Uh, yeah. I hope that’s cleared up.

I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick Meredith. Personally I’m not in favour of them and wouldn’t ask anyone to wear it. It’s patriarchical, oppressive, and nowhere as attractive as more familiar forms of socially-sanctioned torture such as high heels.

It’s not just Islam. What is your opinion of monks who deprive themselves of all human comforts in the belief that suffering will bring them closer to their god? Who would want a life of seclusion and suffering unless they were led to believe from a young age it was for a good reason? Quaint centuries-old tradition, or a culture of coercion by parents, teachers, seniors, history, society, ‘betters’? Somebody oughta write an article. I mean, people believe the damnedest things sometimes. There is another group of people convinced it’s in their best interests and that of the wider society to wear constrictive clothes and take vows of silence, chastity and privation. We call them nuns. I’m not equating them but beware not everyone sees it the same way. If it’s all about choice where does that leave those taught from an impressionable age they’re being watched every living moment – judged, no less - by a vengeful god?

I also wouldn’t teach young children they were born sinful, nor wear a symbol of mediaeval torture around my neck to proclaim my personal piety and adherence to the supernatural. But that’s just me.

You wouldn’t allow a child to see a woman so demeaned. Fair enough. Preferable instead you implore them to “ENJOY LONGER LASTING SEX” via five metre lettering on a Broadway billboard, amid the reclining figure of a semi-naked nymphette, just down the road from the topless bar (“Wet T-shirt competition! Lunchtime Wednesdays”). And for the umpteenth time don’t leave that Cosmo lying around without hiding the sealed section first.

So which will it be? Oppression or objectification? Is that the dichotomy? Worth another article

I know of several Muslim women so garbed, but who would actually make model "liberalists" if they were allowed the title.

Extra-marital affairs, even prostitution, have been known to occur among some women so adorned with the traditional garb that is so increasingly misunderstood, stereotyped and stigmatized by western liberalists (as apparent here). Anyway, such headwear still finds its way into traditional women's dress in Christian southern and eastern Europe, and in some Israeli Jewish communities I've seen too.

For practical purposes, "liberalist" is a more fitting description for the hypocrisy of those who claim some extra religiosity from such fashion, but practice altogether different pursuits than what they preach.

It's funny to read the blanket liberal feminist assumptions about "oppression" implicit in such fashion. What of Muslim men in correspondingly traditional and strict garb - including the headwear - or orthodox Jews, yarmulkes, Amish, etc.?

Get over it.

'There now seems to be an increasing number of liberalists who oppose the universalism, equality and justice pioneered since the early foundations of our religious traditions.'

Well, that statement is a complete joke mil-observer.

Judaism, Christianity (Catholicism) and Islam all bottom out into xenophobia once they gain any kind of political power. Discrimination and gross intolerence against non-monothesitic peoples, or peoples of the 'wrong' monotheism, has been demonstated ad nauseum throughout history. The whole point of secular humanism as a political end is to keep monotheism on a leash. I'm sure Rushdie and other persecuted writers, politicians, and intellectuals would agree.

TR

It is not only monotheistic religions that "bottom out into xenophobia." To see just how brutal a polytheistic religion like Hinduism can be speak to any "untouchable" in India.

Of course religions are not the only vicious ideologies. Mao, Pol Pot and Stalin all espoused atheist ideologies whose cruelty matched that of any theistic religion. I suppose you could use the following classification.

Hinduism is a religion with many Gods. It is a polytheism. (poly = many)

Christianity, Islam & Judaism are monotheisms (mono = "one" or "single")

Marxism is a nullotheistic religion (from Latin nullus = none)

It is RELIGION, not the number of gods, that is the problem.

cont...

Perhaps all ‘face-sack’ wearers - dangerously close to ‘rag-head’, that one - are indeed oppressed. Perhaps some prefer it. From a western perspective the point is “the true test is being able to tolerate the views and behaviour ... of those whose views oppose ours." A national leader has no business publicly announcing his inability to come to terms with foreign cultures at a time religious intolerance was growing and searching for justification. The comment shed no light on that which offends; rather it was a self-indulgence better left expressed in private. It was left to the listener to fill in the gaps.

Our better instincts are often buried under the worse ones - guess where such comments would find resonance? There’s nothing wrong on the other hand in pointing out all Australians are entitled to their beliefs and the respect of others for those beliefs, however alien they might be. Trite, but what’s the alternative? We can take on the world and remake it in our image, hide from it altogether, or deal with it maturely.

All faiths are designed to modify one’s behaviour; some are more effective than others and in a theocracy doubly so. Feel sorry for them all you want Meredith, and whenever you get the chance make sure to explain very carefully to those from other cultures just how yours is superior.

Heya Bennie,

Yeh, I can buy some of that.

But hey when you say "Perhaps all ‘face-sack’ wearers - dangerously close to ‘rag-head’, that one - are indeed oppressed."

Lol, looking for a new word to censor? Words and the right to speak them is a bitch, hey?

Sorry I just don't buy the all religious are equally as bad argument.. Sure the monks may beat themselves up, the atheists hate everything, the Christians think a man walked on water, sucked in on them all... Thing is I doubt Geert Wilders would be banned from a country if he criticized monks or Christians or atheists.

It's a free world, there will be comment, opinion, it is part of a transparent society...

But sorry Bennie love, I do feel deeply sorry for those poor women in their face sacks and will always say so.... How degrading it is to walk the streets, faceless, in a horrible ugly shaped sack... I mean get real here... and why the horrid discrimination from the feminists... SHAME on them.

It was wonderful when that girl who got done for drugs in Indo, converted to Islam and used the religious favoritism to get off the charges and came home to Oz and became a bikini model.... ehhehe

Now that is good Islam :)

With all due respect, I genuinely think Islam needs to soften up and reform, let go a bit, have a beer and show it's tits. Stop taking so much offense at everything and have a laugh at Mohammed drawn as a bomb head etc...

The Christians take it on the chin with the Jesus jokes, I am an atheist I can laugh at Nietzsche dying from madness and the pox,so can other atheists...

Also separating law from religion helped the Christian society's a lot, we stopped burning witches and made some progress.... maybe Islam could have a conversation with the rest of the world about that too...