Ah, but we all know the burqa represents a different category from the examples of religious attire the Toronto Star‘s public editor lists.
He’s explaining to readers why he erased part of an opinion writer’s column about the hijab revolution. At one point the columnist jumped from hijab to burqa and – rather like Boris Johnson comparing wearers to letter boxes – commented that the women in them seem to be wearing Halloween costumes. This was deemed too offensive to retain.
If, as seems likely to me, many girls and women hidden under black hoods and robes are oppressed (a lot of them probably envy the hijab that’s causing all that trouble in Iran), I don’t suppose it’s very nice to add to their downtrodden condition by taking these sorts of jabs at them… OTOH, you could argue that, short of outlawing it (which much of the world – and, for many public-facing circumstances, some of Canada – has done), various forms of verbal complaint about it might help give some burqa wearers the clarity/guts to stand up to their husbands/imams/communities and take them off.
And as for the editor’s effort to see it as equal to turbans and yamulkes (The thing about the pope is ridiculous, though it does reveal the radicality, the extremity, the editor rightly intuits about burqa-wearers — tens of thousands of ordinary citizens dressing every day in a look comparable to that of the head of the global Catholic church? You expect to see lots of people every day in Toronto dressed like the pope? Even the pope doesn’t routinely dress like the pope.), there’s a vas deferens between guys plunking a small or even large head covering on their noggin, and the astounding full-body coverage (including black gloves so you can’t even see fingers) of the burqa. The way it blocks access to basics, like sunlight, free movement, full vision — much less simple interaction with other people in the world. The way it features black cloth over your mouth. The way it subjects eight year old girls to this.
Nope. The burqa is incomparably problematic, which a glance at its legal status in much of the world will reveal.
Okay, but where are the op/eds from rafts of Western women intellectuals, and from jolly burqa wearers all over Europe, saying Well of course there shouldn’t be an edict, but burqas are beautiful empowering expressions of piety and selfhood and you’re all defaming them just as much as Johnny and Amber are defaming each other … ?
I mean, everyone’s dumping on the burqa lately… It’s almost as if people think there’s… something wrong… with a heavy agonizingly constraining black full body bag robbing wearers of sunlight and peripheral vision, and featuring a heavy cloth strip over the mouths of women and little girls as if I mean is there some sort of symbolic value there…? That mouth thing?
So where are its defenders? They’re noisy enough when countries begin voting for burqa bans. They organize big pro-burqa marches and they tell us we’re Islamophobes for objecting to burqas. Where is all that moral passion now that everyone’s acting as if burqas are obviously atrocious? I’m waiting.
The top-to-toe burka, with its sinister, airless little grille, is more than an instrument of persecution, it is a public tarring and feathering of female sexuality. It transforms any woman into an object of defilement too untouchably disgusting to be seen. It is a garment of lurid sexual suggestiveness: what rampant desire and desirability lurks and leers beneath its dark mysteries? In its objectifying of women, it turns them into cowering creatures demanding and expecting violence and victimisation. Forget cultural sensibilities.
More moderate versions of the garb – the dull, uniform coat to the ground and the plain headscarf – have much the same effect, inspiring the lascivious thoughts they are designed to stifle. What is it about a woman that is so repellently sexual that she must diminish herself into drab uniformity while strolling down Oxford Street one step behind a husband who is kitted out in razor-sharp Armani and gold, pomaded hair and tight bum exposed to lustful eyes? (No letters please from British women who have taken the veil and claim it’s liberating. It is their right in a tolerant society to wear anything including rubber fetishes – but that has nothing to do with the systematic cultural oppression of women with no choice.)
Campaign slogan, Afghan Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhunzada.
His song:
A bag of bones under a full-body wrap!
Now tell me which leader can do better than that!
******************
UPDATE: Comes now a charismatic young challenger to Akhunzada…
Campaign slogan: We CAN do better than that! I guarantee that that corpse will be a nine-year-old girl with no clitoris, just sold off to a seventy-year-old man!
To the tune of Clementine.
Tried the hijab, tried abaya
Tried to keep our peckers down
But your nostrils we espy - ed
And our stiffies went to town
Only burqa only burqa
Only burqa keeps us down
We are lost and gone forever
When you wear just half a gown
O you whorish godless creatures
How you make our wieners fizz
When you show your brazen features
All the streets are lined with jiz
Only burqa only burqa
Only burqa keeps us down
We are lost and gone forever
When you just wear half a gown
Prohibiting use of the burqa in schools reflects a “mindset of the past,” the Council of the Islamic Community wrote in a statement on Friday.
And I’m following the mess closely. I haven’t written about it yet because I need to know a lot more about the particular circumstances, regions, histories, politics, before I venture an opinion. I’m reading, reading, and reading.
And do we ever take open carry seriously. Look at the poor mayor of America’s current deadliest city, Jackson, Mississippi! Desperate, he tried getting rid of open carry — and the state came down on him like a ton of Glocks.
As for burqas – they’re banned in much of Europe, but babe this is the land of the free! Banish the thought.
… covering your girl child – girl infant – from the moment she pops out, in all her blasphemous sexiness – is big business around the world. The burgeoning popularity of female-blanketing means more and more stores in virtually every location are getting in on the trend. UD’s post title anticipates some product line names…
… And children’s songs… If you’re happy and hijabi clap your hands! If you’re…
Now we all know (if we read UD) that Quebec is in all kinds of trouble in the larger, uh, Canadian entity, because that province passed a law restricting public employees from wearing hijabs while on the job. We also know that everyone dumped on the French when their Senate passed a law (it went no further than the Senate) banning hijabs in public settings on people younger than eighteen. Yet when one of Canada’s most prominent pediatric physicians – the director of pediatric surgery at McGill – writes a shocked and angry response to a recent cover image on the Canadian Medical Association Journal, UD thinks it might be worth your while to read what he says.
“As a pediatric surgeon, I admit I would not typically have gravitated toward the excellent article in CMAJ by Drs. Bloch and Rozmovits if it wasn’t for the image that accompanied it — a picture of 2 girls, probably about 3 or 4 years old, reading together. One of them is covered in a hijab.
The image shocked and infuriated many. Yasmine Mohammed, a Vancouver activist who has championed equality for Muslim women, tweeted, “The cover of @CMAJ features a little girl in hijab. How disheartening to see my so-called liberal society condone something that is only happening in the most extremist of religious homes.” Another Muslim woman, a surgical trainee who wishes to remain anonymous, messaged me to express her horror at seeing the image, which triggered painful childhood memories of growing up in a fundamentalist Islamic society, where she was forced to wear the hijab from early childhood and taught that her body was desired by the opposite sex and should be covered. She later shared her perspective in a private conversation with the CMAJ interim editor-in-chief and publisher.
It has become “liberal” to see the hijab as a symbol of equity, diversity and inclusion. Out of the best intentions, the CMAJ editors probably chose this picture to accompany an article on the application of such principles in medical care.
I work in an urban tertiary academic children’s hospital embedded in an extremely multicultural environment. Many of my trainees, colleagues and patients’ parents (and some adolescent patients) wear the hijab. I respect each woman I interact with, as well as any woman’s choice to express her identity as she desires. Some women face harassment and discrimination for their choice to wear the hijab. That is real, and it is also wrong.
But respect does not alter the fact that the hijab, the niqab and the burka are also instruments of oppression for millions of girls and women around the world who are not allowed to make a choice. We are currently being reminded of this daily, as we see the tragic return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and its effect on the subjugation of women and girls. Girls as old as those in the picture are being sold into marriage to old men — institutionalized child rape. The mentality that allows this to happen shares much with the one that leads to covering up a toddler. But even in so-called moderate Islamic countries, such as the one I grew up in, societal pressures heavily marginalize women who choose not to wear the hijab. In addition, women in these countries who are not Muslim and do not wear the hijab are often subject to intense harassment and discrimination. I know that, because some of these women are in my family. I respect the women who see the hijab as liberating. But we must also remember the women and girls who find it oppressive and misogynistic.
Ironically, the article explores evaluating interventions to address social risks to health. A young girl such as the one depicted in the image is typically also banned from riding a bike, swimming or participating in other activities that characterize a healthy childhood. She is taught, directly or indirectly, from an early age that she is a sexual object, and it is her responsibility to hide her features from the opposite sex, lest she attract them. A heavy burden for modesty is placed squarely on her shoulders. So many women have been traumatized by such an upbringing, which, I believe, frankly borders on child abuse. Is that not a social risk to health? Are these children not a vulnerable population?”
********************
What will it take for you, and many other well-meaning people, acting “out of the best intentions,” to see what some subcultures are doing to their girls? Do you think that legitimizing bordering-on-child-abuse by featuring it on the covers of medical journals is a good idea?
******************
UPDATE: After complaints, the letter has been retracted, with cringing apologies from the editor, along with her pledge never again to trespass onto the truth. A commenter at Retraction Watch gets it said:
‘Could someone explain exactly what is so terrible about the author’s claim: “Some women face harassment and discrimination for their choice to wear the hijab. That is real, and it is also wrong. But respect does not alter the fact that the hijab, the niqab and the burka are also instruments of oppression for millions of girls and women around the world who are not allowed to make a choice.”
Is that such a fundamentally unreasonable statement? Is the author incorrect that the hijab, niqab, and burka have—for many girls and women—associations with oppression? I expect that for many people the hijab is a harmless symbol, or even a mere fashion statement—but can’t the same be said of the Confederate battle flag, which is certainly a symbol of oppression to many people?
To be clear, the author did not argue that women shouldn’t wear hijabs. In fact, he explicitly said women should be able to dress however they please without being subjected to discrimination or harassment. What the author argued is that showing a toddler in a hijab isn’t a good way to represent cultural diversity. Perhaps the author is wrong about that—but if he is, then isn’t the appropriate course of action to present a counterargument pointing out the flaws in the author’s statements? Instead we get a retraction and a generic, uninformative statement from the editor apologizing for hurt feelings.’
The latest look in Karachi.
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.
“All of our European sisters rallying in support of veiling are right!” exulted one young woman eyeing the onward march of the Taliban. “I can’t wait for total covering — modesty’s the ticket! Allah’s gonna love it!”
************
UD devoutly hopes that watching vibrant living beings die under the vile shroud that is the burqa will strengthen Europe’s (most of Europe’s) determination to ban it among its citizens. Together, footage from ISIS prisoner camps and from pious perverted Afghanistan should be more than enough to silence the fools defending the invisibility cloak.
************
Today’s [American] college students are too young to remember the utter shock of seeing a country of women wearing burqas, head-to-toe coverings with small patches of mesh in the eye area. Women who looked all the same, women who were completely hidden, women unable to see except barely and straight ahead.
It was a nightmare.
Tsk. How judgmental. How culturally non-relativist. USA Today’s opinion writer just comes right out with her Islamophobia, and this must be because she has failed to read the right books and attend the right rallies. A nightmare? Oh no. No, you can’t say that. The burqa is a beautiful expression of the piety of Muslim women. Now all Afghan women will be beautiful in the sight of God.
Problems start in the headline.
Rather than asking whether Islam is liberal enough to belong in Europe, the more relevant question today appears to be whether Europe is liberal enough to accept Muslim women.
Given many restrictions on various forms of veiling in countries all over the world, including the middle east, this is certainly not the more relevant question. With these historical trends, the more relevant question is whether countries that mandate veiling are liberal enough to stop doing this.
The hijab is more than a religious symbol to those who wear it. Muslim women cover their hair out of tradition, to maintain a connection to their cultural heritage, or for reasons of modesty. Several young European women I spoke to explained that they wear the hijab despite protests from their immigrant families, who do not want them to face undue scrutiny or discrimination at work.
This is the vague, anodyne stuff one always gets from champions of covering up. Just saying it’s a religious symbol is empty: Tell me what it symbolizes religiously, because not all forms of behavior that call themselves religious get an automatic pass.
Out of tradition? Meaning? Veiling is tribal, and very limitedly tribal. Do all of the women who veil come from a tribe that veils? And is a liberal culture compelled to tolerate all tribal behavior? Again, precision, please.
Reasons of modesty must be discussed alongside religion, no? And tribe? I mean, can we put all of this together to make a salient point? It would be something like: These women perceive themselves to derive from particular tribes. (Which tribes?) These tribes feature a form of Islam which the women believe mandates that women must hide themselves from men. You note that their families often protest their behavior. Could this be because, alongside its negative social and economic consequences, it lacks any legitimate Islamic grounding? This, in other words, might be a good point in the essay to cite any Koranic verse mandating veiling.
The rampant European misperception of the hijab as a symbol of a supposedly misogynistic Islamic culture…
Funny thing about that rampancy. Wonder where it comes from. Wonder why vast swathes of the world perceive… well, all religions as misogynistic, but Islam as king of the misogynists… wonder where that comes from.
I’m afraid, in other words, that you’re not going to be able to dance your way to your conclusions through a series of false or undercooked generalizations.
At no point in her essay does the writer attempt to understand rampant legislation, votes, referendums, against veiling – in countries all over the world. She does the pointless dance most defenders of burqas and hijabs do: Countries all over the world are Islamophobic, and hijab/burqa wearers are their victims. Here’s some advice: Get off the dance floor and do the hard honest work of figuring out why you’re losing this fight. Don’t be like Donald Trump, who loses a fight and stands there wailing like a fool. Accept your losses and analyze them.
Afghanistan remains one of the worst countries in the world for women, after only Yemen and Syria, according to an index kept by Georgetown University’s Institute for Women, Peace and Security.
It’s definitely been better for women with American troops there, but it was still hideous, and it’s about to become heinous.