IN MY SHOES: Take The Veil Off, Or Go Home
Columnist Georgie Anne Geyser recounts the strong reaction she had a dozen years ago sitting next to a Muslim woman in the first class cabin of a plane who willingly wore a niqab:
She looked like nothing so much as a black widow spider: not only completely covered in a black robe, but with an ugly contraption over her face that obscured her nose and most of her face. I thought, "My God, it's like a medieval torture device!" Yet I watched her, fascinated.
When they served lunch, I ate the usual way. But for whatever hidden-away human creature was in that black sack, eating was a humiliating journey. She had to take every small bite with her fork, bring it through the small opening in the front of her burqa, up through the top and out around her neck, behind the long and ugly witchlike nosepiece, and finally into her mouth. I had plenty of time to assess my highly emotional response.
I HATED it! I hated not whatever person was wrapped in that medieval sack, but the fact that women still allowed themselves to be trussed up like this, like sexual objects belonging only to the men of the family. I deeply resented it. They threatened me, those black rags. They threatened not only the many Western women I came to know in the Middle East, but also the millions of Arab and Muslim women who have been struggling for freedom, responsibly and valiantly, within their cultures and religions. …
Tough stuff. But Geyser warns: "lest anyone falsely accuse me of ‘discrimination,’ there is no part of the Koran that tells women to cover their faces, only to dress modestly. …"
But modesty is not the point of the niqab. Fundamentalist Muslims insist on subjugating women, even when they live in countries where women are regarded by law and custom as equal to men. But Geyser argues that they also want to subjugate Western women living in European countries:
We have societies of Pakistanis, Moroccans and other Middle Easterners coming to Europe and to Britain, not to belong but to demand and impose. Believe me, these customs impose upon Western women's freedoms, as well. And we have Britain's top leaders begging them not to do what they should never have even thought of doing. …
This is why, although there are many wonderful Muslims in Britain, if they don't address these cases, Muslims will become more and more ostracized. The New York Times just published a comprehensive look at the problem titled "Across Europe, Worries on Islam Spread to Center." In short, "more people in the political mainstream are arguing that Islam cannot be reconciled with European values."
I'm afraid that is true; the only ones who can prove it untrue are the European Muslims themselves. Time to come out from behind the veil. In fact, it's way past time for all this political theater to end - or the players must go home.
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