I've written often about the veil and burka in Islam, my view being that they are either symbols of oppression or signals of piety, and either way, problematic.
Western feminists who support veiling in "solidarity" with their Muslim sisters have got it wrong.
Two reforming Muslim women, Hala Arafa and Asra Nomani, have the same view, and make related points about "honor and virginity":
/snip
As mainstream Muslim women, we see the girl's headscarf not as a signal of "choice," but as a symbol of a dangerous purity culture, obsessed with honor and virginity, that has divided Muslim communities in our own civil war, or fitna, since the Saudi and Iranian regimes promulgated puritanical interpretations of Sunni and Shia Islam, after the 1970s Saudi oil boom and the 1979 Iranian Revolution
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/01/06/do-non-muslims-help-or-hurt-women-by-wearing-hijabs/wearing-the-hijab-in-solidarity-perpetuates-oppression
PS: Asra Nomani reviews a book on woman in Islam, "Excellent Daughters", in The Wall Street Journal"'of 29-31 January 2016.
Sent from my iPhone
Western feminists who support veiling in "solidarity" with their Muslim sisters have got it wrong.
Two reforming Muslim women, Hala Arafa and Asra Nomani, have the same view, and make related points about "honor and virginity":
/snip
As mainstream Muslim women, we see the girl's headscarf not as a signal of "choice," but as a symbol of a dangerous purity culture, obsessed with honor and virginity, that has divided Muslim communities in our own civil war, or fitna, since the Saudi and Iranian regimes promulgated puritanical interpretations of Sunni and Shia Islam, after the 1970s Saudi oil boom and the 1979 Iranian Revolution
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/01/06/do-non-muslims-help-or-hurt-women-by-wearing-hijabs/wearing-the-hijab-in-solidarity-perpetuates-oppression
PS: Asra Nomani reviews a book on woman in Islam, "Excellent Daughters", in The Wall Street Journal"'of 29-31 January 2016.
Sent from my iPhone
