Clifford D. May: Of Niqabs and Neo-Colonialism
[Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism and Islamism.]
...What do you think about the niqab — sometimes also called a burqa — the veil that leaves only the eyes of a woman uncovered? Critics, not least Muslim critics such as Fadéla Amara, France’s secretary of state for urban policy, suggest that when a woman is forced to wear one it not only deprives her of individuality but is, effectively, a portable prison. France recently moved to ban the niqab, as have several other European countries.
Nevertheless, a recent New York Times review of a Yemeni restaurant in Brooklyn noted in passing that the diners are apparently segregated by sex and that next door is “Paradise Boutique, where mannequins model chic niqabs."...
Fadéla Amara, the French official, perceives this as a consequence of cultural relativism — Westerners declining to denounce not only polygamy and the niqab, but even “forced marriages or female genital mutilation, because, they say, it’s tradition.” Such condescension, she adds, is “nothing more than neo-colonialism.”...
Read entire article at National Review
...What do you think about the niqab — sometimes also called a burqa — the veil that leaves only the eyes of a woman uncovered? Critics, not least Muslim critics such as Fadéla Amara, France’s secretary of state for urban policy, suggest that when a woman is forced to wear one it not only deprives her of individuality but is, effectively, a portable prison. France recently moved to ban the niqab, as have several other European countries.
Nevertheless, a recent New York Times review of a Yemeni restaurant in Brooklyn noted in passing that the diners are apparently segregated by sex and that next door is “Paradise Boutique, where mannequins model chic niqabs."...
Fadéla Amara, the French official, perceives this as a consequence of cultural relativism — Westerners declining to denounce not only polygamy and the niqab, but even “forced marriages or female genital mutilation, because, they say, it’s tradition.” Such condescension, she adds, is “nothing more than neo-colonialism.”...