Those dusky people far away with their interesting headgear get a pass, a quaint acceptance really. A kind of inverted bigotry or even outright applause. Whereas you transplant those same people here and all of a sudden you can't make up your mind whether the same atrocities are worse here because they're here or even more bizarrely the sense those cultures and customs transplanted here are made worse by US. Either way your level of outrage is inversely related to the distance an atrocity happens to you.

It's only human nature to be more concerned with what happens close at hand than what happens in a distant country you've never been to and have no intention of visiting. If you don't want to go around in a state of perpetual anger (yes, I know some people do, but not me) then you have to pick and choose what you're going to get outraged about. My advice is, get outraged at the things you're close enough to to stand some chance of changing.

If I were a woman, I don't know if it would be such a great thing to trade a society that required me to be modest for a society that primarily judges me based on whether or not I lived up to impossible standards of beauty. I don't think the hijab is oppressive per se. I would say, however, that the ridiculous standards for unachievable physical perfection that are treated as normal in our society (has anyone read a magazine lately?!) are pretty damn oppressive. And really, our standards of beauty are unachievable. There are entire websites devoted to comparing and contrasting the pre- and post-photoshop pictures of our models and celebrities... allegedly the most beautiful people in our society, who are apparently not even good enough to get in the glossies without major touchups.

That, I think, is the mistake that non-multicultural feminists make when they assume that the hijab is a symbol of oppression. Yes, it is oppressive in circumstances where women's lives and safety is threatened if they don't wear one. But in much of the Arabic world, women view the hijab as something that preserves, rather than degrades, their dignity and personhood. Western people often view Western culture as the blank slate to which everything else must be compared, but really, we are as oppressive (in our own way) as any other patriarchy. We have just clothed our oppression under such guises as women's sexual liberation. Arab women live in such a culture that often requires them to wear a hijab or burqa: Western women live in a culture that often requires them to wear toner, concealer, foundation, powder, mascara, eyeshadow, lip gloss, hairspray, a push-up bra, form-fitting clothes that are "sexy but tasteful," and $300 shoes.

Who are we to say that people of Arab or Muslim culture must conform to our high standards of equality?

Just exactly how wearing a complete head covering all day long is ever, "empowering?"

The contorted newthink that one must engage in to arrive at such a conclusion would both horrify and astound Orwell himself. Only if freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength, can the hijab be considered a tool of female empowerment.

No, sometimes religion is wrong. Religionists routinely judge non-believers to be inferior, they're sinners, they're of necessity morally bankrupt (because morals can only come from God). For some reason, it is considered ill mannered to respond in kind. I have no such inhibition, and today I shall deconstruct the hijab empowerment nonsense dispassionately.

These are the reasons given by one muslim woman for why she wears the hijab, and finds it empowering. I just did a Google search, and it's the top hit for "hijab empowerment.": http://youngbritmuslim.blogspot.com/2007/03/my-first-day-with-hijab-hijab.html

1. Wear it as your label so that you are recognized as righteous women.

2. Wear it so that you are not harmed because of your physical attributes.

Doesn't point 1 necessarily imply that women who do not wear the hijab are not "righteous women?" Is that empowering? You must wear this set of clothes that completely mask your womanhood, or you are a slut?

On point 2, isn't this precisely the sort of blame-the-victim, she wore a miniskirt and deserved rape mentality that feminists rightly decry in our own society?

Hit #4 on Google (http://xpress.sfsu.edu/archives/magazine/009365.html) reveals more arguments, such as, “When you cover your body, men don’t look at you like you’re an object. They look at you for your mind.”

This sounds empowering on first utterance, but isn't this sentiment entirely the result of a patriarchal society, with such an ingrained culture of woman hatred that men believe that any woman who is beautiful must also be stupid? And why doesn't it apply the other way around? Shouldn't good looking men also hide themselves from the view of women, for similar reasons? Or is physical appearance only a detriment for women? Hmm... why would that be?

True empowerment is not gained through fashion. It is gained through a larger cultural understanding that women are equal to men in every respect.

A hijab or burka or blanket on your head may be empowering -- when men are free to gang rape you and let you take the whipping for it. In that way it is like the fake vending machine disguise some Japanese lady invented to hide from attackers. But that is like saying Anne Frank's attic was a lovely retreat. Sure, it beat the death camps. But being in America would have been a hell of a lot better.

Feminists are inclined to sit around and whine that they make x percent less than men. Meanwhile sipping five dollar lattes and perusing the latest coffee table food porn (see pre-eminent uber-fem whiner R. Traister's latest video offerings). Meantime, their sisters in the rest of the world are raped, beaten, starved, hidden under blankets all day long -- and empowered?

In sum, this is relativistic bullshit. It stems from the affirmative-action PC culture which says you cannot judge minorities -- only white men can be truly evil. We saw in the Duke rape case where that thinking gets you.