Posted on 11/01/2006 3:50:00 PM PST by MadIvan
All the debate about Muslims and the veil has centred around women. What should they wear and how should they wear it? Perhaps its time we looked at what the veil tells us about Muslim men.
The Koran is little help. The verse cited in support of women wearing headscarves or veils is hardly specific: And say to the believing women to cast down their eyes, and guard their private parts, and reveal not their adornment save such as is outward. Islamic scholars have argued ever since about what precisely that means.
The presumption, though, is that immodest dress, however defined, will inflame mens lust. But more extreme Muslim clerics suggest also that if it does, it is the woman who is to blame. Sheikh Taj Aldin al-Hilali, the Mufti of Australia, recently preached: If you take uncovered meat and place it outside . . . and the cats come to eat it . . . whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meats? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.
Unsurprisingly, this has led to a furore in Australia, with moderate Muslims speaking out against the Mufti, who finally agreed to take leave from preaching this week after suffering a minor heart attack. For, coming soon after several particularly nasty cases of gang rape by young Muslim men in Australia, the sheikhs sermon seemed to be absolving the attackers from responsibility.
In the Sydney case to which he was referring, the 18-year-old victim was raped 25 times by up to 14 men. She hadnt been walking, skimpily dressed, down a dark alley at 3am. She had been sitting on a train, wearing her best suit for a job interview and reading The Great Gatsby. Yet the rapists still called her a slut and an Aussie pig.
Of course only a minuscule fraction of Muslim men are rapists; the rest are upright, law-abiding citizens. But the premise of the dress code is still that mens impulses cannot be controlled unless women hide themselves. Why should not Muslim men start to take more responsibility for their sexual desires, rather than expecting women to dress absurdly modestly, lest the sight of a bare arm or even a lock of hair should lead them to uncontrollable sexual urges?
The Mufti also preached that, in adultery, Responsibility falls 90 per cent of the time on the woman. Why? Because she possesses the weapon of enticement. Cant the man be expected to resist the enticement? And what if he entices her?
If it were true that human beings were incapable of reining in their sexual desires, then men should dress modestly, too otherwise we women would be tempted to jump on men in T-shirts or even those not wearing hats. That is what the Victorians believed: both men and women were covered head to toe for the sake of modesty.
It is the asymmetry that I object to in Muslim thought, the fact that men can wear what they like while women cannot. Are women supposed to be more evolved than men, more in control of their passions? In that case it seems odd that they are not even allowed to enter many mosques, let alone preach in them.
No, Muslim men seem to want to have it both ways. They want complete leadership of their community, with womens voices seldom heard, but then they are happy to reduce themselves to the status of animals feral cats in the Muftis sermon when it comes to sex, unable to resist the charms of a woman with an uncovered head.
The issue ranges beyond the Muslim community. For its not much fun for the rest of womankind, dressed perfectly modestly in their own eyes, to know that, because their heads are bare or their calves exposed, many Muslim men will see them as tarts.
What is more, Western women are prepared to cover right up if they visit a strict Muslim country where local people would be offended by skimpy shirts or shorts. Yet there are still many Muslim women living in liberal Britain who continue to wear the full veil, hiding their face, whatever offence or alienation it might cause here. For Aishah Azmi, the Dewsbury classroom assistant, to refuse to uncover her face to a class of young children is as culturally insensitive as it would be for me to walk through a Middle Eastern souk in a pair of shorts.
It takes time for cultural change to take its course. I dont blame Muslim men who were brought up in more traditional countries, such as Pakistan, for holding traditional views about womens garb. But it is incumbent on the next generation, born and brought up here, to re-examine their parents prejudices in the context of this countrys values.
Young British Muslim men, surrounded by respectably dressed non-Muslim women who do not feel it necessary to cover their hair or swathe themselves in shapeless black cloth, ought to realise that such a society can exist without horrific levels of sexual predation. After all, in head-covering Pakistan, according to its Human Rights Commission, a woman is raped every two hours and gang-raped every eight hours.
Whose fault is that?
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
Their tiny endowments have Muslim men in a perpetual rage which can only be assuaged by brutalizing women.
Clearly not, that's why they wear diapers. The one on their head is a spare for emergencies.
Quote: "In the Sydney case to which he was referring, the 18-year-old victim was raped 25 times by up to 14 men. She hadnt been walking, skimpily dressed, down a dark alley at 3am. She had been sitting on a train, wearing her best suit for a job interview and reading The Great Gatsby. Yet the rapists still called her a slut and an Aussie pig."
Unbelievable....and soon coming to a town near you.
No, no they can't.
No, no they can't.
Almost men will control themselves if there are sufficient social or legal penalties for not doing so.
These creeps are encouraged by their culture to rape women. They should be shot.
That is, "almost all men."
Which is why at some point Western women will arm themselves and will not hesitate to shoot a Muslim man as soon as they feel at all threatened. They reap what they sow...
Oh I don't know,, could it be ............................
SATAN
Goat: "My rear end wishes they could!"
Whoa!
"So many sheep, so little time..."
Psychosexual illness runs rampant among Muslim males.
Believe me I know, but not from personal experience Thank The Lord.
"The presumption, though, is that immodest dress, however defined, will inflame mens lust."
I'm of the opinion that God made men and women with a fair amount of lust, for a purpose.
Islam presents an inconsistent notion. On one hand, sex is to be AVOIDED.
On the other men take multiple wives, and have many children with each. Sex here is hardly avoided.
I don't get it. And if I was a woman, I'd get it even less.
where the fu*k are the australian men??????
The Islamic law that prohibits women from going out in public unless accompanied by a male relative is wrong. It should be that Muslimn men should not be allowed in public unless accompanied by their mothers.
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