Strip Off!

You will have to explain a little bit anya.

Or not.

You completely lost it jingl

If they dress modestly because the argument is that it stops men's lust. Does that merely allow the men not to exercise self control? That the women have to help the men to behave appropriately by the way they dress?

Yes but say they choose to be oppressed?

So, it's ok for women to wear signs of oppression just so long as they look good?

What has "looking beautiful" got to do with anything?

I am totally agnostic about the choices of apparel muslim women make. Particularly if it is their choice.

But it does seem somewhat obsessed about sex?

I don't believe it is Pogs. I find it difficult to articulate my feelings about the burka, I can't see it as anything other than a statement that men are so unable to control themselves that women must be covered from head to toe in an ugly tent. I hope not to offend anyone but it's a symbol of oppression to me, though I accept many women chose to wear it.
Many Young Muslim women in our part of England wear very attractive hijab. They look good, often wear them with skinny heans and very skilfully applied makeup. I've no issue with hijab in the workplace but I don't mind people wearing a cross, turban or Yamika either.
A friend lived in Iran during the late 60's early 70's and remembers it as a place of relative freedoms where dress was an individual matter. Her photographs show young Northern Europeans and Iranians wearing similar clothes and mixing freely. No more.

Quoting tanith. "she likes the feeling of modesty it gives."

Sounds like posturing to me.

Nadiya does not wear a burka/niqab and looks beautiful in her hijab.

Another point the Muslim faith cannot agree on is the wearing of the burka in accordance with it's own teachings.

It's interesting to note how many countries ,including some European countries such as Switzerland,France, Italy have a 'Burka Ban'. I believe Germany has just decided not to go ahead with a proposal.

www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/burka-bans-the-countries-where-muslim-women-cant-wear-veils/

If we are discussing the Burka/Niqab I am minded of two voices of women I have heard.

One was a woman interviewed recently in Syria in a town that had been liberated by the Kurds. She ' hated 'the burka with all her soul and what it stood for and the fact Daesh made them wear them.

The other is an Iranian friend who ' hates ' the burka with all her soul too. Before the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979 she remembers the relative freedom the country had , including female clothing. We all know what happened afterward and the rule of Ayotolla Khomeini and I for one see the burka as nothing more than 'the imprisonment of women'.

As for the incident on the beach I thought it was over the top and unnecessary. I felt sorry for the woman to be honest.

In her new program Nadiya said she decided to wear it when she was 14 and she discovered religion even though her own family aren't particularly religious.. she likes the feeling of modesty it gives.

had been

Yes Stansgran. And if you had a police-person on duty that night in Nice, you might be feeling a little animosity to anything muslim right now. I'm not saying it's right. Or that is/was the case. Just that, if it was, it's understandable.

Can we have a link to that news item please Anya. I find it hard to believe.

Ah yes, nuns! During the height of The Troubles, the nuns were forced to remove their veils and that solved everything

I read somewhere that the armed police on the beach v.burkini lady was staged. I think all this is revenge by the French for Nice and Rouen. I cannot stand the face covering outfits in the uk . I think most of the time they are making a point. I think in Muslim countries then these poor women are stuck. The women I've met in the uk have always appeared to be wearing it because they are used to it. As new brides they always seemed to have clothes bought by husbands that struck me as rather tarty. It will over the next few hundred years turn into traditional worn for special occasions outfit like kimonos or dirndls.

I wonder if these paintings by Georges Seurat should get the chop too? The people in the first are mostly fully clothed, and every one of the adults is wearing a hat! In the second, the woman is probably wearing twice as many clothes as the woman on the beach at Nice!

www.georgesseurat.org/Sunday-Afternoon-on-the-Island-of-la-Grande-Jatte--1886-large.html

www.georgesseurat.org/Bathers-(Study-For-Bathers-At-Asnieres)-1883-84-large.html

I don't know if I'm missing the point or not, but that woman at Nice beach who stripped off on allegedly being forced by four burly armed men was not wearing a burkini, or any garment which was recognisably Muslim, even. She was wearing a blue top over black loose trousers and top and a separate blue scarf wrapped around her head.

Had she been western, I bet no-one would've given it a second thought.

Ironic, isn't it!

On one thread some of us are moaning about the state of our hair, yet on this one we are discussing whether women should choose or have to cover their hair.

Is it considered erotic in Islam, that no man apart from a woman's husband is allowed to see it?
I can't see why there is this need to cover it, but if that is what women choose to do fair enough.

An Iranian student in a class I was teaching, at coffee time, when the men all went to have a break (ciggie), took off her scarf to show us what was under it. Shock horror! Her hair was cropped very short and dyed blonde. She looked terrific, but she had to put the scarf on when non-related males were present. She did have a lovely selection of scarves which her mother used to send her from Iran.

Not even for the sake of future generations? When something they are being made to wear is uncomfortable and unhealthy?

Nuns used to scare the shite out of me.

Interestingly, many Nuns who wore a tunic covered by a scapular and cowl with a veil in the late 60's no longer do so today. This was because they felt that they could reach the public to do their charitable work wearing civvies with a veil covering their heads. I grew up around Nuns and I didn't think anything of their attire even when you could only see their faces, everything else completely covered. Perhaps that is why it doesn't bother me at all if people choose to cover up as part of their identity any more than it does Hell's Angels, EMO's or any other kind of "club" and I don't think anybody has the right to question it.

Most women who wear a scarf only do so in public and not at home. None of our business why she chooses to do so- but I'd be pretty surprised if it is actually to cover up 'bad hair'.

Well, she will have bad hair if she wears a headscarf all the time.