I would’ve swore at the ref, too. (Thanks, Mankanwal):
Parents and coaches of a Calgary junior soccer team are angry after a Sikh player was barred from a game for insisting on wearing his religious head scarf.
Northwest United was competing in a tournament in this Vancouver suburb when a referee told 17-year-old Gurindar Durah he could not wear his patka, which young, religiously observant Sikhs are required to wear.
Mr. Durah swore at the referee and was ejected from the game. Then his team decided to walk out in protest.
Mad props to his team for standing up and walking out for their boy. Durah’s Coach, Mario Moretti supported his players, calling the tournament “done” the moment the ref brought up Gurindar’s patka:
“This is a decision our players made, not me. I supported my players. They all supported Gurindar, which was a no-brainer for us.”
Of course the people behind the tournament, in a dazzling display of deluded, oblivious lameness stated that Durah was barred from the tournament for “swearing”. Way to address the issue, there.
I’m somewhat shocked that it all went down north of us; I always thought of Cah-naw-duh as being literally and figuratively more chill. Beyond that, the Sikh community there is so accomplished and visible when compared to Amreeka. I unlearn something new, every day.
visibility and numerosity of a minority often correlates with majority hostility, so i’m not surprised.
nearly 1% of canadians are sikh. 13,000 punjabi speakers in calgary out of 940,000 ppl.
I tried protesting the requirement to wear a hoochie skirt while on the tennis team (the boys wore baggy shorts down to their knees like basketball players — why should girls be forced to run around in ass-showing skirts and shove tennis balls up that nasty special underwear when the boys can have proper pockets?), but got told I couldn’t play unless I did. If an item can go with the general uniform and doesn’t get in the way of anything physical, what’s the big deal?
Belgium bans the burqa
Is anyone else alarmed by the burqa?
When I was growing up none of the Muslim women in my neighbourhood (90% Pakistani) wore the burqa – a few wore the hijab. In the last fifteen years that has changed and I reckon every fifth or sixth Pakistani woman you walk past in the street wears a burqa or niqab – and it is disconcerting.
The worst was when I took my kid cousin to the park to play on the swings and there were girls of about ten or eleven years old in full burqa running about in black with nothing showing but their eyes having their weekly ration of joy – I just dont understand why a girl has to be covered up like that.
Its relevant to this because in France Sikhs had a hard time after the hijab was banned in schools – I dont know how many Sikhs are in Belgium and I wonder if this would affect them – it seems to be face-covering specific.
Is anyone else alarmed by the burqa?
FUCK YEAH!
I just dont understand why a girl has to be covered up like that.
because she’s a pearl, blah, blah…blah, blah….
when i was in college i read a book about machiavelli’s ambivalent relationship to christianity. for machiavelli christianity was a sap on the spirit of a free republic and implied external ties (roman catholicism and the pope after all). it seems that to some extent he favored a patriotic paganism that was subservient to the polity. so the tensions between church and state are old indeed (some would push back to canossa or constantine, but i don’t think the nation really existed then so the dynamic was different). in the anglo-saxon nations there is a tacit assumption that religion is different than other beliefs or opinions, that it gives an added imprimatur of legitimacy to any practice. last week’s “hasidic jewish mohel sucking on baby penis wounds” controversy illustrates the point, because it was religious practice no pedophile charges were brought (i mean seriously, a 50 year old man putting his mouth on a infant’s penis in any other context!?!?!). religious liberty is a sticky issue, there are limits as the case of native american peyote smoking illustrates. but, there are plenty of work arounds and implicit look-the-other-way tendencies, christian scientists in many states can’t be prosecuted for child neglect as easily as other parents (their religion tends to be hostile to modern medicine, so sometimes kids who are raised by hardcore parents die of minor ailments, often very painfully). the amish community has been left alone for many years as well, though sex abuse scandals have started to come to light. and so on.
religious liberty is good. i’m one of those people who assumes that most people will be involved in organized religion for the indefinite future, and that we have to make accommodations with that reality. but, we need to be more judicious and cautious about what we find to be acceptable or not acceptable (in my opinion). we need to have a public debate as to the possible conflicts between man-made law and the ‘higher law.’ we need to figure out a common set of values and norms which bind us together as nations that transcend (or at least supplement!) the identity of the fellowship of the believers.
in many roman catholic cultures anti-clericalism has a long history, and in places like france or germany the church has become subservient to the state (in france it is through exclusion, in germany through controlled subsidization). in the anglo-saxon countries we haven’t had those issues to nearly the same extent. but now our pluralism is getting more thorough, and i believe some groups are combining the special privileges granted to religious practice and synthesizing it with multicultural platitudes of all-cultures-are-equal to block any movement toward compromise with the mainstream.
i have said it before: a liberal republic needs a fellowship of equals, face to face, rather than the sealed off social architectures that some of the more conservative muslims favor.
i guess i’ll turn this into a blog post at some point….
btw, readers of the weblog might be interested in tariq ramadan’s the future of western muslims, it’s an intellectually serious work…but it leaves me frankly not optimistic about islam-as-we-know-it and integration with the west. the refusal to move fast on shariah is what i think will be the stickler, i think in principle ramadan would not oppose a lot of accommodation with western norms…but he wants it to be on muslim terms in western nations. books like reza aslan’s no god but god aren’t worth reading unless you need some beach or plane paperbacks.
razib
I will probably be called prejudiced – but I actually think that making a pre-pubescent girl wear a burqa is a form of child abuse.
How ironic — I wasn’t paying attention to all the recent posts about Sania, so maybe I missed the news that the religious old men with “offended sensibilities” went after her tennis skirt.
Punjabi Boy, I HATE seeing young Muslim girls on playgrounds too, all covered up. (or at the swimming pool, refusing to take lessons with their classmates My Pakistani Muslim boss explained to me once that girls aren’t supposed to decide whether to cover themselves until they’re older, and that forcing it on children is just gross. In one of my women’s studies classes in college we read an essay about how “throwing like a girl” develops, and the author said it was because of a million subtle things in a girl’s childhood that make her not comfortable being completely physical and at one with her abilities (i.e., having to wear a dress and being told not to get dirty, being discouraged from climbing trees, etc). I can only imagine that girls physically restricted from a young age will grow up with restricted psychologies as well. It’s like the women in the zenanas being unable to imagine life outside the family compound, and agitated if they have to venture out.
As for the hijab in France, yesterday’s paper had a story about how one year on, mostly no one cares and the girls are totally fine taking it off for school, agreeing that school is a place where students are French above everything else. Perhaps a piece of propaganda, but if true, it’s encouraging. Apparently France is taking credit for stemming a wave of extremism with measures like this. Maybe all the weird beards are just moving to England now. 😉
There was a very good 90-minute documentary on the BBC here last night called “Battle for Islam”, it was about the various moderate and extremist forces now struggling for control of the faith worldwide, and the subsequent implications for the future.
The programme was presented by a writer called Ziauddin Sardar and he travelled to a number of Islamic countries to see how they’re dealing with the current struggle. The BBC website has a detailed summary of the programme and the issues it discussed on this URL:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/battle_for_islam/4203918.stm
Not at all.Why is it alarming? Am not sure I get what you mean.
No way.
There are a whole bunch of very close friends that I have, who happen to be Muslim and none of them wear the burqa. In fact, they are all among the most nattily dressed women one might find, and to add to which, they are exceptionally attracttive. (there is something to the theory Muslim women are good looking I think, but guys would probably make better observations on this)
They tell me that a lot of Indian Muslims(they included) have a huge Sufi influence. In this, they kind of reject extreme forms of religious display as they feel it is not relevant to the basic tenets of their faith. I must say, none of them display any external forms of religious expression, while their conduct and behaviour is beautifully in line with the good things I associate with Islam.
Is this something that is such an anomaly? The “tehzeeb”, the honesty, “iman”, brotherhood, hospitality and (shamelesly) good food(specially kebabs) I associate with Muslims, is all born out by my interactions with these friends. They are from different parts of India, one is from Bengal, the other is from karnataka, two are from Lucknow and another is a Kashmiri.
The burqa seems a complete afterthought.
Hmmmm. is my sample very skewed? I hope not.
Sumita
Sumita
So you dont find covering a girl from head to toe in black with only a slit for eyes alarming?
==============
Jai Singh
I missed that programme and I hope it is right – if it is then there is going to be an almighty head on collision between these two schools and I have to say that in England, the ‘traditionalists’ and orthodox are winning. When I said in my earlier post that you never saw a girl or woman in a burqa fifteen years ago I wanted to point out that this dress code indicates a growing conservatism among a certain section of Muslims, not an opening up – in other words some sections of Muslims are retreating and becoming more conservative rather than less so.
You must have noticed it yourself – did you see so many burqas and niqabs when you were growing up as you do now?
More on the girl/physical ability thing, there was a huge essay in a recent Sunday mag about a British woman who’d adopted a Nepalese baby while working over there, who suffered huge pangs of guilt for the first few years for depriving the infant of “her culture.” She finally took the kid for a visit (against her wishes, as she felt British, not Nepalese), only to realize that her daughter didn’t fit in with her peers because she was much more verbally assertive and physically confident than all the other girls. Basically the mother decided that maybe having a Western upbringing wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to the girl.
On the main topic – the achievments of Sikhs in Canada – it is clear that Sikhs have done a lot and have a long history in Canada there – but the problems of gang violence and criminality amongst a small section of Punjabi youth in Vancouver show that a ghetto-Sicilian mentality needs to be snapped out of there too.
Sunita — Your sample may indeed be skewed slightly. It may be specific to the US (assuming that’s where you are right now). Here in the UK, there aren’t very many Muslims from India itself, apart from the small Gujju Vohra minority. The greater proportion seem to be from Pakistan, followed by Bangladesh.
There are, however, an increasing number from the Middle East and Africa.
Punjabi Boy — You’re right about the increasing numbers of burkas, niqabs, headscarves etc, but I don’t know if this is because of an increasing conservatism or due to the recent immigrations from the Middle East (Afghanistan and westwards). Are you sure it is the Pakistanis who are covering up, and not predominantly women from other parts of the Islamic world ?
Article from yesterdays Guardian about the tensions amongst Asians in the aftermath of the London bombings and generally about how communal politics have affected desis in England
Since the July 7 bombings much attention has been focused on the Muslim community, while attacks on Hindus and Sikhs have been largely ignored. Shivani Nagarajah talks to non-Muslim Asians about feeling under siege
Its in primarily Pakistani and Bangla areas I am talking about.
Punjabi Boy
Alarming, no. Curious, yes. I am not sure whether the woman feels forced or thinks she is making a free choice. I don’t understand her inner reality when I see a burqa. Hence, if it makes her feel better in some way, it may be fine in my opinion. I cant speak for another’s self-image and identity, only for mine. Hence am not alarmed. But yes, if I heard a man force a woman to wear one, I would stay very clear of such a man. For me that would be symptomatic of the fact he thinks a woman’s body may be a temptation he cannot overcome throuh his free will and choice. That is a very alarming thought. The burqa by itself , is not.
Do you see the difference? Maybe, as a man, your sensibilities are greater(as they should be) about how men think about all this. But, to me, as a woman, a burqa by itself means nothing. Its the system of thought that may be assoiated with it that bears examination.
Sumita
Jai
Though the US is where I am now, these are all friends I have from India, who I knew in school. My mother also has similar friends (who did not wear burqa and would die laughing if one asked them to. I do think Muslims from India have something that is not in line with the stereotypes I hear/see in the rest of the world.
Sumita
How is this any different from making a young sikh munda wear a turban ?
It funny how Surrey Sikhs go around asking everyone else in the country to bend over backwards to accomodate their beliefs when they themselves are bigoted and intolerant.
Sumita
Come on – that is sophistry – the two are coterminous – you can apply this philosophising about ‘meaning’ to everything- abstract thought is a great thing when its just exercising and doing sit-ups of the mind for the sake of it – I am talking in real terms of girls being dressed in burqa’s with only slits for their eyes.
Punjabi Boy,
I don’t live in an Asian-dominated area and don’t visit areas with large Pakistani and Bangla areas very often, but on the few occasions recently when I have visited such areas around London, yes you are right there do seem to be a lot more burkas etc around. I’m not sure if this is due to increasing orthodoxy, or immigration (via marriage ?) from their countries of origin, or simply population growth (ie. more of them are visible), or some combination of all of these. I think a British Muslim living in one of these areas, or at least with a greater insight into his/her community, would be the best person to answer why this is happening these days.
It could also, of course, be due to greater religious control of British Muslim communities by imams etc at all the mosques which seem to have sprung up everywhere.
Sumita,
I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but you’ve actually given the exact historical reason as to how the whole business of keeping Muslim women covered up and segregating them from men came about during Mohammad’s time. This is exactly why it happened — because some of his male followers complained that they were finding women spiritually distracting. Apparently one of his follower’s children suggested the idea of keeping women away from male eyes in order to solve the problem, and Mohammad thought it was the perfect solution.
Sumita,
You do see burka-clad women in India here and there, but you may be right in your comments. It’s probably because India is generally a more liberal country than nations where there is a Muslim majority. I guess this is also going to affect how Indian Muslims view/practice their religion.
Punjabi boy
Your accusation of sophistry, while apprently valid is incorrect. Youa re not familair with how I think and its easy to see what I say as fake. It is not. In an environement, where there is a danger of women being assaulted as majority men are still at baser levels of existence, it may be a fair way of protecting a girl. (I have other simialr examples, nothing to do with Islam)Its like going into a jungle with bears, with no guns. Burqa may be valid protection in a certain society. You may not be aware of what kind of men live under the roof of a girl in burqa.
Also, if a woman defnies herself by physical charactersitics only, then she will also find comfort in wearing a burqa.
What I am trying to point out is, it is not as consistent a reality that one might imagine.
Sumita
mehfil
I reckon there is a big difference between dressing a girl in a burqa and conditioning a boy to wear a turban – dont you? Personally I believe Sikh parents need to chill out with their kids in the diaspora a little – but the two are not comparable.
The comparison is between a hijab and a turban – and you will never find a Sikh who says there is anything wrong with a hijab, or not fight for the right of Muslims to wear the hijab (like Sikhs in England did over the France ban)
Sumita
Yeah I know – all that relativism – women are to blame for men lusting after them and Muslim men cant be trusted not to molest a woman who is not covered up – isnt that quite condescending to Muslim men?
Jai
I am not aware of the specific history but am keenly aware of this dynamic and spiritual quest. These are topics I explore in my writing too. This problem is not limited to Muslims but is a struggle for integration that is similar across religions and cultures. There are many wonderful discussions and viewpoints on this.
Sumita
Yes it is but, as I mentioned in post #20, unfortunately this is exactly how this mindset originated in Islamic history. It’s basically an externalisation of the issue, ie. you try to control the external environment in order to prevent any negative impact on you, rather than taking primary responsibility for how you react to the external influence and thereby doing your best to control your own reactions internally.
Punjabi Boy
Check my comment to Jai(no 24) (which i wrote beofre reading yours). You will find the answer to whether my thoughts are consistent or not.
Let me put it like this. If I lived in a society where men forced me to wear a burqa, I’d wear one in a heartbeat with no protest. In my survivalistic intelligence I would see where that forcing would come from.
However I would also plot my escape from such a society with precision described in many great escape films. (and hopefully succeed)
Sumita
Would it involve digging a tunnel?
Punjabi Boy,
God, i cant stop laughing. Yes, it would mean digging a tunnel, and many other things, including pretending to be a dead body that gets thrown into the sea(Monte Cristo) Only am petrified of water so dont know how it would work.
Why, would you help if I asked for assistance in escaping from burqa prison?
laughing
Sumita
Sumita
If it involves digging a tunnel I am with you – I have always wanted to escape by using a tunnel – we have to think about where to hide the mitti though – any ideas?
Other options include a helicopter landing in the middle of all these people who are chasing after us – we jump on the rope ladder and hold on as we take off in the air holding on for our lives.
And in “shawshank redemption” he crawls through two football stadia length sewer pipes…
Hmmm, would wearing a burqa be easier? There’s a thought, a stinky one.
Sumita
Those are the only options – tunnels and helicopters – theres no other way to escape.
Sumita,
You’ve forgotten the following
Fool-proof escape method:
Hike up your skirt and negotiate a ride by showing some leg.
You could find an old motorbike mysteriously lying around and then jump over the barbed-wire fence, Steve McQueen-style….;)
Deal!! Helicopter it is. Who doesnt like to fly, that too into freedom?
Nice closing shot in a film.
Sumita
You could hide the mitti inside your turban. You’d end up with a pretty big pug by the end of it all, though — like Shahrukh Khan in Paheli. Or a Nihang. You’d have to make sure you don’t move your head around too much otherwise the top-heaviness would make you fall over, which would be a bit of a give-away.
Christopher
Good try but let me tell you, many who have tried that method, have ended up in unpalatable places
aha!! Am not falling for that one!!
(never forget Sanjay and Geeta chopra)
Am sticking to helicopter, and full view of all.Waaaay safer!!!(YOu see I have spent time thinking of such ridiculous things)
Sumita
having spent quite a few yrs in the mideast , wud like to add my two bits here. Hiking up the skirt may not work . At the best it might invite red spray and at worst a rape . There have been incidents of women being taken into the desert, assaulted and then left there to die of eventual dehydration .
I dont have a very good grip though – I would probably fall off the rope ladder as the helicopter soars away and fall into a garbage truck going back into the prison – knowing my luck that is what will happen.
If we dig the tunnel, can we dig it with spoons?
You could rip off your burkha and fling it to the ground at the gawping fundies, in a final act of defiance. Just make sure you don’t wear too short a skirt while you’re flying away, otherwise you really will give your former oppressors an image they’ll never forget.
Although I’m sure our friend Uncleji would like to see that sort of thing, the randy old silver mongoose.
Punjabi boy
Please no spoons. the helicopter it is, Now if your grip is weak, learn a good nautical knot. (any scouting experience. worry not, I can teach you)
Jai
No flinging of burqa. I learnt in my film class, things left unsaid add to the drama. The flying away is enough.There could even be a sequel where I question my right to wear a burqa in Western society( and bring us right back to this thread)
laughing
Sumita
True but you’d probably be okay back in prison, because by that time you’d have become friends with the wisest old guy there, and some Hell’s Angels biker-type will have somehow become very protective of you after initially terrifying you. And, of course, the nastiest gangsters inside will leave you alone after you’ve done a few thousand sit-ups on an inclined bench like Tom Selleck in that movie and you stab the thug harrassing you the most when you corner him in the toilets.
Don’t forget the part where you somehow help out one of the fellow inmates who’s paroled before you are, and he “owes you a big favour” when you’re released. And then your revenge begins….
The helicopter it is then – I get claustrophobia in tunnels anyway and would get panic attacks which is the last thing you need when you are escaping.
We could ask the helicopter driver to put velcro or super glue on the rope ladder for added grip.
You might get mistaken for Batman, with your black burqa flapping around you while you’re hanging onto that helicopter….
“Parents and coaches of a Calgary junior soccer team… Northwest United was competing in a tournament in this Vancouver suburb”
Did the incident occur in Calgary or Vancouver?
Earlier this year a Vancouver youth was attacked and had his patka torn off.
The crisis is over:
My mother also has similar friends (who did not wear burqa and would die laughing if one asked them to. I do think Muslims from India have something that is not in line with the stereotypes I hear/see in the rest of the world.
The proportion of women who wear Burqa is significantly higher in Delhi, UP then it is in Pakistan. The only part of Northern Hindustan where women dont wear Burqas in large numbers is Pakistani Punjab. I have been to rural Punjab in Pakistan and very few women there wear a burqa. The burqa among the poor is ubiquitous in Old Delhi and all over UP. The Muslims Sumita met were probably middle class or upper class. Poor Muslims ( who are the overwhelming majority) almost always wear burqas. Take a walk through Old Delhi and you can see that.
Punjabi Boy, You obviously dont have/appreciate freedom of religion and hence your starry-eyed support for the hijab ban in France and a potential Burqa ban in UK.
Al Mujahid
I dont support any ban of a hijab – what are you talking about?