Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > Dutch burqa ban fights cultural Jihad - CAIR "Hijab is walking symbol of Islam" - Muslimahs don hijab as post 9/11 political act
Dutch burqa ban fights cultural Jihad - CAIR "Hijab is walking symbol of Islam" - Muslimahs don hijab as post 9/11 political act
November 21, 2006
Holland Nears Vote On Burqa Ban
http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=rabinowitz112106.htm
Holland Nears Vote On Burqa Ban
http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=rabinowitz112106.htm
By Beila Rabinowitz, Director - MilitantIslamMonitor.org
November 21, 2006 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Last week Melanie Philips the author of "Londinistan, How Britain is Creating a Terror State Within" told an audience at the Middle East Forum that 'wearing the niqab and burka was a political act used by Muslims to show that they did not want to integrate or intend to observe our laws by sending a message that their loyalty is only to Allah.'
In the United States, Newsweek reported that the wearing of a hijab [the headscarf] was on the increase among American born Muslima university students. Observant of the high regard the media has for multiculturalism, the magazine then went on to claim that the reason for the donning of Islamic religious garb was "spurred by a desire to express solidarity in the face of 9/11 discrimination" offering the dubious statistics of the Saudi financed Wahhabist mouthpiece CAIR [Council on American Islamic Relations] whose legal advisor, Arsalan Ifhtikar declared that "The hijab is the walking symbol of Islam."
In Holland, Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders' bill banning the burqa is nearing a vote in the legislature and has led to considerable political fallout among the citizens of Europe's most liberal country.
If passed this legislation would be the first of its kind in Europe and Wilders has been careful to expand the justification for the ban to include terror and security issues saying that "people should be identifiable when they walk on the street or go into a pub or a restaurant or whatsoever."
Though Muslim groups and their lefty allies are opposing the ban, claiming that it is antithetical to longstanding Dutch notions of tolerance, the reality is that wearing the burqa has become a symbol of Muslim intolerance, an aggressive manifestation of Islamist intent to resist acculturation.
Holland's increasingly hostile Muslim populating is said to contain - according to a recent government report - 120,000 radical Islamists. Given the fact that it only took 19 Muslims to perpetrate the most serious act of terror ever committed on American soil and that the London bombings were carried out by 4 people, the implications are obvious.
Belgium has experimented along the same line as Wilder's legislation with one town having banned the niqab and assessing a 150 euro fine for its violation. According to the town's mayor the ban was more for social then security reasons stating that "old people were afraid and children cried when woman started appearing with their faces covered." Tellingly, the only woman defying the ban and is the wife of a terrorist being held in connection with the Madrid bombings.
In the UK the leader of the House of Commons, Jack Straw said that he "felt uncomfortable talking to someone I couldn't see" and that he would prefer that women not wear the niqab which caused an uproar in the UK. Straw related that most women removed the veil upon request when his female assistant was present, but his Muslim constituents bellowed, claiming that he had betrayed them, likening his position to having "family member going against us," a sad commentary on Straw's hitherto perceived dhimmitude.
Straw related that one woman had told him the "veil was more cultural then religious" adding that "women as well as men went uncovered the whole time during the haj" [the pilgrimage to Mecca]. The controversy has became so polarizing that the head of the UK's Commission For Racial Equality warned of race riots like the ones that took place a year ago in France. This unintentional irony was in large part lost on the lefties and the Islamists since the rioters in France claimed they were venting their anger because they weren't being accepted into French society, while UK Muslims threatened mayhem because they resented being asked to become Westernized and embrace the culture.
It should also be noted that Turkey and Tunisia - both Islamic countries - have banned the wearing of the hijab in government and public institutions such as universities because it is considered such a confrontational Islamist symbol.
The modesty argument, that niqabs and hijabs are meant to promote respect for women are glaringly contradicted by the overt sexism of Islamic societies.
Recently, a group of mostly women demonstrators assembled in downtown Cairo, Egypt to protest an incident in which gangs of young men groped passing women [covered from head to toe] tearing at their clothes, as police looked on. The government denied that women were ever assaulted and pro-government newspapers accused the Internet bloggers who reported the assault of trying to "defame Egypt."
The ongoing practice of polygamy by Muslim men in societies where the wearing of burqas is nearly universal among women demonstrates the weakness of the burqas reputed power to instill gender respect.
Thus it becomes clear that as Daniel Pipes noted in "Europe's Burqa Wars."
"Nothing symbolizes the rift between radical Islam and the West so non-violently but pungently as the burqa - a full body covering that covers the eyes which Westerners find especially offensive on their own streets."
The insistence by Islamists on the wearing of burqas, hijabs or niqabs is indeed a political act. It is a rejection of Western society and demonstrates a refusal to assimilate by those who are intent on bending societies to their will rather that submit to the culture and mores of their host country.
Honoring such demands under the guise of religious freedom merely clears another obstacle on the road towards recognition of Sharia law, a movement populated by an entrenched and unyielding Islamist minority.
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