Hijab Politics

The Toronto Star reports today on the tragic story of a young Canadian girl who was killed by her own father because she refused to wear a hijab to school:

A 16-year-old girl is dead and her father has been charged with murder after an attack in a Mississauga home....

Friends at the victim’s school said she feared her father and had argued over her desire to shun the hijab, a traditional shoulder-length head scarf worn by females in devout Muslim families....

Pal Ebonie Mitchell, 16, and other friends said Aqsa still wore the hijab to school last year, but rebelled against dressing in it this fall.

They said she would leave home wearing the traditional garment and loose clothing, but would often change into tighter garments at school.

She would change back for the bus trip home.

It's a horrible story. But on the same day as this girl is murdered for her secularism, the left is busy defending the veil. See Danielle Crittenden's piece at the Huffington Post, "Islamic Like Me: HuffPosters Defend the Veil." Crittenden spent a week dressed in a full burqa just to see what it would be like--and surprise! she didn't like it one bit. But her series for HuffPo earned her nothing but the animus of the site's readers, and now she's defending the piece:

I'm glad so many of you took the time to post comments. There were definitely some general themes among them: If a woman chooses to veil herself, shouldn't we respect that as her individual choice? Isn't the West just as oppressive towards women with its constant marketing of sex? Just because veiling is culturally different from our customs, why should we feel threatened by it?

There's something deeply troubling about the left's embrace of the veil. It's obvious that not all of these women want to wear the veil, and it's obviously the West isn't just as oppressive towards women. But in light of today's news, that last question, which Crittended felt compelled to answer for her left-wing audience, is absurd on its face. We aren't the ones threatened by the veil--the threat is to 16-year-old girls who don't want to wear it, and risk death at the hands of their own family should they refuse to do so. "Culturally different from our customs" is, in this case, nothing more than a euphemism for barbaric.

An example of the kind of Liberal who defends the burqa and assigns the blame to the US, you have to look no further than this:

Now, as a liberal, I try not to cast aspersions on other's cultures. But I do find the burqa or niqab rather constricting. But rather than rail against the attire, why not talk about how Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, the two countries with the WORST violations against the rights of a woman, were governments supported by the United States, and IMPLEMENTED by the CIA, respectively? So if you're looking for the problem, look to the good 'ol US of A, with our great cosmopolitan values... unless we're trying to gain oil profits, or fightin' the damn Commies.

There's much more to this issue than you make of it. Women's rights are a serious issue. But to look at the dress code as the focal point for the sufferings of women, and yes, of PEOPLE in some AMERICAN BACKED Middle Eastern countries, and tacitly make the point that this is emblematic of the problems with Islam, misses the point. I truly believe if women want to put a black tablecloth over themselves, they have every right to. If someone tries to froce them to do it, that's wrong. But you, of course, make no mention of this. It's not the burqa, or the niqab, it's the lack of choice that begs for reform. Thanks for your time.

You cannot parody that.