of acceptable behaviour you don’t lose anything. For example there are women, and in all likelihood the majority of those posting here today, who would not dream of showing any leg hair. They have shave, waxed or covered their hairy legs for decades. This is the cultural norm here in the uk.

Are they oppressed and victims of their male dominated culture?

I’d say, yes, but in no way as impacted as girls who’s culture removes them from formal education at puberty, or forces them to marry, or stops them driving, or speaking or doing very much without adult supervision.

Post pandemic many of us have experienced being out and about “masked”. Did we lose agency? I’m not sure I felt I did. So I’m not sure the veil IS the issue. I’m not convinced it’s the religion, because we all know (I assume) there are Muslims who do not cover, and we know there are Muslims who do who are living happy fulfilling lives. So let’s talk about what IS the problem. Not dress it up concern about bits of material.

When people start to smear and make labels it's a sign that something is being deflected from.

Reminiscent of “Trans Media Watch” @Imnobody4

This kind of activism is only going to make things worse. It should be strenuously resisted.

"Welcome to the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM), a little-scrutinised activist group seeking to skew the national conversation. CfMM is, or has recently been, part of the Muslim Council of Britain, with which successive governments have had a policy of non-engagement for its hardline views. But that has not stopped it from being listened to, welcomed or even employed at influential levels of the media."

"The headscarf for women is “normative” and a Muslim writer “misrepresent[ed] Muslim behaviour and belief” when she said there was “no basis in Islam for the niqab”, the full-face veil. The late Andrew Norfolk, of this newspaper, who did more than anyone to expose the grooming scandal, “scapegoated” Muslims."

www.thetimes.com/article/8e73ebea-e40e-43b3-88ca-636380ae084a?shareToken=0a54f44345f73b3b7b0f71b4320b0660

No sacred castes. Many of us aren’t afraid of being labelled or smeared to get us to shut up about men hurting women. It doesn’t work with “transphobia” or anything else.

@TomeTome ....but it IS notable that Islam is particularly used as a shorthand for countries or cultures that are not representative of the religion but more of a toxic male dominance.

The religion is being used/mis-used by toxic males to oppress women. We are naming the religion that is being mis-used.
Tbh it really won't make any difference what word we use, because 'phobia' will be added to the word to shut women down.

Imnobody4 thank you for posting that article.

This is the direct link to the Letters themselves:

The Taliban letters: one woman writes in freedom, the other in fear
The bestselling British author Kate Mosse shares her inspiring email exchange
with a brave female writer living under Afghanistan's brutal regime
https://www.thetimes.com/world/asia/article/letters-from-kabul-the-reality-of-life-as-a-woman-under-the-taliban-b0rdwbhz2

It reminded me of a campaign that KJK has been running since International Women's Day on March 8th 2025 and that some Mumsnetters might be interested in. The text on the International Women's Echo page is as it was before the launch on IWD:

International Women's Echo

We are excited to present the International Women's Echo. This straightforward system echos women’s across social platforms. By signing up, you’ll be paired with a woman from another part of the world who will share your voice with her network. You can follow her social media accounts and amplify her posts across your platforms, with the option to translate if you wish (using translation/grok type tools). In many instances, we’ll suggest that you both follow each other. Think of us as the matchmaker. Complete the form below, and we’ll connect you as soon as possible. Sign up now to be ready for our launch on International Women's Day.

Please note, we do not accept responsibility for the match and if it's not working out we recommend letting us know and we can request both accounts to stop interacting. We don't recommend sharing any personal details, but you're an adult and you can do what you like! We do not vet applicants and we will only share your usernames and geographical location. Which posts you choose to share is up to you, we recommend sticking to the topic that unites us.

https://www.letwomenspeak.org/iwe

Rather than keep trying to throw something at me that will stick because you so want to catch me, why don’t you go work on your reasoning skills because, if you know these things as you claim, why is that you don’t connect the dots and are still so basic and biased in your opinions.

Go throw some questions at your beliefs, they’re the ones who needs help with logic and common sense

The BBC have been terrible on this. They live in a bubble where they're completely unaffected by anything going on outside their dinner party circuit.

Do you really think that it's hard to be an atheist or non Christian in the UK?

Hirsi Ali says she can’t understand why she’s become the enemy:

“It has always struck me as odd that so many supposed liberals in the West take their side rather than mine … I am a black woman, a feminist and a former Muslim who has consistently opposed political violence”.

https://ethics.org.au/big-thinker-ayaan-hirsi-ali/

I know these things. I meant what you personally meant by conservative. But it’s fine you seem to have a broad understanding of the lives of Muslim women from a variety of cultures. Tell me what did they tell you they felt about their lives?

At the end of the 1970s, Iranian fundamentalists invented the term "Islamophobia" formed in analogy to "xenophobia". The aim of this word was to declare Islam inviolate. Whoever crosses this border is deemed a racist. This term, which is worthy of totalitarian propaganda, is deliberately unspecific about whether it refers to a religion, a belief system or its faithful adherents around the world.

https://newrepublic.com/article/81178/the-invention-islamophobia

I agree. I hesitated to use the term (because frankly it isn’t white Muslims that have the most difficulties here), but it IS notable that Islam is particularly used as a shorthand for countries or cultures that are not representative of the religion but more of a toxic male dominance.

'Yes, it happens — even for an Afghan woman — that someone from afar expresses a willingness to listen to her. So, I choose to believe it and open my heart to you.'

KJK is doing something simple but it seems remarkable. How dare feminists talk of Islamophobia, they should be ashamed.

Who is “we” and why do you assume I am not part of that “we”. I’m not trying to shut down your voice but to be frank it does seem like you are trying to do that to me? Speaking about concerns with Islamophobia is not saying dont speak, I said I was wary as everyone should be because weather you personally recognise it or not it is harder to be a non white, or non Christian or atheist in the uk and gets harder every year.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/43b1fa0b-bf81-46a0-9fe1-150cdecf6d43?shareToken=9cc6843e1edbded17202eaad19ec55b6

'Last week The Times published correspondence between the author Kate Mosse and Parand, an Afghan writer who was risking her life to reply. It is one of the most moving things I have read, and I have read it several times now. Every time I do, my eyes leak.'

There is a link to the article in the text - I can't seem to link to it for some reason. However here's the first letter from Parand.

Dear Ms Kate
I am truly excited to write to you. When I got your letter, I could hardly believe that I would be able to correspond with such a well-known figure in contemporary English literature.
But then I told myself that sometimes, even for an Afghan woman, such things can happen — even though her life is filled with hardship, and she is a victim of agreements made behind closed doors. A woman who does not incite war but suffers because of it. A woman who is not allowed to enter the world of politics yet is always burnt by the political decisions made by men.
Yes, it happens — even for an Afghan woman — that someone from afar expresses a willingness to listen to her. So, I choose to believe it and open my heart to you.
I was born into a society deeply afflicted by gender stereotypes. I am in my early forties and married, with no children. In the eyes of the people, I am not a “good woman” or a “proper homemaker” because I work and am not financially dependent on a man in my family. I write because my thoughts are free from any chains and I refuse to live under oppression.
As for how I started out, well initially I was unemployed and hopeless. For two years I searched every government office for work, only to return empty-handed. Eventually I participated in an exam for a scriptwriting position and was selected. Since then I have written scripts for radio dramas, plays and theatre.
That was eight years ago, when the foreigners were here and things were very different. I was allowed to go to the office for one year after the Taliban took over, but then a command was issued that banned women from working in offices for non-governmental organisations. After that I worked from home. Now I receive my yearly contract on the street for signing.
For my literary work, I use a pen name.
Thank you for listening to me.

I think it’s an excellent campaign.

She has started the conversation happening here and elsewhere. Everyone who sees it is sent the signal that this conversation is now in play.

It says nothing about Islam. It simply says ‘free your face’. Many people observe Islam without a face covering. So this is not a conversation about Islam. It’s about the repression of women so severely that in some places they are not allowed to be seen or heard outside their homes.
In others they must be fully covered.

That level of oppression is hard to believe from our perspective. However believe it you should- you can see it! What on earth leads you to believe that the women you see who are fully covered are making a choice to live that way?

It has no place anywhere in the world. I can’t do a lot about Afghanistan. I will do what I can here in the UK.

No one has the right to tell us not to talk about this. No one has the right to tell us to accept it, to accept that a subset of our population are living in subjugation.

To claim it’s none of our business- as if this isn’t about women and children in our country- is racist as fuck. Othering the women and girls who live like this.

Here are three BBC journalists discussing Louise Casey's grooming (rape) gangs report (my bold). They are Adam Fleming (Newscast) talking to Alison Holt (Social Affairs editor) and Judith Moritz (Special correspondent):

'...whenever we talked about this issue over the last 10 years, we went to people in position of authority who had access to better data than we could do, because we are just members of the public at the end of the day, and these people in authority said "No, the data suggests that there aren't certain ethnic groups over-represented in these crimes" and we took them at face value when actually a lot of these people should have been saying " We don't know because the data doesn't tell us because it is really patchy because in a lot of places it's not collected". That would have been a more accurate thing for those authority figures to have told you, me and Judith'

Senior BBC journalists, who should have known better, quietly accepted the poor data being peddled because .... racism....islamophobia....community tensions.
If the Great and the Good shut down debate of issues of concern to people in the UK, then the issues do not go away. They fester and people's frustrations on all sides are conscripted by bad actors.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0ljnbr3

Nearly everyone is beginning to look youthful to me - especially the Police!

We don't expect you to understand the oppression of women because you are an oppressor yourself.

@TomeTome I am not going to explain the term conservative to you, your ignorance and fudging urges because denial are not my problem tbh

Also, regarding ignorance, can it be pointed out for the billionth time and one more that Islam is not a race, nor a unified set of rules…

If you cared to look beyond your oversimplifying biases, you’d realise Islam’s faith is lived very differently according to local cultures.

Senegal is 80% Muslim, polygamy allowed, the lot, women covering their hair over there are quite rare. Turkey, Muslim country, a scarf is enough for practicing women. But it’s not like that in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran or Saudi Arabia.

Perhaps you should read the messages; they are after all Muslim woman's (silenced) voices.

I am extremely wary of the level of Islamophobia expressed in the uk and the racist undertones to discussions of this subject.
I understand the wariness and I am wary myself. However, 'islamophobia' is being used in a similar way to 'transphobia'; to shut down debate and create, either intentionally or through ignorance, a safeguarding issue.