herve wrote:Part of the success to my escape was to use Emirati's own culture against themselves, all along.
2 examples
The purpose of the abaya is to "ghost" women, so when you know it, you wear one and you become invisible, because after all, that s what men want for their women, modesty is a no brain excuse, they all wear make up and perfume under anyways. A funny story about it, somebody emailed me a flyer, it was a petition from the women club of a "women only" beach in Jumeirah, they used my name as to justify that a female officer should check women in abaya before they get to the beach to make sure, it was no man under to peep at women.
Their religion: on a Friday morning between 10.00 and noon, everybody is at the moske, no souls on the water, nobody is watching, door is left opened. See ya!
Is it bad? is it appropriate? what do you think poeple?
Not that I want to be knitpicking, the abaya and the way it is being practiced currently is not what it was meant to be, ofcourse its seems ridiculous when the abaya is worn but it leaves a very visible vapor trail of perfume, perhaps you must have noticed the wide variety of styles associated with the abaya (some of them being translucent - note the variety is due to satisfying feminine desire for fashion (which is the source of the discrepancy associated with the proper application of the abaya) .
Technically this is all rubbish and is in NO WAY ASSOCIATED WITH ISLAM IN ANY WAY - SHAPE OR FORM. What the respectable women are practicing is, but a byproduct of the death of the religion and which is replaced by culture and fashion. Culture has overtaken the significance of the abaya. To illustrate what i mean, Take for example someone who says - In the name of ALLAH and then sips beer. The action is technically correct but its application is wrong, since alcohol is ABSOLUTELY FORBIDDEN (except in the case of medical application). Making that entire action FORBIDDEN and PUNISHABLE BY LAW.
My point being that the way in which the abaya(and all the other components of ISLAM) is being practiced in the middle east and in the muslim world in general is not correct, since the essence of its functionality as you aptly pointed out as "ghosting" is missing. But as I mentioner earlier this is an APPLICATION ISSUE OF THE MAIN CONCEPT and should not be attributed to the SOURCE OF THE CONCEPT viz ISLAM
About people just leaving their shops and going to the mosque, well the attendance to the prayer is direct command, un-fulfillment of which carries a heavy penalty, according to the religious law (referred to as SHARIAH -English translation JURISPRUDENCE) which is not actually fully enforced ( for whatever reason). This was a practice done way back when mischief was not as rife as it is now, so in this case I agree that its not the wisest thing to do. But i wouldnt go as far and say that its downright preposterous. Again I would like to say WHAT YOU SEE BEING FOLLOWED IN THE MIDDLE EAST IS PURE GARBAGE and HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FAITH.
Moreover IMHO the RELIGION is being improperly used in the MIDDLE EAST as a form of control since the rulers themselves are far far away from any kind of religion.