I guess I don't see why it needs to be one or the other. Perhaps one will readily lead to the other. Mimicry tends to lead to openness and comradeship, as odd as it seems. People go and shave their heads to show support to loved ones with cancer for example. Can you imagine how comforting it would be in a way, as a Muslim woman, to spend even one day at school where you don't look the part of 'odd one out', but instead everyone looks like you? I think it could easily lead to talk about what it's like to wear the hijab, why she wears it, etc. And it could also lead to open talk about why we western women are so against such patriarchal nonsense.
Hijab Day...good idea or bad?
- Thread starter tamarin
- Start date
I guess I don't see why it needs to be one or the other. Perhaps one will readily lead to the other. Mimicry tends to lead to openness and comradeship, as odd as it seems. People go and shave their heads to show support to loved ones with cancer for example. Can you imagine how comforting it would be in a way, as a Muslim woman, to spend even one day at school where you don't look the part of 'odd one out', but instead everyone looks like you? I think it could easily lead to talk about what it's like to wear the hijab, why she wears it, etc. And it could also lead to open talk about why we western women are so against such patriarchal nonsense.
Karrie
OK little one I didn't have all the facts about people trying to dictate what women wear while trying to integrate into western living while retaining the familiar from their own lands and maintain the religious doctrines they must follow.
Now that is something which I would be against. All immigrants must be afforded the benefits of the new society, opening doors for which they left their homelands in the hope of finding better lives.
What they wear, how they worship has little impact on a good, positive nation. Acceptance and integration can come from understanding and rather than remain in a passive role while waiting to be 'invited' the Islamic women might want to organize their own teaching seminars of understanding - Women in Diversity.
There should be no western society in our world of immigration and travel where one feels left out because of personal belief, requirements of dress and habit, and the sooner it is understood, there should be little problem.
There is a caveat however - that would be in trying to amend or change the traditions of the new homeland. Let those changes come in generations of the future, never try to arrive and insist on immediate gratification. That would be ignorant and insulting to the new land.
Some of these ladies should study the early immigrants - women from Ireland for example, landing on the shores of the 'new world' and how they were treated, what they were expected to do in their short lives, and if they got sick or could not keep up, they were kicked aside for another more able bodied. What to wear in school? Many never made it to school they were expected to work at the ripe old age of eight, along with their brothers. They were the first slave labor...... Immigration is not easy - but those who are up for the challenge should be willing to go at least halfway.
OK little one I didn't have all the facts about people trying to dictate what women wear while trying to integrate into western living while retaining the familiar from their own lands and maintain the religious doctrines they must follow.
Now that is something which I would be against. All immigrants must be afforded the benefits of the new society, opening doors for which they left their homelands in the hope of finding better lives.
What they wear, how they worship has little impact on a good, positive nation. Acceptance and integration can come from understanding and rather than remain in a passive role while waiting to be 'invited' the Islamic women might want to organize their own teaching seminars of understanding - Women in Diversity.
There should be no western society in our world of immigration and travel where one feels left out because of personal belief, requirements of dress and habit, and the sooner it is understood, there should be little problem.
There is a caveat however - that would be in trying to amend or change the traditions of the new homeland. Let those changes come in generations of the future, never try to arrive and insist on immediate gratification. That would be ignorant and insulting to the new land.
Some of these ladies should study the early immigrants - women from Ireland for example, landing on the shores of the 'new world' and how they were treated, what they were expected to do in their short lives, and if they got sick or could not keep up, they were kicked aside for another more able bodied. What to wear in school? Many never made it to school they were expected to work at the ripe old age of eight, along with their brothers. They were the first slave labor...... Immigration is not easy - but those who are up for the challenge should be willing to go at least halfway.
And how does this invasion occur? I'd almost adopted Islam myself once, and can understand the attracion behind it. How will you stop an invasion of faith short of banning school and municipal libraries from carrying Korans and prohibiting history teachers from teaching... history! Every good history book, including Gibbon's literary masterpiece, the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, will devote an entire chapter just on Muhammad and his family alone, along with an additional one on Arab learning, and a third on how that learning spread to the west!
Shall we ban Gibbon and Rodwell (who was an anti-Muslim Christian reverend himself and translated the Koran for apologetic reasons, around the time of the King James Bible, thus the stylistic resemblance and literary splendor of that book)from the schools and libraries too? And what about Dreyfus? Oh boy, we'd need to ban some of the English language's best historical classics from our schools just to stop the invasion! Sorry westmanguy, but seeing that some of the classics of our own original literature, written by Englishmen themselves, often paint Islam in a positive light, not to mention their eloquence, and sometimes even give Christianity a harder time (just compare Gibbon's treatment of the crusades and the dark ages with the rise of Arab learning). And read Carlyle, around Gibbon's time. Just read 'On hero worship', which devotes an entire chapter to Muhammad and again paints him in a very positive light, with further references to Muhammad's great contributions in his 'the French Revolution'.
So I'd like to know: how exactly do you intend to stop this invasion short of keeping students ignorant of English literature itself?!
I'm not so sure! I was baptised yet stopped believing in the Catholic faith by the age of 9 at the latest! Yet I still did confirmaiton due to school pressures, and went to church at parental request. Only later did I make it clear that I wasn't Catholic.
Another man I knew had a really hard time with his missionary family. HIs wife was also from a misisonary family, they were both missionaries themselves, and then... oops... he changed religion. He believed in the Qur'an too. Oh boy you could imagine the fallout form that!
On another occasion, I knew one woman who'd continued to go to church to avoid being excommunicated from her family and friends.
I'm sure 100% of Romans were Christian during the Crusades if they knew what was good for them.
So be careful with statistics. It might be true that 76% call themselves Christian, but how many genuinely are, and how many are just walking the walk to avoid conflict with family members insisting that a Canadian muct be Christian, as if the nation has become the vicar of God.
Later on in this thread I see we come to segregation. Yes, that is a big issue in the Muslim community, and they need to make a greater effort to integrate. Bear in mind, however, that with attitudes like 'If you convert from the Christian Faith you're no longer Canadian, have betrayed your roots and ought to be shot' would tend to push them away. Had I become Muslim, I know for a fact that I'd be running into conflicts with both Muslims (for not integrating) and certain other Canadians (for not being so welcoming). Looking back on it, I'm glad I never became Muslim: I'd have too many fights on my hands!
WMG - are we gonna start counting the dead, tallying up the sins of both sides? How far back do we go: a few years, a few generations, a few centuries or maybe a couple of millennia?
Yours is a weak argument for either side, furthering the debate in no way measurable.
Pangloss
The point of gay pride day and hijab day are quite different: gay pride is all about being out of the closet and being visible - because most of the harassment of gays happens discreetly, and happens because there was a culture of gays who were afraid to be outed.
So in that sense, gay pride day does exactly what it intends to do - make gay culture visible.
Hijab Day, well, maybe it is a gesture of solidarity or an attempt to walk a little bit in someone else's shoes. . .how much that succeeds is an open question.
Pangloss
I've had Muslim friends who were female, and they themselves vehemently defended the hijab. Granted I'd also met non-Muslims from Muslim families who wore it just for protection from the family.
It's not such a simple topic. In the same light I could argue that my religion is oppressive since it doesn't allow sex outside marriage or polygamy. It doesn't allow homosexual marriage either, nor does it allow consumption of alcohol. It has a month of Fasting similar to the one in Islam, and required obligatory prayers along with alms. And it encourages vegetarianism.
So is my faith oppressive? I choose to follow these laws, so how is my faith oppressive?
So Muslim women choose and even desire to follow thse laws. So if we ban them from wearing the Hijab, then who's really doing the oppression?
As for the Hijab day, I have no idea how Muslims feel about it. My guess is, they wouldn't care; they'd just go about wearing the hijab themselves and let others be.
And may you read Gibbon's Decline and Fall, or Carlyle's 'On Hero Worship' or 'the French Revolution'. It would seem that even some of our best literary masters paint a positive light on the Prophet of Islam.
The celebration of culture is never a bad idea. A scarf upon the head is a traditional thing and though I don't know beans about it, I presume it's a gesture of obedience to god.
Imagine taking an idea and explaning that to a kid in grade six and telling them that they can only explain it to two people, who can in turn, explain it to two other each and so on. By the end of the day, when you talk to the kids in grade one, like all women have to be covered from head to toe in a blanket so that men don't get forced to rape them.
I don't see a single proble with anyone who wants to wear a hijab or whatever they want. As long as at the end of the day they can take it off whenever they like an express themselves as equals to everyone else.
Imagine taking an idea and explaning that to a kid in grade six and telling them that they can only explain it to two people, who can in turn, explain it to two other each and so on. By the end of the day, when you talk to the kids in grade one, like all women have to be covered from head to toe in a blanket so that men don't get forced to rape them.
I don't see a single proble with anyone who wants to wear a hijab or whatever they want. As long as at the end of the day they can take it off whenever they like an express themselves as equals to everyone else.