Banning the burqa: What’s really being hid?

[Sense & Sensuality]

“After a hard day at work, an Afghan working woman usually changes out
of her uniform, applies her lipstick, a dab of mascara, and a dusting
of eye shadow and then she puts on her powder blue burqa and commutes
home,” writes Kiko Itasaka, an NBC News producer in her blogging at
NBC’ Blog. (http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/05/14/4376895-
under-that-burqa-lipstick-and-high-heels).

Burqa, a full-body covered black gown and hijab (‘niqab’) a head/ face-
covered scarf are modest Muslim styles of dress in general which were
introduced into Arabia long before Muhammad, primarily through Arab
contacts with Syria and Iran, where the veil was a sign of social
status. [See: Ahmed, Leyla (1992). Women and Gender in Islam:
Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New Haven: Yale University Press.
ISBN 0300055838.]

Wearing a ‘burqa,’ for a woman, is also not a pleasant experience.

When she moved to Saudi Arabia, Nesrine Malik, a girl originally from
Sudan but living in London, had to wear a burqa and she tells of her
experiences with that full-length cloak in her blog (http://
www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/7896536/Burka-ban-Why-must-I-cast-off-the-veil.html).
She commented, “On a practical level, it was cumbersome, hot, and
uncomfortable. Eating or drinking in public became a chore, as food
has to be maneuvered gingerly under the veil or taken abruptly in
small bites. In Saudi’s overwhelming heat, temperatures regularly
reach 45C and any physical outdoor activity, even walking, is out of
the question. I became anti-social, hardly able to wait until I got
home before tearing off the ghastly garb.”

In Kabul, more than half of the women wear burqas, while outside of
Kabul, virtually all women are clad in head-to-toe covering. It was an
astonishing fact for me that during my Bangladesh visit a few years
ago, I found none of the women wearing burqas and very few in ‘niqab’
or ‘hijab’ on the streets of Dhaka and Chattogram or even in Cox
Bazar. But during my visit to Kerala, I saw the majority of Muslim
women walking on the street wearing that black long gown, covering
their total body. One of my writer friends told me that these types of
scenes were not common in Calicut at least fifteen years ago and the
tendency to wear has been growing after the demolition of Babri
mosque. After that evil incident, Indian Muslims suffered from an
identity crisis and started to accept all religious conservatism as
their mark of religious identity. I haven’t visited Pakistan, so it is
difficult for me to say what is the status of Burqa there, but I
encountered a question asked by an internet user at ‘Yahoo Answers’
site. The user has asked, “I went to India and Pakistan respectively
for vacation and surprisingly to my knowledge, I expected Pakistani
women to be dressed very ‘Islam-like,’ but from what I’ve seen, they
were all mixing in with men with no head-scarfs on their heads, let
alone burqas. Isn’t Pakistan an Islamic state?” (See:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110417132757AAxwwfo)

I have an idea that the ‘burqa’ was imposed on women when the Taliban
took over the country in 1996, but Kiko Itasaka says it was accepted
by Afghanistan women before the Taliban when the Northern Alliance
took control of Kabul in 1992. It was accepted as a tool to protect
them from unwanted male attention as that was the time of violent
crimes, many of them committed against women. (See:
http://salaamafghanistan.blogspot.com/2004_07_04_salaamafghanistan_archive.html)
I don’t know whether it is American propaganda or not but in India we
are reading in news that the fundamentalist Muslim militants in
Kashmir issue ‘fatwa’ from time to time that wearing ‘burqa’ for women
is an essential of the female dress code. Recently in this year, Sesto
San Giovanni, a small town in Italy, made national headlines after it
decided to ban women from wearing burqas and to which Muslim women of
Italy, who generally do not prefer ‘burqa’ came on the street to
protest the authority’s decision stating that it is an unfair and
unnecessary attack on their freedom of expression.

Recently in several European countries, a tendency to ban this full-
body covering burqa or the face-covering ‘hijab’ has been seen and as
governments there are trying to outlaw this dress code, which is
pushing many countries toward a debate. At the end of April, the
Belgian Parliament agreed unanimously on a law that would forbid full
veiling in public. But the law must still be approved by the Belgian
senate. France is set to be the second European country, after
Belgium, to declare the full veil illegal in public places. The French
cabinet introduced a bill that would also ban face-covering in public.
If parliament agrees on the measure, wearing a burqa or a hijab could
carry a fine of 150 euro (about US$188). Besides these two countries,
other states like the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, Denmark,
Switzerland and Great Britain also intend to introduce a bills in
their respective law-making bodies calling for bans on burqas. But the
European Council has voiced opposition to the burqa-ban ambitions of
these countries and the European Council’s Human Rights Commissioner,
Thomas Hammarberg, has warned that a burqa ban would only increase the
tension between religious communities. According to him, “two rights
in the convention are particularly relevant. One is the right to
respect for one’s private life and personal identity (Article 8). The
other is the freedom to manifest one’s religion or belief ‘in worship,
teaching, practice and observance’ (Article 9). Both articles specify
that these human rights can only be subject to such limitations as are
prescribed by law and are notably necessary in a democratic society in
the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order,
health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of
others.” (See http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/08/europe-ban-burqa-veil)
Read the rest of this entry » http://bit.ly/iJod8A