https://pp.vk.me/c635106/v635106753/217e/XWciycs1P1c.jpg
Also, fundamentalists just invented most of things they sell as eternal.
About the traditional dress: It will be more appropriate to say that those were the traditional dresses before the nations came under the rule of Islam. Once Islam takes over as a ruling entity and ideology, things become more and more fundamentalist and women will be the ones to suffer the most under such a rule.
>>Also, fundamentalists just invented most of things they sell as eternal.
The fundamentalists have not invented most of the things they claim and the acts they carry out as Islamic. They do have a support for their views/actions/claims in the very fundamental scriptures of Islam, namely Quran and Hadiths. These views by Bill Maher and Sam Harris may help understand this point in a better way. [1], [2], [3]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E1u9lQeAsY
However, most of those countries are long islamic. They figured ways to have both islam and freedom of expression. Only in the later years did they become violently fundamentalistic to displayed extent.
Some didn't yet. Tatars are muslim for quite a few centuries but they don't dress their women like that.
Only in 20th century, only after Ataturk abolished the Caliphate after the WWI. Before, only if they managed to set themselves free from the Muslim rulers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Caliphate
Marvel the maximal extent of it:
http://asianhistory.about.com/od/turkeyhistoryculture/ss/Ott...
In Islam there's no concept of freedom, especially not "of expression:"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam
"Islām is the verbal noun of Form IV of the root, and means "submission" or "surrender"."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim
""Muslim" is an Arabic word meaning "one who submits (to God)"
Just wishing something to be true doesn't make it true. And anachronisms are only that.
Their interpretation of what being Muslim means in practice might differ significantly.
http://jakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/news/despite-ban-female-g...
"2008 Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) fatwa challenging a ban on FGM issued by Indonesia's Health Ministry in 2006"
I stand to my claim, and I can support it with links: wherever Islam is a majority religion or "near to majority" the oppression exists. At least women, "unbelievers" (in Islam) or both. And Islam stands nowhere there for a "freedom of expression," quite the opposite. And the reason for that are both the basic religious texts and the practice through the history.
Regarding your arguments from another thread:
> Having training camps and wrapping women in opaque blankets is two distinct things. Bosnians mostly did former and not latter.
Do you talk only about the last years, and about the pure historical accident? I've given you the overview of the related history, after the WWII Muslims didn't have any governing power, and after the most recent war they just remained non-Sharia. Not something that the religion prescribes. And the Muslims weren't a majority.
> luckily I don't see much of them
You don't know what you talk about. For those not believing in Islam, the "ruler" was every Muslim they had to deal width, and they had to deal with them, as only Muslims controlled the land, and the Christians were just the workers on the land and they "belonged" to the Muslim owner just like the land belonged to him. They weren't allowed to do anything else. And what can be considered as the equivalent of the modern "police" were Muslims and of the "court" typically Muslim clerics (as Islam traditionally doesn't separate the church and the state).
So for you to imagine, imagine that whatever you do you do for such "rulers" (just for you to earn enough to eat) and that they control you whenever they please. Only they are allowed to carry weapons. And if your wife, daughter or sister doesn't cover her hair... maybe a recent example from the "moderate" Indonesia gives a hint:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Indonesian_beheadings_of_...
You can also research what the punishments for Muslims oppressing the "unbelievers" were "traditionally" to understand how ugly it was. All together, not a "tradition" anybody should be proud about. When Muslims today brag about "the people of other religions living peacefully" in the regions they controlled that typically meant just "they were not exterminated" (at that times, a lot of people were needed to work on the land, just like slaves were needed on the cotton fields in the States). Until the convenient moment, of course:
This. The freedom lovers, liberals and humanists must understand this threat posed by the vicious ideology of mainstream Islam. The USA and the west now must also invest similar (if not more) efforts and resources to fight this vicious ideology as those that they invested to fight another vicious ideology called communism.
It should however be noted that there are many people who have been Muslims just by birth and they do not necessarily follow the vicious ideology to its core.
So the fight must be against Islam and not against all Muslims, per se.
Yes and we should support all such people instead of parroting the slogans that effectively support the Islam fundamentalists (and they are anyway supported by billions of dollars every year). Parroting the slogans (like this title "the poems of a guy show how Islam is complex," no, Islam as an ideology is not getting more complex due to the unrelated publicly unknown actions of some individual) and supporting the initiatives that even indirectly support Muslim intolerance ("wear a burka day" and similar) doesn't make you "good for not being the racist," it just makes you a threat to the survival of our hard achieved freedoms.
We actually have to support these Muslims who don't treat their religion as the only truth there is, those who don't wear headscarves, those that don't hate Jews, those who don't pray five times a day, those who don't attend mosques, those who dare to say that the religious books were just made by humans, not the verbatim words of whichever "god."
The freedoms we take for granted are also "use it or lose it." The caricaturists (!) are among the first to painfully personally recognize how we're daily losing the freedoms. Charlie Hebdo is quite a known story, but consider Molly Norris who had to not exist anymore:
http://www.seattleglobalist.com/2015/02/09/molly-norris-draw...
http://www.steynonline.com/6965/there-is-no-more-molly-or-lu...
So what's going on? Taleb cleverly notes: "The most Intolerant wins." The intolerant minority can actually overpower the weaker tolerant majority.
We must be very clear in what we don't want to tolerate too. Which will be hard for a lot of "feelings" as yes, the West has a lot of what it shouldn't to be proud about too, that it shares with Islam. Including the religious fanatics and the slavery in America, or religiously-based hate and killing of Jews and many other nations in Europe. All part of the history or even presence, influencing the current events.
And we have to cut through the huge amount of disinformation to increase the number of people aware that the problem of losing freedoms exists, before it's too late.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niq%C4%81b_in_Egypt#/media/Fil...
Some other peoples in the same countries of course wore less "fundamental" clothing.
Still your picture with a woman without the head covering and with the skin showing in Bosnia is 100% anachronistic (recent, somebody shot a waitress dressed as a tourist attraction in just some part of the old clothes, according to the Wikipedia page) and surely not "traditional." This is how it looked like traditionally:
http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/8913992104084b29887dc4ab7fa2fd0b/b...
They still look much nicer than the "modern ninjas."
What's "tradition" here? How widely were it practiced? Because I totally see this practice of digging in the past for some more obscurantist behaviors, and calling it "tradition" as if it is a good thing.
BTW, Gaddafi was also secular compared to what followed:
http://africanleadership.co.uk/blog/?p=8161
That's what complex is: one word like "secular" isn't enough to understand what's going on, especially over any non-trivial time period or the area involving different nations.
> What's "tradition" here?
Under the Muslim control, which lasted for centuries, sadly, no woman was able not to wear a headscarf in the presence of the rulers. Non-believing men weren't able to do anything lucrative or have any real governing function. Once the Muslims have lost the control, the "tradition" was able to change. But there are the real forces pressing backwards even as we speak.
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militant_activity_of_Osama_bin...
> was able not to wear a headscarf in the presence of the rulers
There's a lot of things even I won't do "in the presence of the rules", but luckily I don't see much of them, so I'm free to do whatever I please. Wasn't same true for them?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Hasht-Be...
There's no arguing that these are depictions of Muslim women by Muslim painters, so it's a bit simplistic to act as if Islam has always imposed the same interpretation of what "modest dress" means. Anyway, I'm not trying to wade into this larger debate but just wanted to point out that we don't need to speculate about what the traditional dress was like in regions like the Persian or Ottoman empires, there are abundant historical images that show us.
Having women wearing black in the areas where the Sun could kill them while men at the same time wear white was surely practical for Bedouins restricting their movement and making them any kind of the "escape" riskier. Luckily, Persia was something else, thanks to its history.
Kindly allow me to be very subjective, to my eyes, Iranian women are beautiful above average (the ones I've met didn't wear headscarves). I do understand the people becoming poets in their presence.
As you are the OP, any chance of obtaining access to the other poems mentioned in the article? Any affiliation?
Enjoying something while trying to prevent others from enjoying it. Which he did. Searching for reasons to back it up makes it worse.
On related note, I've heard there's sentiment coming from smartphone-clutching young parents where they say they'll somehow restrict their children from visiting internet. WTF are they thinking? First they'll fail, then how do they think they'll look in the eyes of their children?
Too bad that many people are content both with arbitrary restrictions and with the people who force restrictions on them.