PING!
Posted on 10/25/2006 10:14:28 AM PDT by GMMAC
Modesty and menace
Barbara Kay
National Post
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
MONTREAL - Last week, while being buffed for an interview on a French-language TV talk show, I observed a quartet of young Muslim women trooping in for their touch-ups. They were amateur models who, in the segment following mine, would serve as visual accompaniment to a commentator's discourse on the diversity of Muslim "fashion." The girls primped, and tweaked their respective costumes: a hijab, two different styles of chador and the full-body, face-veiling niqab.
Lately it has become more acceptable to admit to "cover recoil." Certainly I felt a frisson of revulsion when the niqab-clad young woman lowered a second veil over her entire face. With eyes visible, she had been barely identifiable as a woman. When they disappeared, she no longer registered as a human being. She was a ... creature.
The niqab, still a rarity here, is a hot issue abroad, where several political leaders have held forth on its negative social effects: British Prime Minister Tony Blair has called it a "mark of separation." Blair's foreign minister, Jack Straw, announced he will no longer interview veiled women in his constituency office. Italy's Romano Prodi declared, "You can't cover your face .... It is not how you dress, but if you are hidden or not."
Coincidentally, in England a Yorkshire school suspended Aishah Azmi, 24, an assistant teacher, for insisting on wearing a niqab in class. (She had not worn a veil at her interview.)
Azmi's case may be a tipping point in Britons' patience with Muslim entitlements. Politically correct deference to complaints of discrimination by Azmi and leaders of the Muslim community did not spring forth with their wonted alacrity, and Azmi lost three claims of discrimination and harassment before an employment tribunal. Let us fervently hope this is a sign that frankness around the indecency of the niqab will henceforth be the order of the day.
Yes, indecency. A great deal of hypocritical ink has been spilled about "respecting difference," the "right" of women to affirm their cultural identity and the injustice of "forcing" women to adapt to Western norms. These multicultural pieties don't reflect essential Canadian values, just a fear of being labelled Islamophobic. For in reality, in the interest of decency, social comfort and civil norms, we "force" people to refrain from doing all kinds of things.
Our decency spectrum features a somewhat elastic middle zone of socially appropriate behaviours, as well as two end zones: One is over-exhibition in public -- nakedness and unseemly intimacies; the other -- total cover and discomfiting social distance -- is over-inhibition in public. Both extremes provoke negative social tension. We don't second-guess the familiar old transgressions of the over-exhibitionistic zone. There would be no talk of "respecting difference" or "rights" if someone strolled naked into a schoolyard.
But the opposite end of the spectrum is more nuanced.
We're clear about men in ski masks in banks and other urban spaces, because we instinctively associate the hidden male face with deviancy or violence. But cover in general amongst women signifies sexual modesty (an appropriate middle zone behaviour and a Judeo-Christian heritage value), so we're pre-programmed to approve -- or at least not disapprove -- of all cover's various "fashions." Yet as members of an egalitarian and individual-promoting culture, we are offended by the shocking depersonalization of women the niqab in particular confers. It's a muddle; theory wars with instinct.
Our discomfort is compounded by the association of full female coverage with regimes such as the Taliban's and Saudi Arabia, which are not only notoriously repressive of women, but embody or support virulently hostile attitudes to the West. The question inevitably arises:
Why would any free Western woman (whose mother certainly never wore a niqab) voluntarily exchange her individuality for such drastic physical and social self-erasure, except as an ideological gesture of support for anti-Western interpretations of Islam? I am sure I am not alone in longing for the reassurance of some other benign and credible explanation.
Body cover in the name of sexual modesty is a universally respected phenomenon. But face cover is a universal symbol of menace, shame or the intention to deceive one's fellows. We've long had penalties for the offence of public self-imposition, but unlike England and Europe, we haven't had to consider suitable dissuasive strategies against the civic insult of public self-nullification. A flimsy veil is a social wall. It's easier not to build walls than be forced to tear them down.
bkay@videotron.ca
© National Post 2006
PING!
go to some of the more 'pious' states in the middle east and you may be obliged to dress as they do not as you wish. hypocrites, the whole bloody lot of them.
HA....if I ever saw a "group of Muslim women out together" covered head to foot.....I'd wonder if there was a male in there somewhere.
(Disclaimer: the video might be removed by Google for "hate crime")
Great disguise. OBL could be walking among us dressed as a female, who would ever know.
Wow, you are right. Friend worked in Saudi for years. His wife stayed in the states because she was not allowed to drive and had to wear modesty clothing.
I'm always fascinated at how often, in Arab Moslem (even in non-Arab Moslem) complete coverage of the face by MEN is sanctioned--at least by those militants usually accompanied by an AK-47. Somehow it is considered brave and a "sign of the martyrs" to cover ones face like a bandit. Of course the real reason is so they cannot be recognized by law-enforcement--proving their real-life banditry.
What's sad is the elevation of criminality to martyr status of Islamic society. But hey, just look at Mohammed himself.
Still, why is it, both men and women in Islamic societies love to hide their faces? Methinks the practice is revealing.
I think they are trying to be menacing. About a year ago I was in a London Marks & Spencer's paying for an item when I turned away and bumped into a woman dressed entirely in that long black schmatta with only her eyes exposed. The dark hatred in those orbs was palpable!
LOL. That's hilarious.
a cousin in singapore used to vacation in langkawi, malaysia. said it was the most hilarious sight seeing arab mothers on holiday with their children 'swimming' at the beach with full, black burquas. not smart to weigh one's self down like that while your kids are learning to swim.
I saw one today, and they are unbelievably creepy. They truly are a sign of menace and hatred and separation.
I strongly disagree that appeasement should be used in the symbols of death and hatred that the islamic headgear of both sexes represents. Banning them in schools and govt buildings would have a huge effect.
Take a look at the headlines in our leading national broadsheet:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/
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