III
Towards a conclusion: with lubricated lips, Western men espy
black-coated bodies of Muslim women, imagine the exciting
goodies bouncing under the drab (gift) wrapping; Western
women grimace, suppress, demonise their own thoughts of virile
emirs fucking them in hashish-hazed harems. This is our world.
Middle class, ‘democratic’ societies of the West confronted with
‘the dilemma’ of what to do with mysterious, inscrutable non-
Christian ‘ethnics’. Gas them? That was tried once, didn’t succeed
entirely. At any rate the West needs their oil more sincerely
than anti-racism activists could advocate tolerance, diversity,
etc. But hatred of Islam – that is, a pathological concern for
what women wear/shouldn’t wear – widespread in the West
as pursuit of cash, addiction to success, thirst for world
domination. So it can be exploited by politicians. In Holland
(self-proclaimed paragon of open-mindedness) passion for
prohibiting a few immigrants from wearing burqa in the street
transforms mediocre bureaucrats into ‘brave’ ‘outspoken’
leaders. Headscarfed girls in France – although they often score
better than bareheaded boys in maths, physics, chemistry,
biology, French lit. – expelled from school for being veiled
women. In England: when two oblivious women are spotted
in niqab they are reproached by a ‘concerned’ male politician
jeered at by journalists; labelled as sly enemies of British
society, etc. State of Emergency! Once again Eve’s daughters
plotting Man’s Fall. But this has not been all the story of a fake
thing called sexuality, an effect of a history of concomitant
lies, delusions, fantasies. It’s one of the tenets of our modern
middle class world: to defeat competition, get promoted
and appear, at long last, aristocratic. Perennially insecure
we’ll do anything to prove our power over reality, altering
the shape of the body; covering it by force here, uncovering it
by force there: woman will/not wear the veil unhappily ever after.