…when one cannot tell who some other people are (with video)?

Lifting the veil on airport security
Air security won’t ask for veiled Muslims to prove ID

…a man traveling with the group hands in all the passports and is the only one to interact with airline staff while two veiled women simply walk through…

But some have more sense:

…[the] call for lifting the veil is backed up by two Muslim groups often at odds with each other, the Muslim Canadian Congress and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Canada.

“You cannot allow a person wearing a mask to be in the perimeter of an airport,” says Tarek Fatah [more here and here] of the Congress. “If you don’t want to take off the mask, take the TTC (public transit) to Cairo.”

“Women who wear the niqab are not constrained by the religious belief from removing their veil for legitimate reasons, and security is one of them,” said Ihsaan Gardee, executive director of CAIR-CAN.

Gardee admits that Canadian officials may be reluctant to deal with this issue head-on due to concerns about political correctness. “It’s something that needs to be addressed,” Gardee said.

Gardee says it would be preferable if female staff were able to conduct any screening that involved removing the veil but adds that if female staff are not available, the women must still be forced to remove their niqab.

Update: Ezra Levant takes on Pernicious Peggy Atwood et al. (Ottawa Sun on a roll today).

Mark
Ottawa

Aislin/Montreal Gazette

A cartoon referred to as “controversial”, and the Islamic faith, are both back in the news together today, after the Montreal Gazette ran an editorial cartoon on the Muslim woman expelled from school for refusing to remove her niqab in class.

The cartoonist, Terry Mosher, who draws under the name Aislin, crafted a picture of a common niqab, but with prison bars and lock where the eyes would go. As far as cartoons go, it’s not particularly original, or offensive. A simple google images search for the word “burqa” turns up the niqab instead, with a digitally edited photograph of a woman looking through a veil of prison bars. The photo was commissioned by the International Society for Human Rights, which opposes third world gender apartheid for women.

The Egyptian-born immigrant, Naïma Atef Amed, has now twice been removed from provincially funded French language and integration classes for new immigrants after refusing to remove her niqab. The province has backed the wishes of school instructors who said that the niqab was making interaction impractical.

Ms.Amed has since spawned the obligatory provincial human rights complaint with the Quebec Human Rights Commission, an ironic move not lost on many women who say that religious freedom should not be used as an excuse to wear the symbols of gender oppression.

Several Islamic lobby groups and organizations expressed disapproval of the political cartoon today, saying that many women wear the Niqab because they believe it to be the truest expression of their faith. Islamic scholar and author, Tarek Fatah, is not convinced.

“You are free to support these ninjas and I will continue to expose this hideous symbol of Islamofascism,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

“The niqab is a symbol of the Muslim Brotherhood doctrine best expressed by the Saudis where an entire population is identified by their attire just as the red guards were under Mao’s China.”

Many people, like Mr.Fatah, believe that the burqa and niqab aren’t expressions of religiosity, but rather political symbols of political Islam. Indeed, he has written that the burqa is an imported and modern compulsion of Saudi Arabia’s strict Wahabbist interpretation of Islam. It is an interpretation that has been widely condemned by human rights observers the world over.

There’s nothing wrong with the editorial cartoon, which accurately symbolizes the voluntary imprisonment of individuality behind a black curtain of religious dogma. But if I were Mr.Mosher, I would purchase a panic room forthwith.

Margaret Wente wrote precisely the kind of column I would have liked to write, making to the same kind of arguments, and ultimately the same conclusion. We shouldn’t impose a ban on the burqa. It goes against my natural instinct, perhaps even against my cognitive rationalizing, but there it is. A year ago, or even farther back, I think there is no question that I would oppose the wearing of the burqa in Canada. But that doesn’t mean that I accept the fundamental problems associated with the symbol of political Islam.

The history of the burqa, also transliterated from Arabic as burkha, burka, or burqua [which is why you see so many variations on the spelling of other Arabic words in the media], is somewhat varied based upon which source you read. A completely enveloping outer garment, the covering is worn over normal clothing and removed inside the household. The burqa is a combination of the hijab, or head-scarf, with the niqab, or face-veil. The hijab, for instance, is frequently worn by many Muslims in Canada, and is a scarcely noticeable part of their attire, most probably because of the European, and particularly Eastern European tradition that also involves head-scarves. The face-veil portion of the burqa is called the purdah, a Persian word that rather appropriately means “curtain”.

Many westerners are puzzled as to why Muslim women would want to wear symbols of Islamic oppression in western society. There are, perhaps, arguments to be made based upon the religion itself. Those raised in Islamic societies believe in the hadith, a collection of edicts by the Prophet Muhammad, one of which is to teach men and women to dress modestly in public. While most Islamic societies have interpreted this as the reason for wearing the burqa, there is no specific mention of the garment in the Holy Qu’ran whatsoever.

For an explanation of the origins of the burqa in modern Islam, muslim writer Tarek Fatah explains:

There is no requirement in Islam for Muslim women to cover their face. Rather, the practice reflects a mode of male control over women. Its association with Islam originates in Saudi Arabia, which seeks to export the practice of veiling — along with other elements of its austere Wahhabist brand of Islam — to Muslim communities around the world.

[...]

Most of Canada’s growth in niqabi women can be traced to 2004, when a radical Pakistani female scholar by the name of Farhat Hashmi came to this country on a visitor’s visa. After arrival, she was twice denied a work permit. But that didn’t stop her from establishing a Muslim school in Mississauga, Ont. that prosletyzed Wahhabist norms — including the wearing of the niqab, leaving the workforce and embracing polygamy.

In Irshad Manji’s film “Faith without Fear”, there is a somewhat humourous scene when she is in Yemen, trying on burqa’s to see what it feels like to wear one. She asks for the most popular, most liberal style from the shopkeeper. The man nods and shows her a full array of garments, every single one a deep navy blue or a midnight black. There is something a little dehumanizing in not only the “modesty” inflicted upon women in the muslim world, but the lack of colour as well.

The fact is that Nicholas Sarkozy had quite a different reason for speaking about the burqa than might a Canadian. France is host to an estimated 5.5 million Muslims, although admittedly such numbers are difficult to confirm owing to the clandestine nature of North African refugees. Their presence in that country, therefore, is far more pronounced, and entrenched. In Canada few such neighbourhoods exists, and it is safe to say that many Canadians are far more likely to see your average “goth” girl in full black and white makeup, or a British-style “punk” rocker replete with 1983 mohawk, than they are to see a woman shopping in her burqa. Full disclosure here: I’ve never seen a woman in a burqa in Canada, and only quite recently saw a woman in a niqab walking out of the Vancouver convention centre.

But the truth is that we can’t ban the burqa. Not in a nation where we proclaim the fundamental value of our society is the freedom of the individual and the choice that comes with it. Just as we tolerate all other sorts of choices which we consider less than appealing, we have to accept the personal choices that comes with the freedom of a liberal society. The moment we start dictating what women can wear, or in this case can’t wear, we aren’t much different than the countries we criticize. I believe there is also a certain appeal, a natural rebellious instinct among many people, to do something simply because it is forbidden. It would be the ultimate irony to have women “rebel” by wearing a symbol of conformity because it is banned here.

As Margaret Wente says, we have to allow it. That doesn’t mean we have to like it.