New Bush GWOT slogan: They hate us for our depth perception.

So I'll skip the Sarah Palin wink joke this morning.

Saudi women should be forced to wear bags over their heads with eyeholes so they can still see where they're going? Or maybe Saudi Arabia needs to free itself from backwards religious fundamentalists that only exist to oppress other people!

I've heard of the 10 percent solution but never the one eyed woman! This is ridiculous! Keep this kind of crazy in Saudiyya, we don't want a bunch of one eyed women walking around in Egypt.

There is a woman in our neighborhood in SF who wears the full coverage modesty cloak. You should see the looks she gets from other women. She and her husband walk around with their children (a girl and a boy, both under the age of 8), and everytime I see her I wonder why she makes this choice. To me, it seems obvious that it is her choice, although there could be some sort of unseen force exerted at home and no one would know because you can't see bruises or anything because she is totally covered.

Seeing her makes me uncomfortable and I can't help but stare. I can't help but sort of admire her faith that she is so willing to stick out like a sore thumb and endure the stares and (surely, although I haven't heard them) the comments about her garb. I would like to talk to her, but I'm afraid. What would I say? "Tell me about why you make this choice" is a bad opener.

And not to be ridiculous, but what about the obscuring of vision? I worry about her, walking with her children down busy streets that she can't really see in her peripheral vision. It seems dangerous, especially around here. Maybe not so in Saudi Arabia where women aren't allowed to leave the house by themselves, but here people get hit by cars all the time, even though they can see perfectly well.

Given the vast Saudi oil wealth, it seems to me that someone over there could develop a small video camera to be worn outside the burqa, that would transmit video to a tiny screen, perhaps something like a pair of eyeglasses, worn inside the burqa. That way the woman could be completely covered, without even one eye showing.

But a problem. That still leaves the woman's voice, and only Allah knows what might happen if a man happened to hear a woman's voice in public. Again, technology to the rescue. Each woman could be fitted with a voice synthesizer and external speaker, so that whenever the woman said something, it would come out sounding like Stephen Hawking.

Of course, Saudi men might start being sexually attracted to Stephen Hawking, and I'm not sure what to do about that. . . I'll have to seek the will of Allah on that one.

it's that sexy burka. the way it emphasizes the pyramidal shape of the body. the way it's round on top, showing off the contours of the skull. Oh baby!

This reminds me of an episode of the British comedy Are You Being Served, in which the nitwitted senior manager orders the cleaning staff to cover female mannequins in petticoats while they wash them, for the sake of modesty. Cleaning them while covered makes the process all the more titillating and distracting, as they soon discover.

the real seducers are you daughters of Eve. Of course, I've never understood what was so horrible about this; it's not as if it hurts or anything like that. But you were focused on the practical. I wonder if the salacious sheik has stopped to consider that when you can only see with one eye that you lose your depth perception, thus making it easier to bump into things. If he thinks that the mere sight of one of you lot is bad, having one actually accidentily bump into you is surely better ... I mean worse.

Burqa HUD?

Perhaps the solution is to blind and deafen the uber religious men, who seem to believe that women put lust in their heart via magic.

Islam is not the only religion that depends on the dress of women to demonstrate their 'dedication', but it is the one most loudly doing so.

I always want to ask . . . if men are so powerless in the company of women, perhaps it is men that need to be closeted behind the home compound walls - let the women run the country.

I am sure they will fail as well as any man, but I don't think as much money will be squandered on gambling, drinking, porn and Philipino maids.

Has the esteemed cleric considered forcing all men to wear blindfolds instead?

If the problem is men seeing parts of women and going mad with lust, that would solve the entire problem immediately.

Of course, one might wonder about the strength of Muslim mens' character, if the mere sight of a woman's eyeball causes them to lose control of their own actions. If the Muslim faith is so strong, why do all of its adherents have to be continually tied to the mast to ensure that they practice it?

If men have so much trouble resisting feminine wiles, maybe they are the ones who should be walking around with all but one eye covered, or perhaps they just shouldn't be allowed to leave the house until they learn to control themselves...

Ok, the jokes are easy, and it's clear that this is a slippery slope that leads to greater and greater hiding of anything that comes to be associated with the feminine. But, of course, that's the point -- the burqa was always a compromise between those who wanted women to exist only behind walls and the need for women to go out in public. It was meant as a way of carrying the walls with you, to be in public but hidden.

So from that perspective, hiding even more is not irrational. The better the walls, the more complete the hiding, the closer you get to the ideal of a woman who never goes out in public at all. And, yeah, that's frightening, bizarre, and ridiculously at odds with everything most westerners believe -- but it makes sad internal sense.