Comments on: Veils

By: alison

alison — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 10:14:52 +0000

Deirdre: Interesting that in a humid climate, men are quicker than the women to adopt local dress and uncover enough to get a bit of breeze…

Susan: Maybe, maybe not. But the taxi driver figured that to work me for tips he should start with the assumption that I was not.

Roz: But none of them was the point of view of a woman who wears hijab!

Mansa: Spoils of war…

Luc: Je t’attends !

Sandra B: Thank you. Veiling the face is relatively uncommon here too, but for some reason it’s what people think about when they’re talking about hijab, rather than the more common headscarf. (Yes, this post was about veils, not headscarves.)

By: Sandra B

Sandra B — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 04:39:18 +0000

I’m a 6th generation, anglo-Australian living in a very multicultural suburb. Until recently there was a lot of public and low-cost housing, so every wave of post-70’s immigration is well represented here, and a lot of the infrastructure is set up to meet the needs of recent arrivals, often refugees. (My sister hates my local shopping centre because she says she feels like a foreigner :-)) In the past 5 to 10 years, that means many muslims. There are so many variations to wearing a veil, that I find it hard to generalise. The South-East Asian muslims wear a head scarf and cover their arms and legs, which means the teens wear long sleeve tees and trendy jeans, while the various Middle Eastern immigrants wear everything from full hijab (fairly rare) to long dresses and scarves. I often see family groups with the older ladies well covered and their young adult daughters in (modest) western clothing and no head covering. The Africans, who are the most recent arrivals, wear extraordinary colours and prints, and intricate headwraps that sometimes seem to defy gravity.

My husband taught at the local high school, and found that often the muslim girls were very serious about their studies, whereas the boys had a tendency to feel entitled simply for being male. Are the women oppressed? Possibly. Likely to stay that way when they are better educated than their brothers? Probaby not without a darn good fight.

The whole debate about “Them” and “Us” happens in Australia too, but when the “Them” are part of your everyday life, they seem more like “Us” than anything else. Yesterday I shared a joke with the headscarfed check-out attendant and then ran into my Sudanese former neighbour, who told me off for not visiting her at her new house yet.

By: Luc

Luc — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 22:53:10 +0000

Content de te pouvoir te lire Alison.

Je reviendrai.

Cassandra arrive, c’est l’heure d’aller au lit.

18 h 51.

Bisou

By: Mansa

Mansa — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 19:16:46 +0000

Well said, Alison! I still am awed that, when people talk about the integration of the islamic world into western cultures, they talk about the women and how they dress. And when muslims talk about preserving their culture they talk about the women and how they dress….

By: Roz

Roz — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 17:11:35 +0000

It was nice to hear so many different points of view.

By: Susan

Susan — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 12:41:52 +0000

Oh Alison, you ARE such a nice person.

By: Deirdre

Deirdre — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 10:31:42 +0000

I loved it, Alison. I saw a woman in West Philly last week wearing the full head-to-toe veil on a humid 96-degree day. I couldn’t help but think she looked pretty oppressed as she crossed the street. Yesterday, I saw a teenager wearing a veil with her stylish T-shirt and tight jeans. I wondered how long it would be before she had to wear the full coverings.

By: alison

alison — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 03:29:20 +0000

Oh Kathleen, you’re my first commenter! You have no idea how honoured I feel.

By: Kathleen

Kathleen — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 03:18:39 +0000

That was lovely, thank you for sharing that with us.

I’m glad you started blogging. I admire you a great deal.