Truth unveiled?

Kausar Khan, a junior at Northeaster Illinois University has an article, "Veiled Feminism" in the winter 2007 issue of Current magazine (unfortunately, I don't think they have a website--we get copies of it on campus here at Stanford). She defends her decision to weir a veil, which she calls "a mark of a woman's honor, not her inferiority."

This is certainly not feminism, and it's not a case where I can stomach moral relativism. The practice of women wearing veils is one of the most oppressive customs widely endorsed around the world today. The fact is that for normal human interactions, whether social or professional, we depend on seeing a person's face--their entire face, in order to read their emotions. Without the capacity for others to see a woman's face, her status is demoted to the level of a second-class citizen. There is simply no way she can earn the same level of trust. So I don't see how we should stand for such misogyny.

I think most people in mainstream society would agree that the practice of wearing veils is oppressive to women--even if they willingly agree to the practice. The question is what to do about it. I don't think there is any legal justification for putting a restriction into law--I certainly think that free adults have the right to wear whatever they please. But we can speak out against the practice as something that we do not thing a justice-seeking society ought to endorse. We should stand up especially for children being pressured to wear a veil. Khan's younger sister is 14 and has already begun to wear a veil. Imposing backward beliefs on children is one of the most morally repugnant practices, and we should all stand against such oppression.