Racism veiled as liberation

[earwicga]

IMO, this is a brilliant article today by Madeline Bunting - an excerpt:

"The veil debate is making it entirely legitimate to pillory, mock and ridicule a tiny number of women on the basis of what they wear. French politicians described the full veil as a "walking coffin"; on comment threads online there is contempt and sneers for the full veil and those who wear it ? "hiding under a blanket", "going round with a paper bag over your head". In France it is estimated there are only 2,000 women who cover their faces with the burqa or the niqab out of a Muslim population of five million. The response is out of all proportion.

Let's be clear: the niqab and burqa are extreme interpretations of the Islamic requirement for modest dress; few Islamic scholars advocate their use, and many ? including Tariq Ramadan ? have urged women not to use them. They are as alien to many Muslim cultures as they are to the west. And yes, there are instances of patriarchy where some women might be encouraged or even forced to wear a full veil by their husbands or fathers. But generalisations don't fit. Increasingly, young women are choosing to wear the full veil, seeing it as a powerful statement of identity.

Invoking the full weight of the state to police dress codes in public is an extraordinary extension of state powers over an aspect of citizen behaviour which is largely regarded as your own business. Provided you are wearing some clothing, western public space is a free-for-all, and across every capital in Europe that is strikingly self-evident"
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jul/14/forced-into-freedom-france

One example of a young French woman's reaction to this can be found here: bit.ly/aBVa4x

What do MumsNetters think? Seems to me that if we condemn those who dictate as to women's clothing in Sudan for example (see Lubna Hussein) then we must equally condemn those who dictate as to women's clothing in Europe.

'Anyway they can dress in totally impreactical ways that make them look totally stupid if they want and people int UK (but sadly not many muslim countries - hence keeness of them to come to our better freer country) are free to say their clothing is silly.'

OMG! Are you seriously for real?

Yes, I was kittedout when I was on business in Iran in January. It's ridiculous clothing circa 1500 and not required by the Koran. In fact I think it is against God. It is covering up what he created and ensuring a sexism which Mohammed and Jesus for that matter were not keen on. Men have subverted faith for their own ends and silly women kow tow to it.

I am in the UK so I am free to write that just as anyone can write about how freeing it is not to be able to see, to be too hot and to fall over when trying to run and skip or cycle.

Veiling the face is incredibly old, way way way before Islam. Alexander the Great's wife Rukhsana veiled her face and he was pre-christianity, let alone Islam. If Islam had originated elsewhere than in the Middle East, the veil would not have been an issue, but presumably something else from the culture of tht place and time would have been.

But, HerBeatitude, surely the point is not how old the practice is, but rather how it operates now? i.e. does this practice today function as a liberating or as an oppressive practice?

Xenia, yes I have heard that veiling the face is not required by the Koran. Similarly, I have heard that there are Christian communities (e.g. the Amish?) which require women to cover their heads - following St Paul's injunctions, I think - although this requirement is not common to all Christian communities.

wastingaway - interesting point about covering being a practical option in a hot country. Perhaps like the injunction not to eat pork or shellfish - many contemporary commentators have suggested that eating those items (without benefit of refrigeration) might have been asking for trouble 2,500 years ago.

I am also interested in your point about extended home lives. But perhaps that's another thread...

From the Telegraph:

'A 26-year-old Muslim convert was walking through the store in Trignac, near Nantes, in the western Loire-Atlantique region, when she overhead the woman lawyer making "snide remarks about her black burka". A police officer close to the case said: "The lawyer said she was not happy seeing a fellow shopper wearing a veil and wanted the ban introduced as soon as possible."

At one point the lawyer, who was out with her daughter, is said to have likened the Muslim woman to Belphegor, a horror demon character well known to French TV viewers. Belphegor is said to haunt the Louvre museum in Paris and frequently covers up his hideous features using a mask.

An argument started before the older woman is said to have ripped the other woman's veil off. As they came to blows, the lawyer's daughter joined in.

"The shop manager and the husband of the Muslim woman moved to break up the fighting," the officer said. All three were arrested and taken to the local gendarmerie for questioning.'
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/7735607/France-has-first-burka-rage-incident.html

An educated lawyer and her daughter feel it is appropriate in 2010 in France to attack a uslim woman because of her clothing. This is what the article in the OP was saying - it is all down to racism, not women's rights.

covering is definitely practical in blisteringly hot countries so there's no doubt in my mind about the reasons why veiling originally developed.
I was stuck on the side of the road in Portugal in the dead of August after a car crash. MY friend and I had bikinis on thankfully because we had no choice but to take our T-shirts off and drape them over our heads.

"Perhaps like the injunction not to eat pork or shellfish "
My grandma never ate pork if there was no 'R' in the month

It's not 'telling women what to wear' when you ban the full veil. It's making a law about what must not be worn. Women are free to choose anything else to wear in France, as opposed to women in Sudan, or Saudi Arabia, or Afghanistan, who are told exactly what to wear, and woe (and worse) betide anyone who does not wear that item, but chooses another instead.

The message that women are free to choose anything other than the veil is not palatable to those who think women should be neither seen nor heard.

The message that women are free to choose and not be restricted to the veil is a really important one to send to those who strenuously insist that they are not free, and cannot choose, and are inviting ruin on men and society as a whole if they step outside the limits that are imposed on them by people like this who believe crap like this and are not afraid to say it out loud.

I hope the French measure will give women and men who are against the veil and inequality of treatment in the Middle East, and elsewhere where women are second class citizens, some hope that the west is not forgetting them.

Surely it would be better to think of ways to make it easier for women who are oppressed to be free rather than ban the veil?

I can't imagine banning the veil will do anymore than annoy the women who choose to wear it, and result in the women who are ordered to wear it to be shut up indoors?

I loathe the burkha, and the niqab. I hate the fact that I cannot see the woman's face.

If I accidently bump into her, my apology will be more hurried, and I'll look away more quickly. At the school gate, I would not make an effort to speak to her. It would seem like an invasion of privacy, like knocking on a car window to speak to a stranger.

I cannot exchange a smile, or share a comment about the length of the queue, or the fact that the broccoli is a bit limp this week, because I have no idea whether such remarks are welcome. In fact, I would rather assume that she doesn't want any such interaction, as she has chosen to shut herself away.

However, it is her choice to wear it, not mine to prevent her, and I really cannot imagine passing a law limiting what women are allowed to wear.

Where would that end?

Yeah, because a woman who chooses to anonymise herself completely and see the world through a slit in a piece of dark material is really interested in integration

No, no Riven. I wouldn't ban it. People's right to wear what they like trumps my discomfort.

I just feel uncomfortable initiating conversation with someone when I don't get those little telltales of smiles, glances etc, that let you know whether you're remarks are welcome.

And I wouldn't like to impose on someone, being a reserved sort of person myself.

But I'm interested that you think I should try it(I know from other threads that you are a non-niqab wearing Moslem). I rather felt that it would not be welcome, and that by shutting themselves up behind veil or burkha, the women are making a choice to shut out the whole of western society.

I don't like them myself, but I can see why for some women they are liberating, if the alternative is that they don't go out in public at all.

I had an interesting conversation with some young women in Turkey (where the veil is forbidden in government offices) who found it upsetting that they had to remove their hijab at the door of the college they attended. "Freedom" that you're coerced into is arguably not really freedom at all.

If I'm brutally honest, my cynical thought regarding the full niqab is "You know, I doubt that you're so unbelievably gorgeous that your face will stop traffic and distract all passing males." In a way it's a sign of vanity!

Butterbur, your 15.37 post is almost exactly what I said to my DH when we were talking about this this morning.

If a woman in a niqab addressed me I would respond as I would with anyone else but I would never initiate contact.

i live in a country where women are dressed in the full range of options. burka, abaya with headscarf, long coat and headscarf, only headscarf, normal dress no headscarf, skin tight jeans/sleeveles tops/high heels no headscarf etc etc etc

all rubbing along very happily. no need for the legislating of what women should or shouldnt wear.

frankly, in my opinion, there are plenty of other people/religions/organisations telling women what to wear/do without governments having to get in on the act.

But we must remain free to voice our views. Certainly the English tend not to weigh in criticising others in public whom we meet in shops. It's not our way but the right to write what we think shouldn't be curtailed. Indeed if you feel it is morally wrong that little girls are restricted by the way men have subverted islam (or indeed other religions) for their own ends then I'd argue we have a moral duty to speak out about the wrongness of the burka.

The point all religions make including the parable of the Good Samaritan (and indeed what happened in Hitler's Germany ) is that if people walk on by and don't make comment, don't object when wrong things occur like little girls covered up then we condone that.

So yes a right to total free speech but no bans on the ridiculous clothing. They will come to realise soon anyway that it is silly and abandon it. This is just a phase.

There is more sexism and damage to girls in fundamentlaist muslim families in the UK than most other religions. But we will get through to them and they will become liberated and enjoy life better and Westernised. You cannot stop the tide of good practice and freedom thankfully.