{"id":36967,"date":"2011-04-14T13:58:56","date_gmt":"2011-04-14T18:58:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=36967"},"modified":"2011-04-14T14:20:09","modified_gmt":"2011-04-14T19:20:09","slug":"whos-protecting-whom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/whos-protecting-whom\/","title":{"rendered":"Who’s Protecting Whom?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Fe Bongolan<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I need your help to unravel a mystery.<\/p>\n

The mystery has to do with France’s recent anti-burqa legislation signed into law and enacted April 11, 2011.<\/a> The law bans women\u00a0from wearing burqa, chadoor and niqab (full face veil) — garments proscribed by Muslim religion and culture — to cover a woman’s face and body from head to toe.<\/p>\n

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As you can imagine, the new law has stirred an uproar. Throughout the Islamic world, depending on where you are, a burqa serves multiple purposes: It shields a woman’s body from unwanted sexual attention, it designates social and marital status, and as defined by the Qur’an, it provides a veil of modesty — a virtue applicable to both sexes. Of France’s Muslim population of seven million, only 2,000 women wear the burqa.<\/p>\n

In justifying the anti-burqa law, French President Nicholas Sarkozy said: “The burqa is not a religious symbol. It’s a sign of enslavement, of debaseness. I want to say this solemnly. The burqa will not be welcomed on the territory of the French republic. We cannot accept in our country women imprisoned behind a mask, deprived of all social life of their identity.”<\/p>\n

At first glance it appears that in France, the west is attempting to infiltrate and dominate the hot zone of Muslim values. Ironically, France, a Catholic country, has had many iterations of women in full-body black covering starting with convents during the Middle Ages. Is this about the continuing war between the west and Islam? Or is there something more?<\/p>\n


\nEarlier this week, CNN’s Eliot Spitzer conducted a heated on-air debate on the passage of France’s anti-burqa law between two modern Muslim women, columnist Mona Eltahawy and Muslim blogger Hebah Ahmed. The full transcript of the debate can be found here.<\/a>\u00a0 Below is a key passage from the show in response to Spitzer’s leading question – do you wear a burqa of your own free will?<\/p>\n

AHMED: Nobody has — nobody has forced me do this and I really have to disagree with the statistics that Mona is trying to put forth because studies have shown that there are only 2,000 women in France that wear the niqab. The majority of them are converts who converted to Islam and are voluntarily choosing to do it. This is my choice. Nobody can force me to take it off. I would not take it off even if you paid me to do it. And the fact of the matter is that there’s never — I have never met a single Muslim woman in all of my travels around the world that is being forced to wear it. She — I understand Mona does not like it and does not want to wear it personally. But she keeps talking about her own feelings about it and she wants to use the law to support it. If she wants diversity and Islamic belief, then she has to accept my version just like she wants me to accept hers.<\/p>\n

SPITZER: Mona, let me ask you this question. Do you have any evidence to support your statement that women are forced to wear this? And let me ask you this. If women are being forced to do something they don’t want to do, there is recourse other than banning this entire mode of dress that is chosen as we just heard from Hebah by people who do choose to wear it of their own free will.<\/p>\n

ELTAHAWY: Well, you know, I lived in Saudi Arabia. I have a sense that she’s traveled the world and she’s never met a woman who has been forced to wear it. I lived in Saudi Arabia where millions of women are forced to cover their face. But now that the argument will be, well, that’s in Saudi Arabia not in France. What choice does a woman have when she’s told she will burn in hell if she doesn’t cover every inch of her body? What kind of a choice is that? So, of course, she’s going to convert to this ideology.<\/p>\n

AHMED: I’ve never heard that. I’ve never heard anybody say that.<\/p>\n

ELTAHAWY: But the women who convert to this ideology who are then told that this is how to be a good Muslim woman, to be close to God, to avoid hellfire, is there really a choice in that? And I believe when you have a law like this, you know, I told you I detest Sarkozy. I consider him racist, but I will not sacrifice Muslim women’s rights in order to uphold the Muslim right wing which I believe is misogynist. With a law like that, a woman can tell her husband or any male relative who is forcing her to dress like this, the law says I don’t have to dress like this.<\/p>\n

SPITZER: Mona — Mona, let’s not deal with Saudi Arabia, different customs, different laws. We have the First Amendment.<\/p>\n

AHMED: Thank you.<\/p>\n

SPITZER: I was talking about France. I was talking about France.<\/p>\n

SPITZER: Mona, wait, hold on one second. In the United States, we have the First Amendment that gives people the right to practice religion as they wish. Do you not think that a law in the United States that would ban this form of dress would violate the First Amendment, permission to practice religion as each individual sees fit?<\/p>\n

ELTAHAWY: Well, this comes back to religion again. Everything is allowed, just because someone says it’s their religious belief. You know, what I think —<\/p>\n

SPITZER: No, no, no, Mona — I’m going to jump in. Hold on one second. It’s banned or permitted until there is some compelling state interest on the other side, but it’s got to be an overwhelming interest. What is the overwhelming interest that would justify us in banning a type of dress that people choose as a result of their religion?<\/p>\n

ELTAHAWY: Well, all the reasons I just gave you but I will repeat. I believe that this is genuinely harmful to Muslim women because it creates this pinnacle of piety in which a Muslim woman is told, this is the closest that you can get to God and she’s disappeared. I’m no longer here. You don’t even know who I am. The face is central to communication.<\/p>\n

ELTAHAWY: And not just that, it objectifies women.<\/p>\n

SPITZER: Look, I agree with much of what you’re saying but not as the matter of law. You know, you get the last word. You haven’t gotten a fair time in this one. Give it the best 15 seconds you’ve got.<\/p>\n

AHMED: Thank you. Basically, I want people to know that when I choose to cover this way it’s because I am fighting against a systematic oppression against women in which women’s bodies are being sexualized and objectified. This is a different perspective and a different form of empowerment in which I think when I’m in public, my sexuality is in my control and people have to deal with my brain and who I really am and not judge me by my body. And if we want to really talk about the oppressive situation of women, let’s talk about all the eating disorders, all of the plastic surgery, all of the unhealthy diets that are being done, all in the name of having the perfect body. To me, this is liberating and this is empowering. Mona keeps saying I believe, I believe, I believe, well, we don’t make laws based on what Mona believes or what anybody believes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In this situation,\u00a0we have a country which, right or wrong has imposed its values on one of its many culturally diverse populations, and most specifically, women of that population, by banning them from wearing a culturally significant article of clothing. Furthermore, you have the values of a Christian nation imposed on an Islamic one, albeit a small subset of that population.\u00a0You also have the values of an Islamic nation standing in defiance of its host nation’s customs and norms. And then, there is also\u00a0the psychologically and culturally disconcerting experience of an open society attempting to acclimate to a culture that covers its face.<\/p>\n

This is a classic adventure of the clash between not just two cultures but two worlds. If you were the French government, what would you do? Would you have passed the law at all? If you were one of many Muslim women living in France, what would you do? Do you believe the\u00a0French government is acting in the best interests of these 2,000 women and girls or denying them their freedom of religion? Do you think the traditions of Muslim culture, particularly in regards to women, really protects them? Which side prevails and why?<\/p>\n

I realize we all come from our various cultural and social filters when we look at this issue in any form, but who is protecting whom, and from what? We’d like you to weigh in with your comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Fe Bongolan I need your help to unravel a mystery. The mystery has to do with France’s recent anti-burqa legislation signed into law and enacted April 11, 2011. The law bans women\u00a0from wearing burqa, chadoor and niqab (full face veil) — garments proscribed by Muslim religion and culture — to cover a woman’s face … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36967"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36967\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}