Os tempos estão de radicalização religiosa em todo o lado. E o sintoma mais visível disto é, como sempre, o enlevo com que a malta hiper-religiosa constrange a liberdade feminina. Este texto mostra como na Arábia Saudita as últimas décadas do século XX foram de crescimento da repressão. Algo semelhante ao que se passou no Irão, por exemplo, onde os costumes no tempo do Xá eram bem mais distendidos do que sob a república islâmica. (Também dá alguma resposta aos ocidentais umbiguistas que não suportam que o resto do mundo faça mais do que reagir ao Ocidente, e que adoram a autopunição, e que proclamam cheios de certezas que a radicalização muçulmana não é mais do que uma resposta às agressões ocidentais).
‘No piece of cloth throughout history has sparked more controversy as the veil. Many Muslim women are forced to wear it daily. The hijab has a spectrum, of course, from its most radical embodiments, the niqab, which covers the entire face, to loose fitting headscarves.
Saudi Arabia comes come second only to Iran in using the power of the stick (the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice or the religious police) to impose a particular form and color of hejab on all our women. And when I say all our women, I mean all: Saudi and non-Saudi, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.
The sheer size of the country means that each and every region of Saudi Arabia contains a great diversity of cultures, dialects and religious sects. Until the seventies, women here were free to wear almost whatever they wanted. Bedouin women wore bright clothes and burqas, the parting of their hair and their kohl-lined eyes left exposed. The women of the city donned their abayas, the fabric drawn in around their waists. The Arab women wore their colored hejabs, and the non-Muslim women dressed modestly and without a veil.
The women in my father’s village, Tarfa, to the north-west of Mecca, wore bright clothes with pink and white scarves wrapped around their heads and necks. Like the Bedouins, they left their faces and the parting of their hair exposed.
This all changed when the state-supported wave of religious fanaticism struck our society. The black abaya and facial covering was imposed on all female government employees, and on schools and universities. And the black hejab was imposed on all non-Saudi women, regardless of their religion or creed.’
Mais a Oriente ocorre um movimento semelhante. Os casamentos religiosos mistos são cada vez mais proscritos. Na Malásia muçulmana os casamentos mistos são socialmente desprezados e a apostasia um crime imperdoável. Na Birmânia os muçulmanos estão cada vez mais sob ataque dos budistas radicais e discute-se a proibição dos casamentos mistos. Na Índia é o que se conta aqui (ainda que não se conte como reagem normalmente as famílias muçulmanas quando as suas filhas casam com hindús).
‘After she married Mr. Khan — and changed her given name to Salma — her family disowned her.
But looking back, she says, it was easier being an interreligious couple in the 1970s than it is in India today. At least she felt safe. Now, in contrast, the news is filled with report of assaults on mixed couples.
In several parts of the country, consenting adults who have broken no laws have been threatened, beaten up and, in a medieval twist, had their faces painted black by pumped-up bands of roving men who disapprove of Hindu women in relationships with Muslim men.
There have been reports of women being forcibly shoved into cars and dragged to police stations, from which they are made to phone their parents. Adult women, treated like chattel, like criminals and like juveniles.
Right-wing assailants have stopped weddings between interfaith couples from taking place. They have even forced married women to desert their Muslim husbands, and to marry Hindus instead. […]
Even a poor man with few possessions feels he has something if he has a wife or a daughter whose destiny is his to control. Thus did a provocateur from the right-wing Vishva Hindu Parishad organization say, recently, that Muslim men “should leave our women and cows alone or be prepared for a massive retaliation.”’ (meus bolds)
E voltando ainda ao texto sobre o niqab, tem piada como se aceita que nos países islâmicos esta vestimenta é imposta às mulheres e seja afirmado algo como ‘The imposition of the black abaya is unnatural: it represents nothing but an obstruction on normal life and on the natural evolution that occurs in people’s manner and form of dress‘. Mas quando as muçulmanas o usam na Europa, vá-se lá saber por quê, isso é sempre resultado do mais puro exercício de liberdade dessas mulheres. E que a radicalização religiosa que esmaga os mais básicos direitos humanos das mulheres também ocorra na UE, bem, é apenas sintoma do mais saudável cosmopolitismo europeu e da ainda mais recomendável tolerância. Depois chegam os jihadistas europeus e fica toda a gente muito admirada.
Farmácia Central 