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Originally Posted by Bluesman
None of my business, but it used to provoke the hell out of me. It is nothing but oppression, it has the stink of a display to the rest of the world of how very pious everybody is, and I found the whole thing to be very in-your-face.
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That might be so in a beach in Saudi Arabia where the Burkha is enforced, in Maryland it's voluntary. How is it oppression when the woman chooses to not be nude infront of you? The Burkha is not an Islamic requirement but women still observe it in non-Arab societies since its the level of conservatism that they have.
The position that they are oppressed women because of a burkha (by default, without knowing anything about them) is absurd. It's just a level of conservatism. The same Arab women do wear bikinis in abundant numbers in Arab countries too. They choose to. They still call themselves Muslim and are not renegades from Islam. They just have a different opinion about conservatism.
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I'm sorry, but I'm about to betray a prejudice here: if any of my friends converted to Islam, and insisted that THIS sort of behavior was required, I could not be friends with them anymore.
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I would insist that this sort of behavior be allowed on a voluntary basis. Anyone insisting the forceful removal of a woman's clothing wouldn't be a friend of mine just as much one who forces any clothing on them.
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When I was at NCO Academy, one of the guys in my class (appointed as class leader, by the way) was an American Muslim. He was VERY observant: we had to start class late every day after lunch, because that call-to-prayer time was not 'movable', like some others, and he'd go out back with his prayer rug, come back in and we'd get going.
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I find it hard to believe that you guys HAD to do that. Or did you (the majority) just allow him to do so?
I studied in an American uni in Sharjah and no one was allowed to do so. Some of the professors allowed the students to walk in late during the prayer timings when it really couldn't wait an hour (which is just one evening prayer, which mostly has a 30 mins timing before the sunsets, which is over an hour in America during the summers because of longer days). The rest of the prayers have gaps of several hours to pray and can be done whenever.
Never thought much about it. Graduation day came, and I was meeting the families of all my classmates for the first time. When I was introduced to Mrs. Sadiq, I put out my hand, smiled and said, 'Pleased to meet you.'
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TSgt Sadiq said, 'She's forbidden to shake your hand. But she's pleased to meet you.' She never said a word, and didn't look up. I was VERY uneasy about the whole thing, and I felt different about Sadiq from that moment on. I felt like asking both of them, 'Are either of you aware that that's not what we do here? That it's customary to take the hand that's offered in friendship, and to NOT take it is considered rude, even hostile? Do you know [to him] that I think you're an oppressive beast, and that you [to her]consider yourself his property?
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Hey a British raised Prime Minister of Pakistan refused to shake hands with Mark Waugh (Aussie cricket team capt) all on her own. She politely explained that she should not touch another man than her husband. Of course that was REALLY just PR but thats pretty much how it is.
Your classmate's wife would not be forbidden by her husband but by whatever cultural/religious followings of hers. By the same logic he shouldn't be shaking hands of women either.
One thing though most westerners are real bad at meeting with the easterners wives! My mom usually meets my dad's colleagues (mostly American or non-Muslim) with a quick handshake gesture. Since most of them usually go for the hug and kisses on the cheek. My mom's a very modern woman, sports a very short hairstyle, business woman, and even she has issues with the way they westerners don't make the cultural adjustments.
Of course if I was Mr. Sadiq, I'd let my wife speak on her own behalf just as my dad doesn't call the shots as to what my mom should do in social situations like those.
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But that's all a private matter, even though it leads to an alienation of Muslim from All Others, and from male and female, which is bad enough. The subject of the article, however, is the use of public facilities to segregate a preferred group from another. And not just ANY group, but one that holds itself superior to the Main Body of Culture, the NATIVE customs, if you will. Well, that offends me, and I'm damned if I would EVER let myself be denied my rights so that another's may be exalted.
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I'm pretty sure the article is flawed. A non-Muslim mother accompanying a kid wouldn't have met the same issues as did a father.