Veiled arguments

[gottaB]

The hijab, now generally referred to headscarf, has been the subject of growing debate in Europe for over a decade. But the debate has intensified following the September 11 events and the head-covering has come to symbolise, in the eyes of some in the West, fundamentalist Islam.

In trying to deny Muslim women the right to wear hijab, however, the issue has spawned itself to include sensitive topics such as the modern secular identity of the European states and societies, the compatibility of Islam with a largely Christian Europe and the acceptance of immigrants, their integration into host societies and their religious and civil rights.

For the Muslims, especially women, it also touches upon the right of choice as well as feminist identity, both of which, incidentally, are values espoused by the West. It is in this gray area that the battle is being fought. Does one lose the right to choose if the choice is seen as pegged on religion?

Veiled arguments....

***

If you read German, for more info on the recent headscarf bans, Kopftuch.Info (Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat)

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Progressive Muslims

have been arguing this point for quite a while. There are times when donning the headscarf is a very feminist act. It shows that you wish to be considered on your merit rather than on your appearance. But then the Qur'an says that one should dress modestly so as not to attract attention to yourself-so what to do? What I tend to do is don a baseball cap. I blend in with the general population of NW AR and yet am keeping my head covered. For me, personally, this is a good compromise.

[bemildred]

4. It is often best to avoid stupid battles.

This has always seemed to me to be ridiculous argument.
How can one claim to be a free people and yet be attempting
to control innocuous matters of dress. It reminds me a bit
of some High School's attempts to prohibit "gang dress" thereby
forbidding all students from wearing red or blue. Endless time
and money and argument is spent over these issues, yet it never
occurs to anyone that these prohibitions just aggravate the
polarizations they are intended to deal with, and that these
polarizations would be better dealt with directly by tension
reducing action and better comminication.

[NMDemDist2]

2. bad enough the government won't stay out of my bedroom

my doctors office, now they are the fashion police too?

[aquart]

3. What are the rules regarding separatism?

The headscarf, the yarmulke, the Sikh's turban, set the wearers aside, separate.

There will always be penalties for that, even when our laws forbid them.

Who are these people, to think themselves SO SPECIAL? Is it really different from throwing a snowball at a rich man's top hat, in the days when they distinguished themselves in that way?

[gottaB]

5. Ideally government shouldn't be chucking snowballs

or even packing snowballs for the neighborhood raggamuffins. That's what you'd expect in a police state, not a liberal democracy.

What's interesting to me in the case of the German states is the argument that headscarves should be banned not because they are religious, but because they are political. So you have all these Turkish and other muslim immigrants struggling to explain that by wearing a headscarf they don't mean to support bin Laden or anti-Western terrorist violence. It's ludicrous, but that's the kind of prejudice that people are up against.

Imagine if a government were to outlaw modesty in dress for women. That's how it seems to many, at first blush anyway. And since that makes no sense, you have to wonder what's really going on.

And all over Europe you have this rage against hijab. Here it's to maintain secularism, there it's to maintain democratic values, over there it's to protect women's rights. Pffft. It's all just thinly veiled muslim-bashing.

[cantwealljustgetalong]

6. Those Sexy Iranians...

...

Women are required to cover their hair and to wear either a chador cloak or an overcoat, called a manteau, every time they go out, and these are meant to be black and shapeless. But the latest fashion here in Shiraz, in central Iran, is light, tight and sensual.

...

Worse, from the point of view of hard-line mullahs, young women in such clothing aren't getting 74 lashes any more — they're getting dates.

"Parents can't defeat children," Mr. Salehi mused. "Children always defeat their parents."

And that's what Iran's baby boomers, a wave of 18 million people 15 to 25 years old, are doing. They will transform their country, just as baby boomers in the West changed America and Europe. I don't think Iran's theocracy can survive them, for I've never been to a country where young people seem more frustrated.

...

The morals police no longer order women to cover up stray hairs. These days, the fashion is for brightly colored, glittery see-through scarves, worn halfway back on the head.

"It's possible head scarves will be gone in another year or two, the way things are going," said Amir Suleimani, a scarf salesman in the Tehran Bazaar. "God willing."

...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/08/opinion/08KRIS.html

[gottaB]

7. dress codes suck