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Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Teaching to the Veil A thick veil of commentary lies over the full burqa question, both here and abroad. I freely admit to having a powerful visceral reaction against fully veiled women (I've written about that here), and I've certainly done my best to understand the causes of my repulsion. Anne Applebaum, in the Washington Post, says some of what I feel: ...[T]he veil, as a political issue, won't go away. The French have banned not only the full veil but head scarves in state schools. Some German regions have banned the head scarf for civil servants too, and they are not permitted in Turkish universities at all. Slowly, the issue is coming to the United States: Just this month a Michigan judge dismissed a small-claims court case filed by a Muslim woman because she refused to remove her full-face veil while testifying. In Don DeLillo's great novel, Mao II, the fearless photographer, Brita, repelled by the face masks worn by the self-abnegating followers of a personality- cult leader, suddenly pulls one off of one of his fanatics and almost gets herself killed for her trouble. In a novel about the flight from freedom, about the psychological and ideological appeal of self-annihilation, this gesture expresses the sense shared by people committed to personal freedom that willful demolition of one's individuality, willful evisceration of one's ability to engage in civic life, is a kiss-off aimed at all democratic values. The prospect of teaching someone unwilling to share with me the world of embodied humanity is chilling. --- my thanks to grammarpolice.net for the image -- |