Burka is a tradition in some Muslim and Arab societies. It is not a requirement of the Islamic religion, which advocates Hijab for women, a scarf that covers the head [not the face]. With this in mind, this is an interesting perspective from Dr. Henry Makow.
By Henry Makow Ph.D.
On my wall, I have a picture of a Muslim woman shrouded in a burka.
Beside it is a picture of an American beauty contestant, wearing nothing but a bikini.
One woman is totally hidden from the public; the other is totally exposed. These two extremes say a great deal about the clash of so-called “civilizations.”
The role of woman is at the heart of any culture. Apart from stealing Arab oil, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are about stripping Muslims of their religion and culture, exchanging the burka for a bikini.
I am not an expert on the condition of Muslim women and I love feminine beauty too much to advocate the burka here. But I am defending some of the values that the burka represents for me.
For me, the burka represents a woman’s consecration to her husband and family. Only they see her.It affirms the privacy, exclusivity and importance of the domestic sphere.
The Muslim woman’s focus is her home, the “nest” where her children are born and reared. She is the “home” maker, the taproot that sustains the spiritual life of the family, nurturing and training her children, providing refuge and support to her husband.
In contrast, the bikinied American beauty queen struts practically naked in front of millions on TV. A feminist, she belongs to herself. In practice, paradoxically, she is public property. She belongs to no one and everyone. She shops her body to the highest bidder. She is auctioning herself all of the time.
In America, the cultural measure of a woman’s value is her sex appeal. (As this asset depreciates quickly, she is neurotically obsessed with appearance and plagued by weight problems.)
As an adolescent, her role model is Britney Spears, a singer whose act approximates a strip tease. From Britney, she learns that she will be loved only if she gives sex. Thus, she learns to “hook up” furtively rather than to demand patient courtship, love and marriage. As a result, dozens of males know her before her husband does. She loses her innocence, which is a part of her charm. She becomes hardened and calculating. Unable to love, she is unfit to receive her husband’s seed.
The feminine personality is founded on the emotional relationship between mother and baby. It is based on nurturing and self-sacrifice. Masculine nature is founded on the relationship between hunter and prey. It is based on aggression and reason.
Feminism deceives women to believe femininity has resulted in “oppression” and they should adopt male behavior instead. The result: a confused and aggressive woman with a large chip on her shoulder, unfit to become a wife or mother.
This is the goal of the NWO social engineers: undermine sexual identity and destroy the family, create social and personal dysfunction, and reduce population. In the “brave new world,” women are not supposed to be mothers and progenitors of the race. They are meant to be neutered, autonomous sex objects.
Liberating women is often given as an excuse for the war in Afghanistan. Liberating them to what? To Britney Spears? To low-rise “see-my-thong” pants? To the mutual masturbation that passes for sexuality in America? If they really cared about women, maybe they’d end the war.
Parenthood is the pinnacle of human development. It is the stage when we finally graduate from self-indulgence and become God’s surrogates: creating and nurturing new life. The New World Order does not want us to reach this level of maturity. Pornography is the substitute for marriage. We are to remain single: stunted, sex-starved and self-obsessed.
We are not meant to have a permanent “private” life. We are meant to remain lonely and isolated, in a state of perpetual courtship, dependent on consumer products for our identity.
This is especially destructive for woman. Her sexual attraction is a function of her fertility. As fertility declines, so does her sex appeal. If a woman devotes her prime years to becoming “independent,” she is not likely to find a permanent mate.
Her long-term personal fulfillment and happiness lies in making marriage and family her first priority.
Feminism is another cruel New World Order hoax that has debauched American women and despoiled Western civilization. It has ruined millions of lives and represents a lethal threat to Islam.
I am not advocating the burka but rather some of the values that it represents, specifically a woman’s consecration to her future husband and family, and the modesty and dignity this entails.
The burka and the bikini represent two extremes. The answer lies somewhere in the middle.
from → rense.com Couretsy PalAlert Press
I just finished reading Mr. Makow’s article about the burka and I profoundly agree with its conclusion: “The burka and the bikini represent two extremes. The answer lies somewhere in the middle.”
ReplyDeleteI don’t agree though, with a lot of other assumptions Mr. Makow makes in his article. First, I strongly disagree with the very one-sided declaration that you can reduce women’s and man’s nature to certain qualities or characteristics. Mr. Makow wants us to believe that “the feminine personality is […] based on nurturing and self-sacrifice. Masculine nature is […] based on aggression and reason.” Among other things, women are of course very capable of reasoning und they use their intelligence, their knowledge and experience every day, whether they are working outside the house or raising their children. Thinking (and unfortunately also acting without thinking) is nothing exclusive to men.
I believe Mr. Makow should take care, before he takes some “feminine” or “masculine” values for granted. Of course men and women are different but we should start to see the persons of the opposite sex as a human being before we see him/ her as a man/woman. It may be a nice game to play “What’s the nature of women?” but while we are playing this game, too many women are dying or suffering because men see them as “women” before seeing them as human being and refuse them access to education, to medical care and to the possibility of earning their life. It would make more sense to stop trying to find what men and women ARE as genders and instead try to look at what individuals need to have a decent and fulfilled life. Every human quality can be useful. We should cultivate the one we have without asking ourselves if they are “suitable” to our gender and we should try to work on the ones we lack. While stressing our humanity, we certainly don’t lose our masculinity or our femininity.
The way Mr. Makow see the woman’s “long-term personal fulfillment and happiness […] in making marriage and family her first priority” is very short-sighted. It would be like affirming that man’s long-time personal fulfillment is in becoming a good farmer because through this activity he can feed his family and it is anyways in his nature to work physically because he is so strong. Of course women bear children, they nurse them, they raise them until a certain age and that takes time. Most women are also willing to take that time and regard their family as the most important and valuable thing in their life. (By the way I think most men would say the same. Everybody needs to work to make a living and everybody has projects of their own, but most of us would put everything aside if, for example, a family member was seriously sick.) This said, not all women CAN have children, not all women WANT to have family, not all women WANT to consecrate their entire life to their family, not all women CAN afford to stay home.
ReplyDeleteIn his article, Mr. Makow only talks about two extremes of “womanhood”: the naughty and the invisible women. What about all the other women who are very active in their community (with or without family): the scientists, the teachers, the human right activists, the environmentalists, the politicians, the artists. I am sure these women are very busy and maybe have less time for their family then a lot of mothers and wives do, but they make a difference for their community and are probably more productive and nurturing in many ways than other women. In that sense, it would be very selfish from their husband to force them to devote only to their family. Just like it wouldn’t make sense to oblige a great scientist to work as a construction worker just because, as a man, he has very strong biceps…
For Mr. Makow, the bikini represents the depreciation of women who have became “neutered, autonomous sex objects” while the burka represents a woman’s consecration to her husband and her family.
ReplyDeleteWell, I can manage with the bikini-girl. I don’t need the naughty girl in bikini on the television but I can look away and, most important, I can teach my daughter to feel good about her without showing herself half naked and to choose her clothes in accordance to the weather rather than the last Britney Spears video… And if you look at the homepage of most American schools, you will find a dress code that prohibits excessive cleavage and short skirts (and low-rise pants for boys too, by the way). Because it is common sense, that in school you want to concentrate on your studies and not on your neighbor’s rear.
But it is also common sense, that you need to see where you are going when you walk on the street, that you need to hear what is happening around you and that you need to be able communicate with people. The burka doesn’t allow that. I find it cynical from Mr. Makow to stress what the burka represents for him, as a man. For women who wear the burka, it doesn’t only represent something ideological: it is very concrete on their body. It has a smell. It covers their face. It prevents them from holding things in their hands. More than a symbol, it represents a strong physical limitation. Just for fun imagine that, as a representation of their consecration to their wife and their family, men would start hopping on one leg when they get out of their house, just to symbolize that, without their “best half”, it is hard to walk on the path of life… That doesn’t sound that bright, hmm? Well now think about walking on the street and only having a small wired opening to look through…
But I am not only thinking that wearing the burka is something that is against common sense, I believe it embodies a very dangerous idea. The burka says that a woman should only be visible to her family. This is a great waste for society because, all around the world, a lot of “visible” women contribute to build a better society. It is a shame that not all of them have the opportunity to participate. You may argument that a lot of “visible” women are just out there to be in the spotlight and don’t help at all to make a better world. But now look at all the visible men. Are all of them good leaders, do all of them work only for the benefit of society?
ReplyDeleteMr. Makow attacks feminism in a very aggressive way. He even goes as far as making it responsible for the decline of the western civilization. Feminists can have very different voices and faces, just like, let’s say, democracy can take different forms. What all feminists have in common is that they want to improve the life of women. Some of them are working on very basic projects like providing women with education, helping them to get out of violent families, giving them funds to start a small business that will help them feed their family. Some of them are working on a more intellectual level trying to understand why in the course of history women have often been treated like second-class citizen. And yes, some of them want to “free the female’s sexuality” by arguing that, as long as men go to the brothel and feel good about it, why should women restrain themselves from exploring their own sexuality? Will all those feminist projects improve the lives of women? Some have, some will, some won’t. But in that matter, feminism is not better or worse than another movement. Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water!
ReplyDeleteAt an other level, feminists want to empower women to live their own life without having men who don’t know them and their situation telling them what to do. They think women know the best what they need and what they want and therefore should be able to speak and act for themselves. This should actually sound very familiar to many people in the world who think their country is half ruled by Americans who don’t know anything about their interests and their needs. Who think “Who are those American to tell us what is “the best for us”? They judge us without knowing us and they have the nerve to give us orders?” Well feminists think in a similar way: “Who the *** is Mr. Makow (and others) to declare that women’s nature is based on nurturing and self-sacrifice? Who is he to tell women that they can only be happy if they have children and making a nice nest for their husband? Women have very different needs, aspirations, opinions. Let them talk!”
ReplyDeleteIn the occidental world, a lot of feminists just remind women to think by themselves, when they are confronted with things men expect from them. They say: “Think before you got on a stage in a bikini, think before you stop going to school to marry, think before you have sex with a man you don’t know, think before you go on a second date with a man who hurt you on the first!” Just think! And even if I don’t believe the purpose of women is only to marry and have children, I do believe that women who “think” are better wives and mothers, than women who just live their lives in terms of what men think they should do. For me, feminists are certainly not “confused and aggressive woman […] unfit to become a wife or mother.” And talking about unfit people: of course there are a lot of wonderful men who are great persons, husbands and fathers, but there are also a lot of men who beat their wives because they have had a frustration at work, men who kill their daughters in the name of their honor, father who abandon their children in the name of their own freedom, men who ruin their family because of a bad decision. They are a lot of men who are “unfit to become a husband or father” and this is, amongst others, the result of the belief that men have the monopoly on “reason” and should be the only ones to be “visible” in the public world. A lot of women have to deal with these “unfit men” every day. If they are confined to their “domestic sphere” and their burka, it is very hard for them to get a decent life in those conditions.
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