:: Wog Blog ::

:: WHAT AM I THINKING ABOUT? ::

:: Wednesday, 18 May 2005 ::

Mantoo's All Round

Yasamin Alttahir got the right to shit all over the school uniform rules at Auburn Girl's High school in Sydney.

She can now wear a shapeless blue floor length overcoat over the top of her shapeless green school uniform. And the school gave her that right.

Why on earth bother to have a school uniform at all? The school principal, Sharon Ford, who I had hoped would hold out, in fact never intended to hold out. She just wanted the rules followed so Yasamin could get her way - a parents' letter seeking Yasamin's exemption from the school uniform code to allow their daughter to wear a shapeless floorlength blue overcoat over her shapeless school uniform.

I guess that makes her twice as modest in her pathetic ugly degrading "Islamic" clothing as the Muslim girls at her school who just get by expressing their Islamic faith with an ugly pathetic degrading white headscarf.

I put "Islamic" in quotes cos Yasamin's choice has nothing to do with her faith at all. Her faith just requires her to dress modestly.

It does not decree a shapeless floor length blue overcoat.

It is her choice.

She chooses to express her faith by wearing a shapeless floor length blue overcoat.

She could choose to expres sit by complying with the schoold dress code of Auburn Girls' High.

But nooo. Yasamin is too cool for school, and by 'cool' I mean pathetically self-obsessed.

Maybe soon she will choose to express her faith by not going to school on Fridays - or whatever the week days are that Muslims consider the weekend - because it interferes with her faith.

And her parents can give her a note.

Yasamin does not appreciate a school uniform and what it is for. Community, teamwork, school spirit.

Or maybe she does, she just does not care for team work.

She chooses to waft around her school in her shapeless floor length blue overcoat while all the other Muslim girls dress modestly by wearing their school uniforms loose and just using the ugly white headscarves. She might as well be holding a sign up that says 'youse are all sluts. Not me. I am closer to God that youse'.

I ain't the only one who is appalled at her self-centredness and needless spite shown to her school. I am certain she does not think she is spiteful but how else can what she has chosen and what she has done be understood?

Yeah, yeah, freedom of religion and liberty and all that. Puhlease. It is school. A uniform to be worn for 6 to 8 hours a day. Her religious freedom s not being impinged one bit.

But she sure is impinging on mine - if I was an avowed secular aetheist and appalled at all organised and overt religion - cos you cannot miss her. In her shapeless floor length blue overcoat. She is on the bus, on the train, in background photos, in my face all the time. Flauting her faith.

Is she trying to convert me? No? Then what the hell does she have to be so obvious about her religion for?

The scarves are pathetic. They just are not chic. And since they lead to mantoos in Oz and jilbabs in the UK is the burqa that far behind?

I am with the Tobester - and not just for the linky love - the French have got this right. No Islmaic headscarves or mantoos or jilbabs or hijabs or abayas or burqas (and haven't the Muslims really got too many kinds of oppressive dress for women...?) or other overt religious symbols at school.

To paraphrase the Jesuits:

Gimme the Muslim girle free of the oppressive dress code for 6 hours a day and maybe just maybe I'll give you a liberated educated girlie whose Muslimness is secondary to her good citizenry and her refusal to be bowed by mysoginistic Muslim men and disgusting false interpretations of that faith.

Urgh.

Double urgh.
:: WB 3:52 am [link+] ::