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?
Neither are you. There is no comparison between modesty under Islam and modesty in the West, for the reason that Muslim modesty is about the unchecked power of the male, and Western modesty is about preserving a gift. Sure, it's better when Western women cover themselves some and men have less temptation, but no one with a brain in the West really believes that men have no ability to control themselves if they see some woman's hair.
Delude yourself about the nature of Islam if you wish. The rest of us don't figure we have that luxury.
"The Koran is little help."
Clams...it's "clams be upon him."
No one in this thread has said, "How dare those Muslims make their women be modest" or "What dorks that they dress modestly." We have instead condemned the idea that a man can rape a woman. We have condemned the idea that she could possibly deserve such a thing, that it could be her fault. We oppose RAPE, not modesty.
And you look at that sentiment and call it un-Christlike. Begone, and take your satanic bilge with you.
Yeah, no fear among the women of Islam. See post 47, you benighted harpy.
I hope you will not judge the Fiath by the blather of this harpy.
"Of course only a minuscule fraction of Muslim men are rapists; the rest are upright, law-abiding citizens."
Sounds like Mary Ann is buying a bus pass in case any Muzzies read this piece.
Seriously, the only hope for the non-muslim world is for the women under control to just revolt and refuse to carry on this ruse in a modern society.
Fiath=Faith
Guess I slipped into Gaelic back there.
"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. "
Islam provides a Koranic figleaf covering for all male Muslims for all the vices that Christianity would condemn under all situational circumstances.
Males, having converted to Islam are in candy land when it comes to the control of women and the excusing of sexual license with "unconverted female women" who are less than human any-way...it is no sin to rape them.
I don't get it. It makes them look WEAK!!! Like they have no control or power over themselves. Why would they want to appear as weaklings? Losers.
The socio-commie governments consider it unjust for their people to have an advantage over someone else even for safety. Only the government is allowed to have advantage over someone else.
I think that's pretty much a universal generalization, no matter what the situation is. It could be a bumper sticker!
True. But it also excuses their temptations to steal, to lie, and to assault women. In other words, it empowers them.
That it empowers them only to do evil does not seem to matter.
Oh, good verbiage there!
The Koran as literature couldn't even be published on rolls of toilet paper.
But it should be.
Holy Hooties- I don't know where to start! Not sure whether to laugh at your assumptions about me, or bang my head in frustration at such obtuse statements.
((Fear? Are you sure, feminist? You do realize this is the same stupid argument feminists used against good christian women such as my mother? You sound an awful lot like hitlery clinton when she scoffed at tammy wynette about her "stand by your man" song.))
Feminist???? ME????? I do thank you for the laugh there. You couldn't be more wrong if you assumed I had three heads and antennae!
What does your mother and militant feminists have to do with anything? Did those feminists say it was ok to rape and kill your mother for her mode of dress?
Did Hitlery-at her most macho- suggest that Tammy Wynette should be violently attacked for her song?
Am I sure that Islamic women FEAR punishment and/or death if they don't obey the 'values' forced upon them by ' Islamofacism'? Ummm, yes...fear is definitely a factor. Have you missed the news reports of women being punished and killed by their own families for disobeying the Islamic version of 'modesty'? Do you really think every Muslim woman you see in the street is covered up because it is her idea? You don't think ANY of them are pressured and intimidated and fear punishment if they refuse to obey Islamic 'values'?
((Do you really believe women of the eighteen hundreds all wore long dresses because of fear that they would be raped otherwise? or murdered by their husbands?))
What are you talking about? Which century? We're talking about 'values' NOW. You make my point! Even the most wanton woman in the 18oo's wasn't stoned or killed by her own family for showing an ankle. MUSLIM WOMEN WERE THEN AND ARE NOW! Right now- in 2006- in the name of 'modesty' and 'values' which you seem to support.
((I could care less what atrocities happen in some backward illiterate inbred town in the middle of nowhere middle east. So don't throw that up as proof that clothing on a woman is a bad thing.))
Where did you get that??? Clothing on a woman is bad?
Clothing on EVERYONE is good. I don't want to see naked people in public-not even the most gorgeous people.
However, it's a far cry from halter tops and thongs on the street( which is shameful and trashy- but not deserving of rape or a death sentence), and being a hooded, veiled THING whose humanity must be obscured. A burkha is just ' clothing'? More clothes = more modesty= good? So being completely covered from head to toe = ultimate morality?
And the atrocities against 'immoral' dress and behavior are not happening only in some inbred, nowhere town in the middle east. They are happening in Australia, Great Britain, France, and even the US!
You see no difference between a father saying 'You're not leaving the house in those micro shorts, young lady!' and a father saying 'If you expose your hair and/or bare arms and legs I will kill you for shaming the family!'
((The purpose of my post was to make people think about what the heck we are fighting here. We are not fighting modest muslim women. We should not be so critical of them. We are fighting terrorists. Islamofascists. Last I checked, modest clothing on females isn't a threat to america. It might be a threat to brittny spears, but so the * what!? She is a disease on our culture that should be stamped out anyway.))
Do you not see that it is the 'Islamofacists' who are enforcing this 'modesty' for Muslim women? A veiled Muslim woman is a SYMBOL of what IS a threat to America. She is the very image of the subjugation that Islam wants for the world. You ASSUME their 'modesty' is entirely free will, even in the face of so much proof that most- if not all- these women have reason to fear disobeying Sharia law. Right now- in Western countries.
I see the headscarf and obscuring clothing on Muslim women as a symbol of the controlling cult that is Islam. Just as I see a swastika as a symbol of what Nazism is. In Islam's case it's worse- neo-Nazis don't force their children to wear the swastika. The 'Islamofacism' you recognize as our enemy DOES force its 'values' on Muslim women-and now on Western women . These 'Islamofacists' say WESTERN women deserve to be attacked if they are not modest by Islamic standards and laws!!!
That's not a threat?? Do you agree with that assumption?
Muslim and non-Muslim women should be raped and killed for immodesty?
Even trashy Britney Spears and American teens who dress like her? Do you mean 'stamped out' literally?
How very revealing!
The uncovered Muslim man's meat is the problem,thusly, it shall be wrapped in a gasoline soaked rag, so sayeth the mighty koran.........
Ah... no drinker's droop!
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