This is a good article - Times of India!! One girl said the boys never stopped pestering her - they simply said Salaam ~ when she wore the burqa because they thought she was religious!!
- "A woman who walks with eyes lowered, whose clothes are loose and head covered, who is unobtrusive in public rather than flamboyant, can be described as observing purdah,"
One UK Muslim journalist was making a comparison between Muslim women in their burqas and married Orthodox Jewish women in the wigs [as is customary for likely some] ~ but there can really be no comparison. If you look at the Islamic women - she looks as though she wants to be forgiven for the very space that she has been allotted as a human being. You wonder how insignificant can one make oneself - relative to a man. Whereas the Orthodox Jewish mother - is somewhat akin to a human tank ~ back straight and most certainly on a mission ~ rarely if ever looks beaten down at all. She exemplifies an air of confidence and control ~ albeit in an Orthodox role.
Recently, a bus conductor in Mumbai asked a veiled schoolgirl to show him her face. He needed to verify her bus pass. The girl got off the bus in tears.
The incident was related by a Muslim college girl who wears the burqa, but not the naqaab or face veil, to two older Muslim women in their 30s, who do not. The latter supported the conductor.
The Supreme Court's observation that Muslim women must be photographed without their face veil has found wide support among Muslim women, including scholars such as Uzma Naheed and Dr Shehnaz Shaikh. Nowhere in the Koran or any genuine Hadith is it written that a woman's face or hands must be covered; nor is the colour black mentioned. Both Naheed and Shaikh wear their own versions of the burqa (not black), which fulfil the Koranic requirement that women not display their beauty in front of strangers.
In fact, Shaikh, who runs an Islamic girls' school, asks candidates applying for the post of teachers to remove their face veils when she interviews them. Says Shaikh, "The face is required for identification purposes. To be able to go for Haj, we need a passport which has the photo, and then at the emigration/immigration counters in both countries, you need to show your face for identification." Naheed feels it's intention that matters. "A woman who walks with eyes lowered, whose clothes are loose and head covered, who is unobtrusive in public rather than flamboyant, can be described as observing purdah," she says. "A loose salwar-kameez with a dupatta and chaddar covering the head would as well fit the bill."
Ejaz Aslam, editor of Radiance, the Jamaat-I-Islami's English weekly, believes that the face is the reflection of one's personality, which is given by God; the distinguishing feature by which people know you, and hence should not be covered. "It is essential to be shown, specially for identification. It cannot be worn in all circumstances, for example, by a dentist or an administrator at work," he says.
Why then the growing prevalence of the face veil and the black burqa? There are two reasons. One, some Islamic schools consider it necessary. As Ejaz Aslam says, some scholars feel the face is the centre of attraction and must be covered. Secondly, it's the growing access Muslims now have to Islamic websites worldwide, to different interpretations of Islam. Gulf-returned Muslims come home with the view that the Islam practised there is "purer" than the 'Hindu-tainted' Islam practised here, and decide to impose the dress codes followed there.
Perhaps that accounts for the widespread use of the burqa in Kerala and Tamil Nadu where 20 years back, no one wore it. The naqaab however, has not taken over the South, probably because the South is still safe for women.
Ironically, the spread of the naqaab seems to have gone hand in hand with the spread of education among Muslim girls. Parents often insist that their daughters wear the burqa to college, says Arifa Ashraf, who, with husband Syed Feroze Ashraf, runs Uncle's Classes where Muslim girls from slums get free tuition.
'Education or purdah?' is a post-Babri Masjid dilemma, finds Naheed. "'Both, not either/or," she tells parents.
There are women however, who have resisted the growing trend. SSC topper Roshan Jehan lost her legs in a fall from a crowded train, and had to replace her burqa with a scarf which leaves her hands free to hold her walking stick. But this teenager has not given up her studies, and hopes to pass her CET. Rehana, an anganwadi worker and English teacher, has resisted her in-laws and even her husband's offer of a reward if she veils herself. In her native Bengal, it's not a norm. She is disappointed, however, that she could not prevent her daughter from wearing the full veil. Now her younger daughter can't wait to follow suit.
Rehana's colleague, Rahatunisssa, started wearing the burqa after she got married, and stopped when she found it an impediment in her work. "We have to go in and out of homes; I couldn't take it off and on again and again," says this maths lover who now runs a branch of Uncle's Classes at home. Then there's BCom student Batul, the first girl in her family to study beyond Std XII. She started wearing the burqa when she joined college; but discarded it when she found it inspired rudeness at work and in buses.
Both Rahatunnissa and Batul never liked wearing the burqa—Rahatunissa found it unfair that only girls had to wear it, while Batul found it unbearably suffocating. Batul gives the lie to the myth that the veil ensures safety from unwanted male attention. "Boys never stop passing comments," she says. "To veiled girls, they say 'Salaam' or 'Mashaallah'.”
Times of India
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