Don't pass the buck to me or say that I have to give up my civil liberties to wear the veil or not. If you can figure out intentions, then go do it. If you can't, then admit it that you can NEVER be sure about all the cases, and hence your methodology is a failed.
And if our forefathers took the same line then child marriage and sati would never have been outlawed. Nor suicide or medical termination of pregnancy for that matter. After all, how can the state interfere with the civil liberties of:
1) The fundamental civil liberty of an old fart wanting to get his rocks off on a girl young enough to be his grand-daughter (or a primary school kid being married off and coceiving a kid when she is barely into her teens).
2) The fundamental civil liberty of a woman of joining her husband in death by self immolation.
3) The fundamental civil liberty to take one's own life when life becomes too difficult to bear.
4) The fundamental civil liberty to get rid of an unwanted mass of tissue (the foetus) within one's own body should one decide that carrying it for 9 months and then taking its crap for the next 20 years at the least is not high on one's priority list.
Laws are made by law makers and enforced by the state in the interest of the community and the society we live in. If those interests are not being met by something that has been coming down from the ages, then the law makers are failing in their duty if they do not attempt to change it. Any change will have massive inertia and resistance from those who are opposed to it. That does not mean we cease to change if that change will eventually emancipate many who are otherwise voiceless.
To give security or to prevent pressurized veil wearing is your responsibility.
And I propose to augment one and prevent the other by banning the veil in toto. In time (a generation at most) one will learn to live with it and adapt. Just as the veil was not always there and came to be adapted and accepted as part of everyday life and enforced over time to subjugate one gender to the bidding of another.
You propose status quo because you say it impinges on YOUR civil liberties. But Asim, you are a man. And you are muslim. Are you without bias in this? Which of your civil liberties are impinged upon?
That's your failure then, perform better come up with new and improved ways to catch people on a case by case basis. In some Muslim countries where women do go to complain about such pressures the police does not act. Have you fixed your police before going ahead and changing your laws?
Right now there is no law. The veil is not banned. Ban the veil and see if the same police can afford to be as blaise. But at least give them a stick. Right now all you are giving them is a messy he says, she says situation that is only going to be based on heresay. Wearing a veil or not is black and white. No shades of grey there.
Sarkozy has the right idea.
In all of the world, blacks got their rights when they fought for them. Pakistan was made by ancestors of current Pakistanis fighting for one. America was made by their ancestors. Women's liberation in the west was done by women.
In all of the above, including the fight for suffrage, women and men stood side by side. Would that be the case here? Is this what you are challenging your women to?
coulda woulda shoulda, you are commenting about resent in the subconscious of women. If we started this for the veil, where would it stop?
The fact that you say it is in the subconscious of muslim women shows that you have shut your mind to the obvious. You honestly believe a woman, any woman, by choice would live behind a veil in today's world, and that her gripes are the ramblings of the collective unconscious?
No one in my family wears the veil, but a few are hijabi and despite a lot of people going like "Choro na, hairstyle dikhao" (that is encouraging them to take it off), they don't. Every one of them. So I am applying what I know and have experience, and what I know refutes your made up statistic, and you not being a Muslim can't even have any experience in this matter.
You're right. I'm not muslim. And a hijab is not a veil either. In fact, many muslim ladies have converted the hijab or head scarf loosely draped, into high fashion, and it does look very classy. That said, Pune at any given point in time, and this has been true for the past 20+ years so its not a recent phenomenon, has a sizeable population of Iranians. Both guys and girls. You know the scene in iran right? Well, out here, I have NEVER seen one of these women wearling a veil. The slightly more mature lot (married, kids, etc) will wear a scarf. That's it.
Free choice is supreme, to give that free choice is your responsibility.
As is our responsibility of taking away free choice when it impinges on that of our people. The choice to lead normal lives like normal girls. The choice not to die because a nutter straps a jacket of dynamite around his abdomen, dons a burkha, and walks into a crowded mall - and is not stopped because no one in India is going to stop a female figure in a burkha for obvious reasons.
You are imposing something by law, I'm keeping things open.
You are keeping open the legal loopholes of free choice that are used to pressure your women either directly or more insidiously, so that they never overstep the boundaries imagined for them by their men. So that they stay at home. Bear kids. And do not pine to go out to work. And become independent financially. And develop their own ideas and opinions.
I think a law to facilitate that is long overdue. To even the playing field without making them the villains. Difficult to dump on the lady when the alternative is a jail term.
I ask you the same question I asked before. What if the woman simply wants to wear it.
She cannot. Just like she can no longer hop on to the funeral pyre of her dead husband. Or marry when she's still in pigtails. Or get an MR done because the boyfriend and her forgot protection.
Like women of all religion. Some do flaunt their sexuality, some women even attract the opposite sex through their personality, some are content being arrange married.
All of which can be done just fine without a veil covering the face.
One of those incidents belong primarily to the domain of Spanish Conquistadors.
I'm speaking about the post Indian Wars scenario by the Pilgrims who came much later.
Point was they were always on a path of continual improvement only recently Americans have become a regressive nation - or regressiver to be PC.
That is debateable. But lets stick to the veil here.
