The number of 'moderate' women who wear burkas is highly minimal; the burka-wearers I've met here in the US have either been forced to wear them or wear them of their own accord and have a very Wahhabist interpretation of the Qur'an. Most Muslim women who do cover don't wear burkas, but headscarves, such as myself.  I'm almost 25 and I've worn a headscarf (or hijab) for nearly eleven years.  I wasn't forced to wear it (my mother and sister don't wear them, for example). 

The Qur'an asks women to cover because in those days, and is the case today, women were regarded as sex objects.

The Qur'an on hijab:

33:59 O Prophet! Tell thy wives and thy daughters, as well as all [other] believing women, that they should draw over themselves some of their outer garments [when in public]: this will be more con­ducive to their being recognized [as decent women] and not annoyed.  But [withal,] God is indeed much- forgiving, a dispenser of grace!

Thank you. I've read the rest of your replies. You are an open-minded person and you have my respect.

I recommend all Muslim women study Krav Maga (who cares where it comes from). I recommend it to my Christian friends at church, too. A woman who can take care of herself and her family isn't likely to be messed with. Of course, Krav probably isn't allowed in Muslim countries.

http://corner.nation...

The Stoning of Soraya M. and Trust-Fund Babes    [Manda Zand Ervin]

I saw the movie The Stoning of Soraya M.,
at a private showing in Washington, D.C. and, although I have seen many
pictures of the stoning of the women and young girls by the Iranian
Islamic regime, I could not believed that the human race is capable of
such cruelty. Apparently our words and cries are not strong enough to
raise human-rights awareness, but this movie can help our cause. After all, one picture is worth a thousand words.

As the only Iranian woman is the room, I tried hard
to suppress my tears. I kept thinking, “This can not be the country I
grew up in! Where have these people come from? They can not be the
people I lived among!”  No wonder all the old Iranian philosophers have
looked at the mullahs as evil beings.

I asked the producers
why this movie isn’t shown nation-wide — world-wide — to all the people
on this planet who turn a blind eye to the barbarism of the Iranian
regime. This movie must be shown at the U.S. Congress, at the White
House, at the United Nations, and the European Parliament, I insisted.
On behalf of Iranian women, I would like to invite all the women
politicians to see the real crimes against humanity and the abhorrent
injustice against helpless women and young girls.

The Stoning of Soraya M.
must be shown at the annual conference of the U.N.’s Commission on the
Status of Women, to which I was a delegate. But, of course, this kind
of movie will never be shown because of the politics — UNIFEM is
receiving millions of dollars from the Islamic regime every year, paid
off to see no evil and hear no evil. The hypocrisy is revolting, the
immorality is beneath contempt.

When I got home, I communicated with a woman activist inside Iran about the movie. She said:

As barbaric as the act of stoning is, it is the
brutal assault against the human dignity of a female person that makes
me cry of pain and shame. It is the absolute helplessness that makes me
cry out in protest and get arrested again and again.

How can the powerful women on your side of the world be so indifferent
towards the women in this globalized world of theirs? How can they
think for one minute that their freedom and equality is worth anything
as long as there are women living under these conditions?

Monir K. is one of the many brave Iranian women who
have spent many years of her life battling against the sharia laws that
makes the stoning of women and young girls legal.

The
trust-fund ladies and their friends in Hollywood go to Iran talk to
hand-picked Iranians while their “travel handlers,” who are
plain-clothed Revolutionary Guards, assigned by the regime, are
watching every move people make and every word they utter to the
visitors. The ladies of leisure take publicity photos in the mandatory
Islamic robes and head covers and come home to talk about their visit
to the “exotic Islamic third world.” Iranian women call them “Cultural
Imperialists.”

Cultural Imperialists attend the Nobel Peace
Prize ceremony, praising the woman selected by the Islamic regime, but
they will not utter one word of support for the real activists, the
women who are in prisons, getting tortured and hanged, trying to take
back their place among the respected people in the world.

It
is a fact that the feminist American culture, the culture of Hollywood,
is one of the major issues that Islamists like Khomeini, Bin Laden,
Hezbollah, the Muslim brotherhood, and the Taliban have against America
and the West. But this culture supports the Islamists by its silence
and indifference to the issue of human rights. The Stoning of Soraya M.
should have received many academy awards, many Cannes awards, and many
movie reviews. It is the least this culture can do for the Iranian
women suffering to gain the same human rights that American feminists
exploit.

— Manda Zand Ervin is the president of the Alliance of Iranian Women.

Reagan VS Liberalism