Islam as Child Fashion Statement?

Tuesday, there appeared an article at Spiked on the debate going on in Britain regarding the propriety of the various forms of face-obscuring headdress that seem to be gaining wider acceptance among young women from Moslem backgrounds.

What I found most intriguing was this passage.

... Those who wear the niqab are advertising their separateness from the rest of society - and in doing so, they have much in common with other fashion statements.

Youth culture has started covering up in general. This is most apparent in the fashion for 'hoodies', hooded sweatshirts that effectively cover the wearer's head and obscure their face. But the cap, bicycle masks and even sunglasses are all about cutting the wearer off from those around. While boys cover their faces, they reveal their behinds.

There is a defensive side to all this too. The niqab, the hood and the cap are also about fear of other people. Some young Muslim women say that covering up makes them feel 'safe'. One said: 'I'm not deeply religious. I drive, I work full-time. I go to the gym. But I felt like guys, Muslims and non-Muslims, were staring at me. After I wore one, they would move out of my way. I walk down alleyways at midnight and I feel safe.'

This is interesting because it is about both intimidation (power over others) and concealment (escaping from the power of others). This speaks volumes about the children who are growing up to adopt such fashions as well as the cultural milieu they find themselves in.

These children feel powerless in Western society, I think because we are doing a poor job of really teaching them Western values. This means that they grow up failing to appreciate such a society and not knowing how to function in it. These facts manifest as the paradoxical desire to appear "tough" (When one does not know the power of reason, persuasion looks "weak".) while feeling anything but tough.

This phenomenon is synergistic with, if not also related to that observed by Christian Beenfeldt in his analysis of the "transformation" of John Walker Lindh from a directionless, rebellious youth to an Islamic fundamentalist. The appeal of Islam for Lindh and similar jihadists from the West is that it fills the void -- for moral guidance -- left by their upbringing in a culture saturated with emotionalism.

Walker himself exemplified the mystic view, with his rebellion against the "freedom" of his upbringing, and his subsequent unquestioning acceptance of the precepts of the Koran, dictating every aspect of his life.

In contrast to [moral relativism and a religious/mystical basis for morality], an objective approach to ethics recognizes that values are the means of achieving life. The nature of man--the factual requirements of his survival--determines what is valuable to him. It is not arbitrary preference or mystical dogma but objective fact that determines that the air you breathe in and the food you eat are values to you--and poison is not.

Lindh and others like him fall prey to this fundamental defect in Western culture, its false dichotomy between taking orders from religious authorities and simply "doing your own thing". The veiled women in Britain seem different in that they either have not absorbed so much of this poisonous atmosphere, or at least they are not as explicitly concerned with ethics.

Many people fit into this second category, and this has been a big part of how the West has been able to function as well as it has despite its two self-contradictory rational (Greco-Roman) and mystical (Judeo-Christian) strands. Most in the West, when religion conflicts with their need to act to survive and better themselves, jettison the religious impediments without a second thought.

But what happens when transmission of our culture, however imperfect that culture is, begins to fail? People will generally be less conversant in all aspects, including the better ones, of that culture. Before the decline of our culture, the John Walker Lindhs might have ended up in seminaries or studying philosophy whereas our British niqab-wearers, being more implicitly rational, might have simply been much more self-confident to begin with. Rather than, say, fearing the men around them, they would know how to handle their attention constructively in most cases. (And the men would be of higher caliber, too.)

This may seem a bit like hand-waving here, but this is a still new thought on my part. Perhaps by way of another example, I will succeed in helping to show what I mean.

Last week, my wife rented Take the Lead, a movie about a widowed ballroom dance instructor who decides to teach dance to some inner-city high school students. I did not watch the whole thing (Scott Holleran pretty much nails what was wrong with it.), but one scene in particular stands out in my memory.

In one of his early encounters with the detention students -- angry, directionless, mostly black youths who, like our niqab-wearers hide fear behind tough fronts -- Pierre Dulaine (Antonio Banderas) brings in a partner and demonstrates for them the power of the tango. These students, who had up to that point generally made fun of Banderas for what some would call "acting white" (i.e., having good manners, and tastes outside of hip-hop culture) and considered him a pushover stood in awe as he performed the dance with his beautiful partner. They all saw through the dance the power one can wield through discipline and self-control.

It is this kind of appreciation for Western culture in general that I think is missing from too many youths in the West. And in the absence of reason, emotion and its fellow traveller, violence, become the rule of the day. Is it any wonder that the trappings of Islam, a religion by, of, and for thugs, would end up appealing to such children as well?

-- CAV