Years ago, I warned that the simple headscarf (hijab) was but the first step to full fabric incarceration. I was mocked and disparaged then by Muslim adherents, as well as many on the left. To them, such challenges to cultural practices validate bigotry and threaten liberties. Their laudable concern makes criticism impossibly difficult. Now they are everywhere, ravens, in burka (long cloaks) and niqab (face veils), their little girls scarved and in cumbersome long coats (in training, I am told) for that big day when they too can go into prisons of black polyester. They will be smiling, one mother of four daughters said to me. Or they may be crying, I said, and nobody will see either.
It is a form of female apartheid, of selected segregation tacitly saying non-veiled women are pollutants. There is such a thing as society and we connect with our faces. A veiled female withholds herself from that contact and reads our faces, thus gaining power over the rest of us.Choice" cannot be the only consideration. And anyway, there is no evidence that all the women are making rational, independent decisions. As with forced marriages, they can't refuse. Some are blackmailed and others obey because they are too scared to say what they really want. Some are convinced they will go to hell if they show themselves. Some bloody choice.
It sexualises girls and women in the same way as "erotic" garb does and is just as obscene.
When a woman is fully shrouded, how do we know if she is a victim of domestic violence?
!
