Seeping-in Sharia

I posted this at Roncesvalles in April but, alas, the style-implications went totally over my head. So here it is with an added stronger focus on style.

HuffPo knows what REALLY interests us:
Sheikha Mozah Meets The Royals In Fabulous Fashion
(PHOTOS, POLL)


Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned of Qatar, normally known for her unapologetically monochromatic ensembles, really mixed things up during a meeting with Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle on Tuesday.

But two days later, she returned to the monochromatic Mozah we know and love [sic!] when she and Prince Charles attended a reception and planted a Sidr tree to mark the opening of the Qur'anic Garden Exhibition at the Royal Botanic Gardens [sic!].



Quick Poll

Which look do you like best?

Look 1 (with Queen Elizabeth) for attending a stoning in Iran
Look 2 (with Prince Charles) for attending a beheading in Saudi Arabia
To be honest, neither. She'd even make a burqa look good, so why not?
Rest assured, this is gallow's humour!

The original entry ends here, so what do I SERIOUSLY think about those dresses? I think that the mixed ensemble is plain ugly -- specifically the colours -- and way below what that stunningly beautiful woman is usually wearing. The grey dress is then again more up to her usual standard, although the leaf-shaped ... things look a bit weird. But the colour, the cut -- perfection! Mind you, with a face like that a headscarf looks positively attractive. I have known men (in the pre-Islamisation age) who said that they are turned on by it. So there goes your sharia-compatible modesty.

But what bothers me most is the fact that with the help of this, in her own way, extremely stylish woman, Islam and sharia are not just sold as a lifestyle where a woman is forced to dress "modestly", but as one where a woman, who is one of three, well, wives, can become a role model and fashion icon in our culture and nobody bothers or even mentions the fact that she, with all her beauty, her wit, her style, her Western education and her political and business acumen, is, if we for once take our own standards seriously, a concubine.

But we don't take our own standards seriously, in fact, we have forgotten them.