Posted on 05/28/2009 10:38:56 AM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Funny to return from Lebanon, Syria and Turkey - where women go unveiled - and return to Britain, the land of the full hijab. I see more women with their faces covered in Tower Hamlets than I did in Damascus.
I used to think that covering the whole face except for the eyes was the normal Islamic custom (in a week in Afghanistan I hardly saw a woman's face) and so was surprised to find that even in Syria, the most culturally conservative of the Middle Eastern countries I've just visited, not a tenth of the women seem to cover their faces. Most (by no means all) cover their heads, but you don't get that closed, turning-away feeling you sense along the Whitechapel Road in the East End of London. In the Damascus streets, women in all-women groups, and women with men, chat and laugh; and I saw to be true (what some Muslims have already told me) that the full hijab cannot be considered a religious duty, but is simply a cultural feature of some societies that are Muslim, but not others.
If so, how far should we tolerate it? Spitting is a cultural feature in China but we discourage it here. In Syria I took my shoes off to enter mosques, though that is not in my culture; and wouldn't have worn clothing like skimpy shorts or vests, or drunk alcohol in the streets: practices offensive not to me but to the mainstream culture where I was.
Knowingly to disturb people's feelings is to be offensive. In Western European society, to go out in public with your face masked is (unless done for comic effect) disturbing.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
No, no. He’s got it wrong. When we go there, we have to follow their customs. But when they come here, they can do what they damn well please, and we have to like it. Exhibit A: the African who objected to our flag being displayed in our country on Memorial Day. Exhibit B: The Muslim in Canada who threatened to kill his neighbor because the neighbor politely greeted the Muslim’s wife in their apartment building. Submit. Resistance is futile.
Intolerant racist!
I’m sure the UK police will be at his door shortly asking him to “clarify” his remarks.
The people covering their faces are just Manchester United fans suffering from the defeat by Barcaleona.
Full hijab has nothing to do with religion. In the West, it's a middle finger directed at our culture. A gesture of contempt, not piety.
Perhaps, kufir are “unfit” to gaze on their women.
I know a nurse who said she was instructed never to look at the Saudi male patients in the eyes as it was “offensive” for a woman to do that.
I wonder if they had a similar demand that they not receive any “Jews blood” while in the hospital.
Funny to return from Lebanon, Syria and Turkey - where women go unveiled - and return to Britain, the land of the full hijab. I see more women with their faces covered in Tower Hamlets than I did in Damascus
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