Tuesday, October 24, 2006
The Muslim woman's veil
Can't sleep, so you get a blog post.
The Globe and Mail looks at a Canadian professor who is asking his students to consider their prejudices on encountering a veiled Muslim woman:
As European politicians these days denounce the Muslim veil as inappropriate, University of Toronto Islamic legal scholar Anver Emon gives his students an exercise to show why the veil ignites fear in Western society.
He asks them to imagine a woman standing on a fashionable downtown Toronto street corner wearing a burka, the Afghan garment that covers a woman from head to toe. Or wearing a niqab, the more common face-veil. "Who is she?" he asks them. "Who is the woman?"
Is she an immigrant or born in Canada? Is she educated or uneducated? Married or single? A property owner or a renter? Does she operate only at the direction of her husband or function freely as her own person in society?
Invariably, Prof. Emon says, his students -- whether they're 10th-graders in the high-school workshops he conducts or his law students at U of T -- describe the woman as an uneducated immigrant under her husband's control. In other words, as an "other" and an "outsider."
When he tells them she could just as well be a Toronto-born lawyer, "suddenly the reason for the veil is not clear to them," he said. "Thus, to what degree is our response to the veil based on our assumptions of who is the woman?"
All of this may be a useful exercise. At a basic level, an honored purpose of a liberal education is to challenge the assumptions of student and teacher alike. However, is it really true that a woman in a Muslim veil "could just as well be" a lawyer, even in Toronto? By this sleight of hand, an Amish woman "could just as well be" a Philadelphia lawyer, and an Orthodox Jewish woman "could just as well be..." -- actually, the Orthodox woman could just as well be a lawyer. But I'd still like to see the data on the careers of niqab-wearing Canadian Muslim women. I'm guessing that very few of them actually practice law.
The problem with the Muslim veil is not, actually, that it is horrifying, or that Westerners are victims of "Orientalism," as the Globe and Mail suggests. The problem is that the niqab works for its intended purpose, which is to isolate the Muslim woman from the rest of us. The veiled Muslim woman is withdrawing from society, saying that she is not one of us, that her values and quite possibly her allegiance lie elsewhere.
Now, the United States has always had religious minorities that isolated themselves. The Amish and the most Orthodox Jews and any number of other groups all segregate themselves on purpose and wear unusual clothing or hair styles that mark them. This does not bother us for two reasons. First, these groups are so small that it is difficult to be afraid of them. On those rare occasions when we see them in their costumes they are a curiousity, or an opportunity to teach our children something interesting. Second, these groups quite manifestly appreciate our country precisely because of its religious freedom. Except for Muslims, none of the American isolationist groups has shown the slightest inclination to suppress religious freedom anywhere in the world. Even Orthodox Jews in Israel recognize the right of non-Jews (at least) to practice their own religions or Jews to convert to other religions, which is more than can be said of countries that operate under Islamic law.
Muslims remain rare in the United States, so the withdrawal of Muslim women behind the veil is, for the moment, also a curiousity. If Muslims were a much larger percentage of our population, as they are in Canada and Europe, would we be so accepting? I think not. We would then be facing a significant proportion of our population that had decided, in effect, to withdraw from American life, to reject us, and to renounce real participation in our culture and economy. Can a Western liberal democracy long endure that? Europe and perhaps Canada have put their societies at stake experimenting with that very question.
8 Comments:
By 
, at
Tue Oct 24, 05:09:00 AM:
O/T. O/T,
But I thought you might like it.
Apols in advance Tiger
Censors in the UK. The independant news channel has been running a long series on the degrading treatment of wounded British servicemen returning to abyssmal standards of care in the NHS, in public wards, with public access, laying dismembered in beds, and being serially abused by visiting muslims. (no security-no one gives a rats)
The MOD/Government reaction : refuse access to to independant TV channel.
Raise the roof everywhere, people, EVERYWHERE YOU CAN THINK OF.
shout from the roof-tops
By , at
Tue Oct 24, 05:29:00 AM:
What the article fails to mention is that Headley court, the MOD much bragged about, state of the art, yada, yada, yada, facility IS CLOSED BECAUSE OF STAFFING SHORTAGES CAUSED BY SOCIALIST BUDGETARY CUT-BACKS.
The soldiers are shipped home at night to avoid publicity, staight into a public ward at Selly oak, a district in Birmingham UK which has, and is surrounded by, a very high muslim population concentration. Complaints about surgical skills are average, BUT these soldiers are mostly "shell shocked" and need specific rehab skills which ARE NOT AVAILABLE AT SELLY OAK. Futher, "shell shocked" soldiers fresh from battle regard ALL strangers as enemies, especially if they are wearing "arab" attire and harranging and abusing them. Imagine if the muslim outcry if the personalities were reversed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
To say I was disgusted by the Socialist scum british treatment of their soldiers would be an understatement.
My reaction to this censorship of an independant news channel which relies on advertising (ie good content) for survival, (as apposed to the "tax" supported BBC which mainly produces appeasement bilge) will manifest itself in the future.
By , at
Tue Oct 24, 07:11:00 AM:
There are currently around 750,000 Muslims in Canada out of a population of 30 - 32 million. Even with my extremely general figures, that's a pretty small percentage.
I submit that Canada is more like the States than it is to Europe in our attitudes to Muslims and our appreciation of our freedom; we're not experimenting with our freedoms or our culture or anything else. I also submit that most Canadian Muslims do participate in our society like anyone else up here.
Where are you getting your facts about Canada? Because I notice you often get it wrong about us.
By 
skipsailing, at
Tue Oct 24, 11:03:00 AM:
I live in Amish country and I have to agree, the Amish have chosen thier life style and are doing well to preserve it. I almost whacked an Amish buggy in a rainstorm a few weeks back, but by law they are now required to have reflective tape on the carriage itself. Those black buggies clip clopping along some of our busy roads at night are just as big a concern as the deer these days.
there is also a significant muslim community not far from my home. I don't have the same sense of admiration for these people. There are a couple of reasons:
First, it seems that only the muslim women are required to demonstrate thier difference. With the Amish both the men and women appear significantly different from the rest of us. Yet with the muslims, the men dress like any other american while the burden is placed on the women, that seems wrong IMHO.
Next, there is a sense of deep distrust brewing between the communities here. The arrest and conviction of Fahwas Dhamra rocked this town. Couple this with the common denominator of Islam as the source of our current global strife and the uneasiness is understandable.
I strongly prefer the Australian model. They have two guiding principles: first, no sharia. you want sharia, go someplace else to get it. next, since islam is the problem, the australian muslims must address it.
I think we give the Muslim community in America too much of a pass on this issue. I'd like to see more muslim community leaders speaking out against the islam inspired violence we are facing. CAIR is a concern in that they tend to focus on the grievances of the muslim community A LA Al Sharpton, rather than on the need to communicate facts about the muslim community's position vis a vis America.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Tue Oct 24, 01:05:00 PM:
We shouldn't tell adults how to dress. Next, someone will want everyone to wear Chairman Mao fashions.
I wouldn't pay much attention to Canada, TH. They are the folks who started the whole multicultural mess during their attempts to appease my French Canadian relatives.
Skipsailing, I agree with you about Australia. Prime Minister John Howard is one of the world's great leaders.
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Tue Oct 24, 11:05:00 PM:
Yeah, and that homeless guy could be a millionaire. And that punk holding up a 7-11 could have an IQ of 160.
More to the point, that swastika'd skinhead, who chooses his appearance, might really be a kindly, gentle soul. And that guy holding the "No Blood For Oil" sign might be a Republican.
Could be. But I wouldn't bet on it.
That said, the Canadians are closer to us than to Europeans in their assimilation practices.
By Gary Rosen, at
Wed Oct 25, 03:03:00 AM:
Skipsailing:
You are right on the money with your comment about only the Muslim women dressing differently. I really notice it when I am at the local amusement park. Most people are dressed in standard American casual - t-shirts or tank tops, cutoffs, flipflops etc. The Muslim women are shrouded in heavy clothing and head covering, very foreign and "other" looking, but the men with them dress pretty much like the American men! This tells me that the dress code is not about religion, but about control.
By , at
Wed Oct 25, 11:50:00 AM:
What a straw man that teacher is setting up. Aren't teachers supposed to teach kids to think critically?
No one thinks ill of the woman wearing the burkha, no one is prejuduced against her. What do I think when I see one? I think she is a victim. I don't think she is a bad person, or think to myself she should be denied anything. (Other than the obvious having to take it off for security photos).
All of their talk about prejudice completely misses the point and is actively trying to avoid the real issue: the prejudice is in the men that make women wear these (and the Stockholme syndrome that women from these cultures suffer).
When will it end? I know many liberals who believe we should allow polygamy (which is nothing but forced marriage of children) and that FLDS people shouldn't be prosecuted. How ignorant. It's not our prejudice against their way of life, it's their horrid abuse of women and girls that is offensive.
I beat my head against the wall trying to understand how people can say they are for rights and freedom, then turn around and say they are for the freedom of men/leaders from other countries to take away those rights from others. Like those who believe freedom of speech includes freedom to take away someone's else's freedom of speech by interrupting them / pushing them offstage.
