Ten things wrong with the President of France’s wanting to eliminate the burqa.
lawful: continuum: coitusandcopouts: subtlecluster: sexismandthecity:
1. Mandating how women should dress is mandating how women should dress, whether it is a mandate to wear a burqa, or a mandate not to wear one. When a man tells a woman how to dress, it’s paternalism and subjugation one way or the other.
2. Plus, as Dori points out, a man telling a woman that too much of her body is covered, and that she needs to expose more of it to his view, is pretty weird. How much modesty is too much? How much exposed flesh is enough to satisfy Sarkozy?
3. A Christian man imposing rules of dress upon Muslim women does little to actually foster the kind of gender equality he claims to be advancing.
4. Sarkozy talks as though there is no “subjugation of women” among the non-Muslim denizens of France. As though France is a wonderland of gender equality. According to WikiGender: “Compared to other countries, France has always been rather late in adopting gender equality as a goal and designing policies to achieve it.” So why suddenly all this concern for a certain subset of French women, who just randomly happen to come from a community hated and feared by many in France?
5. What other items of clothing does Mr. Sarkozy disapprove of? Do they also happen to correspond to certain disfavored, marginalized communities?
6. Any attempt to “eliminate” burqas in France will only serve to further marginalize the women who wear them. Burqas, for some women, represent a compromise. Some individuals believe women are not supposed to be seen in public, or be looked at by men outside of the family. In this extreme view, women would be entirely confined to the house and removed from outside society unless they can put on a burqa and go out. Eliminating the burqa for these women would mean eliminating their access to the world. Better conditions for such women require a little more work than outlawing a piece of clothing.
7. Eliminating burqas in France would not mean that women’s oppression in Muslim communities would end. It would simply be a cosmetic change that would do nothing to actually work with communities and empower French Muslim women to achieve equality. It is a measure that ignores all nuance and avoids all honest work to actually tackle the heart of the problem.
8. All this “eliminate the burqa” talk fits just a little too snugly with the popular “Islam oppresses women” meme that Christian Westerners like to toss around, particularly when they are trying to frame a “War of Civilizations”.
9. Also, doesn’t this just come off as a cheap attempt at burnishing his Women’s Issues credentials while effectively only harassing a marginalized, already-persecuted minority? And doing little to nothing to further true societal equality for all women in France?
10. What real issues do French women, and French Muslim women in particular, actually face that Sarkozy is completely avoiding by diverting attention with this stunt? Why randomly target French Muslims now?
4 days agoVia the czech
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“I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.”
Haruki Murakami
[Y: reminds me of these lines from Kahlil Gibran -
Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.]
5 days agodmha:
Dalia Ziada: Can a comic book about MLK change the Middle East?
“Last year, I — as North Africa Director of the American Islamic Congress — proudly worked on editing and publishing the Arabic version of “The Montgomery Story” Comic Book. Publishing such a book in Egypt was a challenging story of overcoming many obstacles over the course of almost four months. Thousands of copies of the Arabic version is now distributed all over the Middle East. Last week, I received a notification from my colleagues at AIC-Boston office that a Vietnamese activist group got inspired by our idea of translating the comic book into Arabic and they translated the comic book into Vietnamese and published it to inspire young people there. I also, knew that the comic book was translated and published in Spanish. Among all these pleasant news, I received an email alert today that the famous academic website: History News Network published this interview with me about publishing such an important historical book for Arabic readers. I am really happy!”
Read the Article here
This is really interesting and is my first time hearing of such comic being done. I am looking forward to reading it.
for information on Dalia Ziada click here
بوہت آلہ کیا خوب کاریگری ھے
I LOVE IT!!
[this is SO awesome - especially because the first word with which i tested it was ‘theek,’ and it spelled it perfectly in urdu, whereas it spelled ‘teekh’ wrongly. GREAT SUCCESS! yet another tool i can use in my ‘theek/teekh’ warS with a certain ridiculous misspeller. -y]
5 days ago
Facebook | Saud Inam’s Photos - Random Stuff (Part 3)
[via the incomparable 2Scoops! with whom i get to hang out in DC in a WEEK. yay! -y]
1 week ago
keep being awesome! (via passiveaggressivenotes)
[this made me laugh…and the resulting comments, even more so. -y]
1 week ago
You're allowed to have jitters.
- Pep talk: Nervous traveller? I understand. Everybody wants you to be as comfortable as possible, so if you need to take some medicine, or close your eyes, or breathe into a paper bag, do your thing! You don't have to act brave or tough (you are brave and tough in plenty of situations) you just need to take care of yourself as best you can.
- Today remind yourself: I'm allowed to have jitters.
- [reminding myself of this ahead of time, since i have a couple of trips coming up in july. i love traveling to places (and window seats and ice-cold cranberry juice on planes), but no matter how disgruntled i get at having to unwrap and re-do the headwrap at every damn security point, and no matter how much i fear that the airlines will lose my luggage containing all my favorite clothes, and no matter how much i dislike airports without free wifi, the only thing that makes me jittery about flying is when the plane reaches a certain altitude and my ears start popping like crazy - so much so that it makes me double over in pain and brings me to tears every single f*cking time. and for a girl who hates admitting vulnerabilities and refuses to cry in front of people, well, this is tough. so, here's me reminding myself, IT'S OKAY. I'M ALLOWED TO CRY. -yasmine]

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[yellow doors and shutters! be still, my heart. -y]](http://4.media.tumblr.com/uqXi7MTIYp1g0m8tg66SSQcao1_500.jpg)