Tarek Fatah: Veil of ignorance

Barry Artiste,

Are you implying with your  'Veils of Ignorance' as must be infered, that behind those 'veils' is 'ignorance', that Islamic women are ignorant?

Clearly the statement 'Veils of Ignorance' does expose a racist and degrading ignorance, but not of the Islamic women behind them.

It is racist and disgusting to think that a dress code is not based on climate and environment, but on 'ignorance' as you equate with 'Veils = Ignorance', the 'of' meaning '=' of course in the normal used ot he term as belonging to.

Have you ever been to Afghanistan? I got a bad stomach just 10 minutes off the plane. I hadn't eaten ad bite, or sipped any water. Did you know that in Kabul, 13% of the dust in the air is fecal matter?

Have you ever realized that not every human has the priviledge of the 'artist' to own a shower, or to have running water? In Aghanistan, in Kabul, there is little running water. Every afternoon in that dusty, arid city, the wind picks up. My pores got swollen in 2 days. The dust, black bacterial matter, lodges in your nose pores, your neck, the back of your neck, and anywhere that dust gets to you WITHOUT PROTECTION - THE VEIL.

Women in Kabul like women everywhere like to have sot skin and no black pock marks that can get infected on their faces. There are also sand mites that jump and eat flesh. Women wear viels there or the same ancient reason any culture has dress codes, to protect them from danger, and increase survival and therefore to procreate and continue. 

It is your Veil on common sense, shared knoweldge of cultural histories and fashion, that is ignorant, not the Islamic women wearing a veil. Only those without the wherewithall to realize that veils look funny in a Western clean city with showers and no daily duststorms, but who cares? Some people wear t-shirts at home in cold Canadian winter weather, because their climate and environment and culture is fossil-fuel-based. One could then also say that those who don't dress like Inuvialit people in Canada at home in the winter are 'ignorant'.

Your point is just another feed to racists, no basis in cultural history, unless you are saying Islamic women are necessarily ignorant? Balderdash! One of my sisters converted to Islam, and she is not ignorant at all. She is a scholar who looks beyond the cosmetic arguments you tend to put your logic and faith into. Such superficiality defies the history of design and human response to their environment, it ignores the cultivation of codes that emerge due to human needs in various climates and geographies.