education, schmeducation! Tribalism rules.

What's the fucking point of your fucking education and your fancy PhD degree if every time you go out with your wife, you insist (or, your religion insists and you endorse it heartily) that she cover herself head to toe in a fucking symbol of unenlightened medievalism?

All right. That was a rant RAGE speaking. This is a situation that I encounter pretty regularly, and I am not going to provide more background on that - for obvious reasons. I have made it clear how I feel about the imposition of the burqa system on Muslim women during an exchange with a 'liberal' British blogger earlier this year regarding the ban on burqa and naqaab effected in France around that time.

As I wrote at that time:

The burqa is the ultimate symbol of religion-inspired subjugation of women; it brands the burqa-clad women as chattel, the property of some man, father or husband, and is often enforced by Islam on pain of death. What would a so-called liberal think if s/he suddenly found at an open place a woman put on a collar and a leash, being pulled by a man? The burqa, enforced by tribal patriarchal customs from the Dark Ages, is symbolically equivalent, although one may not quite understand this parallel unless one has lived in or in close conjunction with an Islamic country...

I invite the readers to read a reasoned articulation of the situation surrounding the (burqa) ban (in France) from Marvi Sirmed, a burqa-ban proponent, journalist and prolific blogger from Pakistan.

Sadly, this particular picture - that got me enraged (HULK SMASH!) this morning - is not very uncommon, especially to those that are familiar with religions, as well as the peculiar phenomenon of religiosity and blind traditionalism amongst some scientists and researchers (i.e. people who really should know better) from the subcontinent.

Of course, a lot has been made - again by the 'liberal' media - of the woman's choice in this matter. Choice is one of those words that can be subverted to mean exactly the opposite of what it is supposed to mean. Of course in this situation the woman has a choice: she can choose to (a) wear the burqa and then be allowed to go out in public, or (b) not wear the burqa and stay back at home, or (c) not wear the burqa, go out and be ostracised by her closed-minded community or her family. Great choice. Don't make me laugh.

How is it so difficult for the 'liberals' to understand what is choice and what is an illusion of choice? How is it that they cannot understand that tolerating and accepting such behavior only perpetuates the cycle of subjugation of and atrocities against women?