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 it’s 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 men’s 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 meat’s? 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 sheikh’s 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 hadn’t 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 men’s 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.” Can’t 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 women’s voices seldom heard, but then they are happy to reduce themselves to the status of animals — feral cats in the Mufti’s 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 it’s 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 don’t blame Muslim men who were brought up in more traditional countries, such as Pakistan, for holding traditional views about women’s 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 country’s 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?
Thank you. Unlike John Kerry, I can still bluster well when riled. :-)
LOL! I couldn't figure out where that guy was coming from. There have been threads where people have suggested that any modest clothing is somehow "unAmerican," but there were no comments like that on this thread.
I'm a fundamentalist frump, myself - long dress, loose blouse, head covering usually - but that wouldn't make any difference to the Australian mufti, I guess. Just being out of my house makes me "uncovered meat."
Disgusting, really. The Mexican immigrants around here always smile at me and the kids, and sometimes say, "God bless you!"
They should be castrated. There now I fixed it. ;)
I didn't find stats for Paris specifically, but here's what I found on the Nationmaster website which offers heaps of stats for various countries :
Murders (1998-2000):
United States : 12,658 (per capita : 0.042802 per 1,000 people)
France : 1,051 (per capita : 0.017327 per 1,000 people)
Rapes (1998-2000) :
United States 89,110 (per capita : 0.301318 per 1,000 people)
France : 8,458 (per capita : 0.139442 per 1,000 people)
Robberies (1998-2000) :
United States : 409,670 (per capita : 1.38527 per 1,000 people)
France : 24,304 (per capita : 0.400686 per 1,000 people)
Burglaries (1998-2000) :
United States : 2,099,700 (per capita : 7.09996 per 1,000 people)
France : 370,993 (per capita : 6.11634 per 1,000 people)
Thanks, but reporting differences from country to country make most of those statistics less than reliable. It's much like the statistics on baby deaths, we consider an infant who breathes a few breaths to be a live birth because we immediately put it on a ventilator, the Europeans call it a still birth.
They CAN - but they neither WANT to, nor are they REQUIRED to control their urges.
Muslim men are the commissars of the Islamic world... They tout the benefits of their system by describing the great things they themselves receive - while denying them to anyone else.
DING, DING, DING, DING! Correct answer.
ROTFLMAO!!!!! Priceless.
This very issue as described by two missionaries who spoke at our church's missions conference last month, one from the Middle East and the other from an Islamic country in West Africa (paraphrased from my notes) -
"Islam is a religion for men. Women are second class, rarely go out, are given 'family appointed accountability partners' to prevent implications of impropriety.
"In Islam there is no concept of personal accountability - all people are good and are only corrupted by outside influences. As a result, men (and boys who learn from their fathers) are never challenged to exhibit self-control, for the corrupting influence MUST come from without rather than from within, so it's always the woman's fault.
"As a result, men are very aloof and superior. As fathers, most Islamic men are very stoic and children are only loved overtly by their mother.
"In addition to their demands for their own women to be modest and the consequences if they are not, Muslim men think that all western women are exactly as portrayed in western media (thanks a lot, Hollywood) and therefore are prey to more overt sexual advances. Often western women in Islamic countries (esp ME ones) are very tense just functioning in society."
Seems to me that it's the epitome of the "devil made me do it" defense - they take no responsibility for their actions and everything is always someone else's fault - and it's seen throughout Islam in more areas than just their complaints about women.
You know darn well I am not advocating rape of anyone. Your response to me is so full of angry senseless crap I don't even know why I'm typing this.
No one in this country is wearing a burka. But I dont know why that would bother you anyway. A burka is only slighty more concealing than an old fashioned nun's habbit.
Remember those? They were once considered proper attire.
Most of the rest of your post doesn't make sense....as if you are responding to the wrong person.
If you are trying to say islam is a threat, then I agree with you. If you are trying to say muslim women are a threat because of the way they dress, then you are a moron.
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"...West really believes that men have no ability to control themselves if they see some woman's hair."
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I don't know what to say to that. Why are you even posting this to me? It's senseless. And even more senseless to insinuate that I beleive it. Explain yourself please.
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"Delude yourself about the nature of Islam if you wish. The rest of us don't figure we have that luxury."
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This is another stupid remark. You know full well I am not supporting radical islam or even moderate islam for that matter. To insinuate that I am, is just plain insulting. I think maybe you should re read my posts and then think about why you are so angered by them. Because you definitely have a problem. Or maybe you just read something into my posts that really isn't there.
You are incorrect.
THere are many posts that indicate anger about a veil and assumptions that women are forced by threat of death to wear them. It is just stupid to make this assumption. It is also stupid to attack an artical of clothing worn by muslim women when there are people that want to kill us. A veil is harmless to all except the brittney spears type. And the only way it threatens those types is that it could possibly draw attention to how disgusting brittney spears really is.
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"We have condemned the idea that she could possibly deserve such a thing, that it could be her fault. We oppose RAPE, not modesty.
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You are not opposing rape by opposing a veil. Don't you have the brains to see that? A veil on a muslim woman is not responsible for a muslim man raping a western woman. Do you really think by banning all veils you will stop rape? THat's just stupid. But even if it did work, it would still be wrong. You don't force person A to change their behavior so that person B won't harm person C.
This is very simple stuff, why do I have to explain it to you?
Oh very nice. I've never been called a harpy before. I enjoyed that alot. Let's see what else you got for me? Anything from the fore brain? Or do I only get emotion and lizard brain responses from you?
Are you an expert on the endowments of Muslim men?
If so, how?
Are you a penis expert?
The problem being discussed here is not the Muslim women's modest clothing. It is the Muslim men's evil, disgusting actions, and their penchant for blaming their own evil on other people. You are right about our degenerated culture. I see around me here in America women who go around half-naked in public because it has become part of our (decadent) culture. I wonder if any of them ever realize that they are wearing outfits that, in most times past, much of the world, would have been very useful for presenting them on an auction block. But this thread has been about the Muslims' evil actions.
Read both your post and CLearBlueSkys' -- CBS used your own words, and responded to them.
And CBS made no sense?
But, back to the habit comment. Nuns wore the habit for their "job" , but I don't ever remember the Pope threatening to hack off their heads if they were caught without it on. Plus Nuns now are not required to wear it.
You sound a little too Taliban for my taste.
No, but 39 years of dealing with people problems, I am somewhat of an expert on jealousy.
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