SPF ??

(I look at ISIL specifically for the sake of this argument. There are other religions and cultures that abuse women and tell them to play dress up. In fact, there are many. Most cultures are based on the enslavement - or at least control - of women and the arming and violence acclimating of men. It's a fine mating dance if you're not compatible with the person you want to have sex with. The mentality is, unfortunately, just beat them and say it's okay because some dead person wrote about it.)

Set your traditions aside for a moment and look at ISIL as a group of people whose main goal is to have as much happiness as they can wrangle. That means food and water, sex, brotherhood, and the safety offered by well defined borders and quality shelter. What they do different from the rest of us (at least in degrees) is to use violence to reduce the competition. This method, like all other learned behavior, is the product of being told repeatedly that is the way a strong man comes by those things.

But that, I think, is the easy part to understand. What really strikes me as relevant to the Muslim reputation is how clothing women in protective drapes of fabric to protect them against the harsh climate became mandatory and how it is now punishable by violence to not wear the hijab.

It is understandable that keeping women safe from sand and sun creates a softer and less sunburnt physical person, but condemning them for not wearing it means they have lost the meaning of the thing. Like our hang-ups with gay sex and menstruation and their relationship to clean water and soap, this tradition is founded before modern invention brought us sunscreen and automobiles. Its function has become in some situations obsolete yet the protective impulse has remained, and in some cases has been used to excuse violence against non compliers.

Women are being treated terribly for not wearing a particular form of sunscreen.

I'd fear them too if I was beating them for not being old fashioned enough.

So, like the men who are accustomed to proving their manhood by being violent, the women in that same culture are accustomed to being abused. The only way to be rescued from the abuse is to play dress up for their romantic attackers.

The violence some Muslim and other religious brotherhoods embrace are under the impression that their only route to care and safety is through the domination of women and their (albeit probably invisible to them) goal is to preserve the female-as-servant-doll abuse cycle. The result is and will continue to be men who abuse the animal that is the female body then scorn it for being trained to be less, and women who think they are incapable of anything but compliance and who cannot function without a rescuer. It is a farce. Those men are trying to kill their way to care and that means it will never happen. Care isn't a result of obedience training. In fact, it creates the type of woman they fear, and rightfully so.

The ISIL threat is a chance for modern Muslim people and all cultures who wear the hijab to publicly acknowledge their traditions as tools that can sometimes be updated. The best and finest of their culture should be preserved but the hijab has to be reconsidered if they truly want peace. I believe powerful teamwork can happen when the hijab is treated as it was intended, as protection from the elements, rather than a prison cell. The Muslim people are the ones to make this change, and we should support them as they guide their culture into a more caring age.

There are more pressing things to fight over.

LC