This from the Reform Party of Syria:
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was seen roaming the streets of Damascus flaunting a Hijab. The Hijab worn by women across the Muslim world has come to symbolize either one of three things: 1) a symbol that men control women by forcing piety, or 2) a return to religiosity because of oppressive rulers, or 3) a fashion statement. If you ask any expert on the Middle East, you would get any one of three answers. The ones who usually claim it is a fashion statement are the political rulers who usually oppress people in general. A Hijab is NOT a confirmation of the rights of women in the Middle East but rather a symbol of their suppression.
As a Muslim, I fully understand respect of our religion by visiting US officials and I applaud that respect. Had Speaker Pelosi worn the Hijab inside a Mosque, this would have indicated respect but for Pelosi to wear it on the streets of Damascus all the while she is sitting with the self-imposed Baschar al-Assad who has come to symbolize oppression and one of the reasons why women are forced to wear the Hijab as they turn to religion to express their freedom is a statement of submittal not only to oppression but also to lack of women's rights in the Middle East. Pelosi just reversed the work of the Syrian civil society and those who aspire for women's freedom in the Muslim countries many years back with her visual statement. Her lack of experience of the Middle East is showing.
Assad could not have been happier because Syrian women, seeing a US official confirming what their husbands, the Imams in the Mosques tell them, and the society at large imposes on them through peer pressure will see in her wearing a Hijab as a confirmation of the societal pressures they are constantly under. No one will ever know how many women took the Hijab on after seeing Pelosi wearing it. The damage Speaker Pelosi is causing with her visit to Syria will be felt for many years to come.
I feel the need to shower every time I think that she hails from Baltimore, my own hometown.
Update: Whatever varying opinions we may have on this, Nancy is uniformly a hit among the radical Islamist crowd.
2 comments:
C'mon guys...that's no hijab - it's just a headscarf. I'm absolutely no fan of Nancy, and I agree that given the circumstance it's suspect, but really - it's just a headscarf. Used to wear one myself during cold weather when I was young. My mother hated it - said I looked like I "just came over on the boat" but it kept my ears warm.
I'm definitely not a muslim. And I might have worn even a hijab if I went into a mosque - but I also probably _wouldn't_ enter a mosque, and I _wouldn't_ wear even a headscarf on the streets.
Oh yeah...they also used to call them "babushkas" because the Polish women wore them.
To you, I and Easter Europe its a head scarf with practical use. In the Middle East, where it is forced on women and at least one minister in Pakistan was murdered by radical extremeists in the past month for not wearing one properly - it is much more. And when arguably the most powerful woman in the U.S. goes to the Middle East and wears it inside a mosque, that is a reasonable show of respect. When she wears it outside the mosque and about town with her new chinless beau . . . that is much more problematic, I think
Post a Comment