Thursday 3 September 2009

Feminists and the Burqah

Nasrene Malik has written an article in the Guardian today urging feminists to get over their obsession with removing the burqah and assist Muslim women with sensitivity with dealing with the real issues they have to face in their lives:

“Although basic rights and dignities are universal, there are ways of enshrining them without perfectly emulating a western experience. That is not to say that Muslim women should be left alone and be allowed to choose to be repressed because it is their right, but in deeply traditional societies, women choose their battles and make distinctions between wants and needs.

The endeavour to help Muslim women is also undermined and treated with increased cynicism when it is morally hijacked in order to underwrite less idealistic campaigns. The latest developments in Afghanistan prove how easily women's rights can be relegated even under western sponsorship. Is female education, the violin that accompanied the drum beats of war in Afghanistan, no less universal a right than freedom from sexual terrorism?”

You can read the whole article here.

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