Hardly any women in France wear burqas, but like habjib (see Joan W. Scott's book The Politics of the Veil), these coverings are seen as symbols of women's oppression.
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=burqa_politics_in_france
This begs the questions: What is the relationship of religion and women? Religion and oppression?
In yesterday's NYT there was an article about the Vatican conducting two investigations of American Nuns who the Vatican thinks have become too modern and involved in the real world.
These nuns are no longer "“promot[ing]” the church’s teachings on three issues: the male-only priesthood, homosexuality and the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church as the means to salvation. " But these "American nuns stopped wearing religious habits, left convents to live independently and went into new lines of work: academia and other professions, social and political advocacy and grass-roots organizations that serve the poor or promote spirituality. A few nuns have also been active in organizations that advocate changes in the church like ordaining women and married men as priests. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/us/02nuns.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=church%20vatican%20nuns&st=cse
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3 comments:
Modern Nuns; that's a laugh! The vatican must want their 'women' in chains (or burqas)! Seems that this is definitely an area worth researching, Joanne. Except for variations of head covering in the middle eastern countries, or rather the interpretation of Islam and women, nuns in the carribean wear white or western dress. In Central America, I found few nuns anywhere except at the church. WEould be interesting studying the modes of dress for nuns versus Islamic women.
I think that the only real difference is that nuns' habits do not have niqabs (face coverings)...but among Muslim women the coverings range from none or none required to hijab (head covering) to hijab plus chador (cloak) to plus niqab to burqas....
Its really great blog
thanks for this great link
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