Ban the burqa, cut down on hand amputations
Opinion
Ban the burqa?
And cut down on stonings and amputations while you're at it
By Brad Marshall : June 24, 2009
French President
Nicolas Sarkozy wants Islamic burqas banned in France. He
criticized the head-to-toe covering that Muslim women wear, saying
the garment deprives women of identity and highlights their
subservience.
“It will not be welcome on the territory of the French republic,” he added.
To non-Muslims, Muslims seem to have some strange ideas. Rightly or wrongly, many people associate Muslims with the Twin Towers attacks in New York, suicide bombings, the Taliban, intolerance of non-Muslims, multiple wives, pilgrimages to Mecca (the hajj) where hundreds of people are trampled to death in stampedes, and savage riots in cities worldwide. In France itself, the 2005 riots by Muslims were the worst in the country since World War II.
But the killings and riots and bombings and stampedes and intolerance and Taliban and multiple wives and flying planes into New York buildings were not the subject of Pres. Sarkozy's ire this week. It was the burka (see photo above of a woman in Afghanistan wearing one while she carries bread on her head). The burqa: That symbol of Muslim womanhood that distinguishes them from almost everyone else on earth.
As a Christian, I have mixed feelings about the burqa. I can see that it is a garment that adheres to modesty, which is what the Koran expects women to be. This is good. And I can see that women who wear them would rarely be the first or second choices as victims for rapists in Western countries. This also has to be a plus for them.
As such, I would be very reluctant to side with the French Pres. in banning them. I wouldn't react well if he tried to stop me from wearing a cross to show my allegiance to Christianity either.
Yet there are obvious problems with the burqa outside Muslim countries. How do you socialize with non-Muslims, who can't have eye contact with you, can't see your face, and who hear only a muffled voice through the veil? The Pres. may have a point when he says they make women prisoners behind netting, who are “cut off from all social life.” It's hard to socialize with people who can't see you, can't hear you properly, and who regard you as being unwilling to fit in with their way of life.
But is there a more obvious reason behind President Sarkozy's criticism of the burqa? I think so.
His wife is the stunning Italian model Carla Bruni — singer, songwriter, and formerly one of the world's top fashion models. Carla wouldn't be caught dead in a burqa, and may even have mentioned this to the Pres. one night while they were watching TV.
Both the Pres. and his fashionable wife obviously have a preference for glamorous Paris fashions over the top-selling head-to-toe numbers seen in the Kabul markets. They wouldn't want Paris to have its reputation tarnished as the fashion capital of the world. Catwalks full of models wearing burkas just wouldn't get the sales that haute couture outfits get — at least not without superbly clever marketing.
(I have heard that there was a catwalk full of models wearing so-called “burqas” in Paris, but they are not the genuine article. They are actually glamorous gowns wrongly labelled “burqas” to cash in on the controversy.)
That solved, let's quickly look at another item of Muslim news that came on the same day as President Sarkozy's headline-grabbing critique of the burqa.
Iran, a country that has had its own share of riots, has decided to cut down on the number of stonings and hand-amputations as punishments in a revised version of the Islamic penal code.
The Iranian parliament has obviously found that cutting off its citizens' hands makes it very hard for them to turn the pages of the Koran to find out where they went wrong.
The revised law will be welcome news for potential criminals, and will make it easier for the country's tourism marketers to attract more tourists to Iran. Who could resist the slogan, “Come to Iran: There have been fewer stonings and amputations this year”?
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