The Burkha

After Time Magazine did an on line puff piece extolling the virtues of burkhas, Michelle Malkin came back with a video attacking that piece. To be honest, I don’t think it’s a very effective comeback to the “burkhas are good” implications in the Time piece, consisting mostly of silly rock videos. However, very early on, there’s footage of two women trying to eat and for that alone it’s worth watch.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6ngsAWVKmY]

My two thoughts on burkhas, in no particular order:

1. They’re misanthropic insofar as they imply that men — especially Muslim men — are such uncivilized beasts that they can’t be expected to hold their sexual urges in check around women.

2. They’re misogynistic in that they hold women responsible for men’s failings (as described in No. 1, above). They dehumanize women. They damage women’s ability to function, whether it be to eat (see the video) or to get necessary Vitamin D from sunlight. (In Israel, the veiled Bedouin women had higher childbirth mortality rates that have been tied to bone deformities arising from Vitamin D deficiences.)  Burkhas also give men an excuse to visit the worst abuses on women, whether it’s beating them for showing an ankle, or forcing them to die in a burning building rather than allowing them outside without a burkha.

And my one question:

I haven’t read the Koran. I have however read in a treatise about Mohammed’s life that he mandated that his women (wives and daughters) be veiled and segregated because he was afraid that that he could be politically attacked by people who leveled sexual slanders against these women. By veiling and isolating them, he precluded that type of attack. Is this true? Is it true that the Koran itself does not mandate this type of covering? I can’t quite get my brain around it but, if it’s true, I find it exceptionally perturbing that Muslim women — and, if Islamists have their way, eventually all women — must be denied sunlight and individuality because Muslim men are modeling their behavior on their Prophet’s politically driven decision regarding his own family.