Banning the burqa has come into debate in Australia once again. It’s times like this where I hate reading the news because I just know the type of bigoted, Islamophobic nonsense I’m going to see. But some things you just cant ignore.
The catalyst for this was when a young Muslim man Omarjan Azari, 22, was allegedly planning on committing a ‘horrific’ act. So instead of examining the psychological state of this young man and reprimanding him accordingly, they took it as an opportunity to awaken that beast named ‘racism’ that everyone seems to love so much.
As a response to this, Sydney and Melbourne was swept up by a wave of hate crimes towards women in hijab and men who look like they might be Muslim. Just like every other time, 1.5 billion Muslims, myself included, are now expected to account for the ridiculous actions of a few fanatics.
Then somehow in this kerfuffle began the ‘ban the burqa’ conversation, because any time to question whether women should be able to dress however they want can never be passed up. Obviously. And before anyone tries to argue that in ‘those’ countries women don’t have the freedom to dress how they want to – yes, this is true in some countries, but Australia and New Zealand are not one of those countries where this happens. If we start banning the burqa, we’re doing the same thing that we’re criticising them for. Feminism is about a woman’s choice and banning items of clothing is an infringement of that choice.
As ridiculous as Tony Abbott’s politics are, it’s still scary when the Prime Minister of a country is essentially saying that he wishes minority women don’t dress in whichever way they choose to. Saying that he finds it confronting only shows how poor his understanding of this particular community is, and if you want them to feel enfranchised and included in your country, this is not the statement or stance you should be making. All it is likely to do is exacerbate that feeling of disassociation and for the sake of achieving long-term prosperity and harmony, this is so unbelievably far from productive.
Prejudice against a religious group is not racism.
While you can argue it is a woman’s right’s issue, on the flip side the reality is that many of these woman from traditional families have no choice.
The Burqa is not liberating, and a belief that any god would somehow endorse it, is not enlightening, it’s down right ignorant and backward.
As a non-muslim, non anything other than colonial descendant, there are plenty things in the world that surprise and confuse me, but generally what I do, if an opportunity didn’t arrive to ask someone personally, is get the best book I can find out of the library and attempt to get a basic picture about what is going on. If online sources are all you have, there are American sites where some muslim women are very open about talking to strangers about how their lives go as muslims.
(Hello, Latifa, thanks for having me, I’ve not forgtten you’re there…)
So the book I got out from the UoA library was by a man called Martin Lings, also known as Abu Bakr Siraj Ad-Din. He was an English Scholar and the book I read was called “What is Sufism”.
You might be thinking, what has Sufism got to do with Muslims? Well, Sufism is the extreme metaphysical form of Islamic beliefs. The relevence here is that in Martin’s first chapters he states what certain basic things mean to Muslims i.e. who can be Muslim (ironically, people like him might not actually be allowed to be “real” muslims) and among other things, about what is known as the Burqa.
The Burqa, according to the people Martin worked with, is nothing like a symbol of oppression. If I can sum it up very roughly, it is like wearing a temple. He says the Muslim is never closer to Allah than when at a particularly relevant temple and the Burqa approximates that temple, and in wearing it, the “surrender” to Allah that Muslims adhere to.
Now sure, everyone will rush in a now and say yes but look what happens in real life, look at he stonings of women, look at the bombs… they’re hiding bombs! etc etc and I accept that, but we as outsiders don’t get the privilege to decide, using nothing but ignorance, who is a real muslim and who is simply born into it and now suffers at the hands of “unenlightened” barbarity and oppression that may or may not have anything to do with Islam or Islamic laws. If we do, it’s no longer unconscious cultural domination, but plain cave-man level stupidity – far from the enlightenment we say we possess and can offer.
So that’s the theory, as I read it. Latifa is free to contradict it in any way since books aren’t real life and religions aren’t always static.
In that case why don’t men wear head to toe burqa’s so they can also be closer to god?
The irony of an intolerant religion wanting to be tolerated.
@ Sansa: “In that case why don’t men wear head to toe burqa’s so they can also be closer to god?”
Indeed. The contradiction isn’t lost on many of us. Objections to the increased wearing of such garments in New Zealand aren’t “racist” – or even Islamophobic – and it’s intellectually lazy for people to use these debate-ending epithets.
Prejudice against a religious group is not racism.
Latifa has had her attention drawn to that on an earlier occasion.
This time, the word racism appears in quotation marks. I suspect that is an admission that the word is not being used strictly correctly yet using it regardless.
“Why ban the burqa?” – I think banning it is counter-productive but understand that desire to do so by many is partly rooted in fear that alien anti secular cultural outlooks will establish themselves here. These might include those reflected in these statistics:
% Muslims favouring making Sharia Law official in their country
% Muslims who agree a wife must always obey her husband
Among Muslims who support Sharia as law of the land, the % who believe in the death penalty for leaving Islam
Anyway, how can you be racist against someone when you can’t even see what race they are?
You can by virtue of that very human predilection: making assumptions.
All these stats of course were obtained from male muslims as the women were not able to be interviewed or allowed to vote.
Just as the speedo is potentially ghastly–pictured is proof– the burqa offends my sense of decency. Women parceled into bags by a dominant male defined religion is a case or horrible brain-washing and abuse. Another thought is, that Muslim men are unable to contain their drives when confronted with the vision of any woman, married or not, well-(western)dressed or otherwise. This is inherent to the requirement of “modesty”–or concealing oneself in a shapeless bag for purposes of not being constantly sexually assaulted in the male mind. If men can’t control themselves, it is their fault, and that must take precedence in any society. I think Muslim men must be insulting all women with their eyes and mindset.
Agree, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to ban the burqa I would rather see it disappear from this country where it is NORMAL to see a person’s face.
You can wear it, it is your right, I guess, but if you must, then you need to accept that most of us find not being able to see another’s face is not normal and possibly even offensive. You cannot have it both ways, you reserve the right to wear it, I reserve the right to find it offensive.
Oh and which custom should we stop at, maybe we should become tolerant of forced marriage and female genital mutilation.
Prejudice against religion is still prejudice.
Us or Tony Abbott deciding whether a woman may wear a ( so called ) burqa is not liberating for her but I guess it is in some way for the clothing censors.
The burqa by the way is not religious it is an item of cultural dress from Afghanistan. The correct term for what everybody is so upset about is Niqab which is also a cultural item in the middle east.
God apparently requires modest dress for both sexes. Though nobody is requiring that of Tony .
Wear a scarf that doesn’t cover your face, fine, wear a burqa that does, not fine, unless of course you live in a country where it is customary. If I wish to travel to a country where that sort of thing is demanded then ok (just don’t put the kettle on for me, any time soon), when in Rome peeps, and all that
Raises the issue of free will and the illusion of choice. Many women in the West coat themselves in makeup, spend thousands of $$ on clothes, cosmetics etc, shave themselves from the shoulders down, wear shoes that are damaging to their feet, and so on, with the aim of fulfilling our cultural/social (which is inherently patriarchal BTW) ideal of what women should look like/be like etc.
If you asked those women if they ‘choose’ to do what they do, and wear what they wear most would say yes. Much the same as Muslim women who ‘choose’ to wear a Burka etc do.
In my mind there is little difference between the Burka and what Western woman are forced to endure at the behest of their male counterparts….is just that the latter is so widespread and accepted that it isn’t noticed. In both cases it is all about the social, political and control of female reproduction at the hands of male members of society.
And guess what we can also choose not to, my feet at 60+ are straight as a die I find gumboots, sandals and barefeet have that effect, and makeup costs me zilch and for most of my life. I can still see a made up face, nothing AT ALL to do with men, it IS to do with being able to relate to one another and you cannot do that with the face hidden behind a shroud.
In this society woman can choose to eschew marriage and children altogether in the burqa’d world there seems to be no such choice, a massive world of difference there.
You’ve just changed the argument/topic without realising. This is a post/discussion about Burka’s. Nothing to do with socio-cultural norms (marriage/children) in Muslim societies.
Well yeah, Simon, it is about choice which goes beyond wearing something that renders you invisible to the outside world as it also represents a lack of choice for other aspects of life.
In any case, seeing someone’s face in this country is the accepted norm, not hiding behind a shroud.
As I said before I would not go so far as to demand it gone (even though I would like to) I think that wearers of it should accept that many like me find it unacceptable, even while reluctantly accepting it.
To be brutally honest with you, as an atheist, I find all religions ridiculous and I see absolutely no reason whatsoever why I should do anything more than accept that others do choose to worship some imaginary being in the sky, but I do think I have every right NOT to respect religion.
It is ironic that within the same paragraph you go from arguing about how certain social norms should be adhered to in this country (seeing a face), at the same time as arguing for your freedom to do as you please (i.e not respecting religion).
In this country yes
Not a valid comparison. If you reject makeup and heels, people might think you look like a bit of a minga, but nobody is going to decide you deserve to be raped nor will your brothers murder you to protect the family honour.
If you read my post again you’ll note that I didn’t actually take a right vs. wrong position on either Islamic or Western ideals/social expectations around dress or appearance for women. I was merely making the point that whether women who ‘choose’ to wear Burka’s actually do exercise something akin to what we would call ‘choice’ is up for debate, in much the same way as its debatable whether Western women ‘choose’ to shave their legs etc.
And re: your comments around rape. If you take a look at Western media there actually is quite a bit of ‘she deserved it (rape), because of how she was dressed’ etc. So you argument (despite choosing a pretty extreme/rare outlier as an argument against Burka’s in the hope that it is not analogous to the experience of Western women) falls flat I’m afraid.
Geeze, that God awful, disgusting picture of Tony Abbott in Speedos, made my eyes water!
Whose idea was it to put that frightening pic up on a Sunday morning?
Now that’s what I call really offensive! Far more so than the wearing of the burqa, which is cultural traditional dress.
Eyes still stinging!
I put it to you that if you have issues with the normal appearance of an adult human not wearing very many clothes, than that is your problem to get over, not Mr Abbott’s.
I think it all comes back to us not dealing with the real culprit of sep 11. If the US had paused for a bit, it would have found the answers and responded correctly. Instead it charged off like a bull in a china shop.
I think I can say, and most people now will agree, it was a political faction within the Saudi Arabian government who funded and planned september 11. These men have used religion to further a political and economic agenda within their own country and globally. I think most christians have been duped, as with many muslims – Into a conflict not of their choosing, by greed and a desire to rule, by a very small group of nasty men.
I find it curious that those who object most strongly when it is suggested that women ‘cover up’ to protect them from male depredations are so supportive of a religion where many of its followers regard it as mandatory for womento be covered one of the reasons cited being that it stops men having lustful thoughts.
If a woman wishes to cover herself that’s fine; she should have that choice. I wonder how many would make that choice freely.
In a Muslim country, someone blogging in favour of the burqa would be considered the conservative and someone blogging against it would be considered the progressive. And yet here we have a blog in favour of the conservative position dressed up in the language of minority rights, i.e. a progressive stance. It’s not surprising that the response in the comments section is so unsympathetic.
Another sociopathic bigot chasing power while espousing an ignorant point of view . How original . Yawn . Time for his picture to go now please .
Burqua is about as Islamic as Female circumcision, in so much as it is a cultural more that has insinuated itself within the religion in order to buttress much older cultural practices.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ibKWVTFSak&index=5&list=PLpEii3SYCu7fw08wGLdVk4jgZ3RgaaQOp
Everyone would one would be well served in reading works by R. Aslan and Karen Armstrong. As opposed to be indulging in colonial era smears against “subject races”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Baring,_1st_Earl_of_Cromer
Note was so concerned with the pilight of Muslim women he then went on to form Men’s League for Opposing Woman Suffrage in 1908.
Everyones bigotry is not even new, or well told.
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