May 20, 2005 – (Institute for War and Peace Reporting) The oppressive Taleban regime is long gone, but many Afghan women are still afraid to abandon their burqas. “I feel naked without my burqa,” said Kabul woman Roqia, dragging large shopping bags and gasping in the heat. “I cannot take it off. I would feel that everyone was looking at me.”

Basically what you said..

“The reference in my comment #8 is very obviously not about what she is wearing, but about the content of the sign she is holding.” I didn’t find it that obvious. If you’re interpreting her sign as a threat, whore is the wrong word to use. It’s a specifically gendered slur in response to a non-gender-specific offence. I didn’t call your article anti-woman, just that particular comment. Sorry if that was unclear.

You seem to have confused me with “self-declared radical feminists”, who if you’re thinking of the same people I am, I can’t stand to read any more for reasons that have nothing to do with the argument here.

I’m not going to answer the rest of your rant; time is short, the internet is large. I’m going back to anti-racist sites where I think I understand the terms of debate.

Nowhere in my article did I call a woman a whore for wearing a burqa, but I get a strong impression that it is the wearers who are calling me “a whore” for not covering up like them. The reference in my comment #8 is very obviously not about what she is wearing, but about the content of the sign she is holding.

I think you sound so predictably full of stale Leftist shit: If a burqa wearer doesn’t have to explain the ideas that led her to her self-loathing anti-woman (actually, anti-human) garment choice, I certainly don’t have to explain/justify to you or to anyone else my opinion of her choice. Freedom cuts both ways: if a woman is “free” to oppress herself with that garment, then I am certainly free to condemn her decision in the strongest terms.

I am not talking about women in Saudi Arabia, who obviously don’t have a choice in the matter. I am talking about Muslim women in Western societies.

Admittedly you don’t know much, but I do, especially since I am from a Muslim majority country myself. I know the various degrees of “modesty” in the various “styles” of Islamic dress for women (and the general misogynous trend toward which they converge), and I am also familiar with the kind of morally absolutist line of thinking which religious sentiments elicit from Islam’s hard-line subscribers.

Women who wear the burqa out of their own choice (and sadly there are many who do) are claiming themselves to be morally superior in so many words, and are implicitly calling everyone else a slut. You better wrap your head around it, and wrap your head around the meaning of the burqa/hijab. As for the attitude I am ascribing to the wearers …’you need to fully cover every square inch of your face and body lest any random male passerby spontaneously breaks down’ …if you were familiar with the Islamic justification for “modest” “dress” for women, then it would not sound so outlandish.

As far as I am concerned, it is about what I (or we) feel comfortable with. Civility is about mutual comfort: Why should I let someone step all over my sensibilities while you suggest she (and most importantly, the culture that produced her) should be exempt from any critical analysis? Nevertheless, I didn’t discuss Islam at all in my article, but merely focused on the humane/cognitive/personal implications of the burqa in everyday human interactions. Yet your knee-jerk reflex is to screech “Islamophobia!”. That word implies an irrational fear of Islam, whereas I am engaged in a rational down-to-earth analysis of a particular piece of cloth. Overreaction much?

In closing, I would like to extend to you my sincere middle finger over your remark of my article being “anti-woman“: a bunch of radical miserable Leftist self-declared “feminists” are going to define what it means to be pro-woman in today’s world and be the official crusaders for our entire gender? What makes you think you represent women everywhere! You certainly don’t represent me! Your movement is morally and philosophically bankrupt. Amnesty International is also a joke.

You seethe nearly every waking moment analyzing women’s “oppression” by the so called patriarchal normatively heterosexual Judeo-Christian Western civilization, but you have a moral and emotional blind-spot regarding the plight of women (and people in general) from different cultures.

That’s because you don’t give a shit: they are seen as an amorphous “other” you know nothing about and want to extend no judgment on. Your “open-minded” neutrality is nothing but self-righteous callousness. You must feel so enlightened compared to a crude idiot like me (not to mention the British “idiots in the streets”) for withholding your precious judgment, for your willful suspension of applied morality…

I can smell your self-righteous smug-farts from here… get a clue!

I don’t know much, but I know there’s a wide variety of styles of dress used by practising Muslim women in various places, and wearing the more “modest” forms is not perfectly correlated with thinking that everyone else is a slut by any means – let alone with an attitude that “you need to fully cover every square inch of your face and body lest any random male passerby spontaneously breaks down …”. I’ve seen a real burqa in an Amnesty International meeting and I can’t imagine why anyone would wear it voluntarily, but it’s not for me or you to imagine – if it is voluntary then it’s entirely her choice and she doesn’t have to explain it to us. Also, it’s not all about whether we feel comfortable. You’re talking about women you meet in Canada? If the political climate there is anything like it is here in the UK, they face enough attacks from idiots on the street without you adding to it.

I don’t usually do drive-by comments but I found this too disturbing to leave alone. I’ve seen other posts decrying the burqa, and the human rights abuses that usually go with it, but I didn’t expect attacks on the women underneath.

It happens that I am from what people call a Muslim country myself, and I have read most of the Qur’an translated in my native language.

I have read a lot more than you seem to smugly assume on the history of your religion, and I have found nothing to contradict my take. Islam is the only religion I know of to impose the Burqa on its women. If you think there has been a grave misinterpretation of the Qu’ran, please point out where exactly this misinterpretation lies. Most importantly, if you are so confident, don’t take it out on me for upholding this alleged misinterpretation. Rather, be a sport and take it out on the Religious Apartheid Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that imposes the Burqa by law and punishes non-adherents with unspeakable brutality.

I never said it’s an unbreakable vicious cycle, I never said that Muslim social norms cannot evolve to adapt to life in a modern society. Do not attribute to me statements I didn’t make or sentiments I never expressed. I am well aware that many Muslim women don’t wear the burqa out of their own free will but rather as a result of coercion from their male relatives. However, a sad minority wear it because they want to, like this Muslim whore here
http://citizenship.typepad.com/isebrandcom/images/real_holocaust_1.jpg

Please clarify what sweeping statements you think I am making.

While the majority of Muslim women in Cape Town wear only the scarf, I have seen many in various stages of heavy shrouding, up to and including the burqa. While some women choose this form of dress themselves, too often the choice is made by male relatives and women dress as commanded by their menfolk or risk consequences.

What disturbs me most about these garments is the insensitivity of a man who demands his womenfolk dress this way. This is Africa…it gets really HOT here. I have seen a Muslim family at the beach near my home with the husband wearing shorts and an open shirt due to the heat, his wife garbed from head to toe in black. Drinking “modestly” is difficult, and I once sat in an Indian restaurant and watched one of these women attempt to eat with one of these face-obscuring veils on…it was not an easy task.

I think commanding woman to dress in this manner is insensitive, demeaning, and dehumanizing. Furthermore, considering that Western women are obligated to abide by a Muslim dress code when visiting Muslim countries, I see no reason that the same consideration should not be applied to Muslim people who come to non-Muslim countries.

In Rajasthan and Gujarat Hindus and Muslims lived close toghther long before the British Raj. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Hindus (probably in self-defense) took up some of the Muslim customs.

I don’t know anything about hill tribes, but it may be proximity to Muslims in their cases too. (It’s easier to veil than be raped or accosted whenever you go out.)

If I lived in Oman…never mind, I wouldn’t, but the same self-defense reason still would apply.

Thank you.

And what about women who belong to ultra-conservative Christian sects? The Hutterites, Amish, Amanas, and Pentacostalists of North America? Or Catholic nuns in many orders — at least in Europe? All cover most of their skin at all times. They may not wear a face veil, but their attire is otherise quite in keeping with the precepts of Islam.

Finally, if you talk with Muslim women in the Arab world — and I live and work in Oman — you will discover that most choose to wear an abaya on their own and that it is not because their father or husband or brother insists on it. I’ve known numerous Omani men say that they would prefer that their women NOT cover, but that they insist on it. It is, therefore, a mistake to assume that the decision to cover has been taken completely from Muslim women’s hands. Certainly, in some cases, this may be true, but it is not always the case.

That women can wear skirts/dresses but men can only wear pants in Western society, for example, is just a convention. That’s why you don’t hear me rant about Buddhist monks being “gay” for wearing their togas, or about the bagpipe playing Celts with their kilts.

Our conventions give us a lot of freedom in what we chose to be fashionable or appropriate, but if they stem from a civilized society, our conventions have to nonetheless closely mimic nature.

And there is such a thing as a state of nature, an objective order of things, toward which world cultures naturally gravitate. It’s no wonder Islam is the only culture in the world that fully covers its women.

It’s not natural, and it’s sick and wrong!

Think about it: our genitals are obviously overly sexual because that’s what sex revolves around. Women’s breasts, perhaps not as sexual as their vaginas, but are still objectively sexualized, and this would be clear to you if you had read some Freud: Children suck their mothers’ tits and develop an intimate bond, which is evoked through the sight of any female’s breasts.

It doesn’t matter if it was convention for girls to go out tit-naked: if you are a heterosexual male, and you spot a girl with perky tits, there is something in your biology and your psychology, that make you prone to getting a hard-on.

On the other hand, if you told me that looking at my beautiful luscious hair in my picture turns you on in a sexual way, I would tell you that you’ve got serious problems.

So that’s the difference. Islam overly sexualizes women, by making their entire body, face, and hair, objects of immediate sexual attention. It’s really a vicious cycle, because in societies that are so sexually strict as Islam, and where a woman’s body is taboo, the sight of even a woman’s hair can do things to a severely sexually deprived male who has never seen any woman’s face except for perhaps, his mother’s.

The point is that Islam objectifies women to a disgusting degree, and applies vastly uneven standards to men and women. In the western world, men and women largely dress the same. Men might take off their shirts sometimes, but it’s still frowned upon, and only universally acceptable at the beach. You don’t see any shirtless guys walking down the street. To a great degree, what’s improper for women, is also improper for men.

SO why don’t Muslim men cover their hair and faces, lest they turn on any female walking by? Their standards are so inconsistent and demeaning to women, and you have to be an idiot blinded by cultural relativism to not be able to see that.

If you need to know, actually, the reason is that in Islam, “immodest” (uncovered) women are fair targets for rape and molestation. The religion originated with the savage Bedouin tribes indeed, so that makes sense.

Those who harass believing men and believing women unjustifiably shall bear the guilt of slander and a grievous sin. O Prophet! Enjoin your wives, your daughters, and the wives of true believers to draw their cloaks over them [when they go out]. That is more proper, so that they may be distinguished and not be harassed. God is ever forgiving and merciful. If the hypocrites and those who have the ailment [of jealousy] in their hearts and the scandal mongers of Madinah do not desist, We will rouse you against them, and their days in that city will be numbered. Cursed be they; wherever found, they would be seized and put to death. (Qur’an 33:58-61)

For your name to be Peter, and for you to defend the veil, is really idiotic. Your cultural relativism makes me sick. Yeah, you blindly assume that all cultures/religions/world views are equivalent, and maybe that’s a disincentive for you to actually learn about any of them in detail, since one is as good as any other. If you had read the Qur’an like I have, you would have a different perspective, because although you judge Muslims by your “progressive” multi-culti standards, they judge YOU by their supremacist absolutist dogmatic standards, and either think you will burn in hell for being an Infidel, or that it’s up to them to send you to hell.

So watch out, I’m telling you…