Today, I was flicking through the world news as you do, and happened to stumble across a very disturbing take on the British government's recent rejection to ban the burka. It appears that a Muslim journalist, namely Mrs Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, is furious at this turn of events, having hoped for a ban of this, as she puts it, 'perversion of our faith'.
So of course, I had to comment, and have done so by addressing her article (printed in red font below) one inflammatory section at a time.
I do invite you to read and add your comments.
Wasalam,
Rafa
Let me open with Assalamu alaikum- the commonly used Islamic greeting meaning ‘peace be upon you’.
As a Muslim woman and a reader of this recent article, I felt it my duty to respond. To have not responded would have made me, in some way at least, complicit in the propagation of such slanderous misinformation. So here goes.
These British apologists for the burka make me see red, whatever side of the political spectrum they come from.
They can be Left-wingers who'll countenance no criticism, however valid, of hardline Muslims. They can be Right-wing libertarians who insist any woman has the right to wear whatever she chooses.
And, as we discovered this week, they can be members of the British Cabinet who ludicrously claim the burka actually empowers women.
Why ludicrous? Surely Ms Alibhai- Brown cannot claim to be society’s universal mouthpiece!
Yes, Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, really did claim that the burka delivers its wearer blissful freedom. As a Muslim, you might expect me to agree with her, but I can't. She is wrong. Her fatuous and ill-conceived defence of the burka rendered me apoplectic with fury.
She is wrong? Fatuous and ill-conceived defence? Talk about abusing emotive language!
Does she even understand the harm she does by sanctioning this perversion of our faith?
Now this is where I am rendered ‘apoplectic with fury’. A perversion of our faith? Surely Ms Alibhai-Brown is a well-respected scholar that is recognised by a reasonably sizeable portion of the Muslim community to make such a comment. So where is the justification to her comment? How is it a ‘perversion’? And of what ‘faith’ pray tell? Because as far as I’m concerned, it is certainly not the Islam that I follow.
Immigrant Muslims who came to Britain to get away from Stalinist ayatollahs, mullahs and women-hating fanatic regimes in their home countries must be spitting their teeth out after hearing Spelman's astounding endorsement of this dreadful garment.
Really, I am fed up already with the sweeping statements and gross generalisations. I am an immigrant Muslim who migrated for none of those reasons. Neither did my mother or any of my friends or any of my mother’s friends for that matter.
In fact, I don’t actually know any Muslim woman (and I know a good number of them, having been Muslim all of my life and having been very much immersed in the local Muslim community) that migrated for the aforementioned reasons. Saying that, I would certainly not have the audacity nor the sheer ludicrosity (as displayed by Ms Alibhai-Brown) to allude that no immigrant Muslims have migrated for those reasons, but that’s just me. I am more interested in accurate depictions than fantastical stereotype-mongering.
We Muslims who came here wanted the freedom that Britain's proud history of democracy was renowned for. We wanted better education for our children and to live and pray in peace in a country which, for all its faults, gives us civil rights and equality between the sexes.
Again, ‘We Muslims’. It would have been far more appropriate and dare I say, true, if Ms Alibhai-Brown started that sentence, with ‘I’ instead. Besides anything else, her reading of history appears much skewed and certainly one-sided. I would think that many of Britannia’s old colonies might take umbrage with her representations.
Yet Spelman's support for the burka suddenly puts all of our expectations under threat; for the most obvious manifestation of the oppressive Islam we left behind is welcomed here with the blessing of the ruling elite.
Oppressive Islam? That is an oxymoron if ever I saw one. It would seem, that rather than shirking the actions of the ruling elite, she is in fact buying into their far more dominant and prevalent discourse that portrays Islam as oppressive, and Muslims in need of liberating. There is only one Islam, and it is anything but oppressive. Now if she'd said that some so-called Muslims attempt to misappropriate their own misogynistic views/practices as being founded in Islam, then that would have been a bit more palatable. And perhaps more honest.
I'd like to invite Mrs Spelman to prove she believes what she says by wearing the black sheet and mask - surely she should do that as an act of solidarity with the 'empowered' Muslim sisters she admires so much.
And if she chooses not to, if she feels she would find wearing a burka limiting and suffocating, why on earth is she breezily recommending it as a garment for other women?
Would she honestly be so upbeat about the burka if a daughter of hers hid herself away inside its veil, or if her son brought home a totally veiled bride-to-be? I don't think so. She and the rest of the 'liberal-minded' burka brigade can only afford to be generous because the burka does not - and never will - affect their own lives, nor test their powers of endurance.
To check out the shrouded sisters who tell me they feel ' beautifully' liberated under a veil, I tried wearing a burka for a day - and threw it off in a couple of hours, wheezing asthmatically.
Poor woman. Asthma is indeed a nasty condition. But come on now, does she really think that simply because her short-lived experience of the ‘burka’ was, for her, an unpleasant one, that those ‘shrouded sisters’ could not possibly be telling the truth? If so, why should we believe her? What makes her experience any more legitimate than theirs?
I felt wiped out, a nobody - lifeless and voiceless.
I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a woman so dependent upon her public appearance for validation as a living vocal present somebody.
A Pakistani shopkeeper said I made him nervous because he couldn't see my face. I saw others shrinking away from me - and I could understand their reactions. So, will the defenders of the burka brand me and the shopkeeper racist? I wouldn't put it past them.
In truth, I am a life-long anti-racist and die-hard defender of Muslims - yet one who abhors veils as do countless other Muslims.
Pahaha! Now that is hilarious. ‘A die-hard defender of Muslims’. Call it paradox, call it what you will but I don’t think I have laughed this hard in a long time. Thank you for injecting some humour into an otherwise banal article. I still have to disagree with you though...
It is a view that has provoked fury and warnings from veiled women, who self-righteously tell me that uncovered Muslim females will end up in hell unless they repent. Women like me, they warn, are 'western whores' who should be thrown on the eternal fire, along with our mothers.
Who are these rude women and how dare they call themselves Muslims? I find it very hard to believe that these veiled Muslim women are using such profane language and taking it upon themselves to damn Ms Alibhai to eternal fire. I would have assumed that they, as practicing Muslim women, would know better than to judge and condemn. Anyone who knows anything about true Islam knows full well that that is God’s dominion alone.
Of course, many veiled Muslim women argue that, far from being forced to wear burkas by ruthless husbands, they do so out of choice. And I have to take them at their word. But it is also very apparent that many women are forced behind the veil.
But, Ms Alibhai-Brown, you haven’t actually done that. You haven’t taken them at their word at all.
A number of them have turned up at my door seeking refuge from their fathers, mothers, brothers and in-laws - men brain-washed by religious leaders who use physical and mental abuse to compel the girls to cover up. It started with the headscarf, then went to the full cloak and now it's the total veil.
Religious leaders using physical and mental abuse? And in Britain no less? Why have they not been reported? Why have they not been prosecuted? One would have thought that such heinous abusers would have been exposed, shamed and hung out to dry in a media so geared to out any inkling of Muslim-related misdemeanor.
Yet again, Ms Alibhai=Brown's writing creates the detrimental illusion that this is commonplace, standard, acceptable Islamic practice. Clearly, though, this is far from the truth. Religious leaders would not be religious leaders if they were practicing such abhorrent, unIslamic injustices. Fyi, there is no compulsion in religion, and more specifically, any form of abuse is strictly forbidden, as it is in all major belief systems. To insinuate that more than 1.4 billion people would follow a religion that preached anything less would be, well, nonsensical.
There may of course be warped individuals who are guilty of these accusations, perhaps even some cultural leaders with their own agendas who mislead the ignorant into mistakenly believing such practices are religiously justified, but that is not what Ms Alibhai-Brown chose to write. Sadly, what she wrote can only be read as prejudiced vitriol.
A good number of these women are warned of the wrath of Allah unless they succumb to life behind the veil; they are told by their fathers they are whores; they are told they will have no friends in the community - and worse still - end up spinsters.
Ms Alibhai-Brown continually confuses the veil (hijab/headscarf) and the burka (face covering)- to do so is very misleading and if she has done so deliberately, very mischievous. To suggest that the headscarf is not an intrinsic and widely accepted part of Islam is nothing short of ludicrous. There IS consensus that the veil is a prescribed religious practice. The face covering, however is not.
I am incensed by the rampant vilification of Muslim fathers, especially when she begins her attack by saying that there are 'a good number' of these ruthless men.
And so these women do wear burkas against their will. I see them in restaurants and parks, unable to eat properly or feel the sun and breeze on their skin.
Today, younger and younger girls are having their hair and small bodies covered up. They are learning the first step to personal incarceration. By the time of puberty, they can choose nothing else.
From her cultural paradigm she has chosen to perceive Islamic modesty as 'personal incarceration', but she hasn't the grace to stop at that, in effect calling us who choose to cover mindless drones that lack the ability to choose anything else. Really?!
I'd imagine that she'd be up in arms should someone working from a disparate cultural paradigm frame their perceptions of acceptable 'Western' attire as a far more sinister type of personal incarceration, one where a woman is required to parade around in the most figure-flattering garments, however revealing they may be, with painted faces and coloured coiffed hair if she is to be well-received by society; that to be validated as a living, vocal somebody, she MUST dress a certain way, and that cannot of course include anything that slightly resembles the modest choices made by Muslim women.
How very sad that we as women cannot see that both of these perceptions can only bring division and disunity at best, possibly even dislike and distrust.
Muslim parents can and do argue that the rapid spread of these customs is a result of their attempt to protect their girls from the tarty, sexualised clothes of Western culture, where mini-skirts and mascara are increasingly worn by pre-pubescent children.
The increasing sexualisation of society should concern us all. But this is no argument for the veil. Good parents teach their girls to dress decently and with self-respect. And the fact is that covering up little girls defines them as sexual beings, not as children, which is what they are.
I and many Muslims, male and female, would disagree with this, as do the majority of Muslim scholars and theologians. The wearing of the veil, despite how Ms Alibhai-Brown chooses to frame it, spin it, taint it with prejudiced distaste, is an act of worship, a prescription from God that the overwhelming majority of Muslim women choose to adopt. When all is said and done, it really is as simple as that.
By the time they have reached adulthood, covered-up women have all but accepted the idea that they are evil temptresses. This is a notion that grossly insults Muslim men as well - for it assumes they are sexual beasts who cannot contain themselves if they see a hint of female flesh.
For the record, no. I do not accept the idea that I am an evil temptress. I do not accept the notion that men are sexual beasts who cannot contain themselves if they see a hint of female flesh. Perhaps, these would be more accurately expressed as Ms Alibhai-Brown's own perceptions, being displaced.
I can safely say that I am an empowered woman, who has much respect for all of humanity, males and females alike.
But men can be bad. And fully veiled females cannot be protected from say, domestic violence - for the scars of that violence are never seen.
Nor can burka-clad women be detected if they choose to commit crimes or acts of terror. There is nothing virtuous about this garment, nothing.
The Koran says explicitly there can be no compulsion in Islam. Mind control is a subtle form of compulsion. I'd argue that too many burka'd Muslim females are exerting a choice they can't not make.
Nowhere in the Holy Book are females asked to cover their faces. A garment used by upper-class Byzantine people to distance themselves from hoi polloi was adopted by the Prophets' wives to stop supplicants and enemies harassing them. That's all it was.
True, a minority of feisty Muslim women today don the veil to show off their kind of girl power.
If they had any conscience, they would not and could not wear the garment that, in so many sectors of society across the world, has become the main way to torment and punish women and girls. Our burka heroines collude with those who torture young Iranian women, for they are proxy maidens to the Taliban.
What a shameful thing to say. If our burka heroines, as she calls them, have not needed to show heroism before, they may well have to in a future where the ignorant people reading this article feel justified in exerting their hateful prejudice towards them.
Then again, in this country, the burka is a means by which women disengage from society. Veil-wearers refuse to compromise - yet we all have to in a complex country.
They do not reciprocate, only expect accommodation. They can look at us and deny us their own facial expressions. Instead of fighting for equal rights, these Muslims want only special treatment.
When Caroline Spelman made her ignorant remarks, she hadn't thought through how far the country can go with this. In Afghanistan, women's voices are disallowed in public places. Will that injunction soon come here?
Well done Caroline Spelman. I applaud you for your unwavering honesty. I can't imagine it would have been easy with the likes of Mrs Alibhai-Brown in your midst.
Do we ban the burka? No, banning is a hard weapon and will make martyrs and is - as Immigration Minister Damian Green said - un-British.
But those who oppose the burka must constantly speak out. Modesty is fine, but state schools should not allow pre-pubescent girls to cover themselves. And in schools, hospitals, courts, universities, airports and trains we should insist that faces must be revealed.
For this sensitive issue, we need enlightened political leaders who can work with the progressive Muslims and stop the relentless rise of the burka. Mrs Spelman is not one of those.
If she thinks she is, God - or Allah - help us all.
Ameen.
