It seems doubtful that the cries of "Islamophobia" will be as shrill against Syria as they have been against Europe. "Syria bans face veils at universities," by Albert Aji for Associated Press, July 19 (thanks to Choi):
DAMASCUS, Syria - Syria has banned the face-covering Islamic veil from the country's universities to prevent what it sees as a threat to its secular identity, as similar moves in Europe spark cries of discrimination against Muslims.The Education Ministry issued the ban Sunday, according to a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly.
The ban, which affects public and private universities, is only against the niqab -- a full Islamic veil that reveals only a woman's eyes -- not headscarves, which are far more commonly worn by Syrian women.
The billowing black robe known as a niqab is not widespread in Syria, although it has become more common recently -- a move that has not gone unnoticed in a country governed by a secular, authoritarian regime.
"We have given directives to all universities to ban niqab-wearing women from registering," the government official told The Associated Press on Monday.
The niqab "contradicts university ethics," he added, saying the government was seeking to protect its secular identity....
Opponents say such bans violate freedom of religion and will stigmatize all Muslims.
Duaa, a 19-year-old university student in Damascus, said she hopes to continue wearing her niqab to classes when the next term begins in the fall despite the ban.
Otherwise, she said, she will not be able to study.
"The niqab is a religious obligation," said Duaa, who asked that her surname not be used because she was not comfortable speaking publicly on the issue. "I cannot go without it."
lol, it may very well be Islamofacism but in Syria at least facism comes before islam.
Just another day in the life of a petty tyrant slamming down everything that might be considered a threat. "Secular" indeed.
"The niqab is a religious obligation," said Duaa, who asked that her surname not be used because she was not comfortable speaking publicly on the issue. "I cannot go without it."
In other words, the rule of fear for one's life is a religious obligation. Better to wear a bag than to undertake the risks of free thought and liberty.
*** 2:282 ***
Hell, if I were a Moslima I'd wanna hide too.
The missing-the-point of this report in the AP is the failure to explain what is really going on.
And that is this:
Alawites control the military (they make up most of the upper officer corps) in Syria, and through that control retain their grip on Syria, though they constitute only 12% of the population. The "real" Sunni Muslims hate them, and if Hafez al-Assad had not crushed them in the early 1980s so ferociously, they might have been back -- with a vengeance. They are still trying, and they won't give up. And if they ever succeed, the Alawite villages will be destroyed. The only hope for Syria's other Christians, too, including the Armenians in Haleb, is for the Alawites to stay in power. But the Alawites can stay in power without Bashir Al-Assad, whose aliance with Iran is, from the point of view of Alawite long-term interests, a gamble that he will lose. Perhaps other Alawites, generals who have a different view and are more cautious than Bashar Al-Assad, will be able to remove him, but keep the Alawites in power with, as always, the pretense of a "Ba'athist regime" open to all -- Saddam Hussein did much the same thing in Iraq, but there he was attempting to disguise a despotism run of, by, and for not Alawites, but Sunni Arabs. That's why Ba'athism found favor in only two Arab states -- the two were distinct minorities: Alawites (with 12% of the population) and Sunni Arabs (with 19% of the population) needed to disguise their rule, and pan-Arab Ba'athism provided, in each country, that necessary disguise.
This is not a case of Muslims banning the niqab, but of Alawites. The more American policy-makers ignore the Alawite matter, the less they will be able to discern what makes sense when it comes to dealing with, and frightening, those who now rule Syria. And they are frightened of the possiblity of a Sunni Muslim takeover. But this fear can be used to undo that fateful alliance with the Shi'a Islamic Republic of Iran, and also force Syria to stop supporting, and supplying weapons to, Hezbollah. The Alawite generals will have to figure out what makes the most sense: the survival of the Alawites, or the survival of the unsteady Bashir al-Assad. The interests of the Alawites surely take precedence. If Bashir al-Assad imprudently does not draw back, and threatens the long-term interests of Alawites, there are more Air Force colonels, and army officers too, who came where his father came from.
Hugh, That is very interesting stuff. What have you read, or what information do you have that brings you to the conclusion you have. Sounds like the history of Syria is interesting.
Another question I have since you seem to be in the know on this. How would an alawite non-Iranian allied Syria behave towards the U.S. Are the Alawites the mythical peaceful Islam I keep hearing about? Inquiring minds want to know.
Let's see:
Arab Muslims in the Sudan attack Black Muslims in the Sudan. Muslims must really hate Muslims.
Saudi Arabian Muslims attack fellow Saudi Arabian Muslims for not being Muslim enough. Muslims must really hate Muslims.
Egyptian Muslims in government ban and imprison members of Islamist political parties. Muslims must really hate Muslims.
Sunni Muslims in Iraq attack and kill Shia Muslims in Iraq. Shia Muslims attack and kill Sunni Muslims in Iraq. Muslims must really hate Muslims.
Alawite Muslims in Syria attack and kill Sunni Muslim in the Hama Massacre. Muslims must really hate Muslims.
Sunni and Shia Muslims regularly attack each other in Pakistan. Muslims must really hate Muslims.
Sunni Muslims regularly oppress and persecute Muslims sects such as the Ismailis (a branch of Shia Islam). Muslims must really hate Muslims.
Kemal Ataturk dismantled the Caliphate, made all Muslim clerics employees of the state, decreed that the Arabic alphabet could no longer be used, banned the hijab in government institutions and put state controls on what would be the ideological content of Islamic religious instruction. Muslims must really hate Muslims.
Tunisia has banned the hijab. Muslims must really hate Muslims.
The Taliban in Afghanistan established an authoritarian police state which in their opinion was meant to be the perfect Islamic state. Muslims must really hate Muslims.
The Iranians have established an authoritarian police state in the name of Islam in which dissent is not tolerated. Muslims must really hate Muslims.
"Muslims are the first victims of Islam. Many times I have observed in my travels in the Orient, that fanaticism comes from a small number of dangerous men who maintain the others in the practice of the religion by terror. To liberate the Muslim from his religion is the best service that one can render him."
Ernest Renan
I have mentioned the Alawites so many times -- google such words as "Alawites" and "Troupes Speciales" and "Hugh Fitzgerald" and many things should come up, that I hesitate to repost one of them, but here goes:
Fitzgerald: What to do about the Alawites
The Alawites who rule Syria constitute 12% of the population. Though they make up the officer corps, still -- there are those pesky non-Alawites among the men to worry about. When "real" Muslims massacred 82 Alawite miltary cadets at a graduation ceremony, as part of an anti-regime, anti-Alawite campaign, Hafez al-Assad surrounded Hama, an Ikhwan center, and told his troops to kill anyone who moved. Twenty thousand were killed.
Qualis pater, talis filius? Not quite. Bashir the son is a most myopic ophthalmologist. He may think that he is safe as long as he lets Sunnis use Syria as a point of entry into Iraq to fight the good fight (and any fight that directs Muslim interest and energies away from the Alawites of Syria, disguised as "Ba'athists," is a good fight), and simultaneously lets Syria be used the other way, as a place through which Iranian weaponry, money, and agents are delivered to Hizballah in Lebanon. In such a way do the Alawites hope, by giving at the office, to stay in power (and to keep those reliable Armenian drivers and other Christians whom they can trust).
But is this true? What if the Israelis inflict a severe defeat -- not merely severe, but one seen as humiliating, to the regime? Then the agitation would begin. Not agitation from the would-be Chalabis -- Ghadry et al, or the false "reformers" like Hafez al-Assad's former aide and Vice-President, the Sunni Muslim Kaddam, now working from the safety of his French pleasure-dome (bought with the loot his years in office permitted him to accumulate, which now allows him to pretend to be a "reformer" when what he really wants is to return to power, this time as Mr. Big). Every Alawite house has a picture of Mary. Every Alawite village is known. Do the Alawites want a bloodbath, or do they want to decide now to retreat into their own Syrian redoubt and no longer do Iran's bidding, or for that matter the bidding of Sunnis, deciding instead to preserve themselves and save their weaponry, for a war within Syria to preserve themselves from the real Muslims?
So far Bashir al-Assad's eagerness to assuage Muslims, both Sunni and Shi'a, outside Syria, appears to have worked. He is still in power. Alawite generals still strut about. But for how long, if their forces are damaged and humiliated by the Israelis? How long did Gamal Abdel Nasser last, after the Six-Day War?
In that vast Pentagon, is there anywhere an office devoted to tracking those potential sources of weakness and internecine warfare, in the camp of Jihad and Islam? For example, is there a special office designed to do nothing but figure out ways to use the peculiar vulnerability of the Alawites for American advantage? For those Alawites must prove to both Sunnis and to Shi'a that they are true Muslims despite their Mary-worship, despite the Syrian government closing on Christmas, despite the Good Friday processions that, incredibly for a supposedly "Muslim" country, actually take place publicly without incident (because the Alawite officers have the army in place to protect those Christian processions from the real Muslims, some of whom have resigned themselves to accepting these things). That office should be dedicated to obtaining not the "friendship" of the Alawites (for god's sake, put that idiotic goal out of your mind) but rather their cooperation, by threatening to encourage others -- Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia -- to use their propaganda machines to harp on this little matter of the Alawite despots who have murdered Sunnis, genuine Muslims, and continue to hold them in thrall. The Alawite rulers may think we would never do this, but that is only because they fail to realize that at this point, if the Alawites behave so as to promote the worst and most violent and most potent of Muslim armed groups, they should not expect their worship of Mary to get them off the hook.
Last year they lost Lebanon as a place to exploit financially. Now they have, in their insensate willingness to fulfill Iranian bidding and thereby to risk everything, have figuratively lost their heads. If they do not come to their senses, Americans, not with help from their "Sunni Arab allies" but rather from Sunni Arabs who have their own reason for cutting Syria's ties with Iran, should make sure that they will be in danger of turning that figurative loss into a literal one -- and not far in the future. Surely they know that. Surely they know what happened to those Alawite military cadets in Homs. Surely they know their local Muslims, and what is just beneath the surface, and what could so easily be made to come out, to the great chagrin of those Alawite officers who would suddenly lose control of their maddened men.
Why risk it? Why risk everything? Hizballah is in trouble. Iran is going to be in bigger trouble. Why should the Alawites of Syria risk all?
[Posted by Hugh on August 8, 2006]
The Koran, hadith and shari'a in One Sentence:
Heads We Win - Tails You Lose
Etymologists may wish to discuss here the relation, if any, of Arabic "niqab" and the French slang word "niquer."
Where are the mobs in Pakistan that were demonstration in the streets against the proposed French ban?Where are the threats from al-Qaeda?Where is the "Arab street"?
"The niqab is a religious obligation," said Duaa, who asked that her surname not be used because she was not comfortable speaking publicly on the issue. "I cannot go without it."
Sure you can. "Free your mind, the rest will follow."
It's not just Syria...
Egypt purges niqab from schools and colleges
Who'd thought Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi himself to be an "Islamophobe", too!
The difference of course being that France is a Western secular democracy, immune to the bidding of any muslim dictator or scholar. Unbearable!
Syria, for a MiddleEastern country seems to be more honest about the various symbols of the headresses.
It's wearing is political more than religious or even cultural.
So, friends, when you see the Dunk'n Donut servers or the former Sheilah Murphy draped in shrouds, understand that post-adolescence and mid-life crises are only human.
Do they see the woman issue here, or are they responsive to the comments about it. No. And, they'll choose not to see the contradictions, either. These 'Fatima ben Steinems' will bravely prosecute the ridiculous.
They've been culled out of the weaker numbers and don't have the stuph to get out. And these neo-Fondas will become more adamant, indulging ignorance.
Maybe they'd like to discuss it all with Bashir.