Finally there are signs that some in Britain are tiring of the degradation of women by the Muslim faith:
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.
[…]A handful of young women wore the niqab and spoke effusively about their reasons. "Wearing the niqab means you will get a good grade and go to paradise," said Hodo Muse, 19, a Somali woman. "Every day people are giving me dirty looks for wearing it, but when you wear something for Allah you get a boost."
Too bad 9/11 wasn’t a wake up call for Democrats…..but I digress. I find it quite curious how this female interviewed for the story thinks 9/11 was a wake up call for Muslims. If she meant that it was time to rise up against the fanatics then I would be jumping for joy, but I doubt that a person who dons the black Muslim tent is on the same side as the moderates.
No western women would travel to the middle east in a mini-skirt, and no Muslim female should wear a tent in a western country. The difference between the two is that in a western country a tent wearing fanatic would not be thrown in jail or beaten with a stick, she may be ostracized since she is rejecting the western ideals of female equality but she won’t be thrown into jail.
But if she were the female version of Batman, Spiderman, or Superman maybe we could cut her some slack….

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Let’s not forget the, as far as we know, one terror suspect who fled the country dressed in one of these get-ups.
Tom
in Malaysia – with a large chunk of the populace as Muslim – it is not legal for a woman to wear a face covering ensemble – one of the reasons for that is security – and I learned this back on my first of many visits to the country back in 1993