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.

Why did God bother to create women if we are so offensive we are meant to cover our faces everyday???

I don't get it.

My view is that as it is so gender related it is a bad thing as it only affects women and how they are percieved.

If both sexes wore it, it would not bother me.

It's not one bit like colonialism. The French parliament has made a law about French dress, in France, not for the first time. French people have elected their representatives, who have voted overwhelmingly for the law. The women in question are French -- so as SAF says, no colonial analogy fits here. Nationality and society trumping religion as a source of identity is a central factor in French history from the Enlightenment on. The French have over the centuries, often accompanied by bitter struggle and division, especially in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and through two world wars fought on French soil, tried to arrive at a working definition of what it means to be French; they have a right to decide this, which they have done, democratically. Britain has had its own, often bloody, struggles with religion, religious freedom, and has come to an understanding, perhaps fragile, and always up for redefinition, of what part religion plays in 'Britishness'.

'perhapsd the veil debate is best left to muslim women who actually wear it?
Imposing opinions from the outside is yet another form of oppression.'

The veil is unfortunately not a cloak of invisibility. It makes the wearer stick out like a sore thumb, in fact. Others have as much of a right to comment and have feelings about the veil just as you have the right to hold opinions on 'barely there' western fashions. If you go out dressed in a way that attracts attention, either because of skimpy clothing or a burqa, everyone who sees you will have an opinion. You cannot pretend that it's purely a matter of your personal choice, end of story.

And in an indirect way, the 'imposing' of opinions 'from the outside' is done every time we go to buy clothing, or choose an appropriate outfit to wear wherever it is that I am going. I do not exist in a little sartorial bubble all on my own, despite what my teenage DDs may claim. There are committed nudists who cannot go about in their birthday suits and now women who are prohibited from covering every square inch of their bodies.

badly put together sentences there...

Why is it ok for men to be seen by non-family women?
Or is it?
How about non-family other men?

It's just sexist stuff invented by men circa 1500 or whenever it was which most modern normal muslim women reject but a few even a few in teh UK decide works for them. They will realise the error of their ways in due course

A burkha can be viewed, I think, in two ways:
Firstly, it can be viewed as a thing in itself i.e. a covering for a face, a piece of cloth.
Or, a religious symbol.

To be against the wearing of it in the first instance is ridiculous- if a woman wants to cover her face it is her decision. It is not harming anyone else. It's not like a crash helmet ban where the argument for wearing a helmet is that other taxpayers pay in the event of an accident.
In any case, even, if I were against the donning of it in principle, the practical side of punishing those who wear it makes it unacceptable: what on earth is the point of criminalising someone for what they put on their face. Who benefits from this?
People who thinks it should be criminalised (for if the burka is banned there must be some punishment dished out to those that break the law) are- imo- bonkers.
Yes, let's give someone a criminal record for having a piece of cloth on their face.

If it is a religious symbol of oppression, then what good does it do to ban a symbol of oppression- banning the burkha won't get rid of the ideology that so many of its opponents disagree with.

I won't. I'm right and women who accept sexism are wrong. And God told me. And she's never wrong....laughing as I type. She gives sexist men a huge shock when they get up there. I'd like to be a fly on the wall.

And of course how we all are affects others. If women present an image that God hates the bodies he made and all men are rapist unless women are constricted and kept out of the way they you perpetuate those myths by covering up.

I wiouldn't ban it because banning usually just makes people want something more but it's very silly and most Muslims don't do it. It's just a cultural thing, not even required in the Koran.

Why not swap so man cover up for the next 5000 years? That would be fairer. Make the men wear the veil and the long skirt things that you cannot run easily in. They'd soon realise how awfully they treat women by allowing it.

Plenty of symbols and clothing and flags are banned; Nazi uniforms and symbols, etc., immediately spring to mind. Holocaust denial is banned -- and that is basically thought and speech. The reasons are very good and sound, imo; they are in place (thinking of Germany here) to send a message that German society repudiates the values those symbols stand for, both to German neo-Nazis and to the rest of the world.

The ban on the burqa is sending a message that France repudiates the values it stands for.

(Not trying in any way to equate the burqa and Muslims with Nazis or Nazi paraphernalia here, just illustrating the point.)

The point about 'silly heels' and 'tight skirts' is that noone is proclaiming they are closer to God by wearing them, noone is assuming superiority in their modesty, no woman wearing a tight skirt does so because an ancient and irrelevant, never modernised, piece of text says she must. Silly heels and tight skirts are not 'anti women' they're fashion alone and aren't a political badge. Likewise cosmetic surgery, which men have too, is not limited to a male view.

Riven, I think some muslim girls who wear the veil in Europe are naive about men.

When I was studying for my MSc, I had an Indonesian friend who wore the muslim veil, not over the face, but you couldn't see her hair. SHe believed this offered her some sort of protection, and she believed men perceived her differently for wearing it. She came into my room crying one evening because our fellow student had made a pass at her. I asked her about it and it turns out she'd invited him into her room to fix her computer and not for the first time.
He got the wrong idea and I'm not sure what happened but she was very upset.
I'm not blaming her, not at all, but I truly think she belived that wearing muslim dress gave her some sort of protection from the 'male gaze'. She didn't realise that men see women as women, whatever they wear.

Having said that I absolutely believe women have the right to cover themselves however they see feet, but I'm not sure I can fully agree with some of the theory behind doing so.

see fit

I love that typo Sakura!

Freudian?

Freudian?