Green Energy
Oliver Guitta has a very important piece up at the Weekly Standard which details the mechanism by which Muslim communities turn to the veil:
... the Tunisian author and feminist Samia Labidi, president of A.I.M.E., an organization fighting the Islamists, recounts that she personally started wearing the veil before puberty, after Islamists told her the hijab would be a passport to a new life, to emancipation. After a few years, she realized she had been fooled and that the veil made her feel like she was "living in a prison." At first, she could not bring herself to stop wearing it because of the constant psychological pressure. But the 1981 ban on the hijab in public places forced her to remove
it, and she did so for good.
Labidi's experience suggests that in both Tunisia and France the recent banning of the hijab has actually helped Muslim women who are subject to Islamist indoctrination.
For Islamists, the imperative to veil women justifies almost any means. Sometimes they try to buy off resistance. Some French Muslim families, for instance, are paid 500 euros (around $600) per quarter by extremist Muslim organizations just to have their daughters wear the hijab.
This has also happened in the United States. Indeed, the famous and brave Syrian-American psychiatrist Wafa Sultan recently told the Jerusalem Post that after she moved to the United States in 1991, Saudis offered her $1,500 a month to cover her head and attend a mosque.
But what Islamists use most is intimidation. A survey conducted in France in May 2003 found that 77 percent of girls wearing the hijab said they did so because of physical threats from Islamist groups. A series in the newspaper Libération in 2003
documented how Muslim women and girls in France who refuse to wear the hijab are insulted, rejected, and often physically threatened by Muslim males. One of the teenage girls interviewed said, "Every day, bearded men come to me and advise me strongly on wearing the veil. It is a war. For now, there are no dead, but there are looks and words that do kill."
Muslim women who try to rebel are considered "whores" and treated as outcasts. Some of them want to move to areas "with no Muslims" to escape. However, that might not be a solution, as Islamists are at work all over France. The Communist newspaper L'Humanité in 2003 interviewed two Catholic-born French women who said they had converted to Islam and started wearing the niqab after systematic indoctrination by the Muslim Brotherhood.
In light of this, wearing the hijab may or may not be a manifestation of the free exercise of religion. For any individual, it may reflect the very opposite--religious coercion. In fact, millions of women are forced to wear the veil for fear of physical retribution. And the fear is well founded. According to Cheryl Benard of RAND, every year hundreds of women in Pakistan and Afghanistan alone are killed, have acid thrown in their faces, or are otherwise maimed by male fanatics.
Given the Islamists' ferocious determination on this point, it is worth asking: Why exactly
is covering the female so important to them? The obvious answer is that it is a means of social control. Not coincidentally, it is one of the only issues on which Sunni and Shia extremists agree. It's not by chance that use of the hijab really took off after Iran's Islamic regime came to power in 1979. Some Shiite militias in Iraq have actually started forcing women--Muslim or not--to wear the veil or face the consequences.
If this issue were not vital for Islamists, how can one explain their reaction when France banned the hijab in public schools? Al Qaeda's number two, Ayman al Zawahiri, "strongly condemned" President Chirac's decision and threatened actions against France. Likewise, Sheikh Fadlallah, founder and spiritual leader of Hezbollah, wrote to Chirac threatening "likely complications" for France. Mohammad Khatami, former president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, called on the French government to "cancel this unjust law."
- I Was Told I'd Have To Wear A Hijab, I Said 'i Don't Think So': Today Programme's First Muslim Presenter On Why She Won't Wear The Veil
I won't wear a veil, but yeah, go ahead and put the gays and apostates to death Mishal Husain, 40, was told to cover her face by Muslim train passengerShe is the first Muslim to present BBC Radio 4's Today programmeCambridge-educated...
-
from Will: "CHANGE" - Egypt Air stewardesses begin wearing hijab. "CHANGE" - Egypt Air stewardesses begin wearing hijab.(HD).EgyptAir stewardesses who campaigned to wear the Muslim headscarf have begun donning the hijab for the first time since the national...
- Al Qaeda Warns France Of Revenge For Burka Stance
From Breitbart: Al-Qaeda's North Africa wing threatened on Tuesday to take revenge on France for its opposition to the burka, calling on Muslims to retaliate against the country, the US monitoring service SITE Intelligencereported.Earlier this...
- French Feminists Attack Obama Over Islamic Veil
It takes feminists all the way from France to finally say what American feminists ought to have been saying for years. Saturday, 06 June 2009 French feminists attacked US President Barack Obama's defence of the Islamic veil yesterday, accusing him...
- Reflections On The Islamic Veil
Following the protests sparked in Spain after a six-year-old girl in Catalonia and two other girls in Ceuta have been allowed to go to school with the hijab, and in Italy after the prefect of Treviso allowed women to wear burqa, I have written some...
Green Energy
Woman In Chains: The Use Of Coercion In The Spread Of The Hijab
Oliver Guitta has a very important piece up at the Weekly Standard which details the mechanism by which Muslim communities turn to the veil:
... the Tunisian author and feminist Samia Labidi, president of A.I.M.E., an organization fighting the Islamists, recounts that she personally started wearing the veil before puberty, after Islamists told her the hijab would be a passport to a new life, to emancipation. After a few years, she realized she had been fooled and that the veil made her feel like she was "living in a prison." At first, she could not bring herself to stop wearing it because of the constant psychological pressure. But the 1981 ban on the hijab in public places forced her to remove
it, and she did so for good.
Labidi's experience suggests that in both Tunisia and France the recent banning of the hijab has actually helped Muslim women who are subject to Islamist indoctrination.
For Islamists, the imperative to veil women justifies almost any means. Sometimes they try to buy off resistance. Some French Muslim families, for instance, are paid 500 euros (around $600) per quarter by extremist Muslim organizations just to have their daughters wear the hijab.
This has also happened in the United States. Indeed, the famous and brave Syrian-American psychiatrist Wafa Sultan recently told the Jerusalem Post that after she moved to the United States in 1991, Saudis offered her $1,500 a month to cover her head and attend a mosque.
But what Islamists use most is intimidation. A survey conducted in France in May 2003 found that 77 percent of girls wearing the hijab said they did so because of physical threats from Islamist groups. A series in the newspaper Libération in 2003
documented how Muslim women and girls in France who refuse to wear the hijab are insulted, rejected, and often physically threatened by Muslim males. One of the teenage girls interviewed said, "Every day, bearded men come to me and advise me strongly on wearing the veil. It is a war. For now, there are no dead, but there are looks and words that do kill." Muslim women who try to rebel are considered "whores" and treated as outcasts. Some of them want to move to areas "with no Muslims" to escape. However, that might not be a solution, as Islamists are at work all over France. The Communist newspaper L'Humanité in 2003 interviewed two Catholic-born French women who said they had converted to Islam and started wearing the niqab after systematic indoctrination by the Muslim Brotherhood.
In light of this, wearing the hijab may or may not be a manifestation of the free exercise of religion. For any individual, it may reflect the very opposite--religious coercion. In fact, millions of women are forced to wear the veil for fear of physical retribution. And the fear is well founded. According to Cheryl Benard of RAND, every year hundreds of women in Pakistan and Afghanistan alone are killed, have acid thrown in their faces, or are otherwise maimed by male fanatics.
Given the Islamists' ferocious determination on this point, it is worth asking: Why exactly
is covering the female so important to them? The obvious answer is that it is a means of social control. Not coincidentally, it is one of the only issues on which Sunni and Shia extremists agree. It's not by chance that use of the hijab really took off after Iran's Islamic regime came to power in 1979. Some Shiite militias in Iraq have actually started forcing women--Muslim or not--to wear the veil or face the consequences.If this issue were not vital for Islamists, how can one explain their reaction when France banned the hijab in public schools? Al Qaeda's number two, Ayman al Zawahiri, "strongly condemned" President Chirac's decision and threatened actions against France. Likewise, Sheikh Fadlallah, founder and spiritual leader of Hezbollah, wrote to Chirac threatening "likely complications" for France. Mohammad Khatami, former president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, called on the French government to "cancel this unjust law."
- I Was Told I'd Have To Wear A Hijab, I Said 'i Don't Think So': Today Programme's First Muslim Presenter On Why She Won't Wear The Veil
I won't wear a veil, but yeah, go ahead and put the gays and apostates to death Mishal Husain, 40, was told to cover her face by Muslim train passengerShe is the first Muslim to present BBC Radio 4's Today programmeCambridge-educated...
-
from Will: "CHANGE" - Egypt Air stewardesses begin wearing hijab. "CHANGE" - Egypt Air stewardesses begin wearing hijab.(HD).EgyptAir stewardesses who campaigned to wear the Muslim headscarf have begun donning the hijab for the first time since the national...
- Al Qaeda Warns France Of Revenge For Burka Stance
From Breitbart: Al-Qaeda's North Africa wing threatened on Tuesday to take revenge on France for its opposition to the burka, calling on Muslims to retaliate against the country, the US monitoring service SITE Intelligencereported.Earlier this...
- French Feminists Attack Obama Over Islamic Veil
It takes feminists all the way from France to finally say what American feminists ought to have been saying for years. Saturday, 06 June 2009 French feminists attacked US President Barack Obama's defence of the Islamic veil yesterday, accusing him...
- Reflections On The Islamic Veil
Following the protests sparked in Spain after a six-year-old girl in Catalonia and two other girls in Ceuta have been allowed to go to school with the hijab, and in Italy after the prefect of Treviso allowed women to wear burqa, I have written some...