You find the most interesting things when you check out people who comment on your blog. Things like this:
I could choose to let this veil be my identity. However, our Muslim brothers and sisters have turned our Islam into a religion of inequality, suppression and injustice, so I can not for any other reason than to please you Allah wear this veil. They have taken the rights you have given me and told me that this is not what you meant. They taken from me basic human needs and told me that this is not what Allah has intended for me.
Oh, Allah, if they could they would steal the heaven that you have layed beneath my feet…
Read the rest here.
raincoaster 
Okay, right now, I really wish I had a veil to hide behind – as I’m checking this out from a freinds house and blushing.
I loved this post; it is prose poetry, and to me it is a marvelous example of an individual’s exercise of free will within a complex context of cultural and religious expectations. I’m not Muslim, but my mother had friends who went veiled (she lived in Saudi for a time) and I do have a friend who wears the hijab, and in Vancouver that takes a bit of gumption. Good for her. It’s a big world and it won’t collapse from the exercise of free will; on the contrary, it is enlarged and ennobled by it.
I’m outraged by Jack Straw’s assertion in the UK that he has the right to ask Muslim women to remove their veils to make him more comfortable. Surely what they wear is their decision, and surely Jack Straw, like all dictators, should just get over the idea that he has the right to override the free will of others to make himself feel better.
There is an inherent cultural mistrust of people who won’t show their faces here. Not saying it’s right, just that it is so.
For myself, it seems to me that veils make it easier to ignore the person behind them. If you seek to remove someone’s humanity you label them, force them into a uniform, be it a yellow star, a leper’s cloak, or a veil. Hide them, and they are an unperson.
I’m not trying to start a fight here, just saying what’s true for me. I value and respect the freedom to worship as one pleases far more than my squeamishness, and Samaha, you expressed your devotion beautifully. I would never suggest that a tradition that could not be found to harm others be suppressed.
Still, to call Jack Straw a dictator because he expressed discomfort with the veil, though, seems to me to be as guilty as he is of point-blank condemnation.
He is the ex-foreign secretary, expressing a private opinion in a public space. That was all. And whether you think he was wrong or right to express it, it was far less agitprop than some British imams have been known to give out.
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Thank you Raincoaster!
While I do not wear a scarf – it enrages me that anyone in a democratic country would have the gall to request a women remove her veil. It’s hypocritical.
Metro, with the diversity of veil types that I see here, I am wondering which type of veil you are refering to. I might agree with you that a black veil that covers all the body including the face can be tagged as a uniform.
But for the majority of veils that I see here, they are of a diversity of colors and they show the face and hands. I don’t think that can be labeled a uniform.
But whether they cover the body or not, surely it is the right of the women in question to make the call.
I believe it is not as simple as women’s rights. Think of it as a warning shot to the extremists that the politicos have realised their game and are starting, belatedly, to react. It may seem a trivial matter but it has opened a debate that should have started years ago.
Don’t forget that only a couple of weeks ago, the self appointed ‘representatives’ of Islamisists were suggesting that they should have a separate legal system (Sharia) from the rest of the UK – women would then have no choice.
There”s also the obvious implications for terrorism; it is surely not outwith the wit of the nutters to have thought of using youths dressed in head to toe burkhas to be suicide bombers.
The latest case in our media concerns a classroom assistant who was hired and working before she exercised her right to wear a veil. Now she demands the right not to be seen without it by any male in the school.
I could also bring in the violence against women aspect (easily found examples abound) and how much easier it can be if ‘your’ woman has to be covered but i think the most relevant point, as you allude to on various occasions (RC’s mother in Saudi?), is that not enough overall integration has been made and action has to be taken on that front because we do not want to change our society to that of another, alien, belief system.
STB
I still consider the Jack Straw issue a case of sexual harrasment. I would be just as disgusted if a Muslim insisted that a non-muslim woman be covered in their presence.
STB:
1. You can’t punish the whole for the faults of the minority.
2. Islamists in Canada attempted the same thing and came under heavy attack by Muslims, needless to say sharia is not practiced in Canada. Also, you can not say that even under that system that women would then be obliged to wear the veil.
3. It is a sad day when we start taking away the very freedoms that we want the world to model itself upon, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, privacy…. Where would it stop?
4. Your suicide bombing argument is a non-argument, unless you would like to take this opportunity to ban trenchcoats and all that baggy clothes that the teens have been sporting as of late.
Raincoaster, sorry for the lengthy post. Also, yes, these days it is very difficult to wear hijab. I used to wear a scarf about 11 years ago when I would drop off my child to her Islamic school and I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I had been cut off, run off the road, yelled at.
Samaha, the truth as demonstrated by a reporter this week is that she was allowed to go through airport security, board a plane, fly to France and was only searched upon arrival.
A trench coat wearer would have been stopped and searched. I take your point re baggy clothes but it appears this was allowed so as not to upset another person’s beliefs – I would rather risk upsetting said person than risk the possible alternatives.
I agree it is unreasonable to punish the whole rather than the transgressor but it is simply not true that the whole is being punished – as I understand it, veil wearers are a minority of a minority. I have absolutely nothing against the wearing of headscarves and am disappointed (though sadly not surprised) by the boorish and dangerous treatment you were subjected to.
I do not want to take away any rights and am extremely angry about the diminution of rights in the UK (and, for that matter, the US). I think, if you were able to see Muslim protesters outside Parliament with placards calling for beheading and other such outrages you might understand why there is a need here for a robust debate.
STB
STB
This summer I took a trip to Bosnia, on the way there at Chicago’s O’hare airport upon x-ray of my daughers purse, a butter knife was found in my make-up bag that I put in her purse. It was an accident that it ended up in her purse, and I had explained this to the security guy who found it. He let me go on my merry way and threw out the knife. While I was happy that I wasn’t going to have to go through any additional security measures, I was also painfully aware that airport security is lax.
Comming back in the aftermath of the arrested London plane bomb plotters, I was even more shaken. Measures that were taken were more a show than anything. I knew that if I or anyone for that matter really wanted to smuggle in liquids, it would have been extremely easy to do so.
What we have to do is come to the realization that planes are now weapons and we have to have stricter measures at airport security. Sure, vigorously screening the Muslims may make everyone more at ease (and had that reporter been on a no-fly list or flagged, she would have had a different experience, go ahead and ask Richard Smith what his experience is like in terms of flying). However, the reality is that one day the Timothy McVeigh will slip through the cracks.
The full burqah is a minority of the minority, but headscarves alone are not.
As for being able to see Muslim protestors, well, I’ve seen the work of 9/11, I have some clue. I do think that England and Europe in general need to have some robust debate and even immigration reforms, but I do not condone or support in anyway ill treatment of their general muslim population. I don’t believe that Jack Straw is an expert on what makes an extremist. I think he used his ignorance to request women to take their face veils off.
Kill the cancer, not the whole person.
The annoying thing, as a Brit, is that we have been really good to Muslim immigrants. In France public sector workers and schoolkids are not even allowed to wear a headscarf. In the UK we’ve helped them build Mosques and allowed them to wear whatever they want in the workplace.
Then when we get these home-grown suicide bombers and nutcases waving placards glorifying terrorism. It turns out there’s about 200,000 people in the UK that believe the July 7th bombings, an indiscriminate attack in central London at the busiest time of year for tourists, was justified.
We even put up with the large numbers of Salafists and other Muslim extremists that ignore us and even refuse to speak to the indigenuous population because they think we are unclean.
I don’t care what people wear, I just wish that they would show more loyalty to their country and a bit of common courtesy. By common courtesy I mean Muslims that were born here and speak perfectly good English not nattering away in foreign tongues in front of their English speaking friends. This is just plain rude, it’s akin to whispering in someones ear.
Wow! I thought I had formed my comment until the very last post. Steven_L you should learn to edit. The 4th paragraph would suffice. Then we wouldn’t know you were a (an?) Colonial Asshole. Too late! Thank you though, it reminded me about the original post to which I was commenting. Interesting, I thought the veil was metaphoric yet only the physical was mentioned in this whole thread. As a PS to STB your point on the cover up of assault really got me thinking. I thought of all the people who have been beaten (burka, sari, high collared shirt and definately long sleeve wearing humans) and no matter I could not find a difference to what they wore. Also, I would like to see that poll that produced your 200,000 in the UK.
Well Lydia, in fairness Steven has come a long way. Not one mention of the Axis of Evil in that comment; the boy is learning!
The problem is not that people are different. The problem is that people are bigoted and use their power to push other people around. Jack Straw, as a former Foreign Secretary, was and is a man with a lot of power over immigrants, and to force them to violate their modesty by overriding their personal wardrobe choices is bigoted and authoritarian in the extreme.
He’s travelled the world, but surely nobody in Papua New Guinea asked him to remove his suit and put on a penis gourd so they would be more at ease.
I’ve worn a trenchcoat several times crossing borders and flying and the most they ever did was make me take off my shoes. Lax security isn’t more lax in the face of Islam. It’s just the same.
Metro, when was the last time you felt comfortable asking someone to remove an article of clothing to help YOU relax? (no dirty Catholic schoolgirl uniform references, please) May I suggest that you’ve been brought up rather better than Jack Straw obviously has?
It seems to me that Jack Straw can fairly ask people to uncover their mouths and noses. In return they can tell him to go soak his head, if they wish. I haven’t seen anyone quoted as saying that they resented being asked to do so. If he’s asking too much then his constituents will not re-elect him.
He has nowhere, so far as I can see, advocated the actual banning or forced removal of veils, chador, nor even burqua. He has noticeably not raised the security question. This is not the action of a bigot.
Whether this is appropriate professional treatment of a constituent is another question, one that rides on the rather blurry line between a representative, a likely voter, and the boundaries of a colour-and-culture-blind government policy.
The problem in this debate is that we’re not really discussing dress. We’re discussing ideas of devotion, and the acceptable level of interference in public life that a display of devotion should be allowed. For there is little question that concealing one’s face does inded, as Straw has been pilloried for pointing out, create an “apartness”. If this were not the case, why are veiled women permitted to reveal their faces to their families and in their homes but not elsewhere, not even to their doctors, for example?
The face is a major source of communication. Facial tics and cues help create understanding between people. Where there is a cultural gap already in existence, as between someone with a tradition of predominantly secular culture and one devoted to a religion surely it’s not too much to ask that someone amplify their signal, as it were? Perhaps Straw simply feels he needs acess to that level of communication.
To hide one’s face is to deliberately establish a barrier, to curtail communication. I do not speculate here why this should be a form of devotion exclusively reserved for women in many religions. I consider a woman in chador little different from a nun, on a purely physical level. Which I understand is part of the reason for the similar modes of dress. But like a nun, a woman in chador usually specifically leaves her face uncovered.
Shamans covered their faces with masks when they spoke for their gods to preserve mystique, Catholic priests hearing confessions often sit behind a screen or curtain to remove their personal selves from the interaction, teenagers often grow their hair long enough to hang over and hide their faces–it’s no coincidence that they do this at the age when they start having secrets to keep.
Newscasters don’t cover their faces. Politicians don’t either. Most clergy don’t when they’re officiating. What do they have in common? The need for trust. We speak of “an open, honest face”. Descending into absurdity for a moment: would you buy a used car from this man?
I wear a beard as a personal choice, knowing full well that people may consider me untrustworthy because of it. If I needed to hunt for a job anytime soon I might well shave it off. But it’s a choice for me. I don’t need it to show my devotion.
The veil, as a personal choice, as a devotion to any god, seems similar to a vow of silence, a deliberate choice to limit communication with the world beyond one’s relationship with that god and one’s own family or faith group. And as a personal choice, I think that’s fine.
But if I find it awkward to try to interact with someone who will not show me their face, please don’t pretend the difficulty is mine alone.
If it were simply an issue of dress, then yes, I would comfortably ask someone whose face I could not see to remove the hat, the coat, the scarf.
But again, it’s not about dress, but devotion. And that means that it is exclusively up to the wearer what that devotion means to them. And that it’s up to the rest of the world to determine what an acceptable reaction is. On a general principle, we recognize the humanity of the person inside or behind that dress. But that very deliberate recognition also proves that we feel differently about that person, as the current debate also shows.
Again: I would never curtail a person’s right to show their devotion in this way. But I don’t have to deal with veiled people in a relationship based on trust. I’m not a doctor, lawyer, banker, or a cop.
Samaha, I admire your devotion and I love your post. I respect your position. But I don’t envy you.
Of course you have the right to believe I’m lying to you. After all, you can’t see my face–or any other bit of me (except the paying subscribers to my webcam).
Metro, I can see where you are comming from in the way that it makes you feel. Your feelings are not up for debate and I was not trying to make this be “your problem”.
In the case of Jack, he is a professional and I expect him to act like a professional. I consider asking a woman to remove her veil as a form of sexual harrasment. Weather she takes it off or not is not the issue. How would we react if a Muslim male surgeon requested that females put on a veil when around him?
You do realize that I do not wear a veil or a scarf, don’t you?
I didn’t realize that you didn’t. I wonder if that would have changed my reading of the post? Probably not and it’s too late now, eh? It’s still a strong statement.
I hadn’t taken this to be any kind of debate on my feelings, just making them plain.
“How would we react …” Interesting question. There are countries and places where that question has been answered, in a fashion. First let us consider England:
A suggestion that a teaching assistant in a non-muslim school remove her veil was greeted with disbelief and anger.
The Post Office has stated that there are “no circumstances” under which a veiled woman shall not be served (including presumably cashing cheques or sending money orders).
And British Airways, which allows Sikhs their turbans and Muslim employees headscarves, recently sought to force a comitted Christian woman to remove or hide a cross she wore about her neck.
All these policies may be openly debated and possibly changed.
Two women have claimed to have been attacked and had their veils pulled off since the debate heated up. This is rightly being treated as a crime.
Another side of England. This might be legit, I suppose, as the hijab is “part of the school uniform”.
Elsewhere:
Indian Kashmir
Malaysia.
The Sultanate of Brunei, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and other nations compel non-believers to conform to dress and conduct codes. In Iraq and Iran, female university students are threatened with death for refusing to cover up.
So how would we react? Better, it seems, than many.
None of these policies is “right”. Rightness has to lie in compromise and the recognition of realities.
But debate is neccessary for compromise, and in some of the countries listed above it isn’t permitted.
Metro, the BA issue you point to is a relevant one, but not for the reasons you think. Her wearing of the cross is not mandated either by religious rules; it was completely a personal choice of adornment, unlike Sikh turbans or veils (which may not be mandated by Islam per se, but are mandated by various groups within Islam). As such, it violates the code. She was given the option of wearing the cross inside her shirt, which she refused; it was the personal choice to display an adornment that got her suspended.
Do I think that’s right? No. But then I don’t think forcing people to work in a uniform is right either.
Jack Straw was being bigoted when he insisted that the women he speak to obey his cultural norms rather than their own. Metro, I doubt you’d go down to the cloistered convent and insist that one of the nuns pop out and see face to face, and if you DID, I doubt you’d insist she wear jeans and a t-shirt to make you feel more comfy. That’s essentially what Straw did, except that he’s also in a position of considerable power over these women, even though he’s not Foreign Secretary anymore.
I don’t think it’s the responsibility or the right of individuals to try to control other people’s clothing choices. But I do understand making judgements about them based on their choices; that’s just logical. At best it can be informed by an awareness of the different cultural norms, but we have, really, no other way to judge people BUT by the choices they make.
I wouldn’t sit down to poker with six guys wearing shades. But if they were the only ones to play with, I’ve got a veil and I’d pop it, the hijab, the abaya, and a baseball cap on.
“But if they were the only ones to play with, I’ve got a veil and I’d pop it, the hijab, the abaya, and a baseball cap on.”
LMAO!
Metro – yes, there are problems within the Muslim countries. However, I was talking about in the context of the western world. What would be our reaction to forcing women to cover so that Muslim men may be more comfortable within our own society. It wouldn’t fly and I don’t think it would be a debate, rather it would end up a civil suit with the majority of people taking the side of the women.
I also don’t believe it is right to force a woman to hide her cross.
Oh my! I was just reminded of something that my father-in-law did. I will have to post about it on my blog.
You’re new to blogging, but you’ve already got the “how to drive traffic to your blog” thing down pat! Congratulations.
;-) It’s really a no brainer.
Actually it would have taken a lot of background to tell the whole story here and I have decided against posting the story as hubby will not appreciate having this story told.
Then that means it’s not going to be on your blog, either. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!
~sigh~
I know, I know! It was either my foot or my husband. What’s a girl to do?
I dunno. How cute is your husband? And if he is cuter than your foot, does he have a single brother?
ROFLMAO!