The Burqa - A Sign Of Western Decadence?

While wearing the burqa is often considered to be a religious custom, many see it as a sign of submission, even degradation, of women. It is on this basis that Nicolas Sarkozy announced amidst much approbation from the deputies in Parliament, that the burqa would not be welcome in the French Republic.

However, some have a more nuanced view of the burqa and see it as a predictable consequence of another type of degradation of women, i.e., the overexposure of nudity and the cheapening of female behavior, as a result of propaganda from the feminist movement. Here is an excerpt from an article by Alain Dumait posted at Les 4 Verités:

(...) I can see that the extension into France of this garment-prison, whether or not it is banned, poses and will continue to pose all sorts of practical problems. It demonstrates, as if that were necessary, that the gulf between what can be called Western modernity and Islamist morality, far from being bridged, is deepening. And this gulf is deepening right within our own country, due to the population, more or less Muslim, of some six million persons.

There is obviously a very strong connection between, on the one hand, the appearance of people, the relation between body and clothing and, for women, their place in society, their freedom, and on the other hand, the culture and even the civilization to which they belong.

According to journalist Denis Bachelot, in his essay "L'Islam, le sexe et nous" (Islam, Sex and Us), the conflict between the West and Islam is not so much religious as it is "sexual", insofar as it deals with the representation of women in all aspects of social and cultural life and even from the individual point of view of her person (...)

In this regard, the generalized wearing of the burqa, not only in Afghanistan and Iran, but also in the Persian Gulf countries, the Middle East, the Maghreb and even in France, is less symptomatic of religious radicalism than it is of an identitarian self-absorption, in which the representation of women is the true keystone.

Now at the same time, the representation of women in Western modernity is more and more depraved, provocative, and on the borderline of pornography. It is no doubt in reaction to this exhibitionism that more and more Muslims, in France and elsewhere, have chosen severity, at the cost of imprisoning women!

Sixty French parliamentarians of all stripes are calling for a commission to inquire into the wearing of the burqa. Why not? The various and sundry testimonies might turn out to be quite interesting. But why not, in a parallel gesture, call for another commission to inquire into post-modern sexual exhibitionism?

Let us try to be logical. The politically correct are pro-immigration. And, I hope, in favor of civil tranquility. I would imagine it is better, from their point of view, that the West and Islam converge rather than diverge from one another on this terrain of modernity. In short, if you want to discourage the wearing of the burqa, perhaps you should put more clothes on the models who pose almost naked in advertisements and magazines to pitch for cars and ice creams... The problem is that the very ones who defend this pseudo-modernity, of which the liberated woman is the symbol (and which, in turn gives rise to a desire for the burqa) are the same ones who want to forbid it!

Alain Dumait is implying here a larger issue - the very presence of massive numbers of Muslims on Western territory is the result of an inner rot, not the result of an invasion against great and self-confident civilized nations. The once great civilized nations have rotted from within, leaving a void where once there was a moral code, standards of behavior, beauty and excellence, a strong religious tradition that was for many a bulwark against such invasions from alien cultures, a way of looking and dressing, a way of expressing one's thoughts, a culture of growth and optimism, despite all the wars and setbacks. Into the breach came Islam. It is filling the breach with its terrorism, its fanaticism and its most strict formalities. Islam found the rotting West a fertile soil for the propagation of its archaic ways. Suddenly, everyone was attracted to the idea of women's enslavement, and polygamy and barbaric ritual killings of both people and animals. Suddenly everyone was defending the right of fanatics to be fanatics. Suddenly everyone was defending this new religion that was so alien to their own rotten habits - or was it so alien after all? Islam had been at war with Christianity since its inception; the rotting West was also at war with Christianity; so there was some common ground.

There will be more than enough blame to go around when the day of reckoning comes for the West. But first on the list (my list anyway) comes "women's lib". A completely deviant movement, not to be confused at all with women's groups whose goal is to prevent women from getting into trouble. The goal of the left-wing (and eventually pseudo-right-wing as well) women's liberation movement has been to aid and abet the forces that set women up for sexual promiscuity and depravity. These include: magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Playgirl, fashion designers, pornographers, media talk shows where the joys of being a "single Mom" are tear-jerkingly inculcated into dumb young girls, bushels of boo-hoo stories about women battered by their live-in boyfriend who is not the father of their three kids and who murders the kids in a drunken rage and the neighbors just can't understand it - they were all such nice people, etc... Such stories are not cautionary tales but lures for gullible, sex-starved young girls who then imitate what they see and hear on the boob tube (a sort of booby trap that sits in the place of honor in the living-room, like an altar, and smirkingly stares down on the rapt viewer).

The widespread propaganda that abortion is a "right", when nothing could be further from the truth has been the cornerstone of female liberational dogma. It is the woman who has the responsibility not to get pregnant, not the girl (who volunteers to get into trouble) who has the "right" to an abortion. Abortion as a basic inalienable right was placed on the same moral plane as, for example, the right to home-ownership - and suddenly indoctrinated young girls wanted to exercise their "right". So they sleep around (as they are told they have the "right" to do), then get their abortion (which is also their "right'). The notion of avoiding trouble by not getting pregnant until one is married is anathema to the women's lib movements - it is much too civilized for their cynical agenda, and civilized behavior from women would put them out of business.

In the process two critically important things were destroyed: femininity and masculinity. Both men and women became like teen-age girls. Young boys adopted the same nasalized sing-song chirp of young teenage girls. Both sexes covered their bodies with hideous tattoos. Both sexes lost the very features that had been the basis for sexual attraction - feminine appeal and masculine strength. Instead of attractiveness leading to an attraction that in turn aroused the need and desire for a permanent union, we now have sleaze, orgies on college campuses, fly-by night sexual experiences that often leave women infected or pregnant and deviant sexual practices elevated to the status of "normal." Sex is cheap because women have lowered the price on their own heads to attract the lowest bidder. Eligible, mature men are more scarce than ever, easy girls are now commonplace. When very restrictive laws allowing abortion were passed, the feminists immediately demanded more, until late-term abortions also became their "right". Late-term abortions are an abomination no one ever considered in the years preceding the 60's.

Feminism, a hungry hydra like all "liberal" pressure groups, can never be satisfied.

Contraception was at one time seen as the solution to abortion, a pipe-dream that is now history. The reckless young cannot be bothered with contraception. Even some grown-up women have said they can't be bothered. Not to mention the potential (hormonal) dangers in the pill. So despite contraception, multiple sex partners, illnesses, some of them devastating to the female reproductive system, pregnancies by the bushel, illegitimate births by the bushel, and uncountable abortions all over the Western world became all too common consequences of women's "liberation". Some liberation!!!

(Actually I think the USA has a relatively low rate of abortion, possibly because of our notorious "puritanism" and some residual religious scruples.)

But the feminists were still not content. They had to encourage married women not to care properly for their children, to dump them in day-care while they went off to their beautiful careers. The terms "soccer mom" or "stay-at-home mom" are derisory in the minds of feminist sophisticates.

Feminists have exploited to the hilt and beyond the weaknesses (such as an inclination to exhibitionism) inherent in young girls. Girls have to be ready to assume mature tasks like marriage and motherhood, not jobs in the pornography business.

Young girls with no moral standards to refer to, little or no maternal and paternal guidance, and no prospect for, or even interest in, a permanent relationship, often drift into homosexuality - another major contribution of the feminists to the destruction of femininity.

In such a dysfunctional society, who can be surprised that Islam walks into the breach?

The archbishop of Paris, André Vingt-Trois has a similar message:

I am not sure that in a democracy you can impose an article of clothing. So, if we enter into the realm of a society that is servile, in which the legislator must define how women should dress, I fear that it would be a path rather difficult to follow.

Note: With respect, I think the Cardinal is making an error when he assumes that a democracy cannot impose a type of clothing. If the behavior and outward appearance of women becomes detrimental to a healthier democratic tradition, then the democracy has an obligation take corrective measures, in order to preserve the well-being of women, their children and men, since men are largely conditioned by women, contrary to the myths of the feminists.

Long ago people (men and women) walked naked on the French Riviera. This was certainly ugly to behold, but at least it was restricted to certain areas. Widespread nudity, plus trampish behavior and indifference to the very concepts of taste and modesty should be just cause for a democracy to take action. Whether it should be done by parliamentary fiat or some other more effective means is perhaps the more essential question here.

The archbishop continues:

On the other hand, I can also see how constraints and customs, or lifestyles, can alienate the freedoms of a certain number of people. This is perhaps the case for a certain number of women on whom the burqa is imposed.... But who is going to fathom their conscience to find out if it is really imposed? But it is also true of many of own women who are not Muslims, or dressed in burqas, but who see the female body exposed like a commercial product on billboard ads. I do not see why we don't ban that! It is in keeping with respect for the human person! I mean that I do not think the nude women in advertisements are any more respected than the women who are enclosed in a burqa.

How ironic that at the outset, the feminists denounced the exploitation of the female body as an "object" for the pleasure of men; and then they turn around and do exactly the same thing, except that they go further than any man ever dreamt of going.

Below, a shot of Madonna in one of her more modest outfits. She has been a major influence on young American girls, stimulating in them the desire to be "bad" and to exploit their bodies for material gain.