There is nothing to fear from the burqa
This is a cute story.
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Sharing a joke cements our common humanity, dress sense be damned.
FORGES of Footscray closed its doors in the same week that France banned the burqa. This bargain mecca had become a heaving mass of thrifty humanity in all its multicultural glory.
Delicate Sri Lankan mothers with their hands full of children's clothes in velour. Gangly Sudanese youths with blue-black skin in caps and oversize jeans. Stooped Greek widows examining cut-price spencers.
Only five kilometres from Melbourne's CBD, and I am in the minority with my pale complexion, freckles, blonde hair and list of cheap items to tick off for my family.
Two families, both mothers garbed in full black burqas with slits for their eyes, each with a child in a pusher, queue at registers directly opposite each other.
The children are full to the brim with excitement, affected by the exuberance of the bargain hunters.
One girl tears off down the path through the lingerie section and the other has leapt from her pusher and is turning circles like a whirling dervish in between the two patient queues, her curls tumbling about her face, tiny gold earrings picking up the shine from the ugly fluorescent lights.
She stops, dizzy and out of breath, as her father and mother look on.
But she is caught between the queues, between two women wearing the same burqa with the same gold trim. She is confused. Her head bobs from side to side as the women chortle behind their face coverings.
They are playing a game with her. The one who is not her mother reaches out and calls to the girl. She acquiesces, moving cautiously to this covered mother but still shooting doubtful glances backwards.
Once up close, her uncertainty deepens. She extends a finger and begins to poke this woman gently, as if trying to ascertain her identity by the feel of her veiled flesh.
Her father looks to me and grins from ear to ear. In heavily accented English, he says simply: "Ah, she is very confused."
No judgment passes between us, despite the fact that I am wearing a short skirt and his wife goes about her day covered from head to toe. I am an unlikely participant in this social play, yet I leave the store feeling somehow enriched. The feeling lingers, despite my many misgivings regarding this extreme form of dress.
Who am I to judge these women's motives for wearing the burqa? And who are they to judge my motives for dressing in a mini-skirt?
Like many people I know, I feel a frisson of doubt whenever I see these shadowy figures entirely covered up. I struggle daily with these feelings in my studies.
My mind is caught up in the abstract political battles that are being fought over these very women's bodies.
I question the religious requirement for women's coverings, as I have never found it in the Koran. I wonder that some women might never feel sunlight on their bare legs in summer, or take pride in dressing their bodies up the same way I do.
Yet I do not question partial head coverings such as the orthodox Jewish custom of covering the hair. For me, the face is different. The face is not cosmetic, as the hair can be. It is our access to the essence of a person.
But I had never considered the burqa in a light-hearted fashion until this chance encounter. I had never seen women playing under the burqa or considered the everyday practicalities that must be accommodated in terms of family life.
I freely admit to feelings of doubt when confronted by a life choice so different to my own. But it is all too easy to forget that there is a woman in every burqa, and that she is a unique individual with her own reasons for dressing the way she does.
I reject the notion that all women clothed in the burqa are repressed beings. I further reject the idea that in order to liberate them we must dictate to them what (not) to wear.
I chose to leave Forges focusing on the common ties that bind us; the bargain hunters, whatever our nationality, ethnicity or creed. For there is so much more that unites us than divides us. Even the simple act of trying to save a dollar here or there to clothe our families can be a shared human experience that transcends religious and cultural conventions, if we choose it to be.
Elizabeth Lakey is working towards a PhD in Islamic studies at the University of Melbourne.
Source
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Sharing a joke cements our common humanity, dress sense be damned.
FORGES of Footscray closed its doors in the same week that France banned the burqa. This bargain mecca had become a heaving mass of thrifty humanity in all its multicultural glory.
Delicate Sri Lankan mothers with their hands full of children's clothes in velour. Gangly Sudanese youths with blue-black skin in caps and oversize jeans. Stooped Greek widows examining cut-price spencers.
Only five kilometres from Melbourne's CBD, and I am in the minority with my pale complexion, freckles, blonde hair and list of cheap items to tick off for my family.
Two families, both mothers garbed in full black burqas with slits for their eyes, each with a child in a pusher, queue at registers directly opposite each other.
The children are full to the brim with excitement, affected by the exuberance of the bargain hunters.
One girl tears off down the path through the lingerie section and the other has leapt from her pusher and is turning circles like a whirling dervish in between the two patient queues, her curls tumbling about her face, tiny gold earrings picking up the shine from the ugly fluorescent lights.
She stops, dizzy and out of breath, as her father and mother look on.
But she is caught between the queues, between two women wearing the same burqa with the same gold trim. She is confused. Her head bobs from side to side as the women chortle behind their face coverings.
They are playing a game with her. The one who is not her mother reaches out and calls to the girl. She acquiesces, moving cautiously to this covered mother but still shooting doubtful glances backwards.
Once up close, her uncertainty deepens. She extends a finger and begins to poke this woman gently, as if trying to ascertain her identity by the feel of her veiled flesh.
Her father looks to me and grins from ear to ear. In heavily accented English, he says simply: "Ah, she is very confused."
No judgment passes between us, despite the fact that I am wearing a short skirt and his wife goes about her day covered from head to toe. I am an unlikely participant in this social play, yet I leave the store feeling somehow enriched. The feeling lingers, despite my many misgivings regarding this extreme form of dress.
Who am I to judge these women's motives for wearing the burqa? And who are they to judge my motives for dressing in a mini-skirt?
Like many people I know, I feel a frisson of doubt whenever I see these shadowy figures entirely covered up. I struggle daily with these feelings in my studies.
My mind is caught up in the abstract political battles that are being fought over these very women's bodies.
I question the religious requirement for women's coverings, as I have never found it in the Koran. I wonder that some women might never feel sunlight on their bare legs in summer, or take pride in dressing their bodies up the same way I do.
Yet I do not question partial head coverings such as the orthodox Jewish custom of covering the hair. For me, the face is different. The face is not cosmetic, as the hair can be. It is our access to the essence of a person.
But I had never considered the burqa in a light-hearted fashion until this chance encounter. I had never seen women playing under the burqa or considered the everyday practicalities that must be accommodated in terms of family life.
I freely admit to feelings of doubt when confronted by a life choice so different to my own. But it is all too easy to forget that there is a woman in every burqa, and that she is a unique individual with her own reasons for dressing the way she does.
I reject the notion that all women clothed in the burqa are repressed beings. I further reject the idea that in order to liberate them we must dictate to them what (not) to wear.
I chose to leave Forges focusing on the common ties that bind us; the bargain hunters, whatever our nationality, ethnicity or creed. For there is so much more that unites us than divides us. Even the simple act of trying to save a dollar here or there to clothe our families can be a shared human experience that transcends religious and cultural conventions, if we choose it to be.
Elizabeth Lakey is working towards a PhD in Islamic studies at the University of Melbourne.
Source