leo28
01-11-2006, 12:38 PM
By Cristina Odone
In 1999, the Vatican held a conference to prepare for the Jubilee Year of 2000. They invited a group of academics, writers and broadcasters. Despite some raised eyebrows from Westminster Cathedral about my eligibility, I was Britain's representative. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I was nervous: would my speech on religion and the media be OK, would my fellow delegates discuss the Summa Theologica over their cornflakes, would I have to kiss the Pope's ring?
The one thing I felt certain about was what to wear: the mantilla – a lace head-covering, usually black – perfectly blends humility, modesty and respect. This doesn't mean I choose to wear it to Mass every Sunday. For one thing, although it was once the must-have accessory of Catholic womanhood, only a very few, very pious women use it any more.
The Muslim veil is very similar. It is a garment steeped in ancient tradition, praised in holy text and worn by a minority of the faithful. Like the mantilla, it is also noticeably at odds with the contemporary taste for baring flesh. Wear it, and you announce your difference.
Neither mantilla nor veil is calculated as an aggressive provocation to society — quite the opposite: these are soft and feminine folds of cloth that modestly conceal a face and figure.
Sitting in his surgery in Blackburn, Straw, who has recently undergone a make-over himself, swapping spectacles for contact lenses and hopeless old Leftie garb for tailored suits, decided to play at being Trinny and Susannah. You shouldn't wear the veil, he told the Muslim woman constituent who came to see him with her concerns. She had come to petition her representative, but received instead a sartorial diktat. The Leader of the House couldn't help her as she was, he explained: her veil made for crossed wires and bad communication; it separated her from people like him.
For government to single out people because of what they wear is not just silly; it is dangerous. There are odious antecedents — think of the anti-Semitic caricatures of skull-capped men that circulated in Germany and France within living memory. If we continue in this vein, the next step will be to single out people by telling them what they must wear. A yellow crescent moon, perhaps?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jh...0/10/do1003.xml
In 1999, the Vatican held a conference to prepare for the Jubilee Year of 2000. They invited a group of academics, writers and broadcasters. Despite some raised eyebrows from Westminster Cathedral about my eligibility, I was Britain's representative. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I was nervous: would my speech on religion and the media be OK, would my fellow delegates discuss the Summa Theologica over their cornflakes, would I have to kiss the Pope's ring?
The one thing I felt certain about was what to wear: the mantilla – a lace head-covering, usually black – perfectly blends humility, modesty and respect. This doesn't mean I choose to wear it to Mass every Sunday. For one thing, although it was once the must-have accessory of Catholic womanhood, only a very few, very pious women use it any more.
The Muslim veil is very similar. It is a garment steeped in ancient tradition, praised in holy text and worn by a minority of the faithful. Like the mantilla, it is also noticeably at odds with the contemporary taste for baring flesh. Wear it, and you announce your difference.
Neither mantilla nor veil is calculated as an aggressive provocation to society — quite the opposite: these are soft and feminine folds of cloth that modestly conceal a face and figure.
Sitting in his surgery in Blackburn, Straw, who has recently undergone a make-over himself, swapping spectacles for contact lenses and hopeless old Leftie garb for tailored suits, decided to play at being Trinny and Susannah. You shouldn't wear the veil, he told the Muslim woman constituent who came to see him with her concerns. She had come to petition her representative, but received instead a sartorial diktat. The Leader of the House couldn't help her as she was, he explained: her veil made for crossed wires and bad communication; it separated her from people like him.
For government to single out people because of what they wear is not just silly; it is dangerous. There are odious antecedents — think of the anti-Semitic caricatures of skull-capped men that circulated in Germany and France within living memory. If we continue in this vein, the next step will be to single out people by telling them what they must wear. A yellow crescent moon, perhaps?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jh...0/10/do1003.xml