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.