The burka, which covers the entire face and body, is not widely worn in Morocco, with most women favouring the hijab, which does not shroud the face.
Women in Salafist circles, and in more conservative regions in the north, are more likely to wear the niqab, which leaves the area around the eyes uncovered....
[T]he Northern Moroccan National Observatory for Human Development said it considered the measure an "arbitrary decision that is an indirect violation of women's freedom of expression and wearing what reflects their identities or their religious, political or social beliefs".
January 13, 2017
"Morocco has banned the sale, production and import of the burka, according to local reports."
"Letters announcing the ban were sent out on Monday, giving businesses 48 hours to get rid of their stock...l unnamed officials told outlets the decision was made due to 'security concerns.'"
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23 comments:
WWMS? What Would Mohammed Say?
This is none of our business. The way Muslim culture brands its domestic livestock is their business. This maybe a Muslim Free Range Women movement.
Edmund Burka would not approve of this bare-faced assault on tradition.
I think they should be considered abusive and banned anywhere women are considered equal people.
It's not a Burka, it's a hijab!
I want to say that Morocco is largely Maliki Islam, which is a branch of Sunni Islam. However because Morocco is so poor, relative to Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia offered to build mosques for the people of Morocco, provided that they get to decided on the Imams to staff those mosques. Saudi Arabia chose, Wahabbi Imams.
I honestly don't know enough about the difference between Wahabbi and Maliki Islam, but my sense is that Wahabbi is much more conservative and tends to produce the more radical types of adherents. This looks like it might be part of an internal culture war in Morocco between the native Malikis and the new Wahabbis.
I was at a park (in Central Texas) when two couples and their kids strolled by. The men were wearing jeans and Polo shirts; the kids in nice casual clothes. The two women were wearing black burkas, complete with screens over their eyes. It was eerily jarring. They were cut off from the world, and the world was cut off from them.
Robt C said...
The two women were wearing black burkas, complete with screens over their eyes.
Here the three kids are also dressed to the hilt.
Blessed are the beekeepers.
Can the banned garments be repurposed? As emergency shelters or sails for windsurfers? Trying to help the country avoid too much economic dislocation here.
The two women were wearing black burkas, complete with screens over their eyes.
How do you know they were women? How do you know that they were not really men who were members of the Ku Klux Klan? After all, they wore similar garb in order to conceal who they were. And that is why it was made illegal in places like Virginia.
Can the banned garments be repurposed?
Make a few minor cuts to allow the face to be visible - and the person thus identifiable -- and they would be fine.
Wearing hoods in public is illegal in Georgia. That effectively ended the Klan's terrorism.
Although I have to admit that the glint of an eye even through a burqua with eye slats is the sexiest thing going.
I wonder if this social custom, intended or unintended, had the consequence of making women appear to men as mysterious and ineffable creatures. "My God, her eyes are as beautiful as they are hypnotic. I wonder what kind of being this is, and what does the rest of her look like."
Went to the market in Marakesh, but it no fun, because hijab me with a pencil.
Morocco has been a much more moderate country for years. About five years ago, my daughter spent a couple of weeks there working on her Arabic. She lived with a family. They need to keep the Saudi mosques and their imams out.
But isn't is a mark of civil weakness, to impose a burqa ban?
I think so. I mean, I am really sympathetic to the plight of these majority-Muslim nations like Turkey, Morocco and France (just kidding, I meant "London") who face problems and terrors the likes of which are unknown to most Americans who don't watch "Hannity" every night. They've got it bad, much worse than we can imagine.
But in the end, it seems to me a mark of weakness and not strength, to engage in such bans, when they are so explicitly cultural and not technical-security measures. (On the technical-security note, I'd be completely unsurprised, if in the liberal United States of America, US Marshalls asked a Muslim woman to remove a burqa before passing through a metal detector at a federal courthouse, or an airport, or before entering the US Capitol. As unsurprised, as I'd be if Eric HolderLynch changed such rules in the interest of multicultural inclusion.)
To me, a burqa ban is telegraphing to the world, "We've lost control of the country; yeah, we'd like some American tourists to come and spend money like the old days, but those days are gone..."
And if the "Hannity" fans out there are wondering why I would not want to blame "Radical Islamic Terrorism," the answer is that I WOULD want to blame "Radical Islamic Terrorism."
The Northern Morocco Observatory for National Development?
That's a hell of a name.
Morocco is all nice and more or less west friendly (or at least not west phobic) on the coasts and the cities. The interior and the Atlas Mountains are quite another matter. There is danger there for westerners, who are harassed and sometimes attacked for the crime of being European. They don't much like American and African non Muslim blacks either.
If you accept that a society in the West has the right to ban woman from walking around topless in a public place (because many people in such society find the public display of breasts offensive), then I think that same society has the same right to ban the wearing of clothing in public that denigrates women and that most educated people in the West find at least equally offensive (if not abominable).
BTW, I support the free the nipple movement and I do not necessarily think society should ban either. But if it can ban the one, it should be able to ban the other.
Sale and production are banned, but not possession or wearing.
This "ban" will have effectively no impact.
Chuck: But isn't is a mark of civil weakness, to impose a burqa ban?
[...]
But in the end, it seems to me a mark of weakness and not strength, to engage in such bans, when they are so explicitly cultural and not technical-security measures.
It doesn't follow that because a ban is "explicitly cultural", rather than based on some other factor, that it indicates weakness. There are all sorts of assumptions behind that assertion that don't hold.
I can think of instances where attempts to prohibit culturally-based behaviors are "marks of weakness" in that they are ineffectual, thus highlighting a pre-existing civic weakness. (In that case, bans cannot reverse, but neither are they a cause of, the weakness.) But it is also the true that strong societies (which can include societies that are newly assertive after having been somnolent for a while) will have no trouble saying, "nope, sorry toots, you can't do that here, end of discussion", if attempts are made to introduce unacceptable alien cultural behaviors.
Which set of conditions apply to Morocco, I don't know. If they're resisting Wahabist infiltration that's been allowed to fester too long, putting the "cultural" hammer down wouldn't be weak, but imperative.
Chuck @ 12:04 PM,
Your incoherence is showing.
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