Jihadi Du Jour: About that veil

Crossposted from The HILL Chronicles

Muslims are already dealing with the radicals in their midst? Yes, that’s what a I read in on MSNBCs’ Newsweek International - in a back issue from October 30, 2006.

I do not believe any Muslim really knows what it is to deal with radicals. After all, it is the westerners that have been subject to their brand of radical Islam. And I have no pity or sympathy for this nonsense.

"Must one be more Muslim than Mohammed?" It’s astonishing how often I am asked this question. Europeans are finally waking up to the fact that it is Islamism, not Islam, that is hostile to everything Europe holds dear. Women’s rights. Secular law and education. Tolerance of gays and different faiths.

The very principle of reason as superior to superstition, the science of Galileo and the free speech of Voltaire—all is under threat from a totalitarian politics disguised as religion.

Europe is not about to descend into a new war on belief. But there’s no mistaking the change in climate. In Britain, Jack Straw, leader of the House of Commons, touched off a storm by suggesting that Muslim women should not wear a full-length veil. It was socially divisive, he explained, "a mark of separation" rather than community. When Prime Minister Tony Blair subsequently agreed, he only reinforced the impression that the country is heading toward even deeper tension between Muslims and non-Muslims. The trend lines are similar elsewhere, whether in France (with its riots) or the Netherlands (with new laws banning the head-to-toe burqa in public) or Belgium (where in recent municipal elections the anti-immigrant Flemish Bloc nearly won control of Antwerp.) (emphasis mine)

I ask the question why come to a western country knowing that ones formal religious dress in not accepted and or tolerated? I ask why should a country, any country, change the way things are done, what their customs are for another chosing to reside in a country not their own? Because no Islamic country will give one the voice to speak up and out against what the people want or do not want - complete dictatorship.

About the veil, I could careless about that–there are much more important issues than that veil. But having said that I will state that some have taken this too far, such as the case in Florida where one Muslim woman recently sued to be able to have her driver’s license photograph taken with her wearing the nijab (the covering of ones complete face-except for the eyes, which are allowed to show through a very narrow slit) on her driver’s license. That is ridiculous. How would any police officer be able to identify her or any other woman that decides to wear the nijab for their photo I.D. - or driver’s license. It makes absolutely no sense. The purpose of formal identification is not just for the law enforcement but for our own protection - especially in cases such as identity theft or worse, a crime.

So where does that leave this issue? Open to much debate, much critique, and much criticism if you are not sympathetic to Muslim women wearing the nijab-anywhere, especially on that I.D. or driver’s license.