The Strange Case of the Burqa

I know there are some people who are outraged because Muslim women, in their opinion, are “forced to wear a burqa”. I find this strange because I know of no other item of clothing that is believed to be worn because men insist on it. Indeed, I find the idea that clothing is/was designed deliberately by men (or women, for that matter) to be rather far-fetched. So why is the burqa singled out for this particular reason? I suspect this has to do with Bush/Cheney grasping for straws to justify their “war” on Afghanistan. That is, we were/are there to “save” Afghan women, and the most obvious symbol of their enslavement is the burqa. This is, of course, just more nonsense, Bush/Cheney were no more concerned with saving Afghan women that they were with a woman’s right to choose or equal pay. It was just one more false rationalization for their completely unnecessary and absurd “war” in Afghanistan and their equally absurd “war” in Iraq. If anyone were serious about saving Afghan women the burqa would seem the least of the problems.

I don’t know exactly how wearing the burqa came about, but it apparently existed in parts of the Middle East even before Islam. There are restrictions of this type all over the Middle East having to do with covering parts of the body, especially the face and the hair, but other parts as well. The full length burqa is a rather extreme version of this. And it is true t that the Taliban, an extreme example, insisted that women within their control wear such garments. This is/was unusual in its severity, and went along with other Taliban extremism like not allowing women out of the house unescorted by male relatives, not being allowed to go to school or work and etc. But surely customary modes of dress are the result of usually long-standing customs and beliefs that are not simply imposed on women by men.

Would you say, for example, that American women are forced by men to wear uncomfortable spike heeled shoes, or bikinis? Even when I was a child both men and women wore bathing attire that covered large parts of their bodies. Single-piece bathing suits came later and eventually bikinis, and now what might be called super-bikinis, little pieces of cloth so skimpy they might as well not exist at all. If I had been raised in a Muslim country where women dress extremely modestly, and suddenly was confronted with women dressed in bikinis I have no doubt I would be offended, if not absolutely horrified. But American women were not forced by men to dress in bikinis or spike heels, they chose over time to do so. It is true they probably did this in some sense to please men, but there is no doubt in my mind that Muslim women wear burqas to please their men also. The burqa allows respectable women to move about in society preserving their modesty rather than being forced to stay at home in seclusion. Much the same is true for veils that can be opened for certain categories of people and not for others, and well-mannered women know when it is proper to be veiled and when not. There is a long history and tradition of proper dress in the Middle East just as there is elsewhere in the world.

Some Australian Aborigines went about completely naked, both women and men. Obviously women did not go naked because men demanded it. In many cultures it is common for women to go topless, that is their custom, it is not forced on them by men. In Highlands New Guinea, where I lived for a time, women wear tiny little grass skirts over an even tinier bark undergarment, and go topless. This is not a well-designed mode of apparel for a place where people suffer commonly from colds and other respiratory ailments, but it is the customary attire. If you ask them why they dress the way they do they answer simply it’s the way their ancestors dressed. Among the Tuareg of North Africa only men go veiled. This is quite probably because men spend their time on horseback in the desert and the veils protect them from blowing sand and the hot sun. No one would suggest that women make them wear veils, or even that other men make them do it. It is a custom that developed over time and apparently makes sense to them. In New Guinea in some areas men wear penis gourds and very little else. No one would suggest they do this because women insist on it although it does constitute modesty in dress. Wearing penis gourds is customary, the ancestors did it. Decent women in the United States when I was a child did not wear pants, nor did they paint their faces or peroxide their hair, all of this has changed during my lifetime. There is little doubt that the burqa is slowly disappearing, as it was in Iran and Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. The Taliban are an exception and even they will no doubt fail eventually. There are more and more indications that as Muslim women move into Europe and the U.S. they will be under increasing pressure to give up their traditional dress. It is, of course, not appropriate for a culture paranoid about secrecy with airport screening and so on. The burqa has already been banned in France and other countries, indeed, even the headscarf has been banned, along with other so-called religious symbols (I wonder about the yamulka).

In any case, to say women are forced by men to wear the burqa is no more accurate or sensible than to say women are forced to wear bikinis or Catholic clergy are forced to wear long expensive gowns, or American business men are forced to wear business suits and ties, or orthodox Jews dress in black, it’s all just “fesin b’long tumbuna,” (the way of the ancestors), and fashions change over time. It’s unfortunate the burqa has been singled out for purely political reasons, merely giving bigots more false ammunition against Muslims.