Hijabs and Tight clothes - Page 20

France and Belgium are taking steps in the right direction regarding 'veils of slavery'.

Belgium has become the first European country to ban the wearing of the burqa — what is referred to in western parlance as ''the full Islamic veil'' — in public places. The lower house of the Belgian parliament voted last week to prohibit the wearing of the face-covering burqa in public. Expected to sail through the Senate, this ban will become operational soon. Interestingly enough, not a single MP in the lower house voted against the move, though there were two abstentions.

France is likely to become the next European country to follow Begium. The President, Mr Nicolas Sarkozy's Government is drafting a bill that makes it illegal to wear the burqa on the street.

Earlier France had taken a tough stance in banning headscarves in schools and other educational institutions, triggering protest marches and revolts.

Talking to Europe 1 radio, the French Foreign Minister, Mr Bernard Kouchner, said he was fully aware that some European countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands would frown at such legislation, arguing that it is an infringement on religious freedom.

"Saudi Arabia will say: 'Fine you have the right to do what you want in your country and I also have the right to do what I want, for example, not allow women to drive'," he added. Incidentally Mr Sarkozy has continued to take a tough call on what French leaders believe is the "locking up" of women under the guise of the burqa, and has decided to go ahead with the bill despite warning from the country's top administrative body — the State Council — that such a ban is bound to be struck down by French courts as unconstitutional. But the French President has always argued that the Islamic veil is an affront to French values as it denigrates women.

The draft Bill is likely to be approved later this month, after which it will come up before the French Parliament in July.

intolerance vs dignity

Both the Belgian and French lawmakers argue that ban-the- burqa campaign is not an infringement of religious freedom but in support of a "woman's right to dignity".

In a world that is increasingly being threatened with terrorism, many European leaders also look at a fully covered person as a potential risk as such a dress causes identification problems. The argument is that first of all, those walking in public places should be recognisable. And, two, the full Islamic veil turns the women into "walking prisons".

While in Belgium barely a couple of hundred Muslim women wear the burqa in public; in France which has a much larger Muslim community, the numbers are bound to be much higher. In both these countries, a fine will be imposed for flouting the ban. Those who fail to pay the fine will end up in prison for up to a week.

Notwithstanding that the western world is getting more and more paranoid about visible symbols of Islam, which is not seen in positive light in public psyche, to say the least — a little while ago Switzerland voters decided to ban the putting up of new minarets — there is a lot that can be said in favour of banning the burqa.

Bundles of blue

While one has seen the odd fully covered women in different parts of India, to me the full horror of seeing women imprisoned in the burqa was driven home in Afghanistan in 2005. The Taliban era had been supposedly snuffed out by the US-led invasion of the country by 2001 end, but all over Kabul and Bamiyan, one found majority of women moving around as bundles of blue… faceless, bodyless… and opinionless, it would appear, because they just refused to chat on the street.

It was ridiculous to even ask them if they wore the burqa out of choice, which is the most potent argument dished out in favour of this inhuman dress code imposed on women belonging to fundamentalist families. Later, and after much effort, when I managed to talk to some women in a private place, they made it amply evident that in the Taliban and post-Taliban era, Afghan women hardly did anything out of choice. They had no say in their dress code, the education the children got, health care or any other simple matter ruling their day-to-day lives.

Unfortunately, the picture in the once-modern Iraq, is depressingly similar. Gone are the days of Iraqi women donning the most fashionable of clothes, designed in France or Italy.

The women of Saddam's Iraq, who had a football team of their own as well as a separate trading floor for women in Baghdad's stock exchange, have born the brunt of a war thrust upon them by the US-led allies. And many of them have been reduces to bundles of black in a Shiite regime. So when the debate is on the burqa and a howl of protest goes up from not only a majority of Muslims but also human rights groups who argue that this is an infringement on fundamental rights and religious freedom, the question begging an answer is whose freedom?

Despite holy posturing in a religion that continues to be dominated by men, the fact remains that more often than not it is the mullahs, the fathers, husbands, brothers, and sometimes mothers and grandmothers, who impose the dehumanising full-face and body burqa on younger women. Human Rights Watch, responding to the move in Belgium and France, has said that such bans are a "lose-lose situation. They violate the rights of those who choose to wear the veil and do nothing to help those who are compelled to do so."

Forget the much cooler climes of Europe, or even the question of dignity, I believe it is simply inhuman to enforce such a stuffy dress code for women in countries such as Iran and Afghanistan, or for that matter even India or Pakistan where the blistering summers would make the complete head-to-toe covering a torture. As for the much-touted concept of purdah, here is what a leading Islamic scholar and leather industrialist of Chennai, the late Ahmedali Parpia, had told me in a interview many years ago: " Purdah should be in men's eyes, not on women's bodies!"

French cabinet approves burqa ban law

Wearing or not wearing a veil should be a personal choice. No one should force you to wear it or force you to take it off.