To feel sad to see 5 year old girl in hijab

[INeedSomeSun]

Probably will get flamed for this & iabu as its not my business.
I am not racist in any way. I am Asian myself and have many Muslim friends.

Growing up, I never saw any muslim girls with hijabs. This is a trend which has been growing since the late 90s.

I know that the meaning behind the hijab is to protect modesty and show committment to Islam. It is supposed to be the girls/womans decision after much thought and dedication.

At 5 years old they are still getting changed in the classroom for PE and she won't be able to do this now with boys around. How will she play and do PE freely? She has been singled out by the views of her parents.
Also, she will barely know what religion means, so she has not made an informed decision for herself.

Normally she is chasing about with my DS and other kids before school.Today she was just stood there, perhaps embarrassed or told not to?
I felt very sad

Basically, Allah is pleased with you if you treat your daughter's the same way you treat your sons. It obviously needed to be spelled out though.

It is something like this...yes, yes, women must cover up but it is only for modesty's sake, not because they're unequal

Maybe I misunderstood - I was reading from surah 55. Apologies if I got this wrong as I said I'm learning.

One of the most telling incidents for me was when we were in Fujairah (sp?) as a weekend break from Dubai.

Evening and the sun is going down. A remote hotel on a peninsula. Hotel nearly fully booked but dining room empty.

Beautiful, huge, swimming pool. 5 or 6 good looking, swarthy, men appear in shorts and cut off t shirts. Obviously they go to the gym and work out. Little children run about laughing and playing.

5/6 women, completely covered up walk behind them.

The men and children came in to the swimming pool and had great fun. They then went down to the beach - 20 ft away and played there. The women also went in to the water. The women were fully covered in their heavy, black, restrictive garb.

I've not forgotten the sadness and sense of oppression this left me with.

I guess this was the bit that led me to believe it was just men: " the smallest reward for the people of paradise is an abode where there are 80,000 servants and 72 wives ( whom no man or jinn before them has touched) over which stands a decorated dome"

In the country I know anyway: It is fairly normal for a son to be given double the inheritance of the daughter. Women can divorce but if they remarry, any children automatically go to their father. Yes, there is the 'term' marriage. In the case of witnesses, a man's statement carries more weight than a woman's (and in some cases a woman cannot be a witness). In cases of adultery, the law comes down very very hard on the woman, not so the man. Prostitution, child abuse, drug use and crime is usually approached with fingers in the ears, singing 'lalalalalalala' strategy.

The whole virgins thing is a mis-translation anyway (like the camel and the eye of the needle actually being a rope). Apparently the original word was 'dates' - ie sustenance, dates being a bit of a wonder food (so really meaning sustenance for the soul). I have seen some foolish young men still making reference to the virgins - they are just stupid and ill educated.

...meant to say. The hotel dining room was almost empty because the local women didn't want to eat in front of the 10% of foreigners, so the family ate up in the bedrooms.

Hang on a sec, do I sense that some presume I am from a different culture? Why am I asked to explain the rape stats for India?

I feel some of you are misunderstanding my point. I am explaining WHY the hijab or burkha is worn, I am not condoning it and my posts cannot be misconstrued to condone that either.

ThePurpleCarrot in thinking I am from an unusual culture you are coming across as quite passive aggressive, presumptious and ill-informed and I am sure that is not your intention.

Let me remind you all of the UK and Ireland 40 years ago. My mother was refused a sterilisation process without the consent of her husband. Catholicism was the oppressive religion then (and still is to some extent) where women were raped in marriage and beaten but nothing was ever said about it. Men hit their wives and that was just that.

The Catholic church preaches that the wife submits to her husband just as the Islam faith preaches. If a young catholic girl got pregnant, she was refused an abortion and the baby was forcibly removed from her arms. She could then be cast-out by her family who saw her as being damned to hell. Oh and all who did not follow the faith were infidels who were also damned to hell - sound familiar?

Niqab is routine for girls
hijab is only once puberty sets in

I pray five times a day Moomins, it is exhausting during Ramadan, but the rest of the year I function fine, my body is used to it, providing I go to bed at a decent hour I can make dawn prayers, if I miss the dawn prayers I can make them up later.

I wouldnt expect a non muslim to understand or desire to worship five times a day, I do it because I want to, it's my personal choice nobody can force me to do it I do it of my own free will.

Nobody has died from praying five times a day and fasting during the month of ramadan as far as I'm aware.

Clumsy, carry on learning prehaps read the entire verse and then find out when it was revealed, that shoudl explain it.

YANBU; very sad.

I love it when people are so happy to educate and share their knowledge. not passive aggresive at all.

If people want to cover their faces voluntarily to follow the rules of their religion I can understand.
But I do wonder whether all those rules affecting women, weren't written by men simply in order keep their women subservient.

The Koran was written by men and the Bible was written largely by men - go figure.

I do understand the desire to pray. I do it twice a day myself.

In the country I am thinking of, these days it is very much not 'if' you fast. Choice is the key issue. I have relatives here who choose, but some there who have to have a bloody good reason not to and who are made to feel bad if they don't.

I would find ramadan exhausting, as do my relies here who do it. I'm not speaking as someone who's never met a muslim. We do talk quite a bit about religion, politics and culture at home. We understand each other and respect beliefs.

Moomin in some cases a womans testimony is only accepted as well it is all about context.

A womans inheritance is half that of her brothers because the brother has to take care of her and provide her maintenance if she is living at home, however a woman does not have that same financial responsibility the brother is also financially responsible for all the dependants left behind plus his own family if he has one.

I am divorced, I am muslim, I have full custody of my children, my husband will never get it as he is a danger and a threat to them. I am going thro the english courts to get this as well, Islamcially I have it already.
By custody Islamically it means that the children sleep in their fathers house, during the day time they can be with their mother.

Islamically a wpmans punishment and mans punishment for adultery is the same. The law neforcers who do not treat both men and women the same for this are the ones at fault not the Islamic law.

Thank goodness we've moved on, rhubarb. I would have hated to live by 1950s social mores, and I'm as troubled by some of the appalling acts committed in the name of Catholicism as you are too. But what does that have to do with this thread?

I have just finished working on a charity website. They help to rescue trafficked girls from Nepal into India. These girls are either abducted from their villages or lured with promises of work or marriage. Once in India they are taken to brothel warehouses where they are sold at auction. The highest prices are reserved for the youngest girls and virgins are highly sought after because of the belief that virgins make men virile.

Some of these men (and women) even perform surgery on girls to make them virgins again so they can command a higher price.

This charity has set up checkpoints across the 1,000 mile border to try and prevent girls from being trafficked. They educate girls they have rescued and give them a life skill because these girls are not accepted back into their families or communities. Once they have been violated, it is presumed that they are atoning for some kind of sin and that they will bring shame on their families. Many of them carry STDs or AIDS and their families cannot afford to care for them. So they are taught to be independent and are re-introduced into different communities where their background is not known.

The scale of it is shocking as is the attitude towards young girls.

It is prevalent everywhere. Women have always been and probably will always be oppressed in some form or another.

THERhubard - please read my posts - I did not ever say you were from an unusual culture. I asked you a simple question as to what your culture was.

Me thinks the lady doth protest too much.

MorrisZapp because there are similarities are there not, between catholicism and Islam?

Catholic women used to cover their heads in church. Look at the coverings nuns wear. Women were oppressed and subject to terrible abuse if they were thought to have brought shame onto their family.

Those who weren't catholic were damned to hell.

The similarities, when you look at them, are pretty striking.

ThePurpleCarrot I am fairly well known on Mumsnet, go ask someone else. I don't see why I should tell you what culture I am from or its relevance. I am not here to provide you with ammunition dear.

At school catholic primary children were forced to go to mass every Sunday, if they weren't they were given the strap at school. Children were given crucifixes to wear around their necks (health and safety nightmare) and had to learn the cathechism off by heart.

This was accepted and in some catholic primary schools children are just as indoctrinated today, yet we reserve our criticism for a Muslim girl who is attending a mixed race school for all faiths?

I am trying to show that the UK, that western culture was not that much different. I am perhaps also implying that it's ok for western Christianity to oppress girls and women but not ok for an Islamic religion to do so?

My friends kids all go to catholic schools here and abroad, as did my dad in the 1930s. No frogmarching children to mass or forcing crucifixes on them.

Females treaded as something lesser than males.

horrid and unacceptable.

Fuzzywuzzy, no I didn't but am horrified by it all. These brave women are fighting a battle just like our suffragettes did.

I hate to see women covered up in black, I hate to hear about the Catholic Church sponsoring laundries for girls whose crimes were to get pregnant, hateful mysygonistic sharia law where women are ignored, hate hearing a teacher pleading that a 15 year old child led him on.

The difference is that in some countries the vast majority of men get away with hate crimes against women and in other countries they don't.

This depends upon the status of women in the country.

In cultures where the women cover up their human rights are proportionately eroded.

It's not choice. If a young girl in a Muslim country doesn't choose to cover up like her female relatives she would be in danger of her life.

In your experience Moomin. The church in Ireland was extraordinarily strict and very oppressive. Many young women were forced into establishments run by nuns to have their babies and then the baby would be whisked away as soon as it was born.

This is well documented. As is the catholic attitude towards non-believers.