I just want to jump in and thank you for starting this thread. I’ve often felt the same anger, whether it be at Muslims, LDS, Hassidim (OK, sure, the guys wear heavy suits, too, but the women wear heavy clothes that cover neck to wrist to ankle AND wigs on top of it!), or even Lakota and other NA religions (not just for the way the women are culturally pressured to dress, but also the strictly proscribed behaviors, from the way they sit - knees together, even while sitting on the ground - to the incessant beading they do all friggin’ day while the men are off doing cool ceremonies). I just…don’t get it. I love being a woman, and I personally happen to be very happy doing “womanly” things (as described by my culture), but I also like that it’s my choice. If I don’t like to bead, I don’t have to bead. If I want to go topless, I go topless, if I don’t want to wear high heels, I don’t.
But there’s a lot of great food for thought here. Maybe I should stop being outraged on the behalf of people who haven’t asked me to be outraged for them. But…how far does that go? Am I still allowed to be outraged about infibulation? About child sweat shops? About the extermination of aboriginal tribes? Widow burning? Honor killings of rape victims? Cultural relativity is nice and all, but there are indeed some things that I just think are wrong, no matter if the people they’re being done to approve or not.
This is where I fall. I’m pretty much OK with any cultures choices about dress and voluntary family structures. I do however have a seething hatred for any type of religious fundamentalism. Call me intolerant if you want. It’s evil and/or an illness, so I’m not sure anyone ought to be tolerant.
For me, this is what I get most annoyed about. The whole reason for the “robes” (whether its just headscarf, or the full hijab) is so that the women “don’t tempt the men”. This doesn’t seem fair. It seems to me that it would be far more ‘virtuous’ and appropriate for the guys to control their thoughts* than for a woman to control how she dresses
or more to the point, thinks whatever the hell he likes, but controls his actions and the way he treats women
The women with whom I’ve discussed this in the past have told me that it’s more than just so they don’t “tempt the men”. It’s also about maintaining their personal modesty and living up to the requirements of their faith. Granted, the person I spent the most time discussing this topic with isn’t Muslim (she’s Christian, actually, but the dictates of her faith demand her to dress modestly).
Her view is that her decision to dress modestly when people can see her - including covering up even on the hottest days - is about living her faith. She keeps covered from neck to ankle even on the hottest summer days for lots of reasons. To show her respect for her own body, to show her respect for God, to show her repsect to the people she might meet, and to help her brothers out by not providing them with temptation. Also, quite frankly, she was pretty blunt about preferring to dress modestly because she finds that her interactions with men are more pleasant when she can be more certain they are dealing with Her-The-Person-And-Fellow-Human-Being as opposed to Her-The-Possessor-Of-An-Amazing-Rack. She finds that people tend to be more polite and respectful to her when she’s dressed modestly than when she’s wearing a tank top and shorts.* Men and women, actually.
She isn’t married, and her father passed away some years ago.
While I’d be angry on behalf of anyone forced into behavior they would not consent to, I’ll also withhold judgment on the state of a person’s consent based on nothing more than the clothes they’re wearing.
*Granted, in the privacy of her own home, she wears as little as comfortably possible. But that’s in private - her faith hasn’t got anything to say about what she should wear when she’s in private.
Sometimes it doesn’t have to be about religion, just about common sense. The OP wasn’t being a prick, he was simply thinking hot out + covered head to toe = damn it must be uncomfortable for them. That sucks Nothing wrong with that. Whatever reason a Muslim woman has for wearing a burqa, whether by choice or force (and sometimes it’s hard to distinguish one from the other), there is no argument to be made that it isn’t somewhat inhibiting, especially, you know, in a non-desert climate. I’ve worn one, with mesh over the eyes. It is not simply a symbol of faith. It is claustrophobic, to say the least. When burqas are re-/introduced into Muslim countries where previously women could simply wear headscarves, I’m not sure they’re met with resounding joy. A friend of mine got in a fight with relatives while in Iran. One of the men tried to tell her that women ‘are like precious gold that must be hidden or they’ll be stolen.’ Ugh. Her aunt said she preferred wearing a chador. ‘Then why not wear it while you’re inside your home in the company of women, if it’s so comfortable and important to your faith?’ Nada.
Meh! I have plenty of friends who wear abayas over their bikinis to go shopping. I own 3 or 4 of them and find they come in really handy for a trip to the corner store/supermarket when I can’t be arsed getting dressed or fixing my hair.
And, FTR, Muslim men are supposed to dress modestly (minimum coverage from navel to knees) and lower their gaze in the presence of women who are not mahram (family, by blood or marriage).
This is a fascinating thread. I look at women dressing restrictively and from my Canadian perspective, they look oppressed to me, but I don’t know them or their circumstances. I think there is something to the argument that the women who were raised to think full coverage is good will think it is good, regardless of how good it empirically is. That would possibly make the raising oppressive, rather than the clothing.
In my own family, my mother’s side is Mennonite, which dictates a certain oppressive dress code for women. Two generations later (my grandma wore mostly dresses and a headscarf), I would walk around in public wearing a bikini (if I had the body for it) and think nothing of it. The Mennonite ladies in my family didn’t take too long before they did away with oppressive clothing restrictions after moving to Canada and becoming Westernized.
Wearing that type of garment also provides them 100% sunblock too. Aside from the scorching heat, the sun would have to be killer on your skin in certain countries.
Anyone remember the Afghan girl on the cover of National Geographic with the gorgeous green eyes? When they found her 17 years later, she couldn’t have been more than 30 years old at the most, and her skin looked literally sand blasted.
I think I’d wear a burka if it would keep me from turning into a crisp.
I agree that a person should be able to wear what she wants. And I also note that that we have different standards for clothing for men and women here in the US also - go to the beach and see how many topless men you will see vs. topless women.
You can’t really know what the situation of any particular individual is.
However, there is still the fact that some Muslim fundamentalists (the Taleban is the example commonly cited in the USA) tried to force women to wear a particular type of clothing. In Iran the police is cracking down on women that want to wear western-style “skimpy” clothing.
There are definitely cases where the wearing of the chador of the burqa is not a choice and should be condemned because it is forced.
Exactly. The guys are the ones being the pricks, but not necessarily for the reason you state. They want to look all modern and westernized because they think it’s makes them feel better about themselves. But if they had any damn brains, they’d be wearing their traditional desert robes and headgear because it would keep them cooler. It wouldn’t work quite as well as in the desert because Houston is a lot more humid (I think?) than where that garb originated, but there is a practical reason for it. What I don’t understand is why, in the Middle East, the men don’t overwhelmingly dress in their traditional clothing.
I clicked on some pictures showing a woman in a long gown, scarf and gloves in a link on the first page. The first picture looked like it was black and the second picture made the garments look like a dark purple. Are women allowed to wear these concealing garments in a shade other than black? What about embroidery or other embellishments?
Does that go for swimwear on American beaches? I’m not joking, compared to many cultures our rather illogical view of what is appropriate attire is a damned close analog to “traditional Islam,” just shifted ever so slightly to one side of the spectrum.
And a mere 100 years ago, there wasn’t even a shift. I think westerners need to step down from our high horse, those of us in America especially. Half of our population has an essentially medieval view of science and the segment that would like to legislate our personal morality based on religious beliefs is growing in influence and is explicitly lobbying for a theocracy.
Let’s reserve our indignation for our compatriots.
I wasn’t aware my indignation was a finite resource. I’m sure I can come up with more.
There have been more than just Muslims pointed to in this thread, by the way. LDS, Jews, Mennonites, corporate dress codes requiring high heels - there are plenty of American institutions just as guilty, and I think we get that.
I have a friend who, more than 30 years ago, married a guy from Saudi Arabia. He didn’t immediately demand that she don more modest clothing. She wasn’t particularly immodest, anyway. As long as they lived in the States, she wore whatever.
However, when they moved back to SA, she had to get the covering stuff, just to fit in. To my amazement, since she was kind of a–well, she was and is a die-hard feminist–she said she didn’t mind. She said the climate where they lived was very hot, windy, and dry, very cool at night, and the garments worn by both sexes accommodated this admirably. Without it she would have needed a prohibitive amount of moisturizer and sunscreen. She said the thing she wore (not a burka) also conveyed invisibility on her.
She also said she was more comfortable covered than un, because she was a person who didn’t think very highly of her own attractiveness*, and she said every single Saudi woman she met (unveiled) was an absolutely drop-dead-gorgeous beauty. She was even briefly uncomfortable when she came home and didn’t have her invisibility cloak.
Where she was in SA I don’t remember, but the thing didn’t have to be black. It could NOT be white because that was what men wore, but it could be a lighter color.
But, where she was, the women (her mother-in-law and sister-in-law) could, and did drive. They didn’t have licenses but they knew how to do it. They couldn’t have done it in the city. So maybe things were more lax where they were, and in certain areas it does have to be black. (I got the impression they lived in some kind of family compound. I know she said there was a swimming pool just for the women.)
*She didn’t articulate this part, I just knew that from knowing her.
The OP’s discomfort, shared by many Dutch, (including me) at women wearing niquabs (coverall, only eyes showing) has led to some interesting legislature in the Netherlands.
Wearing a niquaab in a Dutch street has been made a misdemeanor. A woman wearing one can be fined a fine of around 150 dollars by any passing policeofficer. The rationale behind it (and the law that is applied in such cases) is that in the interest of safety it isn’t allowed for anyone to walk around in public disguised, with an obscured face; robbing banks would just become too easy.
It has to be said though, that fining niquaab wearing ladies isn’t high on the priority list of Dutch police. The only case I know whre it happened, is the militant wife of the leader of our only known Dutch/Morrocan Islam fundie terroriost organisation. She made it a point to come to court, attending her husbands trial, in a niquaab. She was asked to wear something else, she persisted, was fined, still persisted. I don’t know how it ended. I guess the police wisely gave up because she got more out of the battle than they did.
Also, wearing a niquaab can be legal grounds for being fired in the Netherlands. There have been a couple trials in the Netherlands in the past five years where young militant women went to trial over their right to wear a niquaab in school and on the job. As these jobs (kindergarten teacher) required interaction with the public, the judge ruled that the school or emplyer had the right to overrule the ladies’claim to “freedom of religion”. The school or employer was allowed to demand that the niquaab wearing ladies wore something instead that left their eyes and mouth visible.
We also had a case of a lady who was refused unemployment benefits because of her insistence to wear a niquaab. The argument was that she made herself voluntarily unemployable that way. Makes sense to me.
Houston’s had a fairly mild summer, so far, due to clouds & rain. The day in question was clear, therefore on the hot side. But not “blazingly, swelteringly hot” to a longtime Houstonian. Nor to a Saudi.
Traffic around the Galleria is generally abysmal. One learns to avoid the area unless actually visiting the mall.
Not every Galleria store is upscale, but many of them are. How dare these furriners be on their way to spend money, when common working men are just trying to get home!
(Muslims belong to “sects.” Christians belong to “denominations.” Oh, well.)
Islam instructs women to dress modestly. These instructions are interpreted differently according to country & individual taste. Islamic men also dress modestly–consider traditional desert garb. Were the grown men you saw in shorts?
Wanting to conk people on the head is a tad prickish–especially since you include the women. You show no concern about their “oppression”–just anger at their difference. Different looking people on their way to Neiman Marcus–how dare they!
Since you’re asking for suggestions, I suggest you do learn more about different religions & cultures. Houston’s a good place for that.
And be sure your car’s air conditioner works well–to reduce the likelihood of further anger attacks. (Just one reason I commute via bus & rail.)
The only case I know whre it happened, is the militant wife of the leader of our only known Dutch/Morrocan Islam fundie terroriost organisation. She made it a point to come to court, attending her husbands trial, in a niquaab. She was asked to wear something else, she persisted, was fined, still persisted. I don’t know how it ended. I guess the police wisely gave up because she got more out of the battle than they did.