Every time I see a woman wearing a burqa, I remember the scantily dressed women portrayed on the carpets of the Arab Culture Institute of Paris. It is like seeing a bikini in the Villa del Casale in Piazza Armerina. How is it possible that this Islamic tradition coexists with a religious “law” so strict for women? A woman with the burqa represent the division between moderate and modern Islam and the Taleban Islam, fundamentalist, that refuses equality between genders and keeps women

in slavery. But we must be cautious. Islam is not only one, like Christianity is not only one. A part of the women that wear a burqa are free, but another part just obeys family traditions, their husband and religion.

 

The former are determined and defend their choice, the latter do not say a word, they obey someone else’s will and religious traditions with the same obedience and devotion. But a burqa is still a burqa, i.e. a garment that covers a woman from head to foot, preventing anyone from seeing who is behind it. Can the community in which this choice is made accept this? Is there a general interest to ban this choice? The Northern League approached this delicate theme with its usual elegance, proposing a ban on the burqa. So not only a ban on covering the face, but a ban on the burqa, proposing also jail for the lawbreakers. This is another example of the delicacy and highly refined culture of this part of Italian intelligentsia. It is the right way to make unacceptable an inevitable “public” decision, the ban on hiding the face for security reasons.

 

Translated by Chiara Nunnari from John Milton Institute