Women can respect veil bans - Saudi cleric

[struggle4progress]

Jul 24, 2010 at 18:42

RIYADH - A leading Saudi cleric hit out at France for moving to ban Muslim face-veils, but approved Muslim women foregoing veils when visiting a country which outlaws them, a Saudi paper reported on Saturday.

"It is illogical and unreasonable that the French government undertakes such a thing, which is condemned by neutral people, not just Muslims, because the secular state assures freedom of religion," Sheikh Aed al-Qarni told Al-Hayat.

"The state has to respect religious rituals and beliefs, including those of Muslims," he said in an interview.

However, he added, if Muslim women are in a country that has banned the niqab, or full-face veil, or if they face harassment in such a place, "it is better that the Muslim woman uncovers her face" ...

http://www.business.maktoob.com/20090000501676/Women_can_respect_veil_bans_Saudi_cleric/Article.htm

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. And here I was believeing it was NOT a religeious issue

Love how they play it both ways with the Sharia when it comes to those kind of "cultural" issues.

[struggle4progress]

2. In most religious, there's a diversity of opinion about what traditions

are essential and about how far one can go to accommodate local laws and customs

[Warpy]

3. That's very pragmatic. I hope Muslims outside Saudi listen

There is nothing religious about that garb. There is nothing in the Quran except that women dress "modestly," broad enough to allow women to adopt the custom of any country, even ours. The shroud is strictly tribal garb.

Cultural pressure causes Muslim women to pare down to a hijab around here. However, conditions in France and other European countries are quite different where there are large concentrations of Muslims in small areas and young thugs who are self styled modesty police who beat any women they find without a veil if she even "looks" like she could be from a Muslim country.

[Leontius]

4. But it does seem that the 'truly devout' Muslims have made it into

a religious issue across all cultures that embrace Islam.

[Warpy]

5. It's more politically radical than religious.

Women who are brutalized by the packs of self appointed modesty police might even internalize the whole thing.

Things are very different overseas.

[Leontius]

6. The intertwining of radical religious zealotry with radical political

zealotry is one of if not the greatest danger to any free society.

[Warpy]

7. That's really what the law is about

It's about making the zealots so uncomfortable they'll go home rather than have the spectacle of their female property go around with their faces exposed. Horrors!

[ironbark]

9. Conversely , there have been a number of documentary/interviews

in which female Muslim students returning from studies in the West have complained of the cultural obsession with fashion/looks/dating/sex that distracted or interfered with their education.
Upon return to the Mid East or Indonesia they voluntarily embraced conservative clothing and/or the hijab so as to get on with the business of getting an education without harassment or distraction.
Needless to say many of the young men interviewed preferred the western garb.

‘Clothing’ comes in all kinds of shapes, forms and guises…sometimes we ‘clothe’ others with our perceptions and it makes them difficult or impossible to actually see-

http://www.reelbadarabs.com/

[Warpy]

11. I have spoken at length with a lot of Saudi women

who were generally family members of people I was taking care of. They all said they felt unprotected here. Part of that was likely the fact that none of them veiled while they were out of the country. Another part was very likely that they were away from family.

All cited the way the abaya protected their skin from the hot desert sun. (I can well see that, but why did they have to make the bloody thing black?)

It all depends on what you're used to, I suppose. These were all educated women who spoke several languages fluently, yet they preferred their own strict culture ameliorated by family to our free culture often with estrangement.

They had a point. It would drive me nuts to try to live there, but I can well see how it would have driven them nuts to live here.

They did say they wanted to be able to drive at home, though. All of them, no exceptions.

[ironbark]

12. Most of the Muslims here are Sudanese refugees or Indonesian students.

The Sudanese women I’ve met feel more protected under our domestic violence laws while the Indonesian students often felt unsafe…even targeted on the streets.

There was an interview a while back with a Pakistani Professor who had been living in Washington DC for about twelve years. He was asked about the Sharia law relating to amputating the hands of thieves and if he thought it was ‘barbaric”. He pointed out that there were 6-7 incidents each year of such punishment while DC had 1500(?) deaths by fire arms. His wife and children could safely walk the streets in Pakistan at night but would not dare do so in DC.
“It all depends on what you're used to, I suppose”
Yup.

“why did they have to make the bloody thing black?”

Isn’t it actually cooler than wearing white?

“They had a point. It would drive me nuts to try to live there…”

Indeed…and the cross cultural experiences can have long/deep repercussions.
Sayyid Qutb visited America long before his philosophical decedents paid a more horrid visit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb

[Warpy]

16. There is nothing more human than judging another culture by your own

and nothing more devastatingly wrong.

I always opened any sort of cross cultural discussion when I wanted to pick somebody's brains with "You're a long way from home. What things are different here?" In getting them to talk about this country, I learned much more about theirs than directed questions would have done.

I was a nurse and such conversations always allowed me to do my job much better.

[ZombieHorde]

8. Well that takes all of the fun out of the ban!

:sarcasm:

If the conservative Muslim men start making their wives wear ski masks, I wonder if France will ban ski masks, then Halloween masks, then sheets with eye holes cut out, etc.

[Withywindle]

10. I actually have respect for this ruling.

It's really all about respecting the laws and cultural norms of where you happen to be.

When I was in Malaysia for a couple weeks a few years ago, I had no problems wearing a headscarf most of the time, and on the beaches going swimming in long shorts and t-shirt. (Malaysia's not particularly repressive on this front. Head covering is really only insisted on in mosques, and lots of young women go around in shorts and halters 'cause it's frakkin' HOT there.) But my mom and I both found it easy to keep wearing the local clothes, because they're not only modest but also light, loose, and comfortable. It cost me nothing and it was a matter of respect and blending in and not making a spectacle of myself in the place that I was in.

Women in, say, France or America (I've seen a few in Chicago and DAMN is it rare, and creepy when it does happen) who wear the whole death-shroud thing ARE drawing attention to themselves, and making a show of their unwillingness to blend in and join the culture; if the men in their families are forcing them to do so, it's a clear sign that they're only there for the opportunity to make money and are unwilling to let their families really experience the culture.

[ironbark]

13. I have no problem with the “drawing attention” or “unwillingness to blend in”

If that’s a choice the women themselves are making and it’s not being imposed by husband or Mullah.

But your right…it can be “creepy” on the rare occasions you are confronted with the full hijab and your not used to it or expecting it.
Took the kids to an Open Plains Zoo and as they came out of the Cafeteria the two youngest ones started pointing behind me and squealing in a manner that suggested the lions had escaped. I turned to be confronted by four young men dressed as wannabie gangsters and three women(?) in “the whole death-shroud thing”…..it was like a scene from Star Wars and it freaked the kids right out.
But then again…Goths in full regalia have had the same effect.

Perhaps if all such minorities are seen and heard more it wont be so “creepy”?

[Withywindle]

14. I wore Goth fashion in my teens and 20s

and it was with the full informed intention to make people who didn't get the subculture uncomfortable. But the men I was into dressed similarly - they also challenged conventions, in their leather and velvet and eyeliner and nail polish. :9

Subculture, yanno.

There is something that really makes my skin crawl when a certain cultural rule is dictated ONLY to women. As a woman, I know my clothing choices have cultural meaning--but so do anyone's, men and children included, and no one is the "default" and no one is the "problem" that must be fixed or hidden.


(Personally I feel that if the justification is that women's beauty causes men to lose control, then MEN should wear blinders like a cart-horse if they must go out of the house at all. After all, they're the ones with the self-control problem. Or so I'm told by burqa-justifiers.)

[ironbark]

15. ‘Certain cultural rules’ get dictated to men as well….

I live in the hottest/driest continent on earth but the men (especially businessmen) are still obliged to wear a suit…It would be nice/practical to wear a robe, caftan or kilt…
but oooh nooo…can’t do that! ;-)

“MEN should wear blinders like a cart-horse if they must go out of the house at all.”

Oh definitely…Except those of us who have been to Art School and have been ‘trained to look’…like, on a professional basis.
(And after 28 years of marriage I still get slapped for demonstrating or explaining my training ;-)

The way I see it cultures and countries are organic/tree like…you can look at them at any point in their evolution and find flowering and decay. In pre Islamic Arabia it was a savage environment in which a female child was viewed as having less worth than a camel…under Islam women were granted the first inheritance rights. In the West such inheritance rights were granted…then the Church realised wealth was flowing out to the wives of Priests and Bishops so they introduced celibacy.
And on it goes ever getting slowly better…until the Goths bring down civilization again ;-)