Muslims ‘Unveiled’

Asif: Excellent Article. What I am surprised by, amongst this brouhaha, is the kind of unexpected opinions so many people are flouting. A feminist is busy defending the niqab and a practising Muslim is sharing the opinion of the majority.

The only conclusion I reach is that labels are just so ridiculous.

This is what I posted on Aparna`s thread about a similar topic:

Aparna,
A very thoughtful and interesting perspective - especially the part about Hindu women covering their heads. The reason that many Muslims, including some supportive men, are against the hijab, niqab, and burka is that we seem to be losing ground that was covered a long long time ago. From the 20s through most of the 70s, Muslims have been constantly modernizing and uplifting the educational, social, and legal positions of our women. All of a sudden, just like the assaults on airplanes, trains, and tall buildings, there is a segment of Soodi-financed misanthropes who want to push us all the way back to the time when Muslims started borrowing these stupid garments from the Christians. If the Crusades gave silk, Damascus steel, medicine, and science to Europeans, they gave the veil, celibacy, and wholesale slaughter to Muslims. The silver lining is that we never learned to uses the Christians` complicated chastity belts. :)

I don`t see why some of my brothers are being so dramatic about this. The simple fact is that the vast majority of British Muslims -- i.e. those either born here or raised here--are in terms of practise Anglicised to a large degree even if they are practising Muslims (proof of this is that you can go and talk to almost any parent of these second and third gen muslims and they will inevitably moan about `how westernised our child has become: pakkay angrez ho gaye hain!)--and that they will never leave this country as it is their home so why not make it easier for themselves to integrate by adapting local customs as long as these don`t infringe on the shariah. after all, shariah does not specify a particular kind of dress it just says you should be modestly attired. now in indo-pak that might be fulfilled with the shalwar kameez or sari, in arabia by the jilbab and niqab, but not in the UK.

why make yourself a target to bigots (a minority)?
**
those who don`t like it can always leave (those who make the most noise are the ones least likely to go!)

**
the way to fight islamophobia is not by becoming more insular, it is by engaging in the community and making a difference. get educated, get the top jobs and influence the decision makers just like the Jews have done.

**
most importantly, lose the victim mentality. think of yourself as British and you`re more likely to be accepted as one. consider yourself as an outsider and you`ll remain one all your life.

**

the tight-jeans-wearing, butt-showing, tight-t-sheet-with headscarf is a typically British muslimah manifestation. you would not get that in pakistan even though the girl`s parents may be from pakistan!

**
there is cultural symbiosis taking place.

**

most of those people who convert to islam are doing so due to intellectual sufis like gai eaton and t j winter (shaykh abd al hakim) or the late martin lings who all look like and sound like upper class brits with their tweed jackets and plummy accents who just happen to be muslims!

why? because they look FAMILIAR to the majority and yet they have the inner light of islam which can attract people. others like abu hamza just look scary and turn people off. same goes for `ninjas`...

Re: # 82

Echo,

Can u translate this, at least a briefly?

Re: # 79

Correction to #76. Pl read this para as

The culprit i.e. the idea of getting aroused by looking at a women is in the mind of man. If u sanction the same idea to women since they too are an equal part of God`s creation, why dont men in UK/west cover their bodies much like arabs and be not a cause of arousing women?

i/o

The culprit i.e. the idea of getting aroused by looking at a women is in the mind of man. If u sanction the same idea to womwn since they too are an equal part of God`s creation, why dont men in UK/west cover their bodies much like arabs and be not be a cause for arousing women?

The last word.
NOBODY , East or West, can say it better!









....................................ALLAMA IQBAL.

#80 His Excellency {``The reason Muslim women wear hijab has more to do with warding off sexual assault than unwanted gazes. Remember, the UK has one of the highest rape rate in the world``}

Your Excellency,
Pray tell how wearing the hijab protects these Muslim women from that horrible rape rate. In fact, for those specializing in raping Muslim women, this advertisement may be a real boon. Now, they can focus their attention on the hated Muslims.

re: PM #4

The reason Muslim women wear hijab has more to do with warding off sexual assault than unwanted gazes. Remember, the UK has one of the highest rape rate in the world:

1 in 4 women have experienced rape or attempted rape in the UK
25% of victims are raped in a public place.
97% of victims are assaulted by an acquaintance.
89% of rapists are under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs.
Only 6% of those arrested for rape are convicted.

Source: Campaign to End Rape

Wearing hijab in public only protects Muslim women. If British society wants them to discard the veil, it needs to improve the rape statistics first.

Re: # 76

Saima,

When I had been to the Liberty statue in 2000/01 I tried to snap the statue in a most feminine angle. I went around the statue but cant snap her in a feminine position.

Paris is full of statues of naked women and men but nobody gets aroused in that city in wrong places like city bus/promenades. Any surprise?

The culprit i.e. the idea of getting aroused by looking at a women is in the mind of man. If u sanction the same idea to womwn since they too are an equal part of God`s creation, why dont men in UK/west cover their bodies much like arabs and be not be a cause for arousing women?

Since the topics in ur religion tread a very narrow strip.......sanction of male domination, the space for louder voice and equal reason for women is impossible.

With all the emphasis on covering up and enforcement of perceived chastity and morality, why don`t our Mullahs copy EVERYTHING from the discarded Roman Catholic notions of protecting female piety? Why just copy the hijab from them and why not look into chastity belts, nunneries, omnipresent matron chaperones, and immaculate conceptions?

Heck, perhaps we can pay the Macaca code coolies to come up with Intrusion Detection, trusted login, and biometric authentication software. Once the cost of hymenoplastie comes down, is all this protection really necessary in the first place? It seems like investing too much in eyeglasses when Lasik is the rage. :)

dullahbhatti

Ms. Azami has filed a pettion with department of industrial relations (I think this institution watches over labor dispute type issue in britian) and that is the stance she had taken in her petition. Which means that the propaganda machinery may be poisoning the well as usuual.

addenda:

please read this also after#74`s end


The trouble possibly is taking a sectarian view of both the Christian West and Islam. Christianity has been as aggressively proselytising as Islam, setting up ravages in its wake. But there is a growing fear that Christianity is losing out to Islam, as it is now the second religion not just in the US but also in Europe and Australia. Europe has 15 million Muslims, accounting for one in 10 of the population in France, where the government now estimates 50,000 Christians are converting to Islam every year. In Brussels, Mohammed has been the most popular name for boy babies for the last four years. In Britain, attendance at mosques is now higher than it is in the Church of England.

Jack Straw & Reid not worry. Pretty soon majority Britons will be muslims .

In contrast to Muslims:

1) no births among secularoons
2) Disease deaths due to drugs & Aids among secularoons.
3) Abortion among secularoons.
4) Marriage system dying among secularoons.
5) Khusraa/HeejrRaa glamour among secularoons
6) Heavy heavy conversions from amongst the wealthiest, the brightest, the famour, and the most learned ones

InshaAllah , the secularoons would continue to pursue the stuff taught to them and will extinguish themselves sooner than we were anticipating. They may not call it Azaab, but I think it is. Let us all pray that there extinction is hastened by Allah.

---

.
What the Ba Ba Blacksheep, the toata-maina, the Kavvas inside white-buttucks, the apes, and the colony-kuttas do not realise that today one can write ``O`` level & ``A`` level exam in URDU! (Which , the Cantonement and Colony Kuttas in Pakistan Pay Lakhs upon Lakhs of rupees to keep themselves ignorant--their only qualification--what they don`t KNOW or Can`t do]

Meanwhile those from the Madressas all over Europe & USA are not only great ( Top Top Honours) in science & medicine, but they are fluent in Urdu, arabi, Farsi BESIDES knowing amost Latin Greek based languages.

All burger eaters in Pakistan , end up burger flippers in Goraa-lands (we speak english--we serve burgers well)....while those from Madressas & Urdu-mediums have the highest IQ in establishing themselves & start employing Goraas & Yehoods in their companies.

Pakistan`s problem: They have adopted the WORST from Hindoos ( Caste-system) and WORST from the english (Class System)

---

Yet they Insist upon calling themselves MUSLIMS...exactly the kind of stuff Islam taught to despise.


Anyway the hope is that just as the Mongols converted to Islam & established the Mughal/Mongol empire, an empire unmatched to this day in expanse or culture or civilisation. Has it ever happened that CONQUERERS adopt the CREED of the conquered?

Such is the POWER of Islam....and it is happening again.

``Iss kay samunder kee mauj, dajlaa O danube O neel``
The wave of this Ocean( of Umma) comes from the Nile, from Danube, from Tigris

---

Britain`s Elites Converting to Islam


According to a report by IslamOnLine, an Islamic website, 14,000 of England’s ‘elite’ have already converted to Islam, with more on the way.

The report cites ‘the first authoritative study of the phenomenon’ carried out by the Sunday Times on February 22, reporting that “some of Britain’s top landowners, celebrities and the offspring of senior establishment figures” have converted to Islam in recent years.

The Times study was carried out by Yahya (formerly Jonathan) Birt, himself a Muslim convert, who is the son of Lord Birt, the former director-general of the BBC. He used a breakdown of the latest census figures to conclude that there is a major migration from Christianity to Islam taking place in England, with 14,200 converts to date.

Birt is quoted as arguing that an inspirational figure similar to the American Muslim convert Malcolm X, would first have to emerge before the next stage – a mass conversion among Britons – were to happen. “You need great transitional figures to translate something alien (like Islam) into the vernacular,” Birt was quoted by the Times as saying. Professor Birt received his doctorate at Oxford University on young British Muslims.

Emma Clark, the great-granddaughter of a British prime minister also converted to Islam.
Emma, whose ancestor Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, took Britain into the First World War, commented on her conversion saying, “We’re all the rage, I hope it’s not a passing fashion.”

According to the Times report, many converts have been inspired by the writings of Charles Le Gai Eaton, a former Foreign Office diplomat. “I have received letters from people who are put off by the wishy-washy standards of contemporary Christianity and they are looking for a religion which does not compromise too much with the modern world,” said Eaton, author of Islam and the Destiny of Man.

Hakim Harrari

#70 Urstruly, I understood from news that she refused to take off the veil in the classroom. School admin is saying they are ok if she wears outside the classroom with in school campus but she must take it off in class while teaching but she refuses to do so.

#47 Mr. Dots.

As long as I was sitting at the armchair I was of the same opinion as you are about ``unresonableness`` of Islam and Muslims. But only after I got off my butt I realized how receptive the people are and there is so much thirst for knowledge and information that their propaganda machinery and powers that be have deprived them of. Please read my last post addressed to Malik.