Is The Burqa a Religious or Political Statement?
Friday, October 9th, 2009By Phyllis Chesler, www.PajamasMedia.com
Finally, at the midnight hour, some European governments have begun to fight backânot against the Islamification of Europe but against inhumane, even barbaric political practices in the name of religion that violate Western standards of universal human rights.
Thus, first France, but now Italy have called for a ban on the burqa. Italyâs Northern League proposal âaims at amending a 1975 law, introduced amid concern over domestic terrorism, which bans anyone wearing anything which makes their identification impossible.â The Northern League also has the backing of Berlusconiâs People of Freedom party. The Leagueâs Roberto Cota said: âWe are not racist and we have nothing against Muslims but the law must be equal for everyone.â
When Franceâs President Sarkozy first called for a similar ban, a self-identified branch of al-Qaeda in Northern Africa threatened to attack France over this.
Predictably, center-left opposition MPs criticized the Italian proposal and said it was
âunconstitutional because it infringes on religious freedom and justifying it because of law and order is totally out of place.â
Not so fast.
Verily, we live in an age of miracles; thus, none other than Sheik Mohammed Tantawi, the leading religious figure of Al-Azhar, was, just the other day, âreportedly angeredâ when he toured a school in Cairo and saw a girl wearing â niqab,â which means that her face was masked or possibly that she was wearing a full head, face, and body covering.
âSheik Tantawi, regarded by many as Egyptâs Imam and Sunni Islamâs foremost spiritual authority, asked the teenage girl to remove her veil saying: âThe niqab is a tradition, it has no connection with religion.â The imam instructed the girl, a pupil at a secondary school in Cairoâs Madinet Nasr suburb, never to wear the niqab again and promised to issue a fatwa, or religious edict, against its use in schools. The ruling will not affect use of the hijab, the Islamic headscarf worn by most Muslim women in Egypt.
Following the imamâs lead, Egyptâs minister of higher education is to ban female undergraduates from wearing the niqab at the countryâs public universities, Cairoâs Al-Masri Al-Yom newspaper reported.
Again, donât rejoice too soon.
Even the very influential Sheik Tantawi has his fundamentalist detractors who have excoriated him for supporting Franceâs ban on hijab in public schools and for shaking hands with Israeli President Shimon Peres. And, clearly, the Egyptian government is unhappy about the gathering forces of Islamic fundamentalism that consistently manipulate women and womenâs clothing as symbolic political statements. Some have even called for more severe Islamic clothing for women in which only one eye (Algerian style) can show. The Egyptian government understands that it is at risk vis-Ă -vis Islamic fundamentalists.
Now, some European politicians understand this too.
Follow the burqa. Where it goes, you will probably find normalized wife-battering, serious child abuse, including honor killings tooâas well as polygamy, and a pathological hatred of Jews, Israelis, Hindus, Americans, and all other
âinfidels.â There you may also find terrorist cells or supporters of terrorism. From this point of viewâban the burqa, and it may lead to an exodus of terrorists back to their fundamentalist-friendly home countries. But there is another point of view that interests me more, namely, the human rights/womanâs rights argument as grounds to ban the burqa. I have made that argument in these pages. I have found support from Muslim feminists, first at an international conference in Rome, and now in a new book on the subject.
I have been reading the most elegant and excellent book on the subject of the Islamic veil written by Marnia Lazreg. Questioning the Veil. Open Letters to Muslim Women is carefully reasoned and beautifully written. Lazreg is an Algerian Muslim feminist academic and her mother once wore the veil. She is respectful of Muslim womenâs own feelings and of their religious desires. She argues that the veil (face, head, and full body covering) is not commanded in the Koran; that it is harmful to womenâs physical and mental health; and that it is mainly a political statement about fundamentalism and misogyny. She has little patience for feminist academics who themselves are not forced to veil and who âplayâ at imagining or de-constructing the veil as âliberatingâ or as a statement of âresistance.â Of course, she is also on record as having objected to the âmanner in which Muslim women have been portrayed in books as well as the media,â namely, in ways that focus on them only as oppressed victims.
In her last letter, Lazreg implores Muslim women to stop wearing the veil. âIt is a symbol of inequalityâŚit undermines faith⌠it objectifies women for (reasons of) political propaganda just like advertising in Western society does: one by covering, and the other by exposing womenâsâ bodies.â Lazreg also views the veil as harming Muslim womenâs employment because âhijab symbolically inserts her into a virtual domestic spaceâ and affects how she is viewed and treated at work. She re-defines âmodestyâ as related to behavior and character rather than to appearance and opposes âthe straitjacketing of a womanâs body. Removing or refusing to veil does not mean that a Muslim woman has succumbed to the West. She writes:
âNot wearing the veil is not a victory of the âWest,â it is womenâs victory over a custom that inflects their thinking about themselves as human beings. Wearing the veil is not a strike against anti-Muslim prejudiceâŚAs long as states mandate or prohibit veiling, as long as political movements advocate for it, as long as organized networks with books, lectures, DVDs, and course packets promote it far and wide, a woman can never be sure she takes up the veil freedlyâŚUltimately, there is no compelling justification for veiling, not even faithâŚNo one is entitled to turn the veil into a political flag.â
Thereâs more, much more, and I encourage you all to read this fine book.
The Muslim Canadian Congress just recently urged that the burqa be banned in Canada. Given Sheik Tantawiâs statement and the fact that the burqa is also forbidden at Mecca, the Congress argues that it should be forbidden in Canada too.
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