The Choice Between Burqa and Bikini

Abid Ullah Jan
Now that "repressive" Taliban are gone and their "draconian rule" has come to an end, the question that comes to mind after looking at one of the recent Time Magazine's (1) pictures of the week is: why are almost 99 per cent Afghan women still clad in Burqa? What forces them to remain in what New York Times' Nicholas D. Kristof calls "tents"? (2)

Some of the Muslims believes it is "the traditional or custom based wearing of Burqa" which is now practiced "by choice as before." They further elaborate their idea: "By choice wearing of Burqa has 2 components to it: 1) It is enforced by the male head of household 2) It is enforced by the fear of potential castigation, or ridicule for not wearing by society." Again the questions is: If all these cultural and traditional forces were in place and 99 per cent women preferred to wear Burqa by choice, why did the Taliban chose to enforce something that was already practiced and why was there so much hue and cry about it?

Burqa was just one aspect of the broader campaign against Islamic values under the cover of targeting Taliban atrocities. Status of women in Afghanistan today shows how biased and how hypocritical that campaign has been all along. Everyone knows that Taliban were not calling the shots in Afghanistan during 2002. American government and its Allies certainly were. The facts regarding women status in Afghanistan during 2002 as published in Human Rights Watch latest report (December 17) proves hypocrisy and biased approach of the western media toward covering events in Muslim world.

According to the 57-page report, increasingly harsh restrictions on women and girls have been imposed by local governors, who receive military and financial aid from the US government. The Human Rights Watch says that the situation in Herat is symptomatic of the developments across the country and women and girls are facing new restrictions in several other regions as well.

Co-author of the report Zama Coursen-Neff observed: "Many people out side the country believe the Afghan women have had their rights restored. It's just not true. The women and girls are still being abused, harassed and threatened all over Afghanistan, often by the government troops and officials."

Let's not forget that the same situation prevailed before the Taliban. There was, nevertheless, no one to point out the facts with half as much enthusiasm as they displayed in cooking up myths about repression of women by "religious zealots of the Taliban movement" simply because their stated objective was the establishment of an Islamic state.

RAWA, NOW, Amnesty, Physicians for Human Rights and others are nowhere in the picture to cover mounting women rights abuses under the nose of US and its Allies. Boston Globe is no more calling Afghanistan "a death camp for women," in its editorials. (3) No one asks how school boys are being recruited to spy on women and report on their activities to the present government in Afghanistan. No one talks about the continued restrictions on women right to work in the US-controlled Afghanistan. A few publicity stunts of women freedom in Kabul doesn't reflect prevailing situation outside a few sections of Kabul city.

It is not that the forces which unleashed malicious propaganda against the Taliban would remain shut for far too long. According to Human Rights Watch report, in many areas "the local police and troops are enforcing the Taliban-era restrictions." What does it mean? It means the US war for liberalising and liberating the Muslim world has just initiated and the conclusions are being drawn that it is not the Taliban who are repressive, but anyone who follows fundamentals of Islam becomes callous to human rights. Charges of Human or women rights abuses by Muslims would never end with the end of so-labelled theocratic regimes in Muslim world.

In fact, covered in a Burqa or uncovered in a bikini - is a subtle subtext in the "war against terrorism." The United States did not engage in this war to avenge women's rights in Afghanistan. The US war against the Taliban highlights the US objective to fully impose its cultural ways in which, for example, its own cultural ''uncovering'' of the female body impacts the lives of the whole nation.

It is not the Taliban rule, but the teachings of Islam that dictates that women be fully covered whenever they enter the public realm. And that is one of the many Qur'anic injunctions on which the US has declared its "war on terrorism." Once embraced Islam, one has no choices to make other than obeying what is prescribed in the Holy Qur'an. Islam dictates that women be fully covered in public realm, while a recent US television commercial for ''Temptation Island 2'' features near naked women.

Although the US seem to have won the war against the Taliban, it is important for it to gain a better understanding of the Muslim's rejection of American culture. Women's behaviour in Western society is all but a single locus of this rejection.

The irony is that the images of sleek, bare women in Western popular media that offend Muslims also represent a major offensive against the health of Western women and girls. During the 20th century, American culture in particular has dictated a nearly complete uncovering of the female form. In Victorian America, good works were a measure of female character, while today good looks reign supreme. From the hair removal products that hit the marketplace in the 1920s to today's diet control measures that seek to eliminate even healthy fat from the female form, American girls and women have been stripped bare by a sexually expressive culture whose beauty dictates have exerted a major toll on their physical and emotional health.

The unrealistic body images that the Americans see and admire every day in the media are literally eating away at the female backbone of their nation. A cursory look at women's magazines, popular movies and television programs reveal a wide range of images modelling behaviours that directly assault the human skeleton. Irrespective of the social and moral impact of women exercising free choice, the ultra-thin, uncovered women pictured in a magazine sipping a martini or smoking a cigarette are prime candidates for osteoporosis later in life.

In fact, many behaviours made attractive by the popular media, including eating disorders, teen smoking, drinking, and the depression and anxiety disorders that can occur when one does not measure up are taking a major toll on female health and well-being. In 2000, the American Medical Association acknowledged a link between violent images on the screen and violent behaviour among children. In a world where 8-year-olds are on diets, adult women spend $300 million a year to slice and laser their bodies and legal pornography is a $56 billion industry, it is time to note the dangers of uncovered and unhealthy body images for girls and women.

Now that Muslims' "horrific treatment of women" is common knowledge, dieting and working out to wear a string bikini has become a patriotic act. The "war on terrorism" has certainly raised the western awareness of the ways in which women's bodies are controlled by a "repressive Islamic regime" in a far away land, but what about the constraints on women bodies in the West?

Although these problems may seem small in the face of the threat of Al-Qaeda attack and Saddam Hussein's bio-terrorism, there is still a need to better understand how American culture developed to the point that it now threatens the health of its bikini-clad daughters and their mothers. There is also a need to understand why Muslims abhor the US ways to imposing its cultural values through cruise missiles, occupations and media onslaught.

Covered or uncovered? Even if we take religion out of the debate; if the homefront choice is not about morality, still we may see that following western values puts the physical and emotional health of future generations at stake all over the world.

According to Kristof: "I kept asking [Saudi] women how they felt about being repressed, and they kept answering indignantly that they aren't repressed." However, he believes that it is not paternalistic of the West to try to liberate women who insist that they're happy as they are? It might be hard for the cultural imperialists of the West to digest, but the undeniable reality is that Islam doesn't offer choices when it boils down to the right to wear Burqa or bikini.

It is not the eyes of a woman in purdah but the anxious darkly circled eyes of a girl with anorexia nervosa -- the woman trapped inside -- that needs to be liberated from the invisible cultural confines of the west. The Burqa and the bikini represent opposite ends of spectrum. We need to find out which one actually exert a noose-like grip on the psyche, social and physical health of girls and women before jeering at others or internationalising our values.

References:
1:http://www.time.com/time/potw/20021220/6.html
2:Nicholas D. Kristof, "Saudis in Bikinis," New York Times, October 25, 2002.
3:"Afghanistan war against women," Boston Globe, Editorial, March 25, 1999, page-A-22.