Reema and her friends are slowly parading around a Doha shopping mall, making sure their fashionable floor-length coverings are seen.
The glamorous girls shroud their jeans and colourful tops with long black robes, mixing fashion with religion and tradition.
"I think it looks really elegant. There are so many abayas on the market at the moment - the latest being the farasha, or butterfly-style abaya. It isn't tight-fitting like the French-style abaya, which is made to fit the body.
"It's loose with tight sleeves often embroidered with colourful threads."
The abaya is an over-garment worn by many Muslim women in the Gulf. It is the traditional form of hijab, or modest Islamic dress, for many countries of the Arabian peninsula.
But for many women, the abaya is worn with style and purpose. It is another form of expression that offers advantages over Western outfits.
Denise Al-Shammari, an American convert to Islam who lives in Kuwait, wears the abaya strategically.
"It's a convenience thing ... I don't wear the abaya, but if I have to take the kids to school in the morning, I may just whip it on over my pyjamas."
Not really convenience for most of these women, but a necessity. If they don't go out covered head to toe, they risk being treated as "whores" by the local men, who apparently are all so uncontrollably horny that the sight of a woman's ankle turns them into rampaging sex machines.
And of course, it's all their fault if they get groped or raped or worse.
This isn't modesty, but prudery.
But of course, this is all because Islamic men honour their women so much:
"The Prophet Muhammad told women to cover themselves and to not show their shape. A Muslim woman must cover everything except her hands and face, and this is the best way to do it.
"Women should not show their beauty to male strangers."
Women's dress in Islam is based on a principle of modesty.
"In Islam we value women, like jewels and diamonds. They are so precious that they should be covered. They are not like pieces of broken glass lying on the street," Al-Basyouni said.
Well, an abaya does cover all those nasty bruises. But you can't help but hurt the ones you love.
4 comments:
the enlightened west
In Islam we value women, like jewels and diamonds. They are so precious that they should be covered.
Diamonds and jewels are polished so they sparkle, not so they are covered up.
A little more false moral equivalence, Davidson?
Which society has the full force of religious, legal and cultural sanction for the abuse of the women?
The cattle should be at home pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen so they can raise broods of future suicide bombers, what are Muslim men thinking? Allowing mere women to contemplate how they're dressed! Whores.
Post a Comment