The Toronto superintendent explains:
“We disinvited Nadia Murad from our speaker series because of what she went through to get the prize. Torture, rape, sexual slavery: It’s not Canada Nice. We can’t have our teenage girls asking questions about ugly things; our job is to protect them from the sort of stuff that comes from unpleasant parts of the world. Under our new guidelines, invitees will be drawn from women who have created tasty new tea brews and/or monetized their cat videos.”
And that’s Jordan, kiddies.
The United Kingdom’s new culture secretary has been accused of Islamophobia over her views on Muslim women and description of the burqa as a “medieval” dress code.
Accused by whom? The article doesn’t say. By the author of the article I guess, and one or two others. But since totally covering up women is way pre-medieval, the secretary is certainly guilty of medievophobia.
[Nadine] Dorries [has] called for a ban on the full-face veil.
This is added to the article to signify that, like the following miscreants, Dorries is Islamophobic:
“The following nations have introduced full or partial ban of the burqa: Austria, France, Belgium, Denmark, Bulgaria, the Netherlands (in public schools, hospitals and on public transport), Germany (partial bans in some states), Italy (in some localities), Spain (in some localities of Catalonia), Russia (in the Stavropol Krai),[4][5][6]Luxembourg,[7]Switzerland,[8]Norway (in nurseries, public schools and universities),[9]Canada (in the public workplace in Quebec),[10]Gabon, Chad, Senegal, the Republic of the Congo, Cameroon (in some localities), Niger (in some localities),[11][12]Sri Lanka,[13]Tajikistan,[14]Uzbekistan (ban on all personal religious symbols),[15]Azerbaijan (in public schools),[16]Turkey (in the judiciary, military and police),[17]Kosovo (in public schools),[18]Bosnia and Herzegovina (in courts and other legal institutions),[19]Morocco (ban on manufacturing, marketing and sale),[20]Tunisia (in public institutions),[21]Egypt (in universities), Algeria (in the public workplace),[22] and China (in Xinjiang).[23][24]“
“Many [Islamic women] aren’t even allowed to keep their genitals,” [Dorries has written], referring to female genital mutilation (FGM), an outlawed practice in the UK. FGM predates Islam and Christianity, but is carried out by a minority of adherents to several faiths.
That’s so cute that the Al Jazeera writer puts it that way! FGM is overwhelmingly Islamic, and is practically universal in, among other places, Egypt. Check out all them 90%s, babe! Or how ’bout that 200 million? How Islamophobic to dismiss a deeply rooted, insanely popular practice that in Luxor, for instance, is carried out on newborns! Never too soon to keep a female chaste, and we know all about infantile sexuality from Freud.
Of the about three million Muslims in Britain, it is widely understood very few women wear the full-face veil, though there are no official statistics.
As with FGM, it would behoove Al Jazeera‘s writer to do a tad of research. As far back as 2007, the NYT reported that “the number of women [in England] wearing the niqab has increased in the past several years,” and the trend has continued. With England one of the last countries in Europe or Asia with no restrictions on the burqa, the place has made itself a magnet for tourists and residents who wear the burqa/niqab.
The burqa, the writer continues, only “captures the national attention when politicians or public figures comment on it.” No, the burqa captures the public attention all the time, because most citizens of liberal democracies object to it, whether or not they favor bans. The thunderous silence that has followed Dorries’ comment, and many others like it from public figures, conveys the profound unpopularity of female invisibility cloaks, abundantly on view of late in that most Islamic of places, Afghanistan.
A real Islamophobe, that. If she had any understanding of other cultures, she would learn, as Lily Cole has learned, that the burqa is just one more beautiful manifestation of human diversity. Maybe Cole could sit her down and have a talk with her.
A sweet little propaganda morsel in the Bennington Banner instructs us that women covered head to toe in black is beautiful. We are to find this beautiful.
Nowhere in her celebration of invisible women does the propagandist remember to add that we are also to find children – just little girls, of course – covered head to toe beautiful; or that we are to find compulsory female covering in Iran and other countries beautiful. Varied, beautiful, and you’re going to jail for a long time if you and your children don’t veil.
“Many modern nuns have abandoned” their black coverings, the author notes, and I wonder why. And I wonder why it doesn’t occur to her that there’s a difference between modern nuns free to abandon old ways and millions of Afghan and Saudi women (ordinary women, not people who have joined religious orders) who face imprisonment and even death if they throw off their robes. Who at the very least face physical attacks on the street from men who see them uncovered.
The author tsk-tsks all the weird unwoke anti-burqa legislation coming out of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, but never inquires about whether that legislation means anything other than (as she believes) visceral hatred and fear.
“Within our own country and around the world, religious garments say, ‘I believe this.”
Sometimes they say that. Sometimes they say I revile what I’m wearing but I can’t do anything about it. Sometimes they say There are places in the world where men can legally fully cover women, or intimidate them into being fully covered, but this secular republic shouldn’t be one of them.
And it matters what this is, doesn’t it? Are we really not allowed to judge people who say “I believe apostates should be killed”? What about people who say “I believe we should bring back burning at the stake”?
One way to avoid writing propaganda is to read a little bit about your subject. The question of veiling is not solved by agreeing to judge something that a lot of people find appalling beautiful. The matter is complex. One might start here.
Not sure what we’re supposed to do with would hurt the feelings.
As for incompatibility with the law, tell that to the 32 (at latest count) countries – possibly including Sri Lanka, which is in the news today – with full or partial burqa bans – and on this list you will find several Muslim nations. That’s a hell of a lot of scofflaws, and I trust Ahmed Shaheed plans to haul the lot of them in front of the international courts, but meanwhile can I say once again the obvious, which is that burqa bans are all the rage all over the world for a perfectly good set of reasons? Reasons endlessly elaborated ‘pon on this blog?
… is that this sort of social reality tends to make it easier to identify true burqa evil-doers. Like the Montreal father who told his four girls that if they ever took their burqas off he’d kill them. Just for good measure, he beat them all the time anyway. The teacher of one of the girls saw that things weren’t right, and reported the father to the authorities.
He has been found guilty of assault; the daughters, who were in court, are no longer under his authority.
**********
UD thanks David, a reader, for the link to ACTUALITÉ.
[In] the 45 years since it was first officially celebrated by the UN, [International Women’s Day] feels like it marks regress rather than progress when it comes to the African context…
Let’s talk child marriage …, another great “accomplishment” for women across Africa. Let’s look at the case of Nigerian senator Ahmad Sani Yerima, who married [as his fourth wife] a 13-year-old girl from Egypt in 2010 when he was 49 years of age, defending his actions based on his religion.
Yerima told the BBC at the time that the Muslim faith permitted this union, and that he would “not respect any law that contradicts it, and whoever wants to sanction me for that is free to do that.”
… one of this blog’s categories, and it’s always easy to find oodles of news stories about our nihilation (def.: “to encase in a shell of nonbeing“). Israel’s ultraorthodox always provide comic relief on this front (though their significant responsibility for spreading catastrophic coronavirus throughout Israel is no joke – maybe the Israeli government should force a little education on the germ theory of disease onto this appalling population): Their latest is the refusal to allow women’s names on streets named after women… But when the streets are not entirely haredi-owned, some compromise is unavoidable… So okay they’ll let the women’s last names appear…
More significantly, hard-line Muslims in Malaysia are harassing social reformers who want to make veiling truly optional (the law says it is, but…) for women. Predictably, the powerful shariah courts are going after dissenters because – like the writers at Charlie Hebdo – they “insult Islam.”
“Malaysian Muslims are unfortunately subjected to arbitrary rules like this due to our dual legal system,” [the author of a book critical of veiling] said, adding that Muslims should be allowed to opt-out of the Shariah legal system.
Yeah duh. Why does Malaysia have two legal systems? Why do some idiots want England to have shariah courts?
… peace deal … Time to get our whores of all ages inside of sheets again.
Photo, by Abdul Majeed, found here.
How interesting! When an ISIS member’s lawyer wants to justify her having been allowed to return to Norway from Syria’s Al-Hol camp, he goes right to her niqab-dump! Why ever does he do that? How interesting that he clearly thinks we’ll be … reassured about something… consider it something positive and good… that a woman has rejected the niqab…
Yet my burqa:my freedom, and my niqab:my freedom have become international memes; the world’s press routinely publishes I love my burqa and you’ll never take it away from me opinion pieces. We are intended to find Islamophobic this man’s implication that removing the niqab – and hey wait a minute – –
How do we know she didn’t dump it under duress, desperate as she is to get Norwegian medical care for one of her children?
“The woman remains a security concern,” [a local terrorism expert] acknowledged. “But at least she will be under control and surveillance in Norway. Apart from France, no European-born returnees from the war in Syria [have] carried out new terror attacks in Europe.”
Oh yeah right apart from France… As in – apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play…
Bringing her back to Norway is bringing down the Norwegian government; but after all what a good idea to let this “ISIS Wife,” as the NYT headline absurdly calls her, back in the country.
Keep calling these chicks ISIS wives. Go ahead. I mean, that’s all the poor stupid dears were, right? Mobile vaginas immobilizing themselves for a time in ISISland in order to produce babies for one husband after another. No other personal identity here, and certainly no moral agency and certainly no slave holding or beheading applauding or propaganda issuing… The sexism with which these women are being received in Europe and America is astounding.
************
UPDATE: Norway’s ruling coalition has disbanded after the populist Progress Party (FRP) left the government, partly due to the repatriation of a mother with suspected ISIS links from Syria.
The Prime Minister said there were no options, but there were. Bring in the child for treatment while the mother stays behind and works out her citizenship options. She grew up in Norway and presumably has family there who can look after the child. She has a Pakistani background, and one of her husbands has (had?) Chilean roots – she may qualify for citizenship in those countries, or in whatever country her other husband came from (he is not identified in news stories).
****************
ANOTHER UPDATE: So as the thing becomes a big story – a whole government falls because someone thought Norway needed to repatriate and permanently surveil an ISIS militant – we can scan a big ol’ page of news stories about it and find not ONE reference to this woman as an ISIS militant. Let’s see what we find… ISIS spouse, ISIS widow, ISIS bride, ISIS wife… Occasionally we get suspect, woman, returnee… But take a look and you’ll see overwhelming use of the reductive, sexist formulation. Do we call ISIS men ISIS husbands? Why not?
Jocelyn Maclure and Charles Taylor write:
[A teacher cannot wear the] burqa or niqab in class and still adequately [discharge] her duties as a teacher. On one hand, teaching necessarily entails communication, and covering the face and body does not allow for nonverbal communication. On the other, one of the teacher’s missions is to contribute toward the development of the student’s sociability. It seems reasonable to think that wearing a full veil establishes too much distance between the teacher and her charges. In short pedagogical reasons may be involved to justify the prohibition of the burqa or niqab among teachers.
Not that Iran cares about so many of its women – including a high-profile Olympics champ, who has defected to the Netherlands – very militantly casting off compulsory veiling. Put them in jail if they’re here; ignore them if they’re there… But swaddled masses yearning to breathe free can prove quite pesky if they’re truly able to… mass. We shall see. Indications are excellent. Even in places you’d never expect it.
