A Dress Code for Muslims in the West
After the Obama campaign issued a dress code for female reporters ordering them not to wear jewelery, nail polish, open toed shoes and a warning to have a scarf on hand to cover their heads with in a makeshift Hijab, Nancy Pelosi style on his MessiahTour 2008 of the Middle East, you can't help but wonder why Americans are once again called on to "respect" Muslim sensibilities with a dress code in their country, while no such equivalent "respect" is reciprocated in our country.
If Americans are to be expected to dress like Muslims in Muslim countries, then the reverse should be true, Muslims should be expected to dress like Americans in the United States. But of course the reverse isn't true which really means that we accept Muslim standards as superior both at home and abroad.
It's no surprise that Barack Hussein Obama would have female reporters trot out the makeshift Hijab. I'm sure we'll get to the point when Obama Girl is wearing one too. But if Muslims expect us to live by their rules and bay for blood when a schoolteacher names a teddy bear Mohammed or when a reporter wears nail polish, maybe they need to learn to live by our rules over here.
But par for the course, instead we find that Muslim laws are being imposed on us in our own country. The Hijab evolved as a way for Muslim women to avoid being raped in Beirut by Arafat's PLO thugs. (I'm sorry that's Nobel Prize winner and Palestinian President Yasir Arafat.) Today they serve that same function for non-Muslim women in Norway and Sweden and parts of France. What the Hijab really communicates is, "I'm subservient, please don't rape me." It's a true testament to the hope and change Obama and the Democratic party are bringing, for them to compell female reporters to don that badge of servitude that is really no different than a yellow star.
If the United States demanded that Muslim women who come to the United States wear pantsuits, which we consider respectable dress, there would be an uproar. But when a Presidential candidate whose middle name shall not be mentioned demands the same of American women, we're expected to take it in stride.
Today the black ghosts of masked women haunt European and American cities. And what bruises, what bloody marks and what brutality those veils and sheets hide is anyone's guess. While Muslim groups practice their idea of anti-civil rights as civil rights by fighting for the "right" of Muslim women to be oppressed, Western feminist groups hold Hijab and Burka fashion shows whose message seems to be, "Try on some oppression now so you can get used to it."
If the standard is "When in Rome", then it's time for Muslims in America to dress as Americans. If the standard is, "Follow your own cultural traditions", then Americans in Muslim countries should dress how they please. But instead the real standard is "Muslim dress is correct in all circumstances." And that cannot be allowed to stand.
We don't expect Muslim women to wear pantsuits. That is our idea of tolerance. Muslims however expect us to dress by their standards. That is their idea of tolerance. In such an exchange, tolerance meets intolerance and the intolerant win. Just like negotiating land for peace with enemies who take land but don't keep the peace, providing tolerance to those who refuse to practice tolerance in turn is a sure formula for defeat.