Christianity QA

Question:

- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Veiling Through Time: The Tresses of Forgetfulness By Hwaa Irfan Staff Writer – IslamOnline 30/01/2004 A time remembered, is a period of historical films on British history, when to see a woman veiled was quite normal.  To surf on the Internet, one could be led to believe that the veil begins and ends with Islam, or as a wedding dress accessory.  This dictate, descends from the Christian Bible which states in 1 Corinthians 11:5 But any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled brings shame upon her head, 1 Timothy II It is my wish, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands, without anger or argument.  Similarly, (too,) women should adorn themselves with proper conduct, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hairstyles and gold ornaments, or pearls, or expensive clothes, but rather, as befits women who profess reverence for God, with good deeds.  Hence, it is written in the early codes of Christianity that women should veil.

First of all, these passages only refer to worship (especially in church) — they don’t refer to all situations in which a woman is in public.  Second, there’s no requirement that the face be covered (only that the head be covered), so if the translation "veiled" was meant to imply face-covering, then the translation is a dishonest one.  Third, there’s not even a requirement that all the hair be covered (the way in which most current-day Islamists interpret "hijab") — only a requirement that there be a covering on the head. These things are true:   1) At certain limited times and places during the European middle ages, a woman had to cover all her hair in order to be considered decent when going out in public.  However, this was more a cultural requirement of those particular periods of history, not something required on strictly scriptural grounds — and in most times and places over the course of Christian history, women have been free to show some or all of their hair in public.  There has never been any time and place in Christian history when women were required to wear opaque face-coverings.   2) During almost all of Christian history, down to the twentieth century, women were generally required to wear some kind of hat, bonnet, cap, scarf or other head-covering when attending church.   3) Even during the European middle ages (when Christian civilization was not feminist, did not claim to be feminist, and few Christians would have thought that feminism was a good thing), there was already a clear difference between European Christian civilization and middle-eastern Islamic civilization, in that Europeans did not rigorously exclude women from the public realm (the way that Muslims did).  In medieval Christendom, the consort of a king had a publicly prominent and socially visible role as "queen" (while in middle-eastern Muslim countries, there was simply no real "queen" role at all — generally, the only woman to have even a very limited public role was the mother of the reigning male monarch).  At a lower social level, ordinary European women had a public "hostess" role — something else which didn’t even really exist at all in middle-eastern Islamic countries (until very recent times). This consistent contrast between the two civilizations manifested itself in a small (but rather revealing) way when the chess-piece which had been known as the "vizier" in Iran and Arabic lands became known as the "queen" or "lady" in most European languages during the late middle ages — the Europeans thought that the natural counterpart and helper to a king was a queen, while Muslims had a quite different point of view. http://www.islamonline.net/English/artculture/2004/01/article12.shtml

– المتبرجة خير من إرهابي منتحر Murderers are not martyrs!    http://symbolictruth.fateback.com/

Response:

Veiling Through Time: The Tresses of Forgetfulness By Hwaa Irfan Staff Writer – IslamOnline 30/01/2004 A time remembered, is a period of historical films on British history, when to see a woman veiled was quite normal. To surf on the Internet, one could be led to believe that the veil begins and ends with Islam, or as a wedding dress accessory. The event of banning the veil in France has only served to show how much is based on a gut reaction, so deep that there is a past to it. Another misnomer is that the underlying reason President Chirac banned all religious symbols, is because he is a desperate man trying to quell the growing uncontrollable tide of anti-Semitism in France. The last time one looked, Jews indigenous to the Middle East were of the same Semite race as those they feel superior to-the Palestinians (both Christian and Muslims)! As such, the growing attacks against Jews spreading across Europe, in Britain, Germany, Italy and Belgium etc. has been engineered to turn against Muslims. This has symbolized how far humanity has to go before it can become humane, where men women and children have taken to the streets in the twenty-first century to march for their individual rights. The suffragettes once fought for women’s rights, which only imprisoned women into slavery to the body beautiful, against the dictates of a Christian Europe that incarcerated women to a life of servitude in mind and body, when Islam had given Muslim women their rights. This dictate, descends from the Christian Bible which states in 1Corinthians 11:   4 Any man who prays or prophesies with his head covered brings shame upon his head. But any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled brings shame upon her head, for it is one and the same thing as if she had had her head shaved. For if a woman does not have her head veiled, she may as well have her hair cut off. But if it is shameful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should wear a veil. 5 A man, on the other hand, should not cover his head, because he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; nor was man created for woman, but woman for man;

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