There’s no two ways about it – the Burka is a scary looking thing. Far beyond a simple scarf, like that used by Orthodox Christian women in Church, Hijabs worn by more than half of all Muslim women, or even Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the Burka is enigmatic symbol of oppression. The vast majority of women in the world, regardless of religion or region, would concur. Seeing a woman with a full hood pulled over her entire head, only a piece of mesh stretched across her eyes for her to see, is down right bizarre. Simply put, it’s scary and can remind one of the walking dead. When this writer sees women like this, my immediate reaction is one of sympathy. I feel sorry for the women, making up less than 5% of the Muslim world, who feel they need to wear such a ghastly and horrible thing that in no way is called for by any Islamic verse. They make the average person, man women or child, feel uncomfortable at best, fearful at worst.
With that said, French President Nikola Sarkozy is an idiot for trying to legislate its use. Yes, it’s bizarre, but what’s next? Banning the overly tattooed? Drafting a law against freaks with twenty-five ear rings, another dozen nose rings, along with pierced lips and tongues? In the end, we do not have the right to draft laws against that which makes us uncomfortable or afraid. Sarkozy is blind to the fact that drafting laws to dictate the dress codes of women is exactly what the backwards dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and Iran do, making himself an inverted reflection of what he says he is standing against.
Us Westerners should also know better when it comes to dress codes anyway, but we’ve forgotten who Christ really was – a brown-skinned Jew from a Middle Eastern Land that bridges Africa and Asia. He wore a robe like the African dashikis or Arab kandoras and often wore a head dress of some kind. He sang and danced to the rhythms of the Eastern world, and lived a life within a culture far removed from the West. He certainly was not of one “us.” Too bad Sarkozy wasn’t around then; maybe he could have stopped that whole opened-toed sandal fiasco of days gone by.
On a final note, when I have spent time in Paris, the porn that was on TV all hours of the day really did seem to elevate the status of women. Vive la France!
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