Veiled

In the wake of Jack Straw’s recent statements about women wearing veils, Ruth Gledhill has a fascinating discussion of the diverse ways veils and headcoverings are worn in Islamic cultures. She also mentions a nice quotation from a forthcoming interview with Bishop NT Wright, in which he points out that asking a muslim woman to remove her veil is rather like asking a secular western woman to remove her blouse. And, lest anyone point fingers about “repressive” Muslims, don’t forget that there are plenty of Christian churches (especially in the USA) in which women are expected to keep their heads covered and their mouths closed.

pax et bonum

Article posted at 4:25pm on 06 October 2006
Category: Faith, Links, Politics

Again, John, you use a single adjective that is unnecessary.

Plenty, especially in the USA? I am a fundmentalist (as you and many would use the word), and I’ve never, even accidentally, stumbled into a church “in which women are expected to keep their heads covered and their mouths closed”.

Sure, there are plenty. And there are plenty of Brits with a penchant for buggery. There are plenty of M&M’s in a bag. However, your use of the word “plenty” is meant to imply more than a few isolated independent congregations and sects. It is meant to imply that the oppression of women is on a massive scale in “Christian churches (especially in the USA)” to attempt to balance the massive scale of oppression in Islam. It’s not necessary – the quote from Wright is poignant enough.

(As an aside, the vast majority of Yanks have no idea what buggery means. It’s no more a vulgar word to us than “bloody”.)

Hammertime () (URL)
8:04pm on 06 October 2006

Having lived and worked in Blackburn for 10 years and knowing some of the local history to Jack Straw’s comment sadly Tom Wright (who I greatly admire) simply misses the point. Those women who wear veils (which is tiny minority of Muslim women in Blackburn and at least one of the Muslim communities is fiercely against it) only do so “in public” and in family and community settings they do not. So unless the women around Tom Wright routinely walk around their homes and churches and community settings without their blouses on he is analogy is inept.

Tom Allen ()
10:38pm on 06 October 2006

Hammer,
You’re reading a bit much into that. I wasn’t, of course, meaning that Christians are just as bad as Muslims in this respect. Rather, that our hands are still not clean – we used to treat women in a very similar way, and some among us still do.

Tom,
It is a minority who wear veils, of course, and Ruth’s article (to which I link) makes the point as well. Also, Wright’s analogy isn’t meant to signify a literal equivalence of the two. However, it does reveal a similarity that can be hard for some to grasp – that being asked to remove the veil is regarded as indecent.

pax et bonum

[John] () (URL)
09:44am on 07 October 2006

NO John there are two flaws in your use of the word similarity. Firstly Jack Straw did not ask them to remove their veils – he asked them if they would mind removing their veils which is quite different particularly when coming from a deaf man who relise on being able to see people’s lips for good communication. Secondly if any woman regarded the request as indecent (and the veil does not have the sexual overtone which you imply – it has more to do with modesty rather than impurity)she should simply say no as several women have said that they have. The analogy is inept – as I was reminded by an email from a former youth colleague in Blackburn (a white female Muslim)wanting to know who he was and saying how unhelpful the analogy is – to quote her “even your bishops seem to have sex on the brain”.

Tom Allen ()
9:10pm on 07 October 2006

Tom,
You’re confusing two issues, admittedly abetted by Straw himself. First, if Straw is deaf enough to require lipreading, he’s of course entitled to ask people to expose their mouths when they talk to him (provided he does so with sensitivity!). However, there also the issue of Straw’s comment that veils form a barrier between Muslims and non-Muslims. For this more general allegation, his deafness is irrelevant.

Second, no one has even suggested that impurity comes into it! Indeed, the suggestion that the veil is a symbol of modesty makes it precisely equivalent to a blouse worn in a warm room – the removal is an offense against modesty (“purity” has nothing to do with it, as far as I can see). The only reason that sex comes into it is that our culture has lost all modesty about clothing except for that covering specifically sexual attributes. For example, to avoid suggestions of sex, we might compare the attitude to veils to that of Victorian ladies’ ankles (to pluck a random example) – but this is not a comparison to our own culture. For something in our own culture that people may react to, we sadly cannot avoid “sexual overtones”, because our culture is steeped in sex in a way that most Islamic cultures seem to have fortunately avoided.

pax et bonum

[John] () (URL)
6:49pm on 08 October 2006