Ugliness Behind the Burqa

John Palubiski comments on the honor killing in Canada:

This murder is an outrage, not because it was committed by the girl's father, but rather because it is clearly motivated by sick, perverse religious impulses.

segacs replies:

*Shakes head sadly*.

So crosses and pendants are okay because they represent "civil society", but hijabs are not because they represent "sick, perverse impulses"?

I don't even know where to start...

Let me start with the "logic" behind the burqa. And by burqa I mean the clothing which cloaks the entire body except perhaps the hands and eyes.

Ask Imam:

According to the Shari’ah, it is incumbent upon a Muslim female to fully cover herself in front of Ghayr Mahram men besides her hands and feet. If any part of her body, be it even a strand of hair is exposed in front of non-Mahram men, she will be sinful for exposing her Satar / Awrah, and will unfortunately earn the curse and wrath of Allah.

Also, a curious reason given for the burqa is that it liberates women from being looked at as sexual objects. This is amusing because the entire essence of a woman is distilled down to her sexuality when she is told to cover up every inch of her body.

Remember that not wearing a burqa draws the hungry cats.

THE nation's most senior Muslim cleric has blamed immodestly dressed women who don't wear Islamic headdress for being preyed on by men and likened them to abandoned "meat" that attracts voracious animals.

You see, burqa-free women are partly responsible for attracting rapists. One finds the vicious, logical conclusion of this thinking in Arabia: "Saudi court punishes rape victim with 200 lashes."

What sweet liberation.

This wretched mindset sees women as only a sexual object -- and men as no more than beasts who should never be enticed. The burqa is a symbol of this monstrous, backwards, uncivil way of life. Women in Islamic nations wear this vile garb not because they choose to but out of fear. Fear that they might be hit or worse.

For example, recently the Iranian regime cracked down on women who didn't wear appropriate dress in public. All across Persia they were liberated.

Another example: In March of 2002 a few Muslim men were presented with two stark choices.

(A) Allow young girls to escape a fire with a small chance that someone might get a glimpse of their ankles or

(B) Block the exits from the inferno which would result in the painful, horrifying deaths of over a dozen girls.

Guess which choice they went with.

There's another aspect to this perverseness. Most Muslim men do not have control over their lives, laws or society. What they do have is tremendous power over women. These men routinely beat women for the smallest transgressions in Islamic nations; the neighbors and the police don't even bat an eyelash. It's an utterly normal and a sick dynamic.

This normalcy is strongly challenged and threatened in Western culture. Here, women have far more choices in every sphere of life. Aqsa Parvez had only rebelled against the most visible aspect of Islam: the burqa. However, in the future, she could have decided to choose her own studies, profession, and even a husband!

Her father had lost control. He at first thrashed her. She still defied him and threw off her glorious garbage bag when she was in school. He finally murdered her. This heinous man constructed a tiny district of the Taliban in a Canadian city but her daughter repeatedly went outside to taste freedom. He couldn't stomp out that freedom. So, he crushed her.

This is what it's about.

I'll finish by asking segacs or any reader: How many Jews and Christians are beaten or killed every year for refusing to wear their religious symbols?

Comments

[Classical Liberal]

Somehow I can’t help but see parallels between the Muslim excuse for rape and murder, and the Muslim excuse for riots, arson, and murder. The former is “the woman made us do it by being feminine and attractive; we can’t control ourselves, and she deserved it.” The latter is “Westerners made us do it by drawing cartoons or by making movies or by saying that Muhammad was a bloody wanker; we can’t control ourselves, and the people we murdered deserved it.”

I may be mistaken, but I understand that Islam is completely fatalistic. That is, free will is an illusion. Allah determines everything that happens in the universe, including whether you will be a good Muslim or a bad infidel. It’s all Allah’s sovereign choice, and the individual human has no say in it—he is just a slave to Allah. If my understanding is correct, than the idea that the rioting, raping, murdering Muslims just can’t help themselves is completely in line with orthodox Islam. Allah made them do it.

Of course, by that line of thinking, Allah also made the women show off their bodies, or the Westerners draw cartoons, so it’s really Allah’s fault. But Allah can do no wrong. Allah is the definition of rightness, so since he made Westerners draw cartoons and insult the so-called Prophet, that must be right too. Therefore the Muslims who attack those things are in the wrong, but it is the will of Allah that the Muslims should attack women and Westerners, so they are really in the right…

One could get dizzy trying to make sense of it. It’s like one of those episodes of Star Trek where Kirk talks a computer or android into shorting out with a paradox.

Kirk to android: Harry Mudd always lies.

Mudd to android: Listen carefully…I’m lying.

Android: You always lie so when you say you are lying you must be telling the truth but you always lie so you cannot be telling the truth but that would make your statement that you are lying a true statement which it cannot be because you always lie…brzzt…does not compute…error!...error!

[Josh Scholar]

I think Canadians are being confused by the emphasis that the press has given the hijab in this story.

This was an honor killing, not a hajab killing.

Usually honor killings are about holding girls captive and making sure that they have a solid reputation for being completely chaste. Researchers have pointed out that families will kill a girl they know to be chaste, because the goal is for the family to have a perfect reputation not to punish the girl. So it doesn't matter if she's innocent of sexual behavior or intentions, she can still be guilty of having a reputation through no fault of her own. This is about reputation, not justice.

Some honor killings are about religion too - Islam mandates the slaughter of apostates and converts. Some family killings may be in obedience to Islam. As one Jordanian politician said when he voted against a bill that would have outlawed honor killings "this is a matter of religious freedom" by which he meant that if Muslims can't murder then they're not free to follow Islam.

[Josh Scholar]

I copied that over to Damian's site and then added this:

By the way, the culture, the history, behind honor killing is easy to understand - it comes from the economics of buying wives.

In Afghanistan, I recently read that the average cost of a wife is about the average of THREE YEARS SALARY.

Now a young man can't have saved 3 years salary, he can only afford a wife if his extended family will give him the money - and if his extended family isn't well off, then they can only afford this expenditure because they're selling their own girls as wives.

But if a girl has a reputation for not being "pure" and chaste, then not only is she worth nothing on the market for wives, but her family will get a reputation for not controlling the attitudes and sexuality of their girls - the market value of all of the girls in the family will go down.

And because of this, the young men in the family will suddenly no longer be able to afford to buy a wife.

You see how the logic works? If a girl has a boyfriend or even a rumor of having one, the family has to kill her, to raise it's reputation as a seller of girls, in order to protect their investment. And the men will have a VERY strong incentive - the choice between having a family and being forced to be single.

Keep in mind that all of the wealthy men will buy more than one wife, so it really hurts to be too poor this way, men will be forced to be single.

Now I don't know how many Arab societies still do things exactly the way the Afghanis do, but they clearly have a culture that holds the attitude where a family owns and sells its girls as wives - we might fairly call them sex-slaves. Certainly the need is strong to control them exactly the way anyone else running a slave business does - you kill any merchandise that would give your business a poor reputation and lower the price of your stock.

By the way, the word that is translated as "honor" in "honor killing" is a mistranslation.

There is a different Arabic word that means honor in the sense we're used to.

This word, however, means "chastity" or "reputation for chastity".

[Liber]

"This heinous man constructed a tiny district of the Taliban in a Canadian city but her daughter repeatedly went outside to taste freedom. He couldn't stomp out that freedom. So, he crushed her."

Exactly. It is the logic of the fundamentalist mind. Good things can only come from the followers of my own religion. Therefore, if anything comes from the followers of another religion that appears to be good, it cannot actually be good. There always has to be a "hidden agenda", like seeking to convert the followers of my religion to another one.

Talibans destroy schools which have been built by Westerners and kill muslim teachers working there for this very reason. They take away the opportunity of the young to receive a very basic education which might be beneficial for the entire community in the long run. They destroy the wells which have been drilled by Westerners for muslim peasants to irrigate their fields. They destroy the crops sponsored by Westerners which feed muslim people.

They do so because it may not be that anything good comes from the kuffar, anything muslim rulers can't provide their own people with themselves. By this logic, it doesn't count if their own people have to suffer. With decidedly Islamic nations boasting many of the richest individuals on this planet, why is that?

Because they don't care for their fellow human beings, not even for their fellow muslims. Because they only care for personal power, and weapons to establish and guard this personal power, and for 72 virgins in the afterlife. Because they don't give a s**t if some muslim peasants die of starvation. They rather buy gold-plated mobile phones for several thousand dollars. Most of the money donated after the 2004 Tsunami for rebuilding housing and providing food and medical care was donated by Western nations and Western individuals.

And yet some toweltopped, fuzzy-bearded geezers tell their followers that "the West" wants to exterminate Islam. And that you have to stop Western influence by subdueing your children in the name of Islam; the boys by taking away their opportunity to become a member of a free society without ridiculous rules and without religious authorities meddling with every single aspect of their personal lifes; and the girls by taking away these same opportunities, plus their right to dress, move and befriend as they see fit, and ultimately -- by taking away their lives.

[Isaac Schrödinger]

Classical Liberal: Islam is allergic to logic.

Josh Scholar: "if a girl has a reputation for not being "pure" and chaste, then not only is she worth nothing on the market for wives, but her family will get a reputation for not controlling the attitudes and sexuality of their girls - the market value of all of the girls in the family will go down."

Right! Furthermore, other girls in the community / town might be negatively influenced by such a minx. So, harsh consequences sends a powerful signal to the rest of the girls to keep themselves away from males.

What does it say about a family that treats its women as sex objects and as a commodity? What does it say about a society when it gives a family thumbs up for murdering an uppity woman?

A disturbing fact about the murder of Aqsa Pervaz is that no-one in the house tried to save her. Not her mother, not her brothers and not a single member of the second family they lived with.

I wouldn't be surprised if Aqsa's mother and siblings knew in advance about the demonic intentions of her father.

Liber: True.

[Saul Wall]

"So crosses and pendants are okay because they represent "civil society", but hijabs are not because they represent "sick, perverse impulses"?"

Is this person saying that there are many instances of people killing their kids for not wearing crosses and pendants? Is it really so hard for segacs to understand that it is the desire to force and coerce, to the point of murder, that is being seen as perverse not the stupid piece of cloth.

[Isaac Schrödinger]

Saul Well: That's the problem. Segacs does see the burqa as no more than a quaint cloth. He (she?) doesn't get the rationale and the, often deadly, use of force behind its makeup.

[Shaz]

why get dizzy, this is coming from someone who is ignorant and cluless!! first read even some translations of the quran, to realise islam is not sick, if men beat women in islam, then its the men that are sick! not islam, and its men who twist words about the quran, just to suit themselves, there are good and evil men in just every religion, just as women, allah dosent make us do anything, greed from man, has caused poverty, macho men overpower women, i can go on and on, honestly islam is a very beautiful and gentle, people that dont know it fully shouldnt really comment. ok the hajab thing, how many cases have you heard in europe of a women in hajab getting raped??? hardly, so the whole point of allah asking the women to protect herself speaks for it self then!!!