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In Defense of the Burqa
I never expected to be writing this but, after a lot of thought on the subject, I think I’ve grown to understand the value of this garment, and I’m prepared finally to withdraw my objections and actually encourage women to wear it.
The burqa, for those unfamiliar with it, is the traditional body-covering garb worn by many Muslim women when out in public. I once thought it oppressive, but now think I was mistaken in that assessment because I failed to appreciate the purpose it served.
First, the burqa increases a woman’s safety. It enhances modesty, makes them less attractive to sexual predators, and so gives them a little bit more security. We don’t know how much more security, really, but it must certainly confer some safety. Given that, discarding it merely for convenience or vanity or some misplaced sense of personal autonomy seems short-sighted: safety shouldn’t be compromised for less important things. I think we can all agree.
Secondly, the burqa communicates submission to authority. That’s important in any well-ordered society. There’s no virtue in a nihilistic disregard for the social order. Individualism has its place, but there are larger considerations of public good and civil order, and of respect for those responsible for maintaining it. Dutifully wearing a burqa communicates that respect, and that one is willing to sacrifice a little bit of one’s own liberty to meet the expectations of the larger society.
So, because I value both that unmeasurable and probably small but nonetheless real bit of safety, and because I think submission to authority is a good thing, I encourage women to wear their masks when out in public.
Sorry. I meant their burqas, not masks. Masks? Where did that come from?
Published in Healthcare
I, for one, want to see Hank don the Burqa.
Hang on. I’ll find my Zoom camera….
Babylon Bee worthy.
Or, it supplies a measure of randomness that may entice some sexual predators, especially for those that are gamblers.
Rape Roulette!
Mongo, I can’t dignify that with a response.
[ I actually have a key programmed to type that with one click. ]
Think of the variety of firearms that can be concealed!
Exposed nail polish. Violation of Sharia. Off with both hands.
I don’t know how things are where you live, but in my county there are thousands of Arab women who wear burqas on their head, but also the tightest hot pants you’ve ever seen. Kinda makes you wonder…
“Come and get ‘em” she said.
Though on further reflection, she might say that about the burqa as well?
I believe that’s the hijab.
I stand corrected.
Sounds ideal though, the mullahs can’t tell who they’re supposed to stone to death.
Speaking of tight pants, it’s not something I would ordinarily notice, but around here, Amish men’s dress pants, hand sewn for them by their wives, are some of the tightest butt-conforming pants I’ve ever seen on a man. Their ordinary work pants are not anything like that, and the women’s dresses are anything but tight. Though there was the time when I rode to an intersection in southeast St Joseph county and a youngish Amish woman came around a barn where the wind caught and pressed her dress tight, and wow! I hadn’t known Amish women came in that shape! As I rode past she smiled at me with the self-confidence of someone who was used to being noticed by men.
Presumably because I have a short beard with no mustache, I sometimes get a second look from Amish women, or used to when I was a bit younger. Never a 3rd look, though. I sometimes wondered if I was imagining it, but one time I was helping on a Habitat for Humanity house, and a pleasant young man, one of the two paid crew members, looked at me and asked, “Are you…are you…? No, you aren’t.” And he explained that his parents were Mennonite and his grandparents were Amish, and for a moment he had wondered about me.
And since you got me going on Amish women’s clothing (note that I blame you for the digression) there was a time a little further to the east, in southwest Hillsdale County, when I stopped at a convenience store on a very hot summer weekend day. Maybe it was even a Sunday, because there was an Amish woman ahead of me in line in what looked like a black wool outer dress for Sunday. The Amish in Hillsdale County are a lot more conservative than those further west, and there were no concessions to the weather. Ahead of her were a couple of teenaged girls who probably were legal according to the “no shirt, no shoes, no service” sign, if you had a generous definition of shirt. Not sure about the shoes. I had a hard time watching all of them at once. The Amish woman was tall, towering above them. If you wanted a woman who could wrestle a horse to the ground, she would be your woman. I wondered what sort of reaction she had to those scantily clad girls, but of course I needed to keep an eye on them, too. But although the Amish woman’s face was somewhat red from the stifling heat, she had only a slightly prim expression.
If she had been wearing a burqa, I wouldn’t have been able to tell.
What if she had been wearing the hijab with super-tight shorts?
Sort of like “if we can prevent just one death lockdowns are justified!”.
Even if the lockdowns result in hundreds or thousands of suicides, deaths from lack of medical treatments…
Cost-benefit analysis is hard.
Claiming the moral high ground and shaming people into compliance, in contrast, is pretty easy.
This is the best thing I’ve read this year.
Fortunately this is only month 3. :-)
I didn’t know there were Amish in Michigan. Apparently 11,000.
Really I think they’d be safer with 2 burqas.
Seems like there are a lot more than that, but maybe that’s because they kind of stick out amongst the others. There are a lot more of them across the border in Indiana, though.
There’s just a lot wrong with this picture. The gun is a Russian PKM, which is a pretty darn good machine gun but not something you want to shoot with one hand, and that’s what it looks like she’s doing here. She’s going to break a nail almost certainly, and everything from the third shot onward is going to go straight up or behind her.
You’ve got a key, a key? Mongo don’t stop on account of no stinkin’ key!
Mongo, despite his surely demeanor and pugilistic persona, has a finely honed appreciation for the ripping riposte. Anyway, my goal was to make him chuckle so that his first shot would go high and wide to the right. Upset his trigger discipline and all.
Probably didn’t work.
He often chuckles but do consider: if your humor should ever fail, will you get another shot at it?
C’mon, now. I’m a man of peace.
My go-to place for things Amish is Eric Wesner’s Amish America blog. He splits his time between Amish America and his home of Krakow, Poland, and got his start with Amish communities by doing door-to-door book selling among them.
Eric agrees with you that there are 11,000 in Michigan, which has the 6th largest Amish population among the states. He has spent time with them here in Michigan, and knows some of the people well. In reading his summary of Amish in Michigan just now, I learned some new things about the community in St Joseph County: They are an amalgamation of Swiss Amish such as those you’ll find south of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and the neighboring communities just across the border in LaGrange County, Indiana, whose population is about 30 percent Amish. Mrs R has learned of some interesting cultural conflicts between the Indiana Swiss Amish and others of the more “liberal” varieties in Indiana. Intermarriage can be difficult. But in St Joseph County they apparently have made it work out OK.
Eric has also advised me that I should go bicycling in Poland rather than Russia, because it’s safer than Russia. I’d take either one right now, but the Russian consulates aren’t even taking visa applications due to covid, and I don’t think Poland is letting Americans in, either.