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maandag 11 juli 2011

Colour.

After a blog-break, and Twitter now eating up a lot of my time, I'm back. And I'm back with a little thought I had today while waiting for a pizza after work. Now this may have been because I'm pretty tired at the moment from working so much, but never mind.

So I was waiting for this pizza to take away, and there were some people eating. As I'm in Brussels there is a sizeable Muslim population here. Now I'm pretty sure I saw this guy walk past a lady dressed in a niqab - but without the face veil bit (is that an al-amira? I'm not up to speed on my Muslim dress for women). Anyway, he ha what I thought was a bit of a dirty look on his face as she walked passed and I was a bit saddened. She wasn't doing anything wrong, as far as I could see (although I can't be 100% certain). Even if that was the case, it got me to thinking about many non-Muslim people's phobia of the headscarf, niqab, burqa etc.

I thought, I wonder if people would be so scared of them if they were pink? Or purple, or orange?

http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/10862901_hwieK/3/770533125_msixZ#770533125_msixZ

Would people be scared of this?
It just so happens that this particular lady was wearing a black one, as is the most common (at least here in Belgium and the UK, where I have lived the most). Many Indian women wear some fabulously colourful saris and there are never news reports about people wanting to ban those.

Maybe the phobia comes from the fact that those in the west see face covering as something that bad people do. Take balaclavas for example. Coupled with the the constant association of Islam with terrorism by ridiculous newspapers such as the News of the World and the Sun (et al), it is clear to see why people who are more predisposed to hatred or phobia of the differences of people, find it difficult to walk past someone wearing a head dress without their face expressing disgust.

For these people though, colour is obviously very important to them and it would be interesting to see if wearing different colours made any difference to their attitude.

Well, first of all, people should be able to wear what they want (the argument that the niqab or burqa actually stops women from wearing what they want themselves, and is most of the time imposed on them, is a whole other argument). Secondly, if colour did in fact make a difference, then those people who are scared of this type of dress are more stupid than we think.

1 opmerking:

  1. To be fair, I'd be upset, afraid and offended by a fake Burb chav burka/hijab and niqab. Far too Blackpool.

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