I'm with CZZ. To me, given the small number of people who have used the niqab as a "mask" for criminal activity, fears about it seem unfounded and culturally biased. We have many more instances in the US with people hiding weapons in baggy clothing- especially very baggy jeans and long sportswear jersy shirts. I'll never forget a special I watched on school safety in which a teen demonstrated being able to hide several guns including a *rifle* and several knives in one single outfit of very baggy jeans and long sportswear jersey. Unless we are fair about it and start proscribing a public dress code that prohibits all capacity for hiding identity (naked, anyone? OK, bobx would feel comfy, but most women wouldn't
) and all capacity for hiding weapons, any proscription against the niqab specifically just demonstrates a prejudice and goes against the constitutional right to practice one's religion.
Personally, I don't give a hoot about whether the niqab is necessary or not in Islamic belief. What I care about is every person's right to choose how to practice their own faith, so long as it the
practice is not harming others. Claiming that the niqab is harmful to public safety is just laughable.
One in three American women is sexually assaulted in her lifetime, almost universally by men. So should men be taken off the streets because being a man means they are statistically more likely to commit such a crime? There is at least much more statistical grounding for that action than to say some half billion Muslim women should have some dress code enforced on them because there are under a dozen incidences of it being used falsely. Statistically, it's just completely irrational. It's cultural prejudice, that's all.
I believe in women's rights, and I believe that means upholding every woman's right to her religion and construction of gender role.
Generally speaking, I think the US culture has little ground to stand on when it comes to debating about women's rights and freedoms. On paper, we have equal rights, but culturally we do not and it is devastating. When one third of women are sexually assaulted (and many others don't report it!), when girls as young as 8 or 9 are concerned with their appearance and learning to view themselves as sexual objects, when 18 year old girls are getting Botox as "preventative measures"... we have a seriously deranged cultural idea of "freedom" for women. Sure, I can dress in a bikini top on the street, but when someone date rapes me I'm unlikely to get him prosecuted because "I asked for it." The "freedom" to all wear skimpy attire isn't freedom until men and women view the body as sacred and respect the bodies of others. Until then, women's bodies and minds continue to be exploited for the sake of capitalism... to get us to buy products so we look pretty and young and whatever. I fail to see how that is less oppressive than wearing niqab. I fail to see how worrying about being sexually attacked, even by men you know, is less oppressive. I have held more than one friend in my arms as she cried after being raped or abused. So until we fix this incredibly widespread problem of harm to women in the US and really give women equal freedom... I think we're just paying lip service.
Again, just like we ignore the real sources of sexual misery in the US and have widespread homophobia, we ignore the real sources of women's freedom in the US and have hysteria about "traditional/modest" women... the extreme being the niqab. But I've heard rants against various other orthodox women, including fundamentalist Christian women who choose to have many children and stay at home, Amish and Quaker women who choose to dress traditionally, and Jewish women who wear wigs or headscarfs.
These women don't make the same choices I do. But I will always defend their rights to make their own choices.
And before someone feeds out the line "Oh, but it's not a choice! It is brainwashing!" All culture is brainwashing. My own choices aren't just "my" choice. That's part of being human.
