Saturday, April 17, 2004

Demonstration and veils
Crossing Karl-Johan at noon, there was a colourful demonstration. Girls in blue suits and white veils, and men in elegant turbans, a colourful gazebo on the back of a car, and families in turbans and veils in yellow and orange. Turned out they demonstrated against the proposed French law prohibiting hijab in schools.

I have problems with the rules demanding that girls wear hijab, covering their heads and necks (and just about everything else) at all times. I particularly have problems with the argument that women showing their hair ask to be violated by men, and if men take advantage of them the blame is on the women. It is an argument that makes me feel sick. At the same time I feel that it's equally wrong to make women's heads a battleground between culture and nation through legislation, the way women's bodies have been battlegrounds in so many other causes. This is complicated. I want it to just stop being a problem, all muslim men and women to see sense and let their children choose for themselves, and muslim girls to put their veils on and take them off according to function and pleasure, not at the demands of religious and political leaders. And then I want world peace and universal cooperation to solve the problems with pollution, disease and the skewed disperson of wealth and priviledge.

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