Today I found a cartoon making its rounds thru the social networks. It is a clever cartoon, indeed, but not a very accurate one:
Bikini Girl Vs. Burqa Girl... in the same trap?
The effort is kind of misleading, since it focuses in an original way in how the western and the Muslim culture treats women, and it finds something of a moral equivalency. I wish it were like that, but it isn’t. It is important to walk in other people’s shoes, etc. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
But trying to build moral equivalence here makes us miss the bigger picture.
The bikini girl has a CHOICE, i.e. LIBERTY. The other one can always count on being lapidated if she dares to disobey. Intellect is not an issue at all. The bikini girl can be dumb as a brick, but if she chooses to do something different with her appearance (i.e. not to please men), she won’t face what the burqa girl is going to face with the sharia law, if she dares to disobey the patriarchy.
Want to see how an empowered woman looks like? Behold:
The only female in the Top-10 most recognizable superheroes ever!
Don’t believe me? Ask then Ms. Gloria Steinem, please.
Related articles
- Muslim in France Jailed for Punching Nurse Who Tried to Remove Wife’s Burqa During Childbirth (atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com)
- Canada bans burqa at citizenship swearing in (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- Kim Kardashian Wears Burqa In Dubai (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
[...] Bikini Vs. Burqa or how Moral Relativism makes us lose the Big Picture (paulmarsic.wordpress.com) [...]
I think that, in general, you have oversimplified the issue, but I appreciate your viewpoint. Perhaps you will find further points to explore here: http://qahiri.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/bikini-vs-burqa/