There are so many articles floating around today reminding people that they should be saying niqab not burqa. I dont really care about semantics. But I do care about women. The more we position the burqa/niqab debate as for or against and as a question of rights, the more we drift away from discussing the actual issue: Why do we (both western and Muslim alike) value womens modesty so highly? I wrote this article four years ago. That it could so easily have been written today shows just how stagnant our political, social, and religious discourse really is. Not all strands of Islam require a burqa, or even a hijab. But they all do insist on modesty. Hence, the burqa itself is simply the symptom of a much greater ailment and that ailment is...a patriarchy that still places the destiny of a woman in the hands of her male relatives. Many Muslim girls growing up in Australia are finding themselves caught in an impossible conundrum. Do they adopt a liberal outlook on life and ruin the reputations of their family, thus risking almost certain ostracism from their entire family circle? Or do they go along with these traditions that have existed seemingly for eternity, denying their own autonomy in the process? By framing the issue of the burqa as nothing more than a womans choice and denying the history of the burqa as a patriarchal tool, we are running the risk of alienating those Muslim women who seek to break free of the constraints of their culture, as well as abandoning those women who are physically forced to wear it.
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 00:00:40 +0000
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