Modesty and "respect"

Submitted by Cat (United States), Jun 25, 2008 at 13:59

I do not respect the Muslim god, I do not respect the Muslim prophet, and I especially do not respect the Muslim clerics, interpreting Muslim "law," that say women who do not submit to muffling their ears and binding their necks with cloth are "uncovered meat" asking for rape by pious Muslim men.

Modesty means something other than a desperate attempt to protect oneself from sexual attack by religiously-sanctioned predators. (See, e.g., the recent report from Brussels about a woman raped and beaten in a transit station because, her attackers said, she was not wearing hijab. There are also dozens of reports from places as far-flung as Australia, France, and Scandinavia reporting the same behavior by Muslim men.)

As a muslimah in a Western country, you are certainly free to advertise your own fervent religious belief in your gender's inferiority by wearing hijab. Submit all you like, I could care less. But I refuse to be forced into a respect I do not feel, or indicate my chastened submission to a brutal code of gender subjugation that is alien to everything I believe in -- and I don't feel my representatives should be doing it either.

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