there's been a lot of talk over the past few months about france's president sarkozy wanting to ban the burqua. http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-july-1-2009/burka-banbut until now, it seemed like idle threats. i suppose we should have known better seeing as how sarko is a man who, for better or worse, gets things done. nothing has been done...yet. however, the report is under review and may be passed into law if enough supporters are willing to back it.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122981366
in reading Anushay Hossain's essay on NPR, i couldn't agree more with her statement that sarko's woman-empowered lingo simply attempts to cover up the fact that he, too, is trying to exercise patriarchal power over a female minority.
i'm a feminist. i've got a degree in women's studies. i wrote a thesis on gender roles; but i don't pretend to have answers to questions such as these. i think it's pretentious and very "western do-gooder" of us to tell an entire culture of people why we think they are wrong and we are right. this is one of those battles that quickly becomes a pot-ay-to/po-tah-to war. no woman should be forced to do something by the culture or government in which she lives. WOMAN'S CHOICE is key in many of these issues. i hate breast implants. i think they're ugly and unsafe; i also think that many women get them for all the wrong reasons...but lo and behold, if a woman decides freely that bigger knockers are going to improve her quality of life, may she knock herself out to get them. the same goes for the veil, burqua, niquab, and the women who CHOOSE to wear them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoN0o9Sg6QA
i hate to ride the fence on this issue, but i can't say that david beckham forced posh to get those breasts augmented any more than i can say that every woman who wears the symbol of her muslim beliefs is being forced to do so. i think at the root of many of these problems is a society that devalues women's worth as well as promoting standards that reinforce women as the property of men. it's not just islam--look at fundamental christians!!! i've got a real soft spot for the muslims of the world right now. between all this burqua business, consistently being targeted as terrorists, and now with the swiss on their case, (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/world/europe/30swiss.html) they have become to the 2000's what the communists represented during the cold war...hey wait! americans still don't like communists. well, you get my point. i don't think it is through governmental bans that we will make progress in global muslim relations. no one would like it if a ban were passed with regard to christian steeples (except perhaps the jehova's witnesses) nor would they like it if we tried to ban sweatpants and ugg boots. all i'm saying is that if everyone tried to pass laws about people they hated, we'd all have to sit at home naked. that would get boring and cold pretty darned quick. lay off the layered ladies, unless of course you are asked to be a good western savior--in which case, onward christian soldiers!
agreed; but i don't have the answer. i'm sure that as there are muslim communities that are progressive enough to allow women the choice, there are also communities that don't. i don't think we should make them a political target on the whole, though. like i said above, it's not just the islamic community that "subjugates" women...i know devoted christian wives who quit their jobs in order to stay home and raise children because their husbands want them to--this too, feels like lack of choice to me. ugh. it's a slippery slope.
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