If you were a Muslim woman, would you wear a hijab?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

If I were a Muslim woman, I'd be too busy being absolutely beautiful to join this useless forum and answer your inane questions.

That's actually a pretty good answer. Although it also implies that you wouldn't wear one.

Excuse me!? *slap*

Arab and especially Persian women usually have beautiful hair though. Obscuring that with a hijab is pretty wrong and repressive. Not that most Arab and Persian-American women do of course.

I'm not fond of arguments that hijab is oppressive in general (although I also don't buy that it's intrinsically liberating; it strikes me as one of those things that is what you make of it), but at least such arguments tend to be more valid than 'if part of a woman is physically attractive, it's wrong and repressive to cover it'.

To answer your question, I honestly don't know--not because I'm not willing to engage the question or imagine how my basic personality might shake out in a different environment, because I very much am willing to do those things, but because I don't know how my reasons for my actual religious views and tastes would apply to that situation. As things actually stand, I rebelled against the spiritual-but-not-religious post-hippie MTD that I was raised with by becoming a small-o-orthodox Christian with very pompous and ceremonious aesthetic and liturgical preferences and a penchant for imitating what limited understanding I have of my ancestors (when I'm away at divinity school I keep a photo of my CCD teacher grandmother in my room when I'm studying). I don't know if I would rebel in an assimilated Muslim environment by rejecting the assimilation (and thus becoming a more conservative Muslim and probably more inclined to observe hijab) or by rejecting the Islam (and probably becoming some sort of Eastern Christian).

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

If I were a Muslim woman, I'd be too busy being absolutely beautiful to join this useless forum and answer your inane questions.

That's actually a pretty good answer. Although it also implies that you wouldn't wear one.

Excuse me!? *slap*

Arab and especially Persian women usually have beautiful hair though. Obscuring that with a hijab is pretty wrong and repressive. Not that most Arab and Persian-American women do of course.

I'm not fond of arguments that hijab is oppressive in general (although I also don't buy that it's intrinsically liberating; it strikes me as one of those things that is what you make of it), but at least such arguments tend to be more valid than 'if part of a woman is physically attractive, it's wrong and repressive to cover it'.

Human beauty is an expression of God's goodness, and teaching people that they should be ashamed of their beauty is immoral.

Is that a more valid argument?

Yes, except for the fact that it presupposes that hijabi women are or should be acting out of shame. Surely some are--again, I don't buy the 'hijabi is intrinsically liberating and secretly feminist!' argument either--but it hardly strikes me as fair to claim that all are.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

If a person is physically ugly, it's a punishment for sin (slothfulness, gluttony, lust), or the persecution of Satan.

That's ridiculous.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

If a person is physically ugly, it's a punishment for sin (slothfulness, gluttony, lust), or the persecution of Satan.

That's ridiculous.

The fact that you think so means that you haven't let Satan tempt you into vanity.

+1 for you, my friend.

I don't think that's what it means.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

You know, I do recall years ago that Scott (on his original account) said that he's from a mixed marriage and even if he was raised Catholic he would've almost certainly converted to Protestantism later. And no one screamed at him "but that's ridiculous to say, how could you possibly know that?!" sort of things.

That's a bit closer to Scott's actual experience than being a Muslim woman is to yours.