Letters to the Editor
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Tracy have you forgotten what an actual Turkish women told you last time (or did you just intentionally not read it)
That the head scarf ban is desired and wanted by Turkish feminists in order to keep the pressure off of them to take one for Muhammed?
I am truly sorry, I mean it's just craptacular that you didn't take to heart and brain what was said then.
It permits you to foist your ignorant opinions and project onto the entire world. It's one thing if you're just ignorant, but another if you have been educated and you persist in your arrogance.
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What Did She Say?
My God, Symbol-man, Tracy reported on something going on in Spain and then mentioned several ambiguities about it. (Who is pushing it? Who are they trying to protect? Is this really about women's rights?)
She, in fact, said absolutely nothing whatsoever to prompt your tirade. Do you actually read the words on the page before you start ranting?
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A day after Turkey took a giant leap toward repealing its head-scarf ban in universities
If you look up the last time T spoke of this, T was schooled that this was not a giant leap forward, but a giant leap backward.
Repealing the head scarf ban will make it easier to eliminate a woman's personal choice towards Islam and force a woman to wear a scarf.
T figgers if they have a vajayjay they must all be oppressed in equal and like ways. T doesn't want to acknowledge that western society is any better than an Islamic society because it is her role as a white feminist to make sure white men are constantly bashed. So for T, wearing the hijab must be liberating, or at least that's what some muslim women say in some muslim countries, just not muslim women in Turkey.
No matter, what's important to T is not to make useful distinctions but to support the abstract sisterhood against the rampaging patriarchy.
So T learned nothing, and you can see in her very first sentence that she thinks Turkey's move is a good one for womankind.
Here's the prior thread:
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2007/10/03/turkey/
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Quickly scanning that thread, I may owe Tracy Clark Flory an apology.... It may be an actual Turkish women did not tell her that
But actual muslims and former muslims did as well as other people with far more knowledge than T gets sitting in her Salon office sipping her venti soy hazelnut white mocha with extra white mocha and caramel.
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The women are killed, police say, because they failed to wear a headscarf
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/02/08/iraq.women/index.html
Violations of 'Islamic teachings' take deadly toll on Iraqi women
Today's CNN:
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The images in the Basra police file are nauseating: Page after page of women killed in brutal fashion -- some strangled to death, their faces disfigured; others beheaded. All bear signs of torture.
The women are killed, police say, because they failed to wear a headscarf or because they ignored other "rules" that secretive fundamentalist groups want to enforce.
"Fear, fear is always there," says 30-year-old Safana, an artist and university professor. "We don't know who to be afraid of. Maybe it's a friend or a student you teach. There is no break, no security. I don't know who to be afraid of."
Her fear is justified. Iraq's second-largest city, Basra, is a stronghold of conservative Shia groups. As many as 133 women were killed in Basra last year -- 79 for violation of "Islamic teachings" and 47 for so-called honor killings, according to IRIN, the news branch of the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
One glance through the police file is enough to understand the consequences. Basra's police chief, Gen. Abdul Jalil Khalaf, flips through the file, pointing to one unsolved case after another. Video Watch Khalaf show evidence of the brutality »
"I think so far, we have been unable to tackle this problem properly," he says. "There are many motives for these crimes and parties involved in killing women, by strangling, beheading, chopping off their hands, legs, heads."
"When I came to Basra a year ago," he says, "two women were killed in front of their kids. Their blood was flowing in front of their kids, they were crying. Another woman was killed in front of her 6-year-old son, another in front of her 11-year-old child, and yet another who was pregnant."
...
Amnesty International has raised concern about the increasing violence toward women in Iraq, saying abductions, rapes and "honor killings" are on the rise.
"Politically active women, those who did not follow a strict dress code, and women [who are] human rights defenders were increasingly at risk of abuses, including by armed groups and religious extremists," Amnesty said in a 2007 report.
Sometimes, it's just the color of a woman's headscarf that can draw unwanted attention.
"One time, one of my female colleagues commented on the color of my headscarf," Safana says. "She said it would draw attention ... [and I should] avoid it and stick to colors like gray, brown and black."
This extremist ideology enrages many secular Muslim women, who say it's a misrepresentation of Islam.
Sawsan, another woman who works at a university, says the message from the radicals to women is simple: "They seem to be sending us a message to stay at home and keep your mouth shut."
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don't ban the "symbolism"...
Work to end the discrimination.
A headscarf on a schoolgirl can be just a headscarf on a schoolgirl. Muslim women aren't the only women who wear headgear for religious reasons...many married Orthodox Jews and members of some Christian sects do as well.
It seems the Muslim girls at minority Muslim schools would be the ones who MOST needed their right to practice their religion protected.
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Worst. Reader. Ever.
> If you look up the last time T spoke of this, T
> was schooled that this was not a giant leap forward,
> but a giant leap backward.
And in the current post, Tracy did not say that the policy in Spain was clearly a great leap forward.
> Repealing the head scarf ban will make it
> easier to eliminate a woman's personal choice towards
> Islam and force a woman to wear a scarf.
But having a head scarf ban limits a woman's personal choice to wear a head scarf.
The policy clearly has mixed effects, and Tracy neither came out for it or against it. What fantasy person who lives in your head are you berating?