The_Veil

I been researching and thinking a lot, trying to understand (or at least accept) the different points of view existing around “The veil”. After all the reading, I got a feeling of frustration and despair, thinking that there’s no way veiled women can be left alone and just be be women, veiled or not. I was asked to argument an argument, and this task has been proved to be extremely difficult to me, although I can clearly see how in almost all points of view, women are left last. The vast majority of people see niqab wearers as “oppressed” and “abused” women. Sheema Khan from The Globe and Mail says: “True, many Canadians feel extreme discomfort with the niqab, as it often evokes negative images of the treatment of women in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia”. Khan is giving a very gentle and diplomatic explanation for the feelings of most Canadians, but this explanation lacks honesty. The painful truth is, that asides a few individuals concerned with human rights, most people don’t care about the suffering of women in the Middle East. People care about the veiled woman at the local mall or grocery store, because she is close and at the same time unavailable, she is wearing her black niqab, she can’t be read. Black, covered, she is perceived as a threat. Mr. Jean-François Copé said: “We are therefore constantly striving to achieve a delicate balance. Individual liberty is vital, but individuals, like communities, must accept compromises that are indispensable to living together, in the name of certain principles that are essential to the common good”. Who decides what is good and what is not' It could be hard to understand what these women are going trough, in the middle of religion, tradition, social pressure, and on top of that, “modern” people trying to “save” them with some kind of strategy that ends hurting them. Their clothes gives them the freedom to go out and work, study, live life. In their own terms and ways. We, non-muslims shouldn’t feel the right to judge them, to be so arrogant, to believe we have the ultimate truth. That woman that we think is so deserving of our pity and compassion, might not want it, might not need it. What could happen if I want to save a niqab wearer woman, and she refused to be saved' My way or else. “In France, a 63-year-old retired teacher, Jeanne Ruby, told Shaika al Suwaidi to remove her veil in a store outside Paris. When Ms. al-Suwaidi, who was shopping with her two young children, refused, Ms Ruby chased her trough the store, ripped off her veil and scratched and slapped her”. (I am sorry woman, to save you I might use some tough love) This is disgusting. This is what messages like Mr. Copé’s do, incite to racism and intolerance, both dark but always alive feelings, perfectly concealed by another kind of veil; the one of the “illegality” and “politically incorrect”. The retired teacher even had the nerve to affirm: “for me, wearing the veil is an act of aggression. I felt attacked as a woman.”. This situation is so bizarre, I can only think that the Ms. Ruby has waited her whole life to openly hate; for her, it wouldn’t make a difference what race or what religion, could be black, jew, hispanic, anybody would do, but she was given an ok-to-hate-card valid against niqab wearing women, and she used it. This attitude, not very surprisingly agrees completely with Mr. Copé’s words: “The person who wears one (niqab) is no longer identifiable; she is a shadow among others, lacking individuality, avoiding responsability”.”But the niqab and burqa represent a refusal to exist as a person in the eyes of others”. Ms. Ruby took the statement to the heart, she thinks (thanks to the ban) she has the right to beat up and and humiliate a woman who is no longer a person but just a shadow. I think about the two little children, watching helpless and scared while a mad woman was attacking their mother and ripping off her dignity. We think muslim women are being constantly abused at at their homes, by the people who are supposed to be protecting them, but at the same time governments are trying to protect them with... abuse' When Ms. Ruby attacked Ms. al-Suwaidi who was really wearing the veil' Who was the barbarian, the terrorist' I hope that when Mr. Copé said: ¨A few extremists are contesting this obvious fact by using our democratic liberties an an instrument against democracy. We have to tell them no” he was considering all extremists, not only some of them, specially the ones professing the Muslim faith. WORKS CITED Copé, Jean-François, Tearing away the Veil, The New York Times, 2010 Paris. Khan, Sheema, Beyond the veil in the courtroom. Globe and Mail, 2011