[extropy-chat] Muslim paradox

[Damien Broderick]

At 09:36 PM 5/23/2004 -0700, Spike wrote:


>We occasionally see women in chaddors around here, those
>head and face covering scarfs that Muslim women wear;
>my own neighborhood has two families where the women
>don the chaddor.  Only the eyes show.  Today a young
>athlete wore that over her head and face, while allowing
>her quite attractive young legs and arms to be gazed
>upon by arbitrary many ogling admirers, including
>my ever so humble self.

In my novel QUIPU (a revised version of the 1984 TRANSMITTERS, as yet 
unpublished in the USA), one dubious character muses thus:

================

He snickers; a friend returning from the Middle East a couple of years ago 
swore blind that any of the local women, in purdah, would fling her 
voluminous skirts over her head in shame and horror if an outsider chanced 
to see her naked face. Odd enough as a behavior, this performance had the 
ludicrous consequence in Western eyes of inverting the usual conventions of 
decency: for these heavily skirted women were entirely innocent of underwear.

=================

Damien Broderick