I was in Thailand about this time last year. Many Arabs were there on their vacation as well and it was the first time I had a chance to directly mix with Middle Easterners outside of their American version.I hated it.
Sure, the men I talked to were nice, very cordial and festive. Even the bus load of Iranians (who are not actually Arabs, but Persians) in front of my hotel telling me how much they loved America and filling my hands with pistachio nuts were cool. Men are men, anywhere. Usually driven by the same things --money, sports and sex. No surprise there.
What I hated about having all those Arabs around me was the women wearing burqas --the black garment that covers them from head to toe with a little slit cut out for their eyes.
Sure I had seen it before on TV, but to witness it in person was completely unsettling. And watching the men with them wearing shorts, sandals and tank tops stirred a bit of anger. I found myself wanting to tackle the men and unbundle the burqas.
So when the French president Nicolas Sarkozy spoke out against the burqa in a speech to the French Parliament yesterday, I completely sympathized when he said that while "the Muslim religion must be respected like other religions, the burqa is not welcome in France.”
“I want to say solemnly that (the burqa) will not be welcome on our territory...The issue of the burqa is not a religious issue; it is a question of freedom and of women’s dignity...The burqa is not a religious sign; it is a sign of the subjugation, of the submission of women.”The talk of freedom and all that is perfectly legitimate but for me the issue is very simple --people walking around in the streets completely covered in black fabric freaks me out. I wouldn't want it in my neighborhood either.
And spare me the comments about respecting religion.
21 Comments:
amen bobby
DAMN, why does that cursed word always slip between my lips.
cant shake that bogey man ever can we, that nasty stinky elephant in the room.
down with burqas!, while we're at it, down with granny panties. down with banana hammocks, down with it all....
Thank god you'll now be able to feel comfortable when you visit France.
Maybe it's b/c they are embarrassed and think their wives are ugly...but it would creep me out too. It would feel like a city of grim reapers er something. Why black? I think some nice pastels or white would also hide wutever it is just as well?
I like to consider myself an open minded person, but it really was surprising to me how uncomfortable I felt around these women in burqas. Some even wore a metallic mask that had a triangular piece that went over the nose and then around the eyes. It was like some midsummer nightmare.
how about the fatass white women wearing mumus?? my mom had a church friend back in the day that HAD to wear one everyday of her life because she was so fat.
anyway, i digress (like ben does everytime on idlewordship). ooppps. seeing women wear burqas is right up there with the scariness of clowns. it is quite unsettling.
You could play the card where you say these women are put in this position by the men, but almost every culture puts women second or below men. Even in western culture a women takes the husband's name when they get married and changes her name to imply ownership.
miss- misses
mister + miss = Mrs... Mister's?
I'm not agreeing with it, but even a little pot shouldn't call the kettle black.
Fair enough D, but at what point do you draw the line? Ironic that Sarkozy's wife has made her living being uncovered. And yes a little pot just might help the discussion.
i like what d- rock said about guys thinking their women were ugly hence the burqa...
i'm more inclined to believe the opposite, from experience middle eastern ladies are nice, least the ones back in old canukistan.
i think the real reason the men cover their wives up is cuz of their own insecurities.
traditionally she was probably chosen for him by some old blind family member, she did not go willingly, so he would have to do everything to keep her his, if she were seen, she would also see, that the man she was chosen for, was indeed the one needing the burqam not her.
and yeah, a color scheme would be so much cooler
Personally I feel much more uncomfortable around white guys with big beards, tattoos and motorcycle club jackets and black or mexicans with bandanna's and baggy pants and my grandmother is thoroughly freaked out by guys with piercings and unnatural hair colours. Would you find it acceptable to ban these too? Where do we draw the line? I just can't help feeling that you are buying into the last great area of acceptable racism.
Re: "where do we draw the line", more specifically where do you draw the line.
That is a very good question and not easily answered. And you give some great examples to that effect. I guess my knee jerk reaction is that this is an issue of acceptable sexism more so than racism towards those who fall in line with some of Islam's fashion dictates.
I think burqas suck too.
You have to admit though, walking around Korea in summer with all the chicks in miniskirts is pretty damn distracting. You have to hand it to Muslims for pretty much putting their finger on the ultimate distraction: exposed flesh.
I'll take the miniskirts though.
JB
As much as I hated the Shaw that was finally overthrown in Iran in 1979 (who the CIA and MI6 put into power in 1953 to become a big oil puppet for the west), I have to say, it was during his "tyrannical" reign in Iran that he tried to westernize the country...billboards of men and women in swimsuits, smoking luck strikes and drinking jack daniels. TV shows of western people in "western" situations. Western clothes for women.
The people hated it. Most of them.
The sad truth is these people are so fanatical they make born again Christians look like...not Christians. (couldn't think of anything creative)
Many or most of them think the Holocaust was a lie. The hate of Israel seems to be everywhere in this part of the world, although the Jews in Israel today are not even the Hesidic Jews of the Bible -- something that born again Chrisitians cant get their head around; believing the end is near and all and that Israel has a central role to it.
America and Americans have a big trouble understanding the Middle East (and every other part of the wolrd)-- sadly because they don't study history in their spare time.
It's part of their culture. They take it in stride the way Koreans force themselves to be overpolite when talking to older people or getting up for older people on the bus. Or the way born again Christians feel the need to preach their bullshit down the throats of the masses. You can't change culture or belief system...in most people. On an individual scale, there is hope, however.
I'm reading "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins -- it's about Memetics and Evolutionary Biopsychology -- it's also one of the greatest and most controversial books of all time.
It does a great job of explaining why anyone believes in any god or religion or life after death, as well as why people adapt "strange" cultural behavior. Make no mistake, the Memosphere can be cleared of any cultural or religious elements/ailments.
I wonder who wants to one-up me now...
can i? or am i bad for this,
kudos for picking up a book. been there done that
sadly its about genes and evolution mostly, a little blurb about memes. i recommend, virus of the mind for that one if your interested.
thanks for the material, and keep reading, its good stuff. tell me, how was iran in the 70's.
oh and forget studying history(not you,just generally), try english.
sorry ben, its not personal, im working on my routine. i saw door open, so i thought i should close it.
oh yeah, one more thing, i disagree with the other commenter(another IW blog) who hinted you were libertarian, i don't think you are. like you care though.
have fun in america
u may also wanna check out,'civilization and its discontents' by frued...freud...froid...yeah thats it
I think the Iranians were mostly upset that the Shah westernized his name to "Shaw."
'd-rock'.....is that Derrek; my brother-in-law in the Tampa Bay area? Could you run an IP address check, Bobby? I read that Freud book back in high school, anyway....
---
"oh and forget studying history(not you,just generally), try english."
Try capital letters, "MOAM."
Sorry if I have an appreciation for history, economics and politics. Only science is more interesting, anyway...
To see it from a burqa-wearing Frenchwoman's perspective: first, your idiot religion tries to dictate what you can wear. Then, your idiot government tries to dictate what you wear. Women's rights indeed.
But while we're outlawing clothes, I've never been a fan of nun's habits, the kimono, the jalabia, the hanbok, jeans shorts, berets, fanny packs, doo-rags, or the Washington Wizards' uniforms. Just makes me.....uncomfortable.
i hate twits with sideways baseball caps, rolled up baggy pantlegs, oversized shirts, essentially all things that are hip hop, people who werer toques in summer, sunglasses inside and the mother of all fashion offenses, dressing their mother fucking dog.
oh, i forgot one, the home depot look, has got to go, death to kaki!
Burqa's and the niqab should be banned, and it has nothing to do with religion.
No one should be allowed to go about in public with their face covered. We don't let people walk into banks or stores with ski masks on. We don't let teachers stand in front of a class wearing a full head wrestling mask. We don't let people cast their ballot when the monitors can only see their hands. Concealing your identity is a hostile act in our culture - it gives the person doing the concealing power over everyone else. Can women in a public washroom be sure the burka'd mass is not some male pervert in disguise? Can we be sure who a police officer is really talking to? Who is really voting?
Law should be revised to make the following clear: from your forehead to your chin, to the back of both your cheeks have to be visible or else you are breaking a law. Let muslim women wear the lesser head scarf that still reveals their face if they have to, and if they don't like that they can piss off back to a country that suits them better.
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