KKKrap from the National Post

The National Post has been running a four-part series by American author Danielle Crittenden on what it is like wearing an abaya. A remarkably trivial matter, to those of us who live in the Gulf—they could have interviewed anyone on the street here for the same material. Perhaps they think it does not count unless it is a “white” woman doing it. No matter. I know many European or North American expatriates who have chosen to wear abayas in these parts.

Worse, Crittenden seems to have no background in the matter. It seems profane to have someone with so little understanding of Islam representing herself in public as a devout Muslim. This week, Crittenden makes the appallingly bigoted comment that

“If I had chosen to walk about Washington in a white hood and sheets, rather than black ones, I doubt I would have encountered such universal politeness. And yet, what the Klan outfit represents to someone of African-American descent is exactly what the burka should represent to every free women.”

Right. And how many women have been lynched so far by men wearing abayas?

Crittenden misses the most fundamental of differences: it is women, not men, who wear the burka--voluntarily. Men are not permitted to wear it. But it was whites, not blacks, who wore the sheets of the KKK. Blacks were not permitted. If the parallel is otherwise apt, it is men, not women, who are oppressed by the abaya.

As indeed, in a sense, they are. The point is to avoid showing the female form—something most men enjoy. Conversely, members of the KKK could probably not be accused of enjoying the sight of a black. No; they wore the hood to conceal themselves, because this gave them greater power.

Crittenden misses another critical point. In the quoted passage, she is complaining that, in wearing the abaya, people are treating her too politely. But this is exactly why women wear the abaya. It gives them greater dignity. This is just what women, European women, have found here in the Gulf—when you wear an abaya, people treat you with more respect.

It seems unlikely that the point of the KKK, by contrast, was to promote greater respect towards blacks.

No; the difference between the abaya and the hood of a Klansman is the difference between black and white.