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November 16, 2006

Maha Al-Hujailan On 'Walking Prisons"

Topics: Understanding Islam

[Image - the Moroccan style (hooded) Najla Abaya. You'll can see the here. You can see the Burqa - Niqab or face veil for Muslim women - here.]

Via The Big Pharoah, Saudi columnist Maha Al-Hujailan on abayas, the black garment Saudi women wear, in which she points out a very interesting point by saying that women themselves contributed to their enslavement by accepting to be buried under such garments:

"What is strange is that women accepted the idea and were soon submitting themselves to the prison of the garment, the walking slowly, the looking only straight ahead - just to fulfill, it seems, what men imagined the abaya to be all about.

"Women's imaginations, however, seem to have gone to work to create new and more complicated garments which would confine her more than ever before. The old abaya was a simple, on-the-shoulder garment, open on both sides; nowadays women wear abayas which rest on their heads, making them look like large walking crows. As for other abayas, they occupy the wearer with keeping them wrapped around the shoulders, the head and the face so that the woman can't move without worrying that one or more of the bits will fall and she will stand revealed.

Read the entire must read article.

Posted by Richard at November 16, 2006 7:14 AM

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• Maha Al-Hujailan On 'Walking Prisons" - Nov 16, 2006