We once lived in Saudi Arabia, and I was required to veil whenever I went out, because it's the law there. It didn't matter that I was not muslim and a westerner, all women there are required to cover, and believe me I didnt like it one single bit.
On the other hand you hear many muslim women cry inequality or racism when they are in a western country that requires them to unveil. I mean is there a double standard here? You force us to cover in some of these islamic countries but you don't want to be forced to uncover in others. Where is the medium?
Should a woman teaching children cover her entire face? There is controversy over a lady fired in the UK because she only revealed her eyes. Frankly I think kids should see the entire expression, mabe this woman should teach at an all girls school or something.
Posts: 37 | From: egypt | Registered: Jul 2006
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I dunno .. I personally believe that everyone should be free to do whatever s/he please so as long as they are not hurting anyone but I guess the politically correct debate should be the following :-
1- In the process of teaching; especially to children; how much important is visual contact and how could a face-veiled teacher affect the psycologiy of the children (in terms of trust for example) ?
2- Security issues .. How much is face veiling safe in a country with a huge crime rate such as Britain
On the other hand, the question is .. How much is Europe/Britain willing to be open for cultural diversities and what are the limits of liberalism ??? Also ; How come minorities and west-hating immigrants are still not integrating within the British society ???!
Posts: 4 | Registered: Oct 2006
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She was interviewed by a man and didn't have any objections, she wasn't wearing the veil either. Recently she has been describing what she wear under her abaya why?
It's allowed to show children your face as children are unaware of a woman's beauty.
Yes she should teach at an all girls school if she wishes to wear the niqab.
A black lash has already begun,a sheikh was attacked in a mosque, women have been spat on and their niqabs removed.
-------------------- Learn from the past. Live in the present. Hope for the future. Posts: 1474 | From: in my own paradise | Registered: Sep 2006
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'It's allowed to show children your face as children are unaware of a woman's beauty.'
Maybe she is truly ugly and would frighten the kids? Seriously, I think they should wear what they like, a Superman outfit if she likes but the parents should be able to refuse to have their children taught by her, if they think it is not in the childs best interest. If she is threatened with the loss of her job, and the school are with the parents I wonder how long she would continue to wear it when all the schools she next applies to refuse to give her a job? not long I imagine eh.........she would be wearing a halter neck if it meant keeping her job!
Posts: 1500 | Registered: Dec 2005
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Batman, you are a dumb ****. Women not veiling in Saudia Arabia will get them raped! Maybe you masterbate at a the sight of a unveiled woman, but other people don't.
Posts: 935 | Registered: Mar 2006
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This debate between muslim and non-muslim has really gotten out of hand and should not be going on in Britian. A woman being fired in the UK for revealing her eyes is ridiculous! Is she supposed to stumble and fall?! Kids do not care about a woman's face and hair.
Posts: 935 | Registered: Mar 2006
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Maybe kids are not aware of beauty, maybe they are, the point is not how pretty or unattractive she is, the point is that children should be allowed to witness facial expressions, raising eyebrows to show concern, frowning to show disapproval, smiling to show satisfaction, etc.
Sometimes it goes a bit too far. I agree that women should wear what they want to a limit. How many parents would approve of a woman teaching in her bra and panties, I know it sounds like an extreme comparison, but in a western society, wearing a nikab would bring one more unwanted attention than intended. And I thought the purpose of wearing it to began with is to distract attention.
Don't you think if the point is to avoid harrassment, they should just take it off and try to "blend in", rather than sticking out like a soar thumb.
Just as they tell us it's easier to just cover to avoid harassment in their society, isn't it just as easy for them to uncover to benefit the same. Or are they simply being provocative.
I agree that things are getting out of hand in the UK, but the muslims don't seem to want to bulge. I imagine I would have been arrested if I didn't bulge while living in Saudi.
Posts: 37 | From: egypt | Registered: Jul 2006
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Most of us have to conform to dress codes at work. That is partly what the school teacher issue is about. Interestingly, the young woman concerned did not wear a niqab to the job interview. I was amazed to see her declare, during one tv interview, how she enjoyed the attention that wearing the veil brought. This seems at odds with notion of modesty and not drawing attention to herself - as did the very heavy eye make-up worn during some interviews.
In the UK, outside certain institutional or security requirements, we can all dress as we please. Most muslim women in the UK choose not to wear a veil. This debate has emphasised this.
I think that Desperate Housewife is right about double standards - or at least a perception that they apply. Muslims force even western women to cover, in predominantly muslim countries. In the UK, where women are free to dress as they like, in public, it's ridiculous, how blown out of proportion (by a few muslims and a bidding-for-party-leadership, Jack Straw) this debate argument has become. British muslims have been debating this issue for years, yet a small minority seek to contain the debate.
Britain is a remarkably tolerant and fair society. Its certainly not perfect - more a work in progress. Diversity is seen as something to be celebrated, as is freedom of speech. Hopefully, the wealth of tv coverage on this issue and the debate raging will help us all understand each other better.
Posts: 2953 | From: Slightly south of Azkaban. | Registered: Aug 2006
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quote:Originally posted by SayWhatYouSee: Most of us have to conform to dress codes at work. That is partly what the school teacher issue is about. Interestingly, the young woman concerned did not wear a niqab to the job interview. I was amazed to see her declare, during one tv interview, how she enjoyed the attention that wearing the veil brought. This seems at odds with notion of modesty and not drawing attention to herself - as did the very heavy eye make-up worn during some interviews.
In the UK, outside certain institutional or security requirements, we can all dress as we please. Most muslim women in the UK choose not to wear a veil. This debate has emphasised this.
I think that Desperate Housewife is right about double standards - or at least a perception that they apply. Muslims force even western women to cover, in predominantly muslim countries. In the UK, where women are free to dress as they like, in public, it's ridiculous, how blown out of proportion (by a few muslims and a bidding-for-party-leadership, Jack Straw) this debate argument has become. British muslims have been debating this issue for years, yet a small minority seek to contain the debate.
Britain is a remarkably tolerant and fair society. Its certainly not perfect - more a work in progress. Diversity is seen as something to be celebrated, as is freedom of speech. Hopefully, the wealth of tv coverage on this issue and the debate raging will help us all understand each other better.
the bit in bold, totally agree and I thought the same when I saw it.
agree with the rest too
I do think that a lot of muslims are enjoying the media attention, good or bad, or it seems that way here in UK. There is a programme on just about every night about muslims now, which is great in one way but not in another. It also seems to be making more women take to the face cover but more as a rebellious thing than a religious thing, which is quite sad.
Posts: 15090 | From: http://www.egyptalk.com/forum/ | Registered: Jul 2004
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"I was amazed to see her declare, during one tv interview, how she enjoyed the attention that wearing the veil brought. This seems at odds with notion of modesty and not drawing attention to herself - as did the very heavy eye make-up worn during some interviews. "
Posts: 15090 | From: http://www.egyptalk.com/forum/ | Registered: Jul 2004
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When i used to work in a company I had a colleague who was veiled.......... she used to wear long tight skirts that would emphasize her figure.......... she wasnt slim...... she had a sexy hour glass figure.......
she wore very bright colours such as blue or hot pink....... etc, with matching head covers.
So She'd come to work wearing a long tight blue skirt with a matching blue veil & a matching blue floral print blouse......... with matching jewlery; long shiny blue dangling earrings & a big shiny blue necklace............. not to mention the matchin blue eye liner & kohl
She was the most fashionable showy veiled female I ever met.......... I used to call her "the tree" & she knows it
I am not veiled & I can be a fashion victim sometimes but I swear I am very modest compared to her
-------------------- Femme Fatale Posts: 3128 | From: Not Your Heaven | Registered: Sep 2006
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Ayisha, ha, got it! I'm glad someone else noticed it too.
Regarding TV coverage, I agree. It's great though, to have such wide platforms to air views and demolish myths. Last night's 'Dispatches' on Channel 4 was worth watching. I hope you saw it.
Chinderella, yes, a woman can dress very modestly but convey a more showy or entirely different impression!
Posts: 2953 | From: Slightly south of Azkaban. | Registered: Aug 2006
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I missed Dispatches, turned over as it was finishing.
The main point in the hijab is that you are NOT noticed, NOT looked at etc, but there are many like cinders described in Egypt, not so much here in UK, we get the more 'extreme' bunch I dont see the point in covering the hair if they going to wear skin tight clothes and heavy make-up and WANT the attention though.
-------------------- If you don't learn from your mistakes, there's no sense making them. Posts: 15090 | From: http://www.egyptalk.com/forum/ | Registered: Jul 2004
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I just thought I DO have a niqab which I have never worn, its not very comfortable, I wonder what reaction i would get in my small town wearing that now?
-------------------- If you don't learn from your mistakes, there's no sense making them. Posts: 15090 | From: http://www.egyptalk.com/forum/ | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Ayisha: I missed Dispatches, turned over as it was finishing.
The main point in the hijab is that you are NOT noticed, NOT looked at etc, but there are many like cinders described in Egypt, not so much here in UK, we get the more 'extreme' bunch I dont see the point in covering the hair if they going to wear skin tight clothes and heavy make-up and WANT the attention though.
She's a poor young woman ..... a "technically virgin" divorcee
So you understand where the the frustration comes from
Posts: 3128 | From: Not Your Heaven | Registered: Sep 2006
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I used to wear niqab in egypt and I was so happy and content with my decision I had to fight my ex and his family so that I could wear it.
I did think about wearing here in the UK before this story hit the headlines, I was put off for lots of diiferent reasons mainly because I've had such a terrible time for wearing the hijab. I hope to wear it again in the future.
I won't be working in a school though!!
-------------------- Learn from the past. Live in the present. Hope for the future. Posts: 1474 | From: in my own paradise | Registered: Sep 2006
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in my little town they have only just started to accept and not stare at 'brown' people Posts: 15090 | From: http://www.egyptalk.com/forum/ | Registered: Jul 2004
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I agree Saywhat.. that the British are very tolerant, they are the forerunners in relious tolerance since it's there where the protestant revolution began, it's there where the separation of church and state, and people allowed to choose their own religion.
Wotever and Ayisha, if you both own nikabs and can choose whether or not you want to wear it, can I assume that wearing it is not a religious requirement but a matter of personal choice? Does the koran give you a choice?
I can surely respect choices, but I don't understand why someone would cover their face if everyone know what they look like. They say the woman went to the interview uncovered, then covered after she got the job, now if she was already muslim and not a new convert it seems like a very deceptive practice.
Posts: 37 | From: egypt | Registered: Jul 2006
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Desperate Housewife, let me give you food for thought. American women in the Muslim countries should not cover up unless they want and muslim women can cover if they want and the muslim women should not take everything so personally. They want muslim women in Britian to uncover, well, they so should not say that and there should not be a agruement. Agruements over this veil is so stupid. This is how wars get started. Just like if you say something about Catholics and their practices, they get in a uproar. People need to chill.
Posts: 935 | Registered: Mar 2006
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It's not catholics that 'get' in an uproar it's christians. There is now a wider debate about religons, including christians after BA suspended a worker for wearing a cross, she wore it over her cravat, they asked her to tuck it in and she refused saying that it's part of her religion and equated it to wearing the hijab and turban which cannot be hidden.
-------------------- Learn from the past. Live in the present. Hope for the future. Posts: 1474 | From: in my own paradise | Registered: Sep 2006
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Okay, Wotever, maybe catholics don't get in a uproar, but riots should not happen over such trivial issues. Whether or not a woman wears a veil is a trivial issue and is not something to fight about. People could riot over whether or not it's their right to have a bumper sticker on their car glorifing the prophet of Islam, and denying assistance of Jesus, but that would be a dumb thing to riot about, don't you agree? Because people think differently.
Posts: 935 | Registered: Mar 2006
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-------------------- Learn from the past. Live in the present. Hope for the future. Posts: 1474 | From: in my own paradise | Registered: Sep 2006
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concerned for women, It is not trivial because it imples a 'DIFFERENT' status for women than for men. Traditional Muslim values have no place in the west and will never work here. The harder you try to push them the more objection you will get.
Posts: 904 | From: Texana | Registered: Aug 2006
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Arrow, I did not say that women should be forced to veil or unveil. I did not say that all the west should be muslim or have muslim values. Just to riot about a woman's right to cover or uncover is stupid. Muslim values are not trivial, just that you should let people wear the veil or not wear the veil.
Posts: 935 | Registered: Mar 2006
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The problem is not the veil concerned, its what it represents. The very 'reason' for wearing the veil is contrary to western values. Muslim values may not be trivial its just that many of them do not fit here.
Posts: 904 | From: Texana | Registered: Aug 2006
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maybe so, but there is going to be more than just muslims in the west. muslims can wear the veil, christians can wear no headscarf. Muslims can also not wear the veil, depending on the muslim woman.
Posts: 935 | Registered: Mar 2006
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quote:Originally posted by concernedforwomen: Arrow, I did not say that women should be forced to veil or unveil. I did not say that all the west should be muslim or have muslim values. Just to riot about a woman's right to cover or uncover is stupid. Muslim values are not trivial, just that you should let people wear the veil or not wear the veil.
I think so too...... I find it silly & superficial to make a big fuss of whether one should wear a viel or hang a cross..........
It's a personal freedom....... I am not concerend with what people have to wear or believe in.
I am only concerened about those who force what they believe in or what they wear on others........ It would drive me demented if somebody forces me to wear the veil or worship god a certain way & certainly I wouldnt force anybody to do anything or take off their veil
Posts: 3128 | From: Not Your Heaven | Registered: Sep 2006
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concerned, If you want to show the world that you are a second class citizen you can wear the veil, at least for now. You cannot however where in everywhere, such as in many classrooms .
Posts: 904 | From: Texana | Registered: Aug 2006
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How do veiled women show that they are second class citizens?? there are many veiled doctors and teachers that are contributiing to society in so many ways. Sometimes it's peoples won ignorance and in tolerance that causes problems. It was only 40 years ago that the UK and US had signs saying NO BLACKS, and in Germany 50 years ago they had signs saying no JEWS.
-------------------- Learn from the past. Live in the present. Hope for the future. Posts: 1474 | From: in my own paradise | Registered: Sep 2006
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Muslim women living in the west have the same freedoms as all women, to dress how they please (with a few institutional or security exceptions). Western women in countries like Saudi Arabia, including muslim women who reject wearing a head scarf or traditional dress, are forced to conform to rigid religious rules.
When considering international issues, I would like to see a lot more muslim women and MEN condemn the extreme muslim nations which violate women's human rights. Minority views are heard loud and clear in Britain and America. In fact, the Straw debate has simply led to the conclusion that extreme Muslims cry Islamophobia for the smallest of reasons, to promote their misguided cause. They would earn some credibility if they screamed ''VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS'' at SA; where women can't leave the house without their husbands permission: where women aren't allowed to drive; where the religious police stop western women who are not covering their head; where women are seen as prostitutes if they are alone; where women must eat in separate parts of a restaurant to men. Of course, they don't do this, as a tolerant society is a much softer target and they probably share SA's aims.
Arrow is correct about the culture clash aspect of veil wearing women in the west. They are free to do so but the vast majority of the population consider the reasons for making this choice questionable. Tolerance is about minorities doing as they please (within the boundaries of the law) even when they clash with majority sensibilities. When fundamentalist muslims protest violation of rights over relatively minor issues, they are viewed as hypocrites. These same people are happy to oppress any human rights that don't suit them. Moderate western muslims have as much to fear from these ideologists as their fellow citizens.
Posts: 2953 | From: Slightly south of Azkaban. | Registered: Aug 2006
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Very little makes sense in this business about Jack Straw, Muslim women and veils. Aishah Azmi, a teaching assistant from Dewsbury, Yorks, was last week suspended for refusing to take her veil off in class - she was allowed to wear it everywhere else at school, but, rightly to my mind, was told by her local education authority that her pupils, who are mostly learning English as a second language, needed to see her mouth when she taught. This seems entirely sensible. The rest of the whole sorry 'debate' is anything but.
The white, male former foreign secretary said the veil was a “visible statement of separation and of difference”, and that he asks women who visit his surgery to remove it. And nuns? Does he demand to see their hair, too? It’s open season on Islam — Muslims are the new Jews. And the idea that Straw’s divisive statement should not only be tolerated but adopted on all sides, as it has been with a kind of bullying relish, troubles me.
Especially since July 7, it has become acceptable to say the most ignorant, degrading things about Islam. And then we all sit around wondering why young Muslim men appear to be getting angrier and more politicised, or why “westernised” young Muslim women whose mothers go bare-headed are suddenly, defiantly, opting for the full-on niqab-style veil that leaves only a slit for the eyes.
I am particularly irked by ancient old “feminists” wheeling out themselves and their 30-years-out-of-date opinions to reiterate the old chestnut that Islam, by its nature, oppresses women (unlike the Bible, eh,?) and that the veil compounds the blanket oppression.
In their view all Muslim women are crushed because they can’t wear visible lipstick or flash their thongs. Does it occur to these idiots that not necessarily everyone swoons with admiration at the fact that they have won the freedom to dress like 55-year-old slappers?
That perhaps there exist large sections of our democratic society, veiled or otherwise, who have every right to their modesty, just as their detractors have every right to wear push-up bras?
But I’ll get to that in a minute. I should start by saying that my mother was born in Pakistan of a Hindu mother and a Muslim father. She was convent-educated and went on to marry two Catholics (not at the same time). I therefore — unlike some “offended” Wasp commentators — know what I’m talking about, a) because of my endless “aunties”, and b) through spending much of my childhood in India and Pakistan. Given the mish-mash of my ancestry, religious bigotry brings me out in hives. And what we are witnessing is religious bigotry of the most shameful kind. The words used in the context of the veil debate — “strange”, “spooky”, “weird”, “offensive”, “creepy”, “wrong”, “evil-looking”, “sinister” — are not words a civilised society should use about other human beings.
People are made uncomfortable by all sorts of things: I find shaven-headed, tattooed men unpleasant, especially if they’re drunk. I’m not mad keen on hooded gangs of youths at three in the morning. Facial piercings hurt my eyes.
My former husband and I once went to look at a house we were thinking of buying in a Jewish Orthodox bit of London. As it happened we were the only non-Orthodox people on that bit of pavement that morning. I noticed a group of Hassidim were walking around us in a peculiar way. “They’re avoiding our shadows,” the estate agent said, “because we’re unclean.” I didn’t think much of that, either.
But we all need to coexist peaceably. The fact that I find the man in Camden market with bolts through his face, or the Orthodox woman dressed in a drab sack and wearing a bad wig, as “weird” — weirder, actually — than a woman dressed in black with only her eyes showing is neither here nor there.
I don’t expect they think much of me, either. But I would have to be deranged, or consumed with hatred, to attribute random demerits to them on the basis of their physical appearance. A lot of people are made uncomfortable by disability, for instance — but because they live in a civilised society they don’t say it.
Imagine if Straw had said, “There are an awful lot of autistic people in my constituency. I tell them to look me right in the eye, otherwise I can’t help them.” Would there not be an outcry? I’m sorry to equate Islam with disability, but I am doing so because an observant person’s religion is as integral a part of them as their genetic make-up.
Oppressed women are everywhere: there’s probably one living in your street. She may be a Muslim wearing a veil, or a white woman whose husband beats her. She may be covered from head to toe, dressed like a librarian, or fond of micro-skirts. She may be your mother or your sister. She may be you — regardless of how you dress, what you believe or where you come from. And that is the point. Unhappy, abused people come in all colours, shapes and sizes. It is absurd to suddenly, appoint ourselves moral arbiters, and decree, very loudly, that a piece of fabric is an indicator of an unhappy, down-trodden life.
Happy people come in all formats too. The concept of the men hanging out together while the women “work” in the kitchen may seem peculiar to a non-Muslim — though not that peculiar, given that a less formalised version of the same thing happens whenever you have friends round — but I’ve been to many memorable, jolly parties where gangs of Muslim women ate, gossiped and laughed together without seeming overwhelmingly oppressed, or indeed, oppressed at all.
My experience of Muslim life is not that it is the patriarchal nightmare of legend, but that women are powerful, vocal and iron-fisted beneath their velvet gloves. This is a subjective viewpoint: I am not claiming that every Muslim woman in the world is gloriously carefree. They aren’t (who is?), and I am particularly offended by Straw’s comments because the women Straw described are by and large first-generation immigrants — ie, poor working-class women trying to get on with their lives.
I wonder why none of the army of instant experts has pointed out that, by and large, middle and upper middle-class Muslim women do not veil themselves unless they have the misfortune to live in a country that insists on it.
So Straw and his acolytes — the self-appointed sisterhood among them — are picking on the women who are most voiceless and least able to defend themselves. They should be ashamed.
posted
Arrow, I don't wear the veil. I did not say for people to wear it, just to have a choice in the matter and not riot over the women who choose to veil.
Posts: 935 | Registered: Mar 2006
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NotSleeplessIncairo, I read it in the Sunday Times, a few weeks ago. India Knight is a better restaurant reviewer than political commentator.
The debate has moved so much further forward than her generalisations suggest. Despite dragging out predictable clichés and irrelevant comparisons (nuns don't cover their faces, negating one point) her argument lacked balance.
Women in the UK have the right to wear what they please, outside a few specific situations (unlike the unfortunate ones she highlights who live in countries that insist women wear the veil). India Knight has spent her life in the UK and her experience is of muslim women living in the west. Curiously, she makes the point that only poor women in the UK wear a veil...implying it is an economic choice and not a religious one. She seems to be implying that only uneducated, economically oppressed women wear the niqab. Jack Straw would be proud of her!
Posts: 2953 | From: Slightly south of Azkaban. | Registered: Aug 2006
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Hijab and modest clother r duties upon Muslim . Women who truly and faithfuly follow the scriptures of Islam is mandated to veil and modest wearing.
Posts: 2728 | From: جمهورية مصر العربية | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
It isn't only in Saudia Arabia where women aren't allowed to leave the house without the husbands permission this happens a lot. Whether you agree or disagree but this is a separate issue. There are lots of men and women who disagree at women being forced to wear the veil but in some countries it's the law of the land like women not being allowed to vote or drive, i know egyptians and foreigners that married and went to live there and accept this.
I knew lots of middle and upperclass women who wore niqab. Rich and wealthy men who would go and clean the mosque including the toilets.
It's not upto me to tell sisters that wearing niqab or hijab is a must or must not, we are human beings and have the right of freedom of choice and as such we should respect each other and the decisions that we make after all that is what makes us all special and unique regardless of creed and caste.
Muslim or Non-muslims, veiled or non-veiled.
-------------------- Learn from the past. Live in the present. Hope for the future. Posts: 1474 | From: in my own paradise | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
the question now why SA force females to veil? Acc to share3a, is it a duty to force females to veil?
Posts: 2728 | From: جمهورية مصر العربية | Registered: Sep 2006
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Notsleeplessincairo,I am a firm beleiver in human rights until they infringe upon the rights of others. And your article actually strengthens my argument that students have a right to see their teachers face. I'm actually debating the nikab not the hijab if its part of your religion.
I would never generalize and assume all nikab women are oppressed, this is ignorant. But countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan where women are forced, gives the notion that all women are oppressed when they veil. I don't agree but I can see where a westerner would get the idea of the veil being a sign of oppression.
I think more muslims could benefit from encouraging these countries to be more tolerant toward non-muslims just as they insist western countries be more tolerant of them. But you rarely hear them speak on it, the first thing you hear is the claim that one is trying to "westernize" Saudi Arabia, which is ridiculous. They go to western countries dressed in their traditional clothing, so they need to start accepting the same, not being hypocrits.
They do in fact force women to veil, this is why westerners think the women are oppressed. Even countries like Egypt where you are not forced to cover poitically, socially one can be urged to cover because of the family of society pressures, like being harrassed.
The main things I hear on these bulletin board when western women complain about harassment is that they should cover up more. I wish they would shout that over to their sisters in England, avoid harrassment by covering less... but no, hypocrisy prevails.
Posts: 37 | From: egypt | Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
I am stealing this from another board, but Karen Armstrong is a academic that many follow, personally I don't agree with everything she says blindly. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
My years in a habit taught me the paradox of veiling
If ministers really want a proper debate, they must learn that where the veil is forbidden, women hasten to wear it
Karen Armstrong Thursday October 26, 2006 The Guardian
I spent seven years of my girlhood heavily veiled - not in a Muslim niqab but in a nun's habit. We wore voluminous black robes, large rosaries and crucifixes, and an elaborate headdress: you could see a small slice of my face from the front, but from the side I was entirely shielded from view. We must have looked very odd indeed, walking dourly through the colourful carnival of London during the swinging 60s, but nobody ever asked us to exchange our habits for more conventional attire.
When my order was founded in the 1840s, not long after Catholic emancipation, people were so enraged to see nuns brazenly wearing their habits in the streets that they pelted them with rotten fruit and horse dung. Nuns had been banned from Britain since the Reformation; their return seemed to herald the resurgence of barbarism. Two hundred and fifty years after the gunpowder plot, Catholicism was still feared as unassimilable, irredeemably alien to the British ethos, fanatically opposed to democracy and freedom, and a fifth column allied to dangerous enemies abroad.
Today the veiled Muslim woman appears to symbolise the perceived Islamic threat, as nuns once epitomised the evils of popery. She seems a barbaric affront to hard-won values that are essential to our cultural identity: gender equality, freedom, transparency and openness. But in the Muslim world the veil has also acquired a new symbolism. If government ministers really want to debate the issue fruitfully, they must become familiar with the bitterly ironic history of veiling during the last hundred years.
Until the late 19th century, veiling was neither a central nor a universal practice in the Islamic world. The Qur'an does not command all women to cover their heads; the full hijab was traditionally worn only by aristocratic women, as a mark of status. In Egypt, under Muhammad Ali's leadership (1805-48), the lot of women improved dramatically, and many were abandoning the veil and moving more freely in society.
But after the British occupied Egypt in 1882, the consul general, Lord Cromer, ignored this development. He argued that veiling was the "fatal obstacle" that prevented Egyptians from participating fully in western civilisation. Until it was abolished, Egypt would need the benevolent supervision of the colonialists. But Cromer had cynically exploited feminist ideas to advance the colonial project. Egyptian women lost many of their new educational and professional opportunities under the British, and Cromer was co-founder in London of the Anti-Women's Suffrage League.
When Egyptian pundits sycophantically supported Cromer, veiling became a hot issue. In 1899 Qassim Amin published Tahrir al-Mara - The Liberation of Women - which obsequiously praised the nobility of European culture, arguing that the veil symbolised everything that was wrong with Islam and Egypt. It was no feminist tract: Egyptian women, according to Amin, were dirty, ignorant and hopelessly inadequate parents. The book created a furore, and the ensuing debate made the veil a symbol of resistance to colonialism.
The problem was compounded in other parts of the Muslim world by reformers who wanted their countries to look modern, even though most of the population had no real understanding of secular institutions. When Ataturk secularised Turkey, men and women were forced into European costumes that felt like fancy dress. In Iran, the shahs' soldiers used to march through the streets with their bayonets at the ready, tearing off the women's veils and ripping them to pieces. In 1935, Shah Reza Pahlavi ordered the army to shoot at unarmed demonstrators who were protesting against obligatory western dress. Hundreds of Iranians died that day.
Many women, whose mothers had happily discarded the veil, adopted the hijab in order to dissociate themselves from aggressively secular regimes. This happened in Egypt under President Anwar Sadat and it continues under Hosni Mubarak. When the shah banned the chador, during the Iranian revolution, women wore it as a matter of principle - even those who usually wore western clothes. Today in the US, more and more Muslim women are wearing the hijab to distance themselves from the foreign policy of the Bush administration; something similar may well be happening in Britain.
In the patriarchal society of Victorian Britain, nuns offended by tacitly proclaiming that they had no need of men. I found my habit liberating: for seven years I never had to give a thought to my clothes, makeup and hair - all the rubbish that clutters the minds of the most liberated women. In the same way, Muslim women feel that the veil frees them from the constraints of some uncongenial aspects of western modernity.
They argue that you do not have to look western to be modern. The veiled woman defies the sexual mores of the west, with its strange compulsion to "reveal all". Where western men and women display their expensive clothes and flaunt their finely honed bodies as a mark of privilege, the uniformity of traditional Muslim dress stresses the egalitarian and communal ethos of Islam.
Muslims feel embattled at present, and at such times the bodies of women often symbolise the beleaguered community. Because of its complex history, Jack Straw and his supporters must realise that many Muslims now suspect such western interventions about the veil as having a hidden agenda. Instead of improving relations, they usually make matters worse. Lord Cromer made the originally marginal practice of veiling problematic in the first place. When women are forbidden to wear the veil, they hasten in ever greater numbers to put it on.
In Victorian Britain, nuns believed that until they could appear in public fully veiled, Catholics would never be accepted in this country. But Britain got over its visceral dread of popery. In the late 1960s, shortly before I left my order, we decided to give up the full habit. This decision expressed, among other things, our new confidence, but had it been forced upon us, our deeply ingrained fears of persecution would have revived.
But Muslims today do not feel similarly empowered. The unfolding tragedy of the Middle East has convinced some that the west is bent on the destruction of Islam. The demand that they abandon the veil will exacerbate these fears, and make some women cling more fiercely to the garment that now symbolises their resistance to oppression.
· Karen Armstrong is the author of Muhammad: Prophet for Our Time comment@guardian.co.uk
posted
Being born and living in UK, I have freedom to choose, or do I ? Seems like others are trying to choose for me or intimidate me into doing what they find acceptable. We are loosing more choices day by day. I would like to wear niqab, but I have to be honest and say I am too afraid to. It is "Live and let live" as long as its not a muslim. I dont like big hairy Scottish men walking around in skirts, or "women" who are obviously really men sweating beside me at the tampon counters in supermarkets and ladies public toilets, or having to watch 2 hairy men kissing in public,I hate being faced with big naked stretch marked pregnant bellies in crop tops every day I go shopping, and pensioners in micro skirts and knee high stilleto boots, but I wouldnt dream of expressing it to them, or creating a hate campaign against trannies and sad grannies, a naked pregnant belly, or men who like to be called Kelly. Whatever happened to the saying "variety is the spice of life?" On serious note though the teaching assistant is trying to be controversial Im sure. No innocent child is a threat to her. She still has a choice, keep her job or loose it.And, How do surgeons communicate effectively with the surgical team when performing operations with face masks on? How come David Blunkett was able to perform his job without seeing anyone? And how can drunks communicate when they see 6 of everyone?
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And how can drunks communicate when they see 6 of everyone?
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