Take that blouse off! It’s making me hot!

In 1983, I worked as a sales representative with Malaysian Tobacco Company (MTC), the distributor of cigarettes like B & H, Kent and Lucky Strike.

MTC posted me to Kuala Kangsar, Lenggong and Grik.

My job was to accompany the local distributor’s salesmen in their van to the various retail outlets in town and the outskirts to help promote certain brands to targeted markets.

I recall in one Chinese village, near Padang Rengas, watching the young primary school going children, boys and girls, playing hopscotch together.

Watching these kids from a distance, you could only tell the boys from the girls by the length of their hair.

Boys were usually with GI-cropped hair.

The young girls would have their hair cut to just below their ears but not quite reaching their shoulders.

Attire-wise, you could not tell them apart.

They were all in shorts and singlets.

Then in Sauk ( where the famous Al- Maunah stand-off with our security forces took place ), I recall watching young children in what appeared to be a religious school lining up after the recess.

Girls, attired in baju kurung and tudung, segregated from the boys, in baju melayu.

What’ the point of all this?

Well, Malaysiakini reports that one Munirah Bahari of the National Islamic Students Association of Malaysia has some pretty strange notions about how the present school attire for school kids may be root cause of some of the social ills that a prevalent today.

I quote her :

“The white blouse is too transparent for girls and it becomes a source of attraction…It becomes a distraction to men, who are drawn to it, whether or not they like looking at it,”

Malaysiakini reports that Munirah said that “covering up” according to Islamic precepts was important to fend off social ills including “rape, sexual harassment and even premarital sex which involve schoolgirls in their teens.”

Quoting Munirah again :

“All this leads to babies born out of wedlock and to an extent, even prostitution…Decent clothes which are not revealing can prevent and protect women from any untoward situations,”

Munirah also thinks that sometimes these young students take advantage of the white blouse to entice men.

Said Munirah :

“This is the source of the problem, where we can see that schoolgirls themselves are capable of using this to attract men to them…This could see them getting molested, having pre-marital sex and all sorts of things.”

Marina Mahathir, in her blog today, suggests that this report is proof that our educational system is producing intellectual midgets.

Marina is so, so right!

Munirah may want to reflect back to a sad day in 2000 when computer engineer Noor Suzaily Mokhtar was raped, sodomised and then murdered by the driver of the bus on which she was travelling.

Read this Malaysiakini report of 2000.

I quote a statement from Sisters in Islam in that report.

“Noor Suzaily’s rape also belie the claim made by some political leaders that women are raped and molested because of the way they dress. In spite of her modest dressing, Noor Suzaily was still raped and sodomised,”

According to this Malaysiakini report, police believe Noor Suzaily was raped twice before her attacker used her tudung to tie her hands and sodomise her, and when she struggled, he untied her hands and used her scarf to strangle her.

Munirah may also want to check and verify the following.

Do most reported cases of incest involve Malay-Muslims?

Do most reported cases of grandfathers, fathers and brothers raping grand-daughters, daughters or sisters involve Malay-Muslim males?

If so, why is that there are not many reports of girls who grow up in villages playing hopscotch in shorts and singlets being raped by their grandfathers, fathers, or brothers?

Because non-Muslim families cover up these horrible incidences?

Maybe.

Or maybe they are simply fewer in number, if indeed any, than incidences involving Malay-Muslim men.

If so, tends to make me think of the saying, ‘ye judge the tree by its fruit’.