Behind the Iron Purdah

Re: # 40

Kaalchakra,

{It is time Hinduism and Islam were evaluated on their own merits.}

That will always be the difference between you and me. You will always be on the look out for the differences (un-fundamental), conciously or unconciously.
And I will forever be on the lookout for fundamental similarities, and stay away from non-fundamental stuff.

{My curiosity about sufism springs from the fact that Sufis apprpriate some Hindu ideas that they don`t understand one bit, and try to combine them with Islam, creating an illogical and incoherent belief system. I don`t know about Islam, but that is a huge disservice to Hinduism.}

I am not a sufi (some might say) ........... but I don`t care, it`s non-fundamental. And I am not at all attempting to do what you stated above. If your comment is aimed at certain so-called sufis .............. then it`s none of my concern. But if it was aimed particularly at me, I would disagree with your analysis.

Sorry! :)

Whenever I run into a Sufi, I can`t figure out what they really believe in.

I was trying to understand if there is any substance in your ideas or are you another Temporal bhai.

But I will leave you at peace.

---

My curiosity about sufism springs from the fact that Sufis apprpriate some Hindu ideas that they don`t understand one bit, and try to combine them with Islam, creating an illogical and incoherent belief system. I don`t know about Islam, but that is a huge disservice to Hinduism.

It is time Hinduism and Islam were evaluated on their own merits.

Re: # 38

Stop asking wrong questions, Kaalchakra!!!

{Do you believe that Islam is the ``natural religion?``}

No religion is natural. The fundamentals of a religion are natural. Religion is a man-made vehicle to transport those fundamentals to the mortal man.

samirfs

``some fundamental characteristics of man and woman haven`t changed since Adam and Eve and will never change. The point is to accept these in a practical manner and conduct our lives accordingly.``

Do you believe that Islam is the ``natural religion?``

Re: # 36
{why only women species should hide themselves and become a public denouncement everywhere}

I never mentioned that, did I?! Men should dress up modestly as well. More modestly than women I should say ..........

{It is only a lure of men who just want to weave an imagination upon seeing a woman in relaxed mood and stare with her as she is wrongly situated anywhere in society.}

You just reiterated my point, thank you.

{How come you know that the two girls doing assignments were not graceful its dubiously NOT DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to the sitting positions and YOUR OUTFITS.}

I am sorry, I have no formula for that. I just sense it. Maybe, because at one point in my life a detailed study of body language was my passion ....

{ And how you think that GRACEFUL lady was upright in her ENDEAVORS.... }

Not endeavour, my friend ..... the word was Demeanour; the way a person carries herself or himself.

{This is where your mentality cease to go further with a demolished practicality and making you a fool who still thinks in pre ISLAMIC BEDOUIN way}

Believe it or not ............. some things ...... like some fundamental characteristics of man and woman haven`t changed since Adam and Eve and will never change. The point is to accept these in a practical manner and conduct our lives accordingly.

Well, the issue is - are we willing to tolerate certain limited amount of nudity and shamelessness or not?

Re: # 31

{If you encourage certain beliefs about gender, burqas - forced and voluntary - will naturally follow.}

If you encourage certain beliefs about gender, nudity and shamelessness - forced and voluntary - will naturally follow.

Fine line ..... tight-rope walk ....... Balance!

Re: # 32

Nadia,
That`s my exact point, dear friend. {God knows me in and out and I have nothing to hide from god} Men are not God. Men have all the short-comings. I am not God.

{If girls even start thinking how they look like or most importantly How people look at them then I say a thousand veils can`t protect them from murky eyes}

Did you read my post carefully? THE OTHER GIRL WAS NOT .... NOT WEARING VEILS, BURQA, HIJAB!!!!!

And please don`t tell me .............. Pleeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaase don`t tell me that when you go out half-naked, that you don`t care how you look, or if others are looking at you or not ................ I am toooooooooo practically minded a person to accept that.

If you encourage certain beliefs about gender, burqas - forced and voluntary - will naturally follow.

I am like a particle revelling in moving so fast between two extremeties, that to the naked eye I am stationary.

A couple of days ago I was sitting in a coffee shop trying to finish a presentation on my computer. I bought a latte and had just started on the presentation when two gorgeous girls came and sat across my table. They seemed to be grad. students and working on their college assignments ..... overhearing them, it seemed they were studying economics or something like that. One of the girls was wearing a light short (very short) summer cotton skirt and had awesome legs!! The other was wearing a low-waist jeans and had her back to me. Her string bikini thongs were stretched upto the waist and her jeans had slipped just so much that I could see her butt crack a bit. Both were blondes. The angel sitting facing me now crossed her legs and I couldn`t help noticing that she was wearing red silk thongs underneath. She glanced at me, tossed her wild hair and took a sip of her coffee................. I was typing ``God knows what`` on my laptop!!!! Then the girl in skirt moved her chair and sat in a semi-4 position, that is, not the cross-legged position of girls nor the open legged position of the guys, but somewhere in between. .......... The red silk thongs were in clear sight now. The girl in jeans then reached for her thong strings, played with it a bit and re-adjusted them so they were more clearly visible. Entranced for a good time, I shook myself up and looked around the coffee shop to see if anyone was watching me looking. I could see many eyes slyly peering from behind newspapers, novels and coffee cups. I felt relieved!!! I tell you, the girls were hot!!! I could bang them right there and then .....

But all good times come to an end and this one did too. My angels left the cofee shop. I got back to my presentation, still hungover from the ``nazaraa``. A moment later another girl, probably, the same age as my angels, took the same seat. She was wearing ......... well I did not notice what she she was wearing, something covering herself well, I am guessing. But her demeanour was quite graceful. I don`t even recollect her face now. She sat very ``prim-n-propah``. I never glanced at her more than twice, but I could just feel that her presence was making me concentrate on my presentation. Needless to say, the presentation was taking shape fast.

After a while she left too. She wasn`t wearing a head-scarf, or a burqa ..................... but I could have sweared I noticed a ``hijab``. It was not visible to the naked eye ..... No, No, not the translucent veil ....... but a hijab it was ......

Thank you all for your comments. I just want to clarify here that I am neither opposed nor in favor of those who want to wear hijab. That is a personal choice and I am all for it. What I was trying to talk about here was the insidious trend towards removing women (or women removing themselves) from the public sphere. There are already huge controversies up in the NWFP over the disenfranchisement of women and some LB polls where women were banned from voting have been declared invalid and the polls will be held again. If you want to wear a veil, fine. But remember that Muslim women in the time of the Prophet even went to war and fought side by side with their menfolk. You should not feel that your only rightful place is in your home. God made the world for both men and women and you should enjoy it, whether or not you feel you need to wear hijab, dupatta, burqa, or niqab to do so.

Bina:

This article was a sort of deja vu...at one of the stalls in Dubai, I was accosted by a woman in burqa to check out their wares. Their wares happened to be literature on Islam. One of them who took charge of me finally said, ``You know, I used to be like you...`` I, in tourist arrogance, imagined she was feeling sorry for herself; it turned out she was feeling sorry for me. She said she was a former model and used to dress ``like that``. Now, she felt `dignified`. I asked her that if this was ordained by the Quran, then so was the fact that men should avert their eyes when they saw strange women.

I was currently engaged in just such a battle on the letters pages of an Indian paper. In a controversial fatwa, the Darul Uloom has ruled that Muslim women should not contest elections and if they have to do they must do it under a veil. I have been shocked to see a few Muslim women take up for this disgusting edict...anyhow, won`t take up your space and discussion for that (Hope you don`t mind a plug, though:) Indians interested in reading further, please look at my Parsi board...the other relevant IM board has been taken over by UP, alas.)

PS: A gentleman acquaintance once told me that if I wore a hijab my sex appeal would shoot up...what these men won`t do to market their shackles...
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romair (#24):

[And that is the upper class and perhaps even upper-middle class women. In some ways they are worse off than men but in some ways they are better off than men, also. This is the group, which should take the leadership positions to make things better for all women.]

In what way are they better-off than men? They just possess better camouflage. And why should leadership be a prerogative of the elite, anyway? It has been my experience that the best change takes place when `key` workers (that is those from one`s own environment) are trained to teach the others from their social/economic class. I have noticed this in rural as well as urban projects I have been involved in.

Incidentally, many of the women who are now talking `pro-choice` about veils happen to be from the elite class. Women who are intitated into it as a matter of patriarchal stereotyping have no voice, forget a choice.

Bina

To be honest, I am allergic to the Nikab Wallis. The other day, a Nikab Walli asked me in the aircraft to change the seat. I coldly said `No`. I would have politly done that for a NORMAL woman.

I find something unfair in this whole business. While she has all the freedom to look at my face, I do not have the same freedom.

On the other hand, the Burqa clad could have a genuine reason - the social, traditional and customs pressures & not the religious logic.

Millions of rural women still work Burqaless & Hijabless in the countryside with men.

I remember in my childhood - I only saw the Jamaat Islami women wear Burqa/Nikab. Then it slowly crept into the low middle Class.

Now the middle & upperclass also seems to be gradually getting infected. But the 40 or so TV channels are doing a good job in demolishing these taboos.

nhk

I have a suggestion for the wahabi, sunni fundos of Pakistan. Please go for the ultimate purfication of your country and just kill all your women. Think about it. Without the women, there is no chance of moral corruption or unislamic values. Your country will be a 100% pure Islamic nation with impeccable values which you can be proud of. The rest of the world will be really happy for you as well as they eagerly wait for the next 30-40 years to go by :-).

There are certain interesting developments going on, with respect to women, which do indicate a change:

- The way Mukhtar Mai took on her feudal elites, is something that could not have happened even ten years ago. Who knows, maybe women will be the ones who break the feudalistic culture and mindset in Pakistan......

- There are more women in Pakistan`s assemblies and councils now, than there are even in the US or most European Assemblies

- Women are actually becoming fighter pilots. Having seen that up close and knowing how brutal and male-dominated that field is, one has to say if a Pakistani girl can become a miltiary pilot, she can become anything

- Girls top all the academic exams in Pakistan, now. I heard somewhere that there are more girls in Pakistan`s medical colleges than boys. In some medical college (KE?) it was 70:30 in favor of girls

The worse position of women in Pakistan is in feudal and tribal areas. It is in feudal areas that all the honor killings occur. It is also in such areas where the women`s literacy rates are amongst the lowest in the world. The literacy rate for Baluchi women is around 4%. Feudal crimes against women are terrible. Women in such areas can be raped, pillaged and burnt, and no one bothers. An end to feudalism will be the biggest benefit for Pakistani women (not counting the women who are themselves feudals or their next generations)....

The second worse condition of women in Pakistan is in the uneducated religiously dominated areas. Which this article covers to some extent (I don`t know why such articles never talk about the feudal areas).

Urban educated middle class women in Pakistan are suppressed, as well. But in a more subtle manner. Much like they are in other third world countries, with certain cultural factors added in......

There is one group of women that does have it relatively well. And that is the upper class and perhaps even upper-middle class women. In some ways they are worse off than men but in some ways they are better off than men, also. This is the group, which should take the leadership positions to make things better for all women. However, this has been lacking. This group has the resources and in many cases the support to make a difference. But very few out of them seem to have the motivation. In this regard, I have found Indian girls to be far more active and motivated...........