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I am to lazy to write by myself. In moments like this I surf the internet and look for other interesting pages or articles. Like this one:
The veil is political and insulting Genevieve Kineke
(Source)
 Dr. Elham Mane'a, reformist Islamic woman has iterated what I have long thought but have no right to say, since I cannot speak about the tenets of other people's religions. She shows how
political events (mostly in the 1970's and 80's) led to the promotion of a particular sect of Islam (Wahhabism). This in turn mandated the complete veiling of all women, which she find offensive to the dignity of both men and women:
"The veil, then, is a political issue... yet the arguments and the methods used to convince women that there is an obligation [to wear the veil] have taken three forms... The first argument claims that when a woman wears the veil, she covers up her feminine curves and protects men from licentiousness. The second argument claims that when a
woman wears the veil, she helps to establish a good society. The third argument claims that it is, in essence, a religious [duty].
"The first argument is based on the assumption that the Arab man is a lecherous animal that cannot control its urges, and therefore, one must be on guard against it. [The Arab man's] thoughts are controlled by sex, and therefore he cannot be relied on, and the woman's [seductive] parts must be covered in order to protect him from the devil
inside him. This premise is unfair to the Arab man, whom we know as a brother, as a father, as a husband, and as a human being. He is capable of treating a woman as a human being, and not as a commodity to be used for pleasure. He is capable of controlling his urges - even though they exist and he is aware of their existence - just as a woman
is capable of doing so..."
"This first argument also includes a humiliating premise about women, since it portrays the woman as nothing more than a sex tool - not as a human being but as [a collection of] private parts. She isn't [considered] a noble or thinking being, but rather a being whose every body part arouses urges, and which consists entirely of sexual parts -
[including] her voice, her hair, and her body... This argument disregards the fact that a woman can cause a man, and anyone [else] around her, to respect her through her behavior and her attitude towards others, and not by covering her head and her body..."
"The second argument is based the premise that there is a connection between wearing the veil and the establishment of a good society. According to this logic, a good society is one in which no intimate relations take place out of wedlock. However, this premise is at best mistaken, since, as a matter of fact, the societies that mandate the
wearing of the veil and insist on segregation of the sexes are not those in which sex out of wedlock is least common. On the contrary, the forced segregation [of the sexes] has led to homosexual relations, as indicated by studies which show that the wearing of the veil in Arab and Islamic societies has not prevented some of the girls from
having [sexual] relations out of wedlock. After that, they usually have surgery to reconstruct the hymen.
"The third argument rests on the premise that [Islam] has a firm position on the issue of the veil, while the fact is that there are many [different] religious texts on the subject. This abundance [of religious texts] has always existed. You, [the Muslim woman,] can read the texts for yourself, and need no intermediary. [When you read them]
you will see that not only is there an abundance of texts, but that they also have numerous interpretations....
"As a matter of fact, the third argument, which claims that it is religion that imposes wearing the veil on women, is the weakest argument, since we never heard it before the late 1970s, and we didn't see it implemented until the orthodox interpretation of Islam became the most prevalent interpretation in the Arab and Muslim world.
Her writings are found here, although I'm sure she's anathema in much of the Islamic world. She writes with gentle firmness, while leaving the decision to each woman. So many, though, simply are not free to decide such things.
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