Yasmine Mohammed and Religious Dress

In several different lectures, Yasmine Mohammed--a remarkably clear-headed and even-toned lecturer--compares the conservative dress of Muslim women--hijab, niqab, and burka--to Mormon garments.

Her legitimate point is not that the two things are the same but that Western criticism of conservative (Christian) religious practices is hypocritical when the same Westerners turn around and openly embrace conservative dress for Muslim women--especially when the people criticizing Western practices are so-called liberals who wink at the authoritarian practices of other countries.

I agree with Yasmine Mohammed. However, I want to make a point about the problem of comparisons, a problem that possibly also explains Western attitudes toward religion. Yes, many of these so-called liberals are being hypocritical. They are also acting within a Western mindset that is difficult to shake (if it should be, entirely).

The one major difference between Muslim dress for women and Mormon garments (there are several differences) is the privacy of Mormon garments.

Wearing garments is hidden, private, personal. Unless one runs about talking about what one is wearing--or asking questions that in Western culture are (still, despite Facebook) considered rather inappropriate--nobody is going to have a clue what anyone is wearing "under there." Active Mormons can leave them off. Less active Mormons can leave them on. Nobody is going to know. There's an entire world of care that rather resembles Peter Parker washing his Spiderman outfits. Sure, there are general expectations/instructions about care but absent a secret police and intrusive surveillance, nobody is going to know.

This hidden, private, personal act is an element in all religions. The cilice (modern hair shirt) falls into the same category. Medallions, lockets, even dog-tags and tattoos are often used by people in the same way: a private memento, a personal reminder. In religion, private dress crosses over into private, personal rituals and acts. Many Native American tribes refuse to publicize Sun Dance ceremonies, which sometimes involve body piercings. In 1895, Canada outlawed this aspect of the dance (the law was revoked in 1951). As Wikipedia reports, "It is unclear how often this law was actually enforced."

Edwards didn't just write about sinners dangling over fires.
Understandable. Even the Puritans, despite communal living and public censorship, believed that the individual achieved an understanding of grace through private, personal reflection, a non-definable occurrence. Westerners continue to see religion as something involving choice, personal desire, private decisions and belief.

It is difficult, therefore, for Westerners to understand a situation where legal coercion--and the legal contrivance of even free states--take away choice and the personal, private right to exercise that choice as one wishes. They know it intellectually but they don't know it as a lifestyle reality.

Consequently, comparisons can backfire--absent the type of Western thinking which gets all angsty at living in a culture that assumes people should wait in line at the post office ("The industrial-religious-political complex is forcing me to shop at Walmart!"), a comparison between a legally coercive act and a private act of choice is going to cancel out the force of the first. The Westerner thinks, "Why can't the women just leave [as they do all the time in Western religions]?" which misses the point.

I consider the above picture (also used by Yasmine Mohammed) far more evocative. As both de Tocqueville and Rodney Stark attest, when legal coercion is removed, human beings will naturally (and promptly) take up varying responses within and towards their cultures and religions.

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