the oppression of the barbie doll.
Jim Henley (of the great
Unqualified Offerings)
took issue with my earlier statement that
the bikini is a tool of female oppression much like the burka. It's hard to do justice to his critique by excerpting just part of it, and I feel odd about just copying the entire text here, so do take a look for yourself at his link.
I think that Jim's analysis of the burka is fundamentally
sound. It's an oppressive and cruel imposition on women when worn
against their will (as a significant fraction of burka wearers undoubtedly are). But I was talking more about the bikini, not the burka, and Jim's response is very burka-centric (though since he doesn't consider the bikini to be oppressive, he takes understandable umbrage at the comparison). While Jim hasn't posted on his specific views about the bikini, I'll assume that he holds similar views as Steven Den Beste, in that he
equates the bikini with Freedom.
So, let's start with the burka. What is it? As routinely imposed on women, it is a full-length one-piece garment that covers the woman from head to toe, almost invariably black. Usually the face is
uncovered, except in extreme cases where there is a veil or even worse, a metal faceplate. This is almost exclusively a Sunni-Wahabi innovation of recent times, whereas if you look at the modes of modest dress in other Islamic societies you see much more healthy interpretations, ranging from the two-piece colorful
ridah garments worn by women in my own community, the
Dawoodi Bohras, to fully-Westernized business attire (jacket, pants) topped with headdress or scarf. Many muslims living in America use a particular form of headscarf known as
hijab, which is a shawl that drapes around the women's head and shoulders. It's a matter or ethnic and cultural variance as to how much hair is visible, or whether the shoulders are covered, or whether it's black or white or some other color. There is an incredible variety of which non-Muslim commentators are almost universally ignorant of - it's no exaggeration to say that the variety of Islamic female fashion easily matches if not exceeds the variety of fashion found in Western societies. In fact, since many Muslim comunities are Western, there is a healthy mixing between these two fashion universes, with many innovative and (dare I say it?) attractive innovations.
However, none of these fashionable garments are worth anything if they are imposed against the woman's will. However, apart from a few cases (worst offender being Saudi Arabia, homeland of Wahabism), modest dress is part of the culture and not a cruel imposition.
It's important to emphasise that the Qur'an places restrictions on womens' and men's dress (both). These restrictions are solely for
modesty, whose importance as a virtue is comon to Judaism and Christianity.
Attractiveness is NOT the same as sexiness. It is possible to be attractive and yet retain modesty, but sexiness is inherently immodest, because it promotes women as sex objects. Modesty is retaining your dignity - and maintaining your identity as a person, to be respected on the basis of your character. Webster's dictionary defines it as "humility respecting one's own merit." The concept of merit is intrinsic to the Islamic concept of modesty as well.
Many women choose burka freely, as well as lesser variations such as hijab or ridah. Even the most oppressive-seeming burka with metal faceplate and voluminous robes is actually a weapon in the hands of a woman when chosen willingly. My own wife wears ridah full-time, even to medical school, though I was initially against the idea. But I supported her in her desire to achieve her moodesty, and the result has been astonishing. But the benefits she derives from wearing ridah are a topic for some other time.
Contrast the Qur'anic prescription of modest dress with the
tribal custom of imposing oppressive dress on women. It's not exaggeration to say that Islam, Judaism, and Christianity brought the first concepts of equality between genders to tribal peoples who at the time had decidedly primitive notions of gender roles. To take one self-aimed example, pre-Islamic customs of burying first-born daughters alive was stridently condemned by Muhammad SAW. Yet these practices still persist in modern times - for example in Nigeria, where a woman was sentenced to
death by stoning for adultery. Also recently a woman was sentenced to be buried up to her neck in sand and again stoned, for having a child out of wedlock. And there is the case of the
gang-rape of an innocent girl in Pakistan, and
riots in
India.
These kind of barbaric decisions are always made in
remote villages by a band of grizzled elder
men, who invariably call themselves an "Islamic court". The truth is that these are immoral primitive tribal customs, which are used by the tribal elders as a power play of enforcing their authority. They are wrapped in poorly-argued Islamic reasoning, often bundled with some selective out-of-context Qur'anic verse, so that no one dares argue. But this is not Islamic, it's purely a primitive cultural practice, with its sole aim as a power play of
I-have-control-over-you.
These tribal impulses of control are the root cause of the Saudi burka, and the absurd punishments in Nigeria and Pakistan, and the concept of honor killings. They also, to a lesser degree, are the underlying philosophy behind the bikini, which is the real subject of this essay.
The bikini was invented in 1946 by an engineer in Paris, Louis Reard (here's a
history link via Google). The historical record doesn't mention whether Reard was grizzled or an elder, but he was definitely male, and the bikini was a invention specifically designed to "stir the masses". What the bikini does is reduce the woman to a caricature of sexual desire - by revealing almost every part of her anatomy, it completes obliterates any trace of modesty (and hence, undermines her respect in her own merit).
It's true that some women wear bikinis because they have pride in their bodies and don't care (or need) what men think. But a larger fraction of women wearing them are doing so because they want to influence the response of men in some way. Jim Henley called this the "sexual power if women" but it is analogous to appeasement. Whatever power the woman has, is being bent to serve the desires of the other party (in this case, titillation of the male). One of the major flaws in Jim's argument is unstated but implicit assumption that the bikini is an expression of female power - but in fact, it's an abject surrender. Is it really true that women have to strip down to two strategic strips of cloth just to excercise their power?
The bikini and the burka are so far to the extremes that they meet again. They both serve to reduce women, from a person, to an object. In the case of the burka, that object is "slave". In the case of the bikini, that object is "sex". The burka is forced upon women, for fear of consequences, whereas women are induced to wear the bikini, out of desire for consequences. But in both cases those consequences are to please males.
The bikini and the burka can both be used by women as expressions of power and independence. The burka, or ridah, or hijab, can be a powerful weapon of modesty, if chosen freely (and in fact, it is in Western countries like America that Qur'anic modes of modesty in women's dress do finally take on the meaning they were intended to have, because of the freedom of choice. America is the greatest Islamic country on earth). Likewise, the woman wearing a bikini solely out of her personal pride in her appearance has turned the bikini into a weapon of self-expression.
That said, the bikini is not Islamic, because it is immodest. Whether you care about modesty or not of course is irrelevant to the issue of whethr you are being oppressed or not.
But in the West, many women wear bikinis to try and attract the attention of men. And in the East, many women are forced to wear burka, especially cruelly oppressive versions. In that case, both are wrong and immoral, and this is why I claim that they are equally oppressive.
UPDATE: in my last clause, I said that women wearing a bikini solely to attract the attention of men is comparable to women being forced to wear the burkah by men. This is a manifestation of men's control over women, and it is that control which I am labeling immoral. I was careful to only use the word "immoral" in the context of focring women to wear burka (or the power play which makes women want to wear a bikini to please men).
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the primacy of the Qur'an.
Bill has posted an interesting
analysis of Catholic-Protestant relations, which included this brief summary of these churches' attitudes towards each other:
There was a time when Catholics regarded the Protestant insistence on the primacy of the Bible to be anathema, and labelled them heretics. In turn, Protestants considered the Catholic hierarchy to be servants of the antichrist.
This is (somewhat) analogous to the Shia-Sunni view of each other's schools of thought. The Sunni regard the Shi'a insistence on a religious hierarchy (and the
esoteric
interpretations of the Qur'an) as blasphemy, insisting on the
literal Qur'an. Speaking straight from my bias, I find this critique to be hypocritical, since most invariably place Bukhari-Muslim on a higher pedestal, even when hadiths from these "sahih" collections
contradict the Qur'an. If you think about what hadith actually are (ie. purported sayings of the Prophet SAW), then this also becomes ironic, since Bukhari and Muslim have thus created a kind of cult of personality around the Prophet SAW, which is the same accusation leveled at Shia regarding Ali AS (and the Imams after him).
Turning the analogy backwards, no Shia that I know of would find the Sunni insistence on the primacy Qur'an to be an "anathema" the way Catholics regarded Protestants' view of the Bible. But the concept of what the Qur'an is trancends just the literal book. The Prophet SAW has said (in a hadith accepted uncritically by both Shi'a and Sunni observers, and whose
isnad is traced back through Ali AS himself) that there is the
Qur'an-e-Natiq (speaking Qur'an) and
Qur'an-e-Samit (silent Qur'an). These refer to Ali AS and the physical book, respectively. In fact the "an" suffix of Qur'an itself implies a duality. Therefore Shia also believe in the primacy of the Qur'an, but find the view that the Qur'an is only a collection of literal words in Arabic to be overly simplistic (especially considering its divine source).
So, Shia and Sunnis are united in their regard for the Qur'an. However, understanding what the Qur'an actually is is another matter. But these are not incompatible positions and are actually complementary.
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posted by Shi'a Pundit
There is no God but Allah.
Brian has some rather
derisive comments about an observation by a muslim on the Ar-Rahman list, that the Azaan is continually being recited around the world, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and will continue until the Day of Judgement:
If we were to ponder over this phenomenon seriously and studiously, we would conclude the amazing fact that: 'There is not a single moment when thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Muazzins around the world are not proclaiming the Oneness of Almighty Allah and the Apostleship of the noble Prophet Sallallahu Alayhi Wasallam on the surface of this earth!' Insha-Allah, this universal and continuous calling of the Azaan shall not cease until the Day of Judgement, and we should all make du`a for the same, AMEEN.
This seems fairly obvious, but it has less to do with the fact that the Earth is round and much more to do with celebration of the essential nature of Tauhid - the Oneness of Allah. Tauhid is the root of the Muslim's belief. From my perspective, I find this to be a deeply moving observation.
I'm studying for my PhD in MRI physics, I was born in Chicago, I lust after a PS2 and I drive a 2002 Ford Explorer, so I have all my yuppie genX westernized american credentials in place. Still,
it moved me. It isn't a cultural thing, it's a religious one, and attaining a level of understanding about the framework of Islam has perhaps made me attuned to the message of this insight in a way that others can't understand. STill I am an optimist, and I am sure I could explain the reasons why this insight affected me so deeply, if I had the words. For now, though, I am contentto bask in it, and leave the explaining to others, if they desire to. I am content to have found it and for that I owe Brian thanks.
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