Burn Baby, Burn

Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen fled to India after writing an article criticising the burqa resulted in an Islamic death fatwa against her in her homeland.

Here's part of what she wrote:

Why are women covered? Because they are sex objects. Because when men see them, they are roused. Why should women have to be penalised for men's sexual problems? Even women have sexual urges. But men are not covered for that. In no religion formulated by men are women considered to have a separate existence, or as human beings having desires and opinions separate from men's. The purdah rules humiliate not only women but men too. If women walk about without purdah, it's as if men will look at them with lustful eyes, or pounce on them, or rape them. Do they lose all their senses when they see any woman without burqa?

Some do.

Nasreen continues:

Some 1,500 years ago, it was decided for an individual's personal reasons that women should have purdah and since then millions of Muslim women all over the world have had to suffer it. So many old customs have died a natural death, but not purdah. Instead, of late, there has been a mad craze to revive it... What should women do? They should protest against this discrimination. They should proclaim a war against the wrongs and ill-treatment meted out to them for hundreds of years. They should snatch from the men their freedom and their rights. They should throw away this apparel of discrimination and burn their burqas.

Shades of the (apparently mythical) bra-burning '60s. Of course, Western feminists, now so reluctant to help their Muslim sisters, didn't have to worry about being stoned to death for their actions.

(via DhimmiWatch)

-- Nick