Faceless Form Of Control There For All To See

Newcastle Herald

Tuesday November 15, 2005

Joanne McCarthy

YOU can't buy into the "home-grown terror" debate, particularly if you are a woman and a feminist, without conceding the difficulty of defending the legal rights of terrorism suspects to the fair treatment afforded all Australians, while your stomach is churning over their faceless wives dressed in head to toe black.

It is the most obvious physical symbol of the "difference" between what I would loosely call mainstream Australia, and those described by one Herald letter writer last week as "our latest ethnic arrivals (who) are intent on recreating the same miserable environment they left behind".

I'm not a Muslim, I've not read the Koran, but it takes just seconds on a computer to find a straightforward guide to Islam and a discussion on dress. It takes a couple of seconds more to find similar guidelines on dress put out by Christian groups, Catholics, and just about any other denomination you care to mention.

Thus I found that today, because I was raised a Catholic and I'm wearing pants, I am guilty of an "abomination to God", because an Old Testament passage of the Bible says a "woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman's garment".

Hence Fatty Vautin and Peter Sterling have also been abominations on occasion.

I should dress "modestly", and I would argue that today I am, mainly because of the pants. It is interesting to note the similarities between passages from the Bible and the Koran on dress. The Koran teaches both men and women to dress "modestly". It advises women to draw their veils "over their bosoms and not display their beauty" except to their families or slaves.

The history of veiling and seclusion is long and fascinating. And like the dramas that Christians tend to get into, when people start quoting the Bible at each other to justify positions, the veiling and seclusion of Islamic women is also about interpretations of the Koran. And if you have an extremist view of Islam, you will tend to have an extremist view on dress.

The really interesting aspect of this relates to the return of veil wearing by some Islamic women as a rejection of Western influences they see as destructive.

These include an over-emphasis on materialism, the dominance of secular over spiritual life, and the lack of respect for women evidenced by the use of their bodies to sell everything from tractors to newspapers. Drape a big set of hooters over a car bonnet and a percentage of men will look at the car, is the justification for that one. And if you think the barrage of near-naked women's bodies in advertising and on music videos and the like doesn't matter, just read up on why so many of our young girls have body image problems.

The point of all this?

I hate the images of Islamic women where you cannot even see their eyes. As much as I would like to think it is a matter of choice, my gut says control.

But at least there's no hiding it. That extremist view obliterates one gender's body in the guise of respecting it. But those of us who are not the "latest ethnic arrivals" use women's bodies to flog merchandise, or sell porn, and I have to buy the argument that there's respect in that too.

Go pull the other one.

jmccarthy@theherald.com.au