Article Added On: June 29, 2009 - about 1 year ago
Title: Burka bashing?
Original URL: http://www.winnipegsun.com/comment/columnists/peter_worthington/2009/06/29/9967821-sun.html
Author: PETER WORTHINGTON
Publication: Winnipeg Sun
Publication Date: June 29, 2009 - about 1 year ago
Faith Groups: Muslim
Themes: religious attitudes in Canada, religious tolerance/intolerance

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has stirred up something of a hornet's nest with his views on the burka.

It's a hornet's nest that few Canadian politicians (or editorialists) dare agitate, but Sarkozy is 100% correct when he said the burka diminishes the dignity of women, is a virtual, mobile prison, and is alien to France's ideals and values.

To Sarkozy, the head-to-toe burka with its latticed face opening, is not an issue of clothing, or of choice -- "not a sign of religion," but a "sign of subservience." Or, as another remarked, "a cross between a prison cell and a walking tent."

Some see the burka as a modern version of the chastity belt -- imposed by men to keep their women subjected, isolated, without identity.

U.S President Barack Obama has taken a different approach. In a conciliatory speech in Cairo to the Muslim world, he noted the U.S. government has gone to court to "protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab" (and by implication, the burka), and to punish those who would deny it.

He "rejects" the idea that women who cover themselves in this way are "somehow less equal," but adds that denying a woman education is denying her equality. In other words, he wants it both ways.

Such moral equivalency is sloppy, wrong and hypocritical.

The burka, or chadri, is alien to democracy. It is not clothing, but fits over women's clothes, robbing the wearer of personality or identity. The same with the niqab -- the face veil, where women are completely covered except for a narrow eye-slit. Unidentifiable unpersons.

Identities

When Sarkozy says the burka is "not welcome in France," he is denouncing the practice of being unidentifiable -- alien to an open society. The burka should be unacceptable where identities are required -- on commercial aircraft, schools, drivers licences, banks, court.

Women who are conditioned (brainwashed?) into preferring the burka to prevent their faces being seen in public, are not credible arbitrators. Males cannot go to work, or court, or board planes, wearing ski masks.

Enlightened women mostly reject the burka, as it symbolizes that they are mere possessions of men. Chattel without personality or rights.

In Canada, relatively few wear the burka or niqab. Some who do, have no choice. There've been "honour killings" of women who refuse.

No sensible person should object to the head scarf, as there's no identity problem, and it can establish the religious or cultural leanings of the wearer. Amish, Sikhs, Arabs in their traditional dress have no problem being recognized -- unlike those who wear the burka. (In the past journalists have entered Afghanistan disguised in burkas).

Again, the burka is not an article of clothing, so much as a covering for clothes. Nothing in Islam requires that women to be confined to "ambulatory" prisons, as required in Saudi Arabia, by the Taliban, and in certain Gulf states.

Five years ago France banned headscarves in schools and offices, arguing they were religious symbols. That was nuts -- but understandable in a country where the Muslim population is growing faster than any other.

Head scarves, veils and the burka are not the issue in Canada that they are in Europe. Yet. Still, it might not be a bad time to encourage Muslim Canadians to blend with the majority and forgo unwholesome symbols of male dominance, subservience, repression, inequality, and even slavery.