One of the reasons given why Muslim women should wear burqas or niqabs is that face coverings protect wearers from being bothered by men. So says, for example, an official from the Canadian branch of the Islamic Society of North America.
M.D. Khalid, a director of the Islamic Society of North America (Canada), says a woman should cover her face to avoid the unwanted attention of men for whom women are objects of desire.
"I think if a woman is so pretty that she would attract attention to her, then she should cover her face."
Only beautiful women?
"Very attractive women. It’s essentially trying to avoid any bad feelings from men," said Khalid . . .
Similar views, although expressed using more aggressive language, have been heard recently in Australia. The Mufti of Australia, Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali, said that women who do not cover themselves, ideally with a veil, are practically asking to be raped.
[S]exual activity forbidden under Islamic law . . . is “90 percent the woman’s responsibility. Why? Because a woman owns the weapon of seduction.
. . .
"If you take uncovered meat and put it on the street, on the pavement, in a garden, in a park, or in the backyard, without a cover and the cats eat it, then whose fault will it be, the cats, or the uncovered meat’s? The uncovered meat is the disaster. If the meat was covered the cats wouldn’t roam around it. If the meat is inside the fridge, they won’t get it. If the woman is in her boudoir, in her house and if she’s wearing the veil and if she shows modesty, disasters don’t happen.”
The senior Muslim cleric in West Australia concurs with Sheikh al-Hilali's opinion, although not the way he stated it.
Abdul Jalil Ahmad, the Indonesian-born imam at the Rivervale mosque in Perth, Western Australia . . . said that the Mufti had meant well, and was addressing a Muslim audience. Imam Ahmad said he understood the "philosophy" behind it.
"People must realise men and women feel and think in very different ways, and a woman who deliberately exposes herself may attract an evil man, and some men are very bad - but I do not agree with the expression Sheikh al-Hilaly used," Ahmad had said.
So, ladies, better wear a veil if you don’t want to be harassed—or worse—by beastly men.
Please explain, then, why this happened in downtown Cairo, Egypt, a few days ago.
We were sitting in a coffee shop downtown, I and Wael Abbas and Nasser Noury (a photographer for Reuters) and Mohammed El Sharkawy and others. A colleague joined us and told us that in front of Cinema Metro on Talaat Harb Street sexual assaults were taking place and that the cinema's ticket window had been vandalized.
We made our way over there shortly, and in our minds we thought that what our colleague had told us was merely empty talk, with no basis in truth, especially as the streets surrounding Cinema Metro were very quiet as we walked toward there. We stopped at the cinema after we saw that the shattered ticket window, supposing that what the colleague had told us was just illusion or exaggeration at the most, but then after less than five minutes we found vast numbers of youth whistling and running towards Adly Street. We accompanied them to see what was going on.
We were surprised to find a girl in her early twenties who had fainted on the ground, surrounded by a large number of youth who were groping parts of her body and taking off her clothes.
I could not understand, or rather could not absorb, what was happening…the girl got up quickly and tried to run in any direction until she saw a Syrian restaurant called "el Madyafa" or something, and ran into it. The young men surrounded the restaurant and did not leave till one of them shouted, "There's another girl in front of Miami!"
Everyone ran towards Talaat Harb Street again. I found there a girl encircled by hundreds of men who were trying to grope her and rip off her clothes. This time the girl was rescued by a taxi driver who picked her up in his taxi, but the men did not let the taxi pass and they formed a circle around it demanding that she get out of the car until a policeman interfered, raising his baton and beating anyone he saw in front of him.
The crowd did not disperse until the appearance of two girls wearing the Khaliji ebaya (loose outer garment worn by women from the Gulf) walking alone down the street. The young men surrounded them completely and a large number of them pressed against the girls and removed the veils they were wearing, and attempted to remove their ebayas, while 10 and 11 year old boys slipped inside the ebayas from beneath.
Once again shop owners interfered and sprayed the men with water, and took the girls inside their shops. After less than a second the actress Ola Ghanem, who is starring in one of the movies opening on Eid (Abadet Mawasem), appeared and the young men tried to get to her too, but she was surrounded by personal body guards who tried to protect her but were unable to block all the hungry hands that reached for Ola's breasts.
After a short while another girl appeared who was also wearing the veil and the ebaya. She was also surrounded and they succeeded this time is removing the ebaya, but a security guard was able to draw her into a building and shut the gate and prevent the young men from reaching the girl.
There was another girl who wore trousers that were a little tight and an ordinary shirt. This time her shirt was removed and her bra ripped and no one helped her except one of the security personnel who had a club and who pulled her into a shop.
These were the incidents I was able to personally witness in less than an hour I spent in that area.
To that mob, even veiled girls and women were "uncovered meat".
So, tell me again, what's the good of wearing a niqab?
h/t: Clayton Cramer and Sandmonkey
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