JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY GIDEON RACHMAN IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

This kind of legislation is just one more chilling aspect of the Islamophobia which has descended on Western society like a poisonous cloud of volcanic ash.

It really would be nice to get a break from all this mindless, anti-Muslim hysteria.

What do I care what my neighbor wears so long as he or she is a peaceful member of society?

My experience with Muslims is simply one a sweet-tempered people who pretty much mind their own business.

I wish their critics displayed half their excellent qualities.

A few decades back, in films, the niqab was viewed by our public as alluring and fascinating. There are many scenes exhibiting these aspects in old films and serials, scenes made to appeal to our sensibilities.

Now, it has completely turned around with people attributing the most outlandish motives. It’s just the backwash from America’s insane war on terror, fed by Bush’s lame stuff about women’s rights when what he was about was killing.

Women wearing the niqab or the burka – both not really common in the Islamic world – were admitted as immigrants to France with their garments and customs. What right does anyone have to say high-handedly, after they have moved their lives there, they must do away with it?

This is the attitude of the intolerant and those who do not understand what they are talking about, using flimsy excuses like women’s rights. A woman’s rights include wearing what she wishes, does it not?

The reasons for these garments among a minority of Muslims are complex – social, historical, and not just religious, but for devout wearers religion is very important, more so than secular critics can understand.

Almost all immigrants eventually give up their native dress. It is up to them to decide on that, not shrill accusers in a newspaper column.

Those shrill demands are the way Americans behave. It’s one of their most unpleasant qualities. Live and let live so long as people are not being hurt.

We have women being beaten in their homes by the thousands in all Western countries. We have a world packed with abusive practices towards women – bride burning and horrid shunning of widows in India to female genital mutilation (not a Muslim custom but an African one with 3 million victims a year) to the widespread acceptance of fathers and other elders raping young girls in Africa, and people focus on this insignificant phenomenon?

It wasn’t many decades ago that fashionable women in Britain and the United States wore veils with hats. Would anyone with manners have asked a woman then to remove her veil? Indeed a vestige of this practice remains in our wedding ceremonies with the bride wearing a veil only her husband lifts.

No wonder the Muslim world feels under assault from the West. We bomb their countries. We keep men in secret prisons. We say forms of torture are okay. And we interfere with their religious and cultural practices here. Can anyone blame them for feeling angry?

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY SHEEMA KHAN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Ms. Khan, there is to my mind only one made-in-Canada approach to this matter.

That is, let people do as they wish in their private lives and as they feel their religion directs them.

Anything else is state interference into private lives and religion, an abhorrent concept in which I am sorry to see France becoming involved.

I don’t like burkas, but I didn’t like nun’s heavy habits of only a few decades ago either. Some of them were godawful outfits, covering from head to toe and pinching the face in heavily starched material. I’m not too fond of the grotesquely ugly clothing strict Mennonite women wear too.

But it is all none of my business.

We had no complaints about those excesses. The complaints today reflect raw anti-Muslim prejudice, and we have no business accommodating that.

Over time, as people adjust to a new society, they or at least their children, will give up these ancient customs. It just takes time.

It was only a couple of generations ago that women from Eastern Europe, and actually many others, wore babushkas routinely. In the World War II period, it was stylish for women to wear veils on their hats. In Victorian times, women covered themselves in heavy dark clothing and wore hats with large heavy veils. All just common fashion, and all of it has disappeared.

If people out there are concerned about women’s rights, then look to the world’s many true horrors and do something about them.

Three million women a year undergo sexual mutilation in Africa. It is routine practice also in many parts of Africa for older men in a village to rape young girls.

In India, we have bride-burning and honor killing. We also have a ghastly tradition that marries off little girls to rich old men, so the family can get a little money. This horror is compounded by the fact that when the old man dies, the girl is left a widow, and there are terrible rules which apply to her for the rest of her miserable life, including never marrying again and even the clothes she must wear and the food she must eat. Tens of millions of widows in India live under this tyranny.

The world is full of genuine horrors and abuse, never mind what someone wears by custom.