ElfRuler wrote:I have meet plenty of Muslims who share some of your views PO.Perfect_Order wrote:Elfruler, very good response, I enjoyed reading it. You are right there is no monolithic measure of the progress of women. And we should not be so quick to use the western view as a role model, especially knowing it's pitfalls and short-comings.
I was just messing around with the whole oppression of women by the niqab, in that it erases a womans identity. If women are to be liberal and they have the right to dress down, it confounds liberty to put conditions preventing them to also dress up.
I fear that we too often get bogged down in pitting one side against the other. Either we focus too much on the consequences of too much liberty, or the oppressions of too little liberty. When we can be introspective on both sides. Muslims societies do for the most part denegrate the position of women, and confine them to rigid standards and customs. Non-muslim societies have pushed their societies so fast that they have left a lot of women alienated and confused.
My last point is that, muslims not having much to draw from their present, have reached to the past in a way to not let the west monopolize the progress of women. So just like you have, you will reach to antiquity, to illustrate how Islam was first at this. Well, the reality is, Islam is behind, and what their forefathers have done, is not being done today. So, we need to come to grips with our own reality.
A human being's identity is not limited to their facial structure. The argument that the niqaab "erases a woman's identity" is a extremist feminist and anti-Islam/Muslim argument used by those who make it their business to distort and misconstrue the actual principles and Islamic stance on the niqaab. I have yet to see your face or your body, yet your identity as a human is still intact and unquestionable.
Being liberal also includes the right to dress-up, but Western interpretation of liberalism is biased against dressing up. They have passed laws banning women from wearing the Hijab in some European countries as well as the niqaab. We have to also remember that terms such as freedom, liberty, and justice are continuously employed to expand Western intrusion into Muslim lands. Some basic principles of human rights which are also labelled liberty are universal in nature. But in each society the boundaries of liberty is shaped by the collective cultural knowledge of its people.
I agree that we do tend to be one-sided, but it's not the Muslims who are running a multi-million dollar propaganda machine meant to dehumanize, devalue, and re-educate Muslims about Islam and their own identity using an anti-Islamic approach. A woman should never be judged solely on how she dresses, it's superficial and counterproductive. And in Islam the Qur'an (as well as the hadith) did not prescribe a punishment for a woman who does not wear the hijab nor did the Prophet (PBUH) or the Rightly Guide Caliphs punish a woman for not wearing the Hijab, let alone the Niqaab. It's a matter concerning only her and Her Lord. Women being forced to wear niqaab or hijab is not Islamic, but a result of the current existing authoritarianism in many Muslim countries creeping into the private matters of its citizens.
The Qur'an of yesterday is the Qu'ran of today, but the Muslims of the past and the once in the present are completely different and much of that difference stems from Muslims today being clueless about their faith and failing to differentiate between the socio-political manifestation of government oppression and society in general from Islam. You can't confuse the nature of Muslims with the nature of Islam.
Islam is neither behind nor forward, it's forever centered as the Qur'an is. Muslims, however being humans that experience endless cycles of social change will progress or regress depending on their current and historical economic, political, and military connections with themselves and other societies. You can not judge the progression of Islam using Muslims and the current status quo of their governments as an example, especially, when Muslims continue to fail to implement the basic principles of Islam in their lives. WE need to focus on our individual understanding of Islam and ourselves, before venturing out into the World of Islamic reality.
The Elf and the Ruler makes sense now
