The “Muslim problem” sounds like the “Jewish problem”. :o
I better ditch my sunglasses, then!
That’s a beautiful post, but remember, people don’t wear a burqa all day long. It’s not like you are masked forever- mostly you wear it during your commute and while you run errands.
Take Habiba- she wakes up, eat breakfast with hubby and the kids and relaxes over a cup of coffee and the paper. Then she puts on her burqa, takes the bus to the girl’s school where she teaches second grade, and leaves it in the closet for the rest of the school day. After work, she puts her burqa back on and walks over to her friend’s house, who is holding a Scrabble party. She stops at the grocery store and the post office along the way. She spends the afternoon having fun with her friends (and showing off the new dress she bought at H&M) before putting the burqa on and going to meet her husband at her parent’s house for dinner. Once there, she hangs up the burqa, and whiles away the night chatting with her parents and brother and sisters- Uncle Souley is even in town for a surprise visit! After eating her fill, she puts on her burqa and rides home with her husband. She hangs the burqa in the coat closet, kisses the kids goodnight, and chats with her husband about her day before going to sleep.
Seems like a pain in the ass, but hardly a completely dehumanizing problem. I’m not saying it’s great- I think it is a sign of a culture that does not respect women, and it does constrict women’s options. But there is a lot more to the women who wear burqas than what you happen to glimpse seeing them on the street.
Funny you should mention sunglasses. They absolutely are used to hide peoples’ emotions, quite deliberately. Poker players wear them (if they’re allowed to.) Cops wear them to look intimidating. Insecure guys post photos of themselves wearing sunglasses on dating sites because they’re not confident about the way their eyes look. Hugely, hugely important. People think sunglasses on the right kind of guy “look badass”. Why? Because a “badass” is not emotional. Sunglasses are functional and certainly have practical uses but their use as a way of obscuring someone’s true character cannot be overstated.
The very fact that the burqa is only used when out among strangers - in other words, the woman’s true face is “reserved” for only the people who are close to her in her life - is a gigantic blazing sign of how intended it was from the very beginning to conceal someone’s personality.
Yeah, some people unfamiliar with history make this comparison. However, Jews were not responsible for the kind of violence against gays, threats of terrorism & subjugation of women that introducing large numbers of muslims has brought to European countries. Also, it is ironic you’d make that comparison given that Muslims are a major problem for jewish people in European countries. There has been a large increase in anti-semitic violence and it stems from these arrivals.
If you care about the latter 150, why do you support a law that puts them in jail for wearing the burka?
Throwing people in jail because you don’t like their clothes.
To further the Muslim Problem/Jewish Problem analogy, there are 10 times as many Muslims in France as there are Jews in America and the only country with more Jews than America is Israel.
I’ve never met a woman in a burqa, but I have met a munaqqabah, a stranger, in the soda section of a Walmart, no less. I asked her a question and she said she really didn’t speak English. She did, however, speak French, so we had a conversation, with my somewhat rudimentary French, about her little girl (who was a toddler and not in hijab, even) because the little girl happened to have a certain obvious disability that I have as well. I was able to give the mom the name of a pediatric specialist, which was helpful to her because she hadn’t found one here yet. (She pulled out a Blackberry to take the info down.)
This might be the point at which it’s useful to review the difference between a burqa and a niqab. In a burqa, the eyes are behind mesh, in niqab – which is also banned in the French law – the eyes are visible. The eyes are the only thing visible.
And that’s a person’s right. No one owes the public access to their “humanity” on any level deeper than that which they’re willing to give.
In any case, you don’t give women liberty by telling them what to wear, whether that’s saying “you must wear the veil” or “you must not wear the veil.” And you certainly don’t gain much traction by suggesting that women who are “caught” in niqab need “re-education” on how to be proper citizens.
You should be allowed to openly express yourself, I agree.
If you walk around wearing a t-shirt saying “Fuck You”, you are certainly expressing yourself as anti-social. But if you do wear such a bold statement on your shirt, you can expect some debate.
Not sure how this can be compared to someone hiding from society.
How do you know this for sure?
I would be surprised if there wasn’t at least a few of these women who are forced to wear it.
I bet you there must be at least a few who are secretly thinking “Thank God” for this law, because refusing to wear it may mean a severe beating.
Even if there was only one woman who now feels liberated by this law, that’s worth it. The fact is, although the majority may be wearing it as a personal choice, there is very likely a number of women forced to wear this symbol of oppression.
I don’t really care one way or another what religion you are. That is absolutely a personal choice. But even if there was the remotest chance that someone is forced to wear it as a symbol of submission and oppression, then I do have a problem with it.
None. I have never had a chance to speak to them. When I see them though, I do often want to ask. But they are almost always accompanied by a man or two who are obviously in charge. I live in Singapore, and there are a lot of Arab tourists here.
Interesting comparison, the local Malay Muslims wear head coverings some times, but they don’t cover their face. I have no problems interacting with them and I have plenty of Malay friends both male and female.
Actually, my experience is with the niqabs as well. Can’t remember meeting anyone in a burqa.
Still, I’d venture to say you may have likely met more European women who wear it voluntarily whereas my experience are with Arabs.
I get invited to Aidilfitri every year, and I remember one year when attending the feast, my friends had invited Arab friends of theirs. The Arab women wore Niqabs and even then they would isolate themselves in a corner. To eat they withdrew to a different room all together so they could remove the niqab to enjoy the feast in private. Not so with the Malay women who freely intermingled and feasted openly. Even in a social setting, they were anti-social.
They didn’t seem very happy to me, especially compared to their Malay counterparts where there was plenty of laughter.
It sounds like they were very social – with one another. Just not with you and their secular cohorts. It sounds like your big problem is that you feel entitled to munaqqabahs’ attention and don’t get it.
Perhaps it would help those women affected to realize that they are already being secluded.
That’s not it at all. Why would I be looking for their attention? They clearly isolated themselves, so I was certainly not going to approach them.
I was simply observing.
To me it seemed they seemed submissive and resigned to their role as secondary citizens.
I consider women as equal, that is not what I see when I see a woman in a niqab.
I see a woman oppressed. Treated like possession.
Going back to the OP, European women have struggled for hundreds of years to gain independence and equality. The burqa and niqab are used to oppress women in some Muslim countries. To wear it in Europe, even voluntarily, is to wear a symbol of oppression.
Can’t help the Arab women I see here in Singapore, and no, I don’t want their attention.
But in Europe, if it means liberating the women who are forced to wear it, then that is the right thing to do even if it may seem to violate the rights of those who want to wear it.
If they chose to wear it because they feel naked without it, regardless of whether they feel that way because of nurtured male oppression you’re not doing them a kindness by brutally ripping it off.
Women rights are supposed to be about the woman’s perspective, aren’t they ? Let them, or their daughters, or their daughters’ daughters figure that shit out in their own time. Imposing your own standards of what women liberation looks like is just more patriarchal oppression.
Now imagine your daughter needs surgery but everyone in the operating room insists on wearing a mask. Could you trust these people with your daughter’s life?
You make some valid points.
Can you in all honesty guarantee that 100% of the women wearing the burqa or the niqab in France are doing it voluntarily? Not a single one is being forced to wear it? I would be amazed, but if that is fact, then I would agree they should have the right to do so.
I still think it is very anti-social and they limit themselves in what they can do to contribute to the society in which they live. They automatically eliminate themselves from a majority of jobs. I will never understand why they would want to do that to themselves, if indeed it is voluntary.
It’s certainly not voluntary in Saudi.
Yea, that’s the same thing. :rolleyes:
They are the same in that they are equally silly things to be concerned about when your daughter’s life is in jeopardy.
Agreed. Which is why I already admitted it was not a good example.
This post reminded me of a brief thread about the idea of people wearing masks because of deformity or injury–which it turns out you started, AT.
So you are creeped out by the idea of not being able to see everybody’s actual faces all the time. That’s understandable, though I think you can recognize that it’s a character flaw. A person with a facial disfigurement who wants to conceal his actual surface appearance in public is as human as he would be without the mask. Depending on circumstances, a mask might make it harder or easier to treat him normally, but in any event not recognizing the humanity is a failing of others, not of him.
I can’t, I haven’t met all 500 of them. But so what ? Does the suffering of one void the suffering of the others when you rip their voluntary secret blankie away ? Do you know they’re all forced to wear it ? Do my lawmakers know it ? Of course they don’t, nor do they give a shit because helping these women isn’t and has never been the purpose of this law (but that’s another topic entirely).
There are already avenues, call centres, shelters, help groups and so forth for battered women to escape if they wish to or at least try. It’s not like oppression is the Saudi Woman’s prerogative. The burqa is not an alien or different symptom that mandates a specific, targeted “cure”. The only reason it’s being addressed at all is that it bothers xenophobic French people and the zeitgeist is right for a little bit of the ol’ cultural exceptionalism.
Fuck 'em with a Koran doused in petrol.