4. fuck him
My thoughts exactly after I watched this onerous video he did on the hijab:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4jQi0Gjy3MFor all the videos he's made that make Muslims feel good about themselves (and I was one who felt it), Baba Ali is still one of those creeps who obsesses about concealing the female body.
He uses all the old tricks in order:
1.) It's so the woman can be appreciated for her mind and not her body.
So why are there so few female presidents of Islamic councils, women fuqaha etc.? Moreover, how are women and men 'spiritually' equal in Islam if somehow they are temporally unequal? 2.) No one is against nuns covering.
Nuns live in convents and don't work or raise families. He's comparing oranges and apples. 3.) Guys don't look at a woman's kindness if she's half-way undressed.
Hmmm....so the indigenous Chumash of California whose women were topless didn't appreciate their women as anything but sex objects? That would have been terribly awkward as the men were usually completely nude and presumably (if Ali's thesis is sound) in a state of perpetual bonerhood. He goes on to say that women wear hijab for various reasons and not just religious ones but fails to mention the overwhelming social pressures in some Muslim communities. He clearly hasn't read
Samira Belill's book where she writes about the gang rapes she was subjected to because she willingly lost her virginity at 13. Women in some communities cover for "protection" lest they be seen as "cat's meat". How is this free choice? How is it even a choice if God requires you wear it? Then he rabbits on about what constitutes improper hijab. A man telling women how to dress.
So yes, fuck Baba Ali.