Flowers for the Women Wearing Veils - Volume I — Page 233
! ! 233 other. Thus, if by customary p u rda h a severe form of p u rdah is indicated , then this p u rdah is extremely brutal and is a blemish on Islam and Muslims. T he sooner it is removed , the better it will be for Islam and Muslims. Our generations have fallen weak due to this p u rdah. Our women have been deprived of both faith and worldly goods. We are derided by other nations and are presenting our religion to be an object of ridicule in the eyes of o thers. I n our country , o ne kind of p u rdah is the burqa , which women wear when they go out. T hey go from one house to the other , but they are not permitted to go any further. Although this p u rdah is not as objectionable as the other types of p u rdah mentioned above, it does not help to sufficiently improve women’s intellec tual growth or physical health for national progress. Secondly, our old burqa either destroys the woman’s health or in the name of p u rda h , it actually becomes a cause for discarding p u rdah altogether. This burqa is like a walking dome from top to bottom, where even the wo man’s hands are enclosed inside. If she picks up a child, her entire front is exposed from head to toe, presenting such a n unbecoming picture , that one instinctively feels abhorrence towards this type of p u rda h. Far better than this , i s the practice of wearing the chaadar [a long shawl] which existed before the invention of the burqa. A woman could go about her work and cover herself up as well. As I have mentioned above, this burqa is detrimental to health and does not serve the purpose of p u rdah. In my opinion, the new burqa , known as the Turkish burqa , is by far the most preferable among burqa s , excepting one alteration , that it is not wrapped around the body. It should be a straight coat , which falls from the shoulders to the feet, and it should not be the type of coat which display s individual parts of the body. If this kind of clothing was permissib le , then one’s clothes would have been sufficient , and the Holy Qur’ān would not have given the command to wear loose garments over them. There is the additional benefit to t his burqa , that since the hands are free, a woma n can do all sorts of work. A similar example would be a doctor’s loose coat which he w ears during surgery.