Beneath The Burqa

Well done France for unilaterally banning the neanderthal, bronze-age practice of allowing burqas to be worn in public. In a civilized, cosmopolitan and largely egalitarian society, the infliction of this parochial, religious barbarism on women should be stamped out and its expositors shunned. The Abaya, Niqab and Chadri – all allies of the dreaded burqa – are relics of of a primitive, nomadic desert culture that denigrates and subjugates women – it’s time the Islamic world got with the times, in cultured Ireland women have been allowed sit on a jury, buy a pint in a pub and work in public sector while married since way back in the late 1970s!

The International Democratic Institute of Offended Theologies (I.D.I.O.T) have long held the belief that the ban is incipiently discriminatory. In this respect, they are correct. Indeed, we racist ‘westerners’ also discriminate against the excision of a child’s clitoris – is this an unfair comparison? If so, why? ‘Forcing a woman to cover herself doesn’t hurt the woman – in fact, many women want to wear a burqa!’ – ah yes, that old chestnut. What lucid, unabused and untortured woman would force her child to undergo female circumcision? Let’s be specific here, the sowing up of the vagina (often crudely in some back-alley by some quack) until the wedding night where the woman can suffer nightmarishly as the husband hungrily and obligingly rips the scar?

The fact is that in some countries, a woman can be raped for not wearing a burqa – she tempts the man – so it’s not his fault, the poor man can’t be expected not to rape a woman if she shows some elbow or ankle. This is a fact. A similar argument in defense of this barbarism is that, essentially, ‘it’s only a bit of fun’ – as if it is part of some sacred pantomime or fancy dress game. If it serves no purpose – explicitly, if its supporters or wearers don’t really believe in the whole honour-killing and acid-throwing and rape that comes with the territory of not wearing a burqa – then why get so offended when it’s banned? It must be a feeling that tgeir culture is being targeted – why shouldn’t they be entitled to their little foibles? isn’t it a free country?

Here’s a parable: In the early 1980s, on a cold Winter’s day in London, an immigrant from Belfast decided to don a ski-mask for his walk to work – guess what happened? Isn’t it a free country? Can a man not wear a Nazi Stormtrooper’s uniform in peace? No, because it might offend someone. Is there a difference between the potential umbrage taken by a Jewish person to that image and the offense taken by this repudiation of women’s suffrage (yes, many women died to get equality)? The fact that some poor girl has been indoctrinated into some sinister death-cult and goes along with the whole charade is no excuse. So entrenched are its subscribers in the Islamic omerta that a woman who dared to break this ancient tradition could be beaten (or stoned) to death and no-one would ever know – by banning this ludicrous, offensive garment, we emancipate Muslim women from their antediluvian shackles.