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My scattered ranty 10 dinars worth:
1. Many women here on the 'Lith and in the West generally complain about being leered at and chatted up by men in public spaces. Veiled women do not have that problem.
2. Veiling may not be about hijab (modesty) so much as a statement of religious or cultural identity. The two are not necessarily the same, as witnessed by a Muslim girl in my local corner shop who once took her veil off and adjusted her hair right in front of me.
3. Pingles, The Koran just says a woman is to "cover her adornment" or something rather vague like that. The history is all rather disputed, but some say veiling has pre-Islamic origins, others that it was a marker of high-status which became popularised.
4. Many of these girls choose to veil. Their parents may not even want them to. There's this whole 'poor little downtrodden Islamic women' thing running through this thread which is questionable, at least in some cases, both in Europe and the Middle East.
5. Surely western women still have dress-restrictions? The distinction is one of degree, not kind. Men and women call women in short skirts and lots of make-up 'tarts' and everyone knows it, and god help any 'immodestly' dressed western woman wanting to claim sexual assault. And anyway, head-covering by women may not be quite as far from our own culture as we think.
6. Amongst the Taureg, the men veil, the women don't.
7. Isn't the banning of religious expression illegal under European Human Rights law? Will they really get this legislation through?
8. What on earth are the French authorities planning to do re: 'outward signs of religious affiliation' when Jewish or Muslim boys have showers?
9. Islamic culture does not believe sexual suppression is possible. Rather than being an ascetic religion like Christianity, Islam accepts that we're all sexual beings all the time and therefore puts the restraints 'on the outside' rather than leaving them 'on the inside' as in Christianity (if that makes sense).
10. Turkmenistan has more female MP's than the UK, and there are plenty of Muslim countries with female heads of state - we've yet to see that in France or the US. So much for western (so-called) feminism. Well, maybe that's a bit strongly worded, but I'm trying to suggest that Islam is no more and no less compatible with feminism(s) than Christianity, Judaism, secular humanism or whatever.
11. Islamic countries do not have wide-scale female eating-disorders, nor an epidemic of anxiety, depression and lack of self-esteem caused by women trying to attain a certain physical standard of beauty. |
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