Dawning The Burqa: Shallow Imitations

The Police Department in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, U.K. experimented with a novel venture last week. Referred to as “In Your Shoes”, the initiative required three policewomen to dress in Burqas for a day to understand how it feels to a Muslim woman. Two sergeants and a community support officer dressed in head-to-foot burqas and other traditional clothing and went out shopping. The officers wore brightly-coloured traditional Muslim outfits and a full-length black jilbab plus a niqab, which covers the face leaving slits for eyes.
Are we expected to appreciate such experiments? Will the mis-perceptions relating to the Muslim community be rectified through such attempts? Will the Muslim population accept such shallow imitations of their cultural and religious traditions? The “In Your Shoes” experiment had three major flaws. �
First, as expressed by Matthew Elliott, of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, “People want the police out catching criminals, not indulging in politically correct gimmicks. The police are overstretched as it is without officers being paid to do other things than their real job.”
Second, the outcome of the dress-up game was obvious. No one expected the three women to be in any way critical burqa. Sergeant Deb Leonard, who wore some of the clothing, described her experience in a South Yorkshire Police in-house magazine. “I have gained an appreciation and understanding of what Muslim females experience when they walk out in public in clothing appropriate to their beliefs.” It was a poorly crafted PR exercise. For an opposing view on the issue one should read Liz Jones’s account of how she felt on wearing the burqa for a week. In the words of Liz, “It looks so innocuous: just a few yards of black fabric. But, my goodness, how oppressive it is, how suffocating, how transforming.”
Finally attempts at imitating the dress code without comprehending and believing in the cultural and religious rationale of the same are meaningless. For the non-Muslims the burqa is a gender issue but for majority of women it is part of their Muslim identity.
I guess the next experiment will involve British Army soldiers dressed as Al-Qaeda and Taliban men to closely understand the psyche of these men!