BRAS AND BURKAS

The controversy over burkas troubles me. Almost everyday someone posts a hate-filled note on his or her wall filled with buzzwords. Somehow, burkas are associated with evil. The last one, dealing with Canadian naturalization and immigration, people complained that the people wearing burkas did so because they did not want to reveal their faces so authorities could identify them, as they do to everyone else. This implies that “these people”, “Muslims” of course, wear the face and body coverings the way they do because they want special privileges; so they can sneak into “our country” for nefarious purposes such as “behead” people, “bomb innocent Christians”. The most usual rant settles into a diatribe ending with, “if they want to live in the United States, Canada, England, or France, they should dress the way “we” do or leave”, which, of course, introduces the “right wing tough guy” rhetoric into the augment.

Seriously, why do all people wear the clothing they do? In the past, I have made the mistake of limiting my thinking to clothing of religious significance. Of course, such clothing, often gender specific, is a way of identifying themselves with one or another religions or sect within that religion; thus, includes the requirement of women wearing of head coverings in Catholic churches or Jewish men wearing their kippah also known as a yarmulke. In some communities, Jewish women wear hair coverings after marriage, etc. It means little or nothing.

Recently, I read a short piece about Palestinian women dreading going through military check point in going from Gaza to Israel and having young Israelis soldiers feeling (patting down) their bodies for arms and hidden explosives. This is obviously significant and offensive. Regardless, to do this, under the circumstance in which they live, makes perfect sense. In addition, it makes it perfectly obvious wearing such clothing is a clash of cultures. The salient feature of all of this, the one I missed, is that it is “cultural”, which is social behavior modified by circumstance over time; sometimes over a long, long time and other times, not so much.

The objective of wearing burkas, or a full body cloak, or just a hijab, defined in a limited way only as the head covering, is a genders specific matter related to female modesty; a modification of social behavior in force for thousands of years and so imbedded in our natural history that it seems innate. In the west, we have shed most such modification, if some of the extremes were ever a custom. As said, we see mention made of this obvious clash of starkly different cultures in ugly ways on our Facebook pages, which caused me to struggle with the idea of what do we have in our culture dealing with modesty, if anything, that is equivalent. Once I shed the religious connotation and concentrated on clothing in general, an example come to mind; that example was the bra.

As schoolchildren, we learned about primitive tribes all over the world. Without having it pointed out, we just understood they were a topless or bra less—no big deal. We also know that without fanfare, almost universally bras became necessary as part of a woman’s underwear. Over time, it seems almost innate with little notice except, perhaps, the era of bra burning, the era of self-imposed female liberation leaving the unanswered question, “Liberation from what?” The same question I am asking about the burka.

A woman, at least some women, feels very uncomfortable without wearing a bra. However, women do not feel pressured from men or other women to wear bras, they just do’ it is a cultural thing. In the Muslim world, wearing burkas is like wearing bras in our culture. We are told that in the Muslim world, the men, at least some men, insist their wives and daughter wear burkas or hijab. However, and notably, it appears to be like wearing a bra, even if the men said nothing, the women would insist on wearing the burkas or hijab. To put this in perspective, tell a woman standing in a Transportation Administration Authority (TSA) line at a United States or Canadian airport that she cannot wear a burka. In both of our cultures, it would be like telling a woman in such a line that she cannot wear a bra; it would be ridiculous—in addition, that surly would quickly introduce you to a cultural clash in the raw. The Israelis and the TSA solved this type of problem, not completely, but solved this type of problem simply by having female soldiers do the “pat downs”. TSA could do the same. Nevertheless, It would not solve all of the problem.  I do remember the news-making clash in the U.S. of a male screaming at a male TSA person, “Do not touch my junk”. Similarly, in their culture, there will be women who object to same sex body searches because only their husbands are supposed to see their faces, or hair, or body outlines and no one else of either gender.

I remember my shock at being woke up to finding out that in America things in the rest of the world are not always the way we think they are. Several years ago, there was a news program where an overbearing female talking head from a major news network, who had been a vocal and long time strong advocate of woman’s rights often screaming about “how mistreated Muslim women are in the land of the suppressed ” in contrast to those in the U.S. in the land of the free. This is the often-expressed attitude that people in the U.S. are always better than is everyone else. This female activist went to one of the Muslim countries to interview women in respect to these things. Her disappointment was almost palpable when she asked Muslim women how they felt about being “forced to cover up their bodies and faces” and being “so terrible” suppressed by the men. She obviously expected them to lament how miserable they were and how horrible it was and how envious they are of all the freedom women have in the United States enjoy; rather, every single woman she asked, answered that they didn’t feel suppressed; they like things the way they are. What a shock! The news media had exposed us to countless news reports, as news normally go, only the bad stuff was mentioned; about how Muslim women are beaten, raped killed, and subjected to honor killings, etc. Undeniably, some of this takes place especially in areas were there is social strife. As a consequence, we collectively, assume that the “all woman” in the Muslims world wear burkas because they fear being beaten if they don’t. Can we ever learn that they wear face coverings because in their culture, it is like wearing a bra, they want to dress that way? 

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