Web Letters: Beyond the Veil

It always struck me as being outlandish at best, vaguely xenophobic at worst, how so many Westerners obsess seemingly endlessly about a piece of cloth over a woman's head, while appearing seemingly diffident over the real challenges facing contemporary women--Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

One need not be an anthropologist nor a sociologist to recognize that the most pressing issues facing contemporary women are exactly the same as those facing humanity--poverty, underdevelopment, the ever-growing gap between rich and poor, as well as armed conflicts and religious and ethnic intolerance. The sad reality, as exposed so eloquently by Laila Lalami, is that most Westerners discussing the issues facing Muslim women seem to center nearly exclusively on the subject of the headscarf--something that should be a non-issue, especially in the light of the serious social issues facing immigrants in present day Europe.

In this light, it may be both factual as well as logical to consider the Muslim headscarf to be not just a lightning rod for European intolerance towards religious minorities but also a red herring that distracts much-needed attention from far more important and pressing social, economic and political concerns.

Suhail Shafi

Buffalo, NY

I fell in love with Paris after spending the day there a couple of times on long layovers. What struck me immediately about it was the constant juxtaposition of the ancient against the modern: the 900-year old Sorbonne in a city rich with recent immigrants from all parts of the world etc. But mixed in with this strange and arresting brew was a very old-world kind of unpleasantness.

Being South Indian by birth, I noticed that many white Parisians looked at me with obvious condescension and a barely concealed resentment right upon first glance. Once, as I was out on the street with three white American friends, I stopped and asked for directions from a well-dressed middle-aged white Frenchman. Although I addressed my query to him in French, he looked past me (as if I were invisible), and addressed my white friends in English with the directions I had just asked him for. Several incidents like that struck me about the attitude of white Parisians towards "foreigners."

Having spent my college junior year in Austria a few years earlier, I found these experiences to parallel some of what I had experienced in that country. Regardless of how long you live in mainland Europe--in some cases, even if your family has lived there for generations (like the Turks have in Germany)--you are considered an outsider if you look visibly "other" compared to your run-of-the-mill, white European. In Austria, people felt free to address me or friends of African origin openly as "nigger," "slave" and the like.

The extremely low regard in which "Ugly (white) Americans" are held in Europe, by the same token, reeks of xenophobia and "ethnic" prejudice more than a reasonable aversion to the occasional behavior of crass individuals, or a historically founded grudge. I was similarly startled to encounter the deep-seated anti-Semitism of some natives in countries whose Jewish population is close to being non-existent (systematically decimated, in some cases). A sentiment not, as is promulgated in the mainstream American media, prevalent mainly in Arab immigrant populations.

My point? I find it infuriating that white liberals, who have rightly become sick of George W. Bush and his sad reign, think that moving to Europe will somehow place them in a culturally more enlightened milieu. As an "ethnic," and as a committed liberal, I find the United States to be a much more livable, enlightened place, despite all its faults, than Europe. I am very happy to have found my home here.

Sure, I have faced prejudice stateside. But I've always looked past it, with an attitude of: "Everyone here is a child of immigrants. If people have a problem with me, that's their problem"--something I could not say in Europe with much conviction.

Why white liberals think that they would be received as one of the flock in Europe, rather than as "ugly Americans," is beyond me. The French banning the foulard islamique is the least of it.

Alex Varghese

Reading, PA