Unveiled

I’ve called this unveiled to mock the bullshit books and movies that
Have got sold post 9/11 only because of opportunistic titles like ‘the unveiling’. ‘Islam unveiled’, ‘behind the veil’ and the books that got sold only because their covers showed women in hijab.

In this day and age, because neo- liberal democracies do not openly support racism or sexism. Orientalism often exists as a subtle undertone. One of the few areas where the subtlety rule completely falls away is the area of the hijab (veil).

Of course the real reason Muslim women are oppressed and long suffering is not because of the imperialist regimes that have desecrated their homes and families in the race towards military domination but because of a piece of cloth they choose to cover their heads with either as a religious or political choice. The little piece of cloth – might I add - that has got the collective knickers of many European governments in a knot.

Muslim women are shown as backward, un-educated and faceless. They have no individual personalities but are rather a huge blob shown either as a crying mother who has lost her son in Iraq or a women in a blue burqa walking behind her husband in Afghanistan.

So if they aren’t filmed against the background of a war-torn middle eastern country then it’s the old school harem and the beyond orientalist, Sherazadee and 1001 Arabian Nights scene.

This underwear add is the most blatantly orientalist bullshit I’ve seen since Walt Disney’s Aladdin. It ignores the very essence of why one would choose to dress modestly and feeds into the whole 'what's under the veil' obsession the west has. Now European men have a visual to excite their imagination when they look as Muslim women. It takes away from REAL issues of oppression and subjugation and allows the veiled Muslim women to be portrayed as a sex object. This time however you won’t have to ask men from the west to liberate them, more than once.