- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
If we want to start banning hejabs or even burqas (it is ironic that after all the idiotic furor we have had recently in Quebec over Burqas and voting etc, in a province of what, 7 million or so, only 14 women who even possessed a burqa could be found), sauce for the goose/gander thing kicks in. I suppose adults can make their own choices, but children should not be forced, indeed since they are still children, forbidden, to wear Orthodox sideburns, whatever you call them, crucifixes, Mormon underwear, turbans, etc. If you are comfortable with the government micromanaging parenting that much anyway.
Secondly, the amount of ignorance being exposed is shocking. Like any significant object, a burqa can mean many things. In some contexts, wearing one can be seen as a profoundly feminist act. In others, a terribly oppressive one. The whole internal Muslim debate about it actually rather reminds me of the feminist sex-positive vs anti porn debate.
It is an important debate, I think, but one that Muslim women should probably have the primary voice in, not Anglo Saxon newspaper editors.
