knowledge at work - 27th july

This article has been driven by strong emotions. However the author has tried to substantiate and rationalise her stand using references from politics and history. But it is clear that her perception has been blinded by her feminist believes. She is right to a certain extent about the burqa but we must understand the anti-religious fanaticism is equally dangerous as religious fanaticism. This is where the false dilemma arises. Here the author is only considering two options, either wear the burqa or ban it. She doesn’t realise that there might be some women out there who actually feel more comfortable wearing it. What a moderate argument would be to leave it on personal choice rather imposing either of the two.
The author has only states what she thinks is right. The article begins like this: “I am a Muslim, I am a feminist and I detest the full-body veil, known as a niqab or burqa” Very evidently through her language we see that this is her perceptio. No where does she use words like we Muslim Women or us, she is solely speaking for herself. She has adopted Inductive reasoning here. She feels like this, she has had bad experiences in the past, she has felt oppressed and has seen a few other women in that situation and thus generalises that this is what is correct. The tendency to make generalisations is further exacerbated by a phenomenon known as conformation bias. This suggests that people only tend to remember evidences that that support their believes. For Example in the article clearly states that eventhough she usually disagrees with Sarkozy on most issues she agrees with his views on the burqa. Here she is appropriating to her benefit. This is something that has been done from generations together. It is through the means of appropriation that colonisers justified their stand in colonial countries. Be it in India, Africa, South East Asia and Latin America. And this is not limited to politics it is also very widespread in science. Watson and Crick were to Biologists two biologist who won the Nobel Prize to develop the double helix DNA model. They very blatantly took all the credit and mentioned their procedure. However they chose not to mention about their assistant Roselyn Franklin and her achievements that were actually very pivotal to develop the model. They just presented the parts that suited them.
As I said earlier both religious fanaticism and anti religious fanaticism are dangerous. An example of anti religious fanaticism is Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. He is undoubltly a revolutionary leader that brought about incredible amount of change in Turkey but he became an anti religious fanatic. Beginning in the fall of 1925, Mustafa Kemal encouraged the Turks to wear modern European attire. He was determined to force the abandonment of the sartorial traditions of the Middle East and finalize a series of dress reforms. The Hat Law introduced the use of Western style hats instead of the fez. Mustafa Kemal first made the hat compulsory to civil servants and then to the general public. The last part of reform on dress emphasized the need to wear modern suits instead of antiquated religion-based clothing such as the veil and turban. It is said that once one of his civil servants wore the fez and was beaten unto death. Is this ethical? Is such fanaticism sustainable? Isn’t this against human rights which give the right to all individuals to practice any religion of their choice peacefully? If yes then how can we circum ourselves to such injustice? The opposite of this is religious fanaticism what the Taliban preached. It believed in extreme religious fanaticism. While the Taliban was in power in Afghanistan, it became notorious internationally for their treatment of women. Their stated aim was to create "secure environments where the chasteness and dignity of women may once again be sacrosanct," reportedly based on beliefs about living in a burqa. Women were forced to wear it in public, because, according to a Taliban spokesman, "the face of a woman is a source of corruption" for men not related to them. They were not allowed to work. They were not allowed to be educated after the age of eight, and until then were permitted only to study the Quran. The Taliban allowed and in some cases encouraged marriage for girls under the age of 16. Thus here we see two extreme cases. Both against basic Human rights. What we need today is modertion. What distinguishes us from animals is our free will that we should be empowered to practice. Wearing the burqa should be a personal choice, if a woman feels comfortable she wears it, if she feels it masks her identity then she should have the choice to abandon it.
The author has taken up a very extremist stand and is very zealous about this issue however she must not impose her perception on others. She must think this over rationally as this is a very sentimental topic. The burqa has been a Muslim traditions since years, to talk so disrespectfully could lead to numerous controversies.

THE ARTICLE
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/opinion/03iht-edeltahawy.html

Op-Ed Contributor
Ban the Burqa
By MONA ELTAHAWY
Published: July 2, 2009
NEW YORK — I am a Muslim, I am a feminist and I detest the full-body veil, known as a niqab or burqa. It erases women from society and has nothing to do with Islam but everything to do with the hatred for women at the heart of the extremist ideology that preaches it.
We must not sacrifice women at the altar of political correctness or in the name of fighting a growingly powerful right wing that Muslims face in countries where they live as a minority.
As disagreeable as I often find French President Nicolas Sarkozy, he was right when he said recently, “The burqa is not a religious sign, it is a sign of the subjugation, of the submission of women. I want to say solemnly that it will not be welcome on our territory.” It should not be welcome anywhere, I would add.
Yet his words have inspired attempts to defend the indefensible — the erasure of women.
Some have argued that Sarkozy’s right-leaning, anti-Muslim bias was behind his opposition to the burqa. But I would remind them of comments in 2006 by the then-British House of Commons leader Jack Straw, who said the burqa prevents communication. He was right, and he was hardly a right-winger — and yet he too was attacked for daring to speak out against the burqa.
Soad Saleh, a professor of Islamic law and former dean of the women’s faculty of Islamic studies at Al-Azhar University — hardly a liberal, said the burqa had nothing to do with Islam. It was but an old Bedouin tradition.
It is sad to see a strange ambivalence toward the burqa from many of my fellow Muslims and others who claim to support us. They will take on everything — the right wing, Islamophobia, Mr. Straw, Mr. Sarkozy — rather than come out and plainly state that the burqa is an affront to Muslim women.
I blame such reluctance on the success of the ultra-conservative Salafi ideology — practiced most famously in Saudi Arabia — in leaving its imprimatur on Islam globally by persuading too many Muslims that it is the purest and highest form of our faith.
It’s one thing to argue about the burqa in a country like Saudi Arabia — where I lived for six years and where women are treated like children — but it is utterly dispiriting to have those same arguments in a country where women’s rights have long been enshrined. When I first saw a woman in a burqa in Copenhagen I was horrified.
I wore a headscarf for nine years. An argument I had on the Cairo subway with a woman who wore a burqa helped seal for good my refusal to defend it. Dressed in black from head to toe, the woman asked me why I did not wear the burqa. I pointed to my headscarf and asked her “Is this not enough?”
“If you wanted a piece of candy, would you choose an unwrapped piece or one that came in a wrapper?” she asked.
“I am not candy,” I answered. “Women are not candy.”
I have since heard arguments made for the burqa in which the woman is portrayed as a diamond ring or a precious stone that needs to be hidden to prove her “worth.” Unless we challenge it, the burqa — and by extension the erasure of women — becomes the pinnacle of piety.
It is not about comparing burqas to bikinis, as some claim. I used to compare my headscarf to a miniskirt, the two being essentially two sides to the same coin of a woman’s body. The burqa is something else altogether: A woman who wears it is erased.
A bizarre political correctness has tied the tongues of those who would normally rally to women’s rights. One blogger, a woman, lamented that “Sarkozy’s anti-burqa stance deprives women of identity.” It’s precisely the opposite: It’s the burqa that deprives a woman of identity.
Why do women in Muslim-minority communities wear the burqa? Sarkozy touched on one reason when he admitted his country’s integration model wasn’t working any more because it doesn’t give immigrants and their French-born children a fair chance.
But the Muslim community must ask itself the same question: Why the silence as some of our women fade into black either as a form of identity politics, a protest against the state or out of acquiescence to Salafism?
As a Muslim woman and a feminist I would ban the burqa.
Mona Eltahawy is an Egyptian-born commentator on Arab and Muslim issues.