The Big City

The BBC has produced an excellent guide to the several degrees of headscarf that different Muslim women wear. I had a good search through the sites of the Muslim Council of Britain, the Islamic Human Rights Commission and the Protect Hijab site. There was plenty of material on them about fighting bans on the Hijab and some on why women choose to wear it, why it’s not sexist and so on but none of them even make an attempt to explain the different types of scarf. I suppose it would be unfair to suggest that it seems like Muslims are more interested in fighting for their rights than explaining their culture, but have a look around, see if you can find anything.

I did find one article about Islamic Clothing Definitions on a site called Central Mosque. They also had an article answering the question “How is it that Islam allows Slavery?” It starts off with a damming description of the practice of slavery by the ancient Egyptians, Romans and “Western European Nations” before going on to explain that “…under Islam regarded as fundamentally equal, the slaves in Muslim society could and did live in secure possession of their dignity as creatures of the same Creator…” It is a good example of the kind of dishonest sophistry that passes for theological discussion in many parts of Islam. You can find equally hilarious nonsense in Christian literature, of course, but not generally published these days. I think that’s because they know they couldn’t get away with it because they’d be rightly lampooned. Unfortunately satire is still a very dangerous activity in most of the Muslim world and so nonsense reigns supreme.

As far as veils go, I don’t think much of them, as I’ve said before, but I find them much less offensive than SUVs. In fact, if I had to put them on a scale I’d say I like them a bit more than shell suits and a bit less than platform shoes. On the other hand, a well-cut chador or shayla can be pretty damm sexy.