I've just received a marriage proposal- conditional upon my turning Muslim
The offer is made by a lady estimable enough on all points- judging by her self-description- the only particular furnishing pretext to pause being her assertion that she is 'modest and wears hijab' and thus nobody's 'blonde arm-candy'. (I suspect my suitor is American.)
This gave me a dynamite idea for a new type of Hijab or Burkha, or whatever it's called, with 'My other three wives are Blonde Arm Candy' stenciled on its back, like bumper stickers declaring your other car to be a Porsche.
Incidentally, I always rejected the thesis of Salman Rushdie's 'Veils suck' article- his own marriage would have been saved had he kept on the Brown Paper Bag de rigueur amongst South Asians back in the Seventies which, it is tragic to note, the rising generation of affluent, I-phone owning, young people now turn up their noses at, especially in France, where Monsieur Sarkozy has felt obliged to bring in legislation banning these new-fangled fabric hijabs- the first step, no doubt, to introducing strategically placed holes in the cast iron Parisian pissoir- enabling the male half of that loathsome race to propagate itself without injury to the aesthetic sensibilities of its females.
3 comments:
Hi can you tell me what languages you speak fluently, out of curiosity? I am looking for translators for my other site.
The anonymity of the burqa takes the uniqueness of face away from the woman. That is my greatest objection to it.
And It is not generally the case that individuals attain the age of majority and are presented for the first time with the choice of wearing or not wearing a certain piece of outerwear.
In most cases, they are socialized into wearing that piece of clothing from very early childhood growing up with the feeling that being without it as almost akin to being naked (in the case of the burqa) or in a state of deep sin ;
@ yayaver- very thoughtful comment.
In Islam there is the hadith- 'everything is going to destruction except (God's) face'
One may say, if Society was purely geared towards Spirituality then there is beauty and grace in the custom. However, as you point out, in our very imperfect society- where Spirituality and Religion are cheapened for purposes of making money or grabbing power- this custom
1) militates against girls and women appreciating that their uniqueness is a gift and endowment from God Almighty from which they have equal rights and responsibilites to make their own unique contribution.
2)this feeling of 'shame' or nakedness is not humility before God but a feeling of powerlessness before those from outside the home.
It is true that where the boys and men grow up without any moral guidance w.r.t curbing their lustful impulses then the average woman may see this custom as the lesser of two evils.
However, since women are the mothers of boys and men- and since they did not give their maternal milk just to see the male half of their offspring feeding Hell Fire for eternity- so courageous women can combat this custom not from desire to parade their beauty but so as to lift Society to a higher level.
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