Backdated? Conservative? Tortured, you would think. But to a lot of women, a full burqa and a veil would mean freedom. Freedom from expressing themselves. Freedom from being seen. Described beautifully in the book "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini, about the lead character Mariam’s feelings who wore the burqa: "the burqa, she learned to her surprise, was also comforting. It was like a one-way window. Inside it, she was an observer, buffered from the scrutinizing eyes of strangers. She no longer worried that people knew, with a single glance, all the shameful secrets of her past.”
Most people would relate to the freedom of expression rather than the freedom from expression and would rather be free than chained. But chained is also being protected, in a harsh and strange way, but never the less, taken care of and fed. The world is sexist and you can’t deny that. Quite chauvinistic, whether you like it or not. Women in many parts of the world fight and many even give up proving their equality in the gender battle.
The burqa ban for France has been on the news for some time: banning burqas to free the women and introducing fines for men who make their women cover their faces. But what about the women who choose to wear them? Isn’t it a loss of freedom for them? Shouldn’t they have the freedom to choose to cover themselves fully? Well, the definition of freedom is relative and you never know where the lines fade between freedom, protection, over protection and chained.
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