Because man is much more sexual in nature than women!

In Reply to Bina Shah (Nudity and the Niqab: The Debate Continues) __________________________________________________________________________ First, I would start by partially agreeing with your statement that women should be allowed to wear whatever they choose. Moreover, I wish that (to quote you) "One day, women will be free to make their own choices about their clothing, and men will simply have to get out of the way." Nevertheless, here is a question that arises when I read your blog; should there be a limit to what a woman chooses to wear? Should the women -and for that matter men as well-be allowed to wear literally anything that they want to wear? Can I as a man be allowed to walk into my office wearing nothing but white boxer shorts and a top hat? Will the office management allow me to wear that? If it doesn't, then should I brand my office management as myopic rigid and conservative shmucks?

The reason behind all this controversy on the niqabs, burkas, hijabs and abayas is the misunderstanding of the original message words of Quran. Hijab in the Quran is used to denote a modest dress. A sort of separation between men and women, it was not implied in the Quran as the covering of the whole female body as we see it today. In fact the word Hijab was misunderstood by the Islamic jurisprudents to mean 'satr' which implies covering up yourself, which if used in the context of Hijab, actually bars women from going outside and remain locked up inside their homes which of course is impractical. The basic premise of Quran is to place restrictions on both men and women in regards to their conduct outside their homes. But an important factor to consider here is that the verses were revealed back in the 7th century and were primarily meant to guide the Muslims in those formative years. However, the views that would have been perfectly sane and rational in those times cannot be held as practical in this era, that much we have to give to the Muslim liberals. If revisit the Quranic verses that order the women to remain covered and hidden in their houses, we find the following: “O wives of the Prophet! You are not as other women..." (33:32) "Remain in your houses." (33:33) Here we see that the restrictions that were reserved for the wives of the Prophet (PBUH) were taken by the jurisprudents to mean as general instructions for all the women. These instructions in those days were the ancient equivalent of modern security procedures regarding the family members of high-ranking officials and public figures, which of course can’t simply be applied to the public. What the Quran actually says is, "Say to the believing men to cast down their glance and guard their private parts..." (24:30), thus, it imposes a restriction on Muslim men and women regarding their conduct. And (to the chagrin of the liberals) these restrictions are neither fantastic nor impractical. In all the civilized western countries there laws against nudity as well as sexual offences. Society, thus itself imposes laws on what we wear and how we choose to act, something, which -to its credit-Islam outlined back in the 7th century AD. Yes, the concept of Hijab is there in Quran, but the Hijab that we refer today to as THE Hijab, is more related to the Arab culture, which we like to idealize in the same way as the medieval western nations idealized the Vatican and later the Renaissance gripped Europe idealized the ancient Greek and Roman cultures. Thus, I leave it upon you to decide which culture you would like to follow and how much promiscuity would you be willing to allow in the society. I really do agree with your statement that women should be allowed to wear whatever they choose to wear but restrictions should be there, why? Because man is much more sexual in nature than women -Ref: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cultural-animal/201012/the-reality-the-male-sex-drive http://www.webmd.com/sex/features/sex-drive-how-do-men-women-compare It is this sexual nature of man that if suppressed or given a free ticket lead to sexual crimes. I again repeat that the extreme, suppression (in the case of Arab and South Asian cultures) and liberalization (in the case of Western nations) will only bring sexual harm to the women. Thus, restrictions on what women and men wear will I am afraid always be there but it depends whether we gravitate towards extreme conservatism or extreme liberalization or should we choose the middle way-the moderate way, which is neither liberal nor conservative. Miss Bina Shah's said blog can be accessed at http://binashah.blogspot.nl/2012/07/nudity-and-niqab-debate-continues.html

Reflections in a waiting queue

I am sitting on a conservatively designed computer terminal in the university, waiting for my transcript and completion letter. There is one trait that almost all education institutions around the world share, and that is their laziness to issue transcripts, I mean I have faced this issue in matric, then college, then the university ( in Pakistan) and now here all the way in Australia. The only improvement in this whole situation was the presence of a pretty looking damsel on the counter, otherwise in my experience it was either a man with a beard chewing pan, a grumpy looking pregnant woman or some bespectacled unshaven moron who had given up hope on living a life.

So now here I am nothing to do, and to while away the waiting hours I decided to write something. Actually it was the Coldplay song "The Scientist" that triggered some hitherto lost memory and made me reflect on the finite nature of everything. I am not a religious person at all, but that doesn’t mean I do not reflect on life and death and what happens afterwards. I like to believe that there is an afterlife but I don’t know if there is one. Maybe there is one, but our human mind is unable to grasp it. What if science can’t prove it in my lifetime, then what? Would I die as an unbeliever? Condemned to live in Hell? Or maybe I would just die and become the constituent matter of the soil on which barley would grow and a grain would just fall due to the wind and be pecked by a hen which in turn would be collected by its owner who would sell it in the market and where it would be cut, skinned and reduced to cutlets and end up on the table of a local politician who would, when filled up, would proceed to plot the death of some rival and the circle of life would carry on. How would my skeleton rise out of the grave on the day of judgement I don’t know. Looks like a zombie apocalypse to me. All I know is that earliest traces of this concept lie in the Egyptian concept of the Kingdom of the Dead. But some people are dead before they even die, their souls or their amygdala part of the brain is dead, for if it was not, then what induces them to kill other humans- Extinguish a Life. They don’t only extinguish a life but they also kill a story. The story of a person who might have had the opportunity to live right up to a ripe old age and relate the story of his life to his grandchildren, lessons that they would retain in their minds for the rest of their lives but who wouldn’t be able to do that now just because there is a soul-less zombie who killed that person in the name of a deity whose nature has been changing from the Mesopotamian Marduk to Yahweh and then Allah. May be that deity is there. Up there somewhere looking down upon the petty conglomeration of cells and molecules we call humans, who kill in the name of His when they have not even seen, heard or even felt Him. May be He was there, back in the good old days, but maybe He has left, He has left this planet and gone over to experiment on some other civilization residing on a planet millions of light years away. Who knows? That's the statement that I KNOW has and will be forever echoing in the story of human civilization. Anyways, I should go over to check whether the documents have arrived or not. Feels good to write, doesn’t it :)