Burqa Quotes

• If you meet a woman in a burqa, she can't reply to your smile. It's a denial of identity.

  Jean-Francois Cope

  Identity, Your Smile, Denial

  "Can Jean-François Copé save France from anti-Muslim extremism?" by Angelique Chrisafis, www.theguardian.com. March 24, 2011.

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• The burqa is a way of controlling the woman, but in the name of respect. Every culture or religion gives a different name for the burqa. It is honor, or culture, or religion. Really, it just controls the woman and keeps her inside.

  Malina Suliman

  Names, Giving, Honor

  "Afghan graffiti artist risks her life to challenge the burqa under the Taliban". Interview with Katie Booth, womenintheworld.com. May 21, 2015.

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• The truth is, a man can choose to objectify a woman whether she’s wearing a bikini or a burqa. We don’t stop lust by covering up the female form; we stop lust by teaching men to treat women as human beings worthy of respect.

  Rachel Held Evans

  Teaching, Men, Lust

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• If a woman is wearing the burqa, it's not her wish. It's more that she feels secure from the Taliban, secure from acid if she were to show her face.

  Malina Suliman

  Wish, Faces, Acid

  "Afghan graffiti artist risks her life to challenge the burqa under the Taliban". Interview with Katie Booth, womenintheworld.com. May 21, 2015.

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• I say if I'm beautiful. I say if I'm strong. You will not determine my story - I will.

  Amy Schumer

  Beautiful, Strong, Inspiration

  Amy Schumer (2016). “The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo”, p.120, Simon and Schuster

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• The ban would apply to the full-body veil known as the burqa or niqab. This is not an article of clothing — it is a mask, a mask worn at all times, making identification or participation in economic and social life virtually impossible.

  Jean-Francois Cope

  Niqab, Veils, Body

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• When I was 12 my brother told me I had to wear the burqa, but I really wanted to play, because I was a child. It's an age you want to play outside and have a good time. And they told me I had to wear it or I couldn't leave the home. I felt it was controlling me, because when I wore it I felt I wasn't a child anymore.

  Malina Suliman

  Brother, Children, Home

  "Afghan graffiti artist risks her life to challenge the burqa under the Taliban". Interview with Katie Booth, nytlive.nytimes.com. May 21, 2015.

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• I have always used the burqa because men are using the burqa in the name of culture and religion to take freedom from women. Women are alive, they have their own wishes and desires, but all the time they have to sacrifice that. They are a kind of skeleton, which doesn't have muscles. They're just breathing, like a kind of puppet that barely exists. If women spoke for their rights, they were beaten by their husbands. So they don't have a voice. They lose their voices and their wishes and their happiness.

  Malina Suliman

  Husband, Sacrifice, Men

  "Afghan graffiti artist risks her life to challenge the burqa under the Taliban". Interview with Katie Booth, womenintheworld.com. May 21, 2015.

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• Since the 1950s (until the early 1990s), girls in Kabul and other cities attended schools. Half of university students were women, and women made up 40 percent of Afghanistan’s doctors, 70 percent of its teachers and 30 percent of its civil servants. A small number of women even held important political posts as members of Parliament and judges. Most women did not wear the burqa.

  Eleanor Smeal

  Girl, Teacher, School

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• The situation of women living in Islam-stricken
  societies and under Islamic laws is the outrage
  of the 21st century. Burqa-clad and veiled women
  and girls, beheadings, stoning to death,
  floggings, child sexual abuse in the name of
  marriage and sexual apartheid are only the most
  brutal and visible aspects of women's
  rightlessness and third class citizen status in the Middle East

  Maryam Namazie

  Girl, Children, Islamic

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• I want to quit. Not performing, but being a woman altogether. I want to throw my hands in the air, after reading a mean Twitter comment, and say, 'All right! You got it. You figured me out. I'm not pretty. I'm not thin. I do not deserve to use my voice. I'll start wearing a burqa and start waiting tables at a pancake house. All my self-worth is based on what you can see.' But then I think, F*** that ... I am a woman with thoughts and questions and s*** to say. I say if I'm beautiful. I say if I'm strong. You will not determine my story - I will.

  Amy Schumer

  Beautiful, Strong, Fun

  Speech About Confidence at the Gloria Awards and Gala, www.vulture.com. May 2, 2014.

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• As a woman and as a feminist, I am very well aware of how women have been oppressed and segregated for a thousand of years and I bristle at the fact in 21 century Australia women are still being kept out of public life and I'm sorry, when you wear a burqa you cannot attribute to society as much as you can without it.

  Jacques Myard

  Sorry, Years, Australia

  Source: www.sbs.com.au

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• It's being made out that the whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate Afghan women from their burqas, we are being asked to believe that the U.S. marines are actually on a feminist mission.

  Arundhati Roy

  War, Believe, Marine

  Arundhati Roy (2016). “The End of Imagination”, p.240, Haymarket Books

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• Anti-Islamist Muslims - who wish to live modern lives, unencumbered by burqas, fatwas and violent visions of jihad - are on the defensive and atomized. However eloquent, their individual voices cannot compete with the roar of militant Islam's determination, money (much of it from overseas) and violence. As a result, militant Islam, with its West-phobia and goal of world hegemony, dominates Islam in the West and appears to many to be the only kind of Islam.

  Daniel Pipes

  Determination, Voice, Goal

  "Voices of Islam". New York Post, September 23, 2003.

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• Sarah Palin and her virtual burqa have me and my friends retching into our handbags. She's such a power-mad, backwater beauty-pageant casualty, it's easy to write her off and make fun of her. But in reality I feel as horrified as a ghetto Jew watching the rise of National Socialism.

  Cintra Wilson

  Fun, Writing, Ghetto

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• If Islam was to be saved, it would be saved by the crazy ones.

  Michael Muhammad Knight

  Crazy, Islam, Pork

  Michael Muhammad Knight (2004). “The Taqwacores”, p.38, Autonomedia

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• The jamaat was an almost silly mish-mash of people: Rude Dawud’s pork-pie hat poking up here, a jalab-and-turban there, Jehangir’s big Mohawk rising from a sea of kufis, Amazing Ayyub still with no shirt, girls scattered throughout – some in hejab, some not and Rabeya in punk-patched burqa doing her thing. But in its randomness it was gorgeous, reflecting an Islam I felt could not happen anywhere else ... If Islam was to be saved, it would be saved by the crazy ones: Jehangir and Rabeya and Fasiq and Dawud and Ayyub and even Umar.

  Michael Muhammad Knight

  Girl, Crazy, Silly

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• Afghans think the burqa is a permanent part of culture. But, if you bring it to Europe, how would people react? Afghanistan doesn't want to change its culture, but it can change, all the time. So why are Afghans giving so much value to it? The burqa is not natural. It's not human nature.

  Malina Suliman

  Thinking, Europe, People

  "Afghan graffiti artist risks her life to challenge the burqa under the Taliban". Interview with Katie Booth, womenintheworld.com. May 21, 2015.

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• Non-Western immigrants, often Muslims, are over-represented in statistics of crime, of dependency on social benefits, that we have honour killings, that we have genital mutilation, that we have streets where women with headscarves and burqas are not the exception any more. And that it's getting worse.

  Geert Wilders

  Benefits, Statistics, Killing

  Source: www.parlementairemonitor.nl

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• I am thankful I was born in America, although if I gain any more weight the burqa thing may start to seem like a good idea to me. See? Another plus about America, you can always find some food.

  Elayne Boosler

  Ideas, America, Weight

  "Top 5 Things I’m Thankful for" by Elayne Boosler, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 24, 2010.

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• Seeing the Afghan women in their burqas, it's easy to say, "Well, they're not as fully aware as I am, so why do I have to worry so much about their plight?" But that's a misunderstanding. They are brutally aware of their station.

  Eliza Griswold

  Worry, Plight, Easy

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• In reality I feel as horrified as a ghetto Jew watching the rise of National Socialism.

  Cintra Wilson

  Ghetto, Socialism, Pageant

  "Pissed about Palin". www.salon.com. September 10, 2008.

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• In Iraq, until before the war, the women were scientists, museum directors, doctors. I'm not valourising Saddam Hussein or the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, which was brutal and killed hundreds of thousands of people - it was the Soviet Union's Vietnam. I'm just saying that now, in these new wars, whole countries have slipped into mayhem - the women have just been pushed back into their burqas - and not by choice.

  Arundhati Roy

  Country, War, Museums

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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