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A recent column by a friend suggests that the old tradition of having a bride wear a veil, and the current Arab tradition of women wearing burqa and chador, are “connected to notions of women as property rather than person.”
I don’t think so. This has the whole thing just about upside down. Do we commonly conceal our property from view? Does a farmer hide a handsome horse behind a dress and veil? Do we commonly conceal the fact that we own an especially attractive car, or boat, or watch?
No; covering ourselves up is something only people do, and it shows emphatically that women, in Islam or traditional Christianity, are not considered property. To dress an object would be odd.
And, in times and places when people owned people as slaves, did they commonly dress them more completely than themselves? Just the reverse.
This tradition, in the West and in the East, actually shows the reverence in which women were once held. Ask yourself, who else’s face, in Muslim tradition, is not to be shown in public? Answer: God’s, and the prophets’. Fairly exclusive company. And hardly an indication of disrespect. After all, in Islam, is God our property, or are we God’s property?
Eastern kings, too, used to travel always behind a curtain in public. Was this because they were the property of the onlookers? Wasn’t the legal situation exactly the reverse? Arab sheikhs even today like to travel in cars with tinted windows. Are they the oppressed of the earth?
Indeed, note when and where women most commonly wore a veil in the West: at their wedding. Is the bride commonly most demeaned at her wedding? Isn't this the one moment in her life where she is most socially exalted? In many countries, the traditional wedding dress is the traditional royal dress: every bride is queen for a day.
It’s time the West got over its prejudice against Arab dress.
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4 comments:
Should the prejudiced west allow muslim women to take driver's license photos in full tradional Islamic dress, with the face obscured? How would you weigh the right to dress as you please versus the legitimate security interest in being able to record and view the face of a citizen, Oh Roney?
Bob
How you miss the point. If your car had an independent mind that you did not trust but wanted to control, then may be you'd keep it hidden too.
Secondly, all the kings, sheiks, brides cover themselves out of 'CHOICE' and they are not beheaded if they don't do it.
Dear Bob:
This is a real issue in the Middle East, and shows again my point that wearing the chador is a privilege.
As for me, I am no fan of special privileges on the basis of sex. I say when there is a legitimate security issue, women should be obliged to show their faces.
But what is really absurd is representing their right to wear a chador as oppressive. Of them.
Hi, 888!
Never mind a car. Horses really can have independent minds. So can slaves. Yet they are not covered up, are they? It is hard to see how this could in any way prevent them from exercising their independence. Just the reverse, actually. It would give them far greater freedom of movement and the chance to do as they please and go where they please--including escape permanently-- without being identified. A lot harder to keep them on the plantation, wouldn't you say?
Note too that, contrary to odd prejudice in the West, wearing the chador is completely voluntary.
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