Veil and Civilization

Interesting to see that the origin of word "West" and "East" come from the europeans during the 3G era (not "3rd Generation cellphone", but "Gold, Glory, Gospel" :-). So the direction was relative to "europe". So the "East" is any place in eastern of europe, while "West" is any place located west of european land (separated by sea). If we see, then the true "eastern" is Japanese, Korea, Indonesia, pacific islands, Australia [geographically and by the origin, but then changed after british came there].

Culturally, when we say "Eastern" civilization, people connote it with anything related to "eastern culture" like Budhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Confucianism (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern), while "Western" civilization for anything comes from europe (interesting to see that Wikipedia says: "Various uses of the concept of Western culture have included, rightly or wrongly, critiques of American culture, materialism, industrialism, capitalism, commercialism, hedonism, imperialism, modernism,").

So, from just this point of view, "West" and "East" is nothing to do with religion of Islam or Christianity. Both religion started from what-so-called "Middle East". Christianity spreaded in the west during roman empire, while Islam is growing fast in the west this time. Allah says in the Al-Qur'an, Islam is not Western nor Eastern, but it is a straight path ("Hanifah").

In my opinion, "BURQA V.S. BIKINI" is more to "Secularism V.S. Religion" or "Hedonism V.S. Morality", not in the name of "Islam". Old western culture, more or less, similar to eastern culture, at least in many of its morality teachings. I can still remember, in old days, women were not allowed to have swimming suits shorter than what could cover their knees or something. Women of the west in renaisannce time were ordered to wear corset. But that morality has degraded alot now in the west as well as in the east. Besides, burqa is just a cultural tradition of people from central asia. I have to admit, many muslim women suffer at the hands of societies and governments who would harm them in the name of Islam. Islam, but it is not what true Islam is. If Islam opresses women, why 4 out 5 muslim converts are women? (one of the good answers are here: http://www.islamfortoday.com/women.htm).

It amazes me, some times, that if an eastern culture is rooted to Islam, people from west call it "opression", "uncivilized", etc., but if it comes from other than that, people called "a great civiliation" etc. (No offense, please). We rarely see people say "Ah...look at those great islamic legacies...we've learned a lot from them" (see http://technostuff.blogspot.com/2006/03/how-islamic-inventors-changed-world.html).