9/11 Was A Wakeup Call For Young Muslims

As many of you have probably seen, Drudge has been running a graphic depicting a woman in a full niqab since yesterday. The graphic accompanies an article entitled "Head-to-toe Muslim veils test tolerance of secular Britain."

When I saw the article yesterday, I considered posting on it, but decided the subject and the information in the article had already been posted on enough here.

However, this morning at Starbuck's I saw that today's New York Times is running a similar headline, and thus I was moved to, once again go over the article on Drudge. This time a money quote jumped out at me.

As per usual, the International Herald Tribune, the originator of the article, is attempting to be "unbiased" in its reporting and is therefore attempting to give both sides of the story equal consideration. Sure, the "tolerance" of "British society" is being "tested", but for Muslims, the veil is "an act of faith."

Check out the line of reasoning in this article:

LONDON: Increasingly, Muslim women in Britain take their children to school and run errands covered head to toe in flowing black gowns that allow only a slit for their eyes.

Like little else, their appearance has unnerved Britons, testing the limits of tolerance in this stridently secular nation. Many veiled women say they are targets of abuse. At the same time, efforts are growing to place legal curbs on the full Muslim veil, known as the niqab.

The past year has seen numerous examples: A lawyer dressed in a niqab was told by an immigration judge that she could not represent a client because, he said, he could not hear her. A teacher wearing a niqab was told by a provincial school to go home. A student who was barred from wearing a niqab took her case to the courts, and lost. In fact, the British education authorities are proposing a ban on the niqab in schools altogether.

David Sexton, a columnist for The Evening Standard, wrote recently that Britain has been "too deferential" toward the veil. "I find such garb, in the context of a London street, first ridiculous and then directly offensive," he said.

Although the number of women wearing the niqab has increased in the past several years, only a tiny percentage of women among Britain's two million Muslims cover themselves completely. It is impossible to say how many exactly.

Some who wear the niqab, particularly younger women who have taken it up recently, concede that it is a frontal expression of Islamic identity, which they have embraced since Sept. 11, 2001, as a form of rebellion against the policies of the Blair government in Iraq and at home.

"For me it is not just a piece of clothing, it's an act of faith, it's solidarity," said a 24-year-old program scheduler at a broadcasting company in London, who would allow only her last name, Al Shaikh, to be printed, saying she wanted to protect her privacy.

"9/11 was a wake-up call for young Muslims," she said.

9/11 was a wakeup call for Westerners, that's for sure. It sure as hell was a wakeup call for me. But, 9/11 was a wakeup call for young Muslims? A wakeup to what? That perhaps, they ought to set about reforming their religion?

According to this article, wearing the veil is a deliberate attempt to seperate themselves from the rest of society.

If this is the kind of wakeup call 9/11 represented for young Muslims in the West, then that means Muslims, essentially, woke up to the fact that they agree with Osama Bin Laden.