Comments

  1. Smokey Dusty says

    OMG! Ridiculous on so many levels. Apologies for the non-comment but where do you start? I tried and failed.

  2. Pierce R. Butler says

    Hey, next time I want to hijack progressive language for regressive purposes, now I know to retain Dr. Bilal Philips!

  3. says

    There is a massive non-sequetur here. If a group of people claim to do something voluntarily, then the most that follows is that it is possible to do it voluntarily. However there is overwhelming evidence that many women in Islamic communities do not wear the Hijab voluntarily. According to Dr. Philips this is a falsehood spread by secular extremists. I would be more inclined to take him seriously if there were World Wear Whatever You Like Day in which women in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia could wear whatever they liked with a guarantee that there would be no untoward consequences.[1] I can’t see how Dr. Philips and his Islamic chums could possibly object to this; in fact, to really show how evil secular extremists are, the Islamic world could do no better than to make every day a World Wear Whatever You Like Day.

    Footnotes:
    [1] Not even a teeny bit of acid throwing; sorry to be such a spoilsport.

  4. rq says

    That was a long confusing sentence.

    And why is there a naked flower in the background? We all know what flowers are…

  5. Carmichael says

    Bilal Phillips has been banned from entering Australia, Germany, Kenya and the UK owing to his extremist views and possible links to terrorist organizations. “Political empowerment”, ‘legitimate right of women”. He couldn’t give a shit about these things. He’s another in a long line of Islamists who, as Pierce R Butler observes, use the language of rights but have zero commitment to the concept.

  6. leni says

    If you have to choose to hide yourself in order to feel empowered, you are not fucking empowered.

  7. Anoia says

    Try to convince western infidels that Islam is not a backward misogynistic ideology with an ad featuring a prepubescent girl claiming she is a woman who “chooses” to cover up as to not tempt men. FAIL.

  8. Al Dente says

    Sorry, Dr. Phillips, but you have failed to make a convincing cast that wearing hajib is empowering.

  9. Omar Puhleez says

    @#8:

    “If you have to choose to hide yourself in order to feel empowered, you are not fucking empowered.”

    DEAD RIGHT, AND

    If you have to choose to hide yourself in order to proclaim to all and sundry that you are empowered, you are not fucking empowered either.

    AND ALSO:

    If you have to choose to have to hide yourself, perhaps its time you have to start heading for the exit.

  10. Sili says

    Pity it’s the weekend, or I coulda worn one to school. I’m sure the pink would mesh nicely with my moustache.

  11. Decker says

    Perhaps next year we could have a ‘walk-ten-feet-behind-your-husband’ day.

    Lke the world hijab day slogan goes:”Don’t judge before you try it”!!

  12. miraxpath says

    Saw two toddlers in hijab today on the train. Felt immensely sad. The way the world is going, when even feminists are stupidly championing the right to ”choose”, those two girls are not going to get the support to throw off that veil when or if they decide that a piece of fabric on their head is not a marker of piety but a tool of control.

  13. miraxpath says

    Oh, and dear Bilal Phillips advocates the marriage of 9 year old girls citing the example of randy old Mo ( caught on TV on a Dispatches Programme) The pic of the prepubescent girl in hijab makes more sense in the light of this.

  14. rnilsson says

    What a nice, lovable guy (wikipedia):

    Controversies

    In 2007 Philips was banned from entering Australia on the advice of national security agencies.[9]

    In 2010 Philips was banned from entering the UK by home secretary Theresa May for holding “extremist views”.[10][11]

    In April 2011, Philips was banned from re-entering Germany as persona non grata.[12]

    In 2012, Philips was banned from entering Kenya over possible terror links.[13][14][15] Philips was named by the US government as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing.[9][16]

  15. miraxpath says

    I don’t really care about his terrorist links but his views on homosexuality, rape, domestic violence, corporal and capital punishment etc are revolting. He is also an advisor to the IERA, that islamist outfit which was involved in the gender segregation row in UCL. Wonder how much ”choice” Bilal Philips advocates for feminists and gays and atheists?

  16. rnilsson says

    My suspicion is that Bilal’s views are horribly coherent. Cf your #16 above, for example. The man has built his whole career on a foundation of fundamentalist Islam.

  17. sambarge says

    I’m sorry to be one of those dictionary atheists but how exactly can you be “extreme” in your secularity? Even the most spiritual people exist in a physical, temporal world. We are bound by the laws of nature, even if we believe that a god or gods exist that isn’t bound by those laws.

    Doesn’t that mean that, in essence, all physical, living beings are extreme in their secularity?

    miraxpath @15:

    The way the world is going, when even feminists are stupidly championing the right to ”choose”…

    As a feminist, I don’t like women being forced to wear anything – whether it’s a skirt in certain office environments where men wear pants, make-up, head scarves, etc. What I don’t support is the lack of choice, not the choices people make – so long as the choice is made freely and with all the information available.

    And that’s where the atheism comes in. I don’t think a child raised in a home that is devoutly Muslim, Christian, etc. can choose anything without regular exposure to the world, knowledge and education and the explicit acknowledgement of her family that she will not be dead to them (literally or metaphorically) if she should choose a different path than their path.

    Also, as a feminist, I believe in choice. However, I do not feel the need to “support” women who make choices that are traditional or supportive of patriarchal structures. I don’t deride them but the young Muslim woman who rejects the veil needs my help a lot more than a woman who has the support of her family and traditional structures; who enjoys the “privilege” of tradition, in this case.

  18. miraxpath says

    Extreme secularist? Say Kemal Ataturk who banned the veil in schools and in government ( I am totally for a ban in schools). Or Jawaharla Nehru and the other founding fathers of modern independent India – they just totally ditched hindu personal law. Just like that. I admire that. I regret that they allowed Muslims, Sikhs and Christians to keep their respective civic codes. I am in favour of a uniform civic code. I suspect I am a secular extremist myself.

  19. Wylann says

    Without knowing much of the background of this topic, and the ‘players’, I knew the person quoted was, quelle surprise, male! Shocking….

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