Karen Healey (Girl-Wonder.org) turns her attention to New X-Men this week, critiquing the unusual wardrobe of Sooraya Qadir, a sand-powered Sunni Muslin Afghani mutant.
You can say what you like about the burqa – and I do – but it is an over-garment designed to conceal the female body. This depiction of a character who says she wears a burqa to be modest and then apparently wraps it skin-tight is patently ridiculous.Incidentally, though Sooraya refers to her robe and headscarf/facescarf several times as “burqa”, the artwork doesn’t show her wearing burqa at all. A burqa is, specifically, the long pleated over-garment with the grille over the eyes. Sooraya is wearing niqab. If five minutes of checking Wikipedia confirms that for me, what does it say about the research standards of the creators?
At any rate: self-professed modest Muslim girl! SKIN TIGHT ROBES! Marvel, we have a problem.
August 30th, 2006 at 7:32 am
I’m all for diversity in comic books, I just wish research standards were a little higher then, “My uncle John said it,” so the characters can be treated with a little respect. Poor Dust.
August 30th, 2006 at 7:54 am
It’s the same with nun’s habits.
August 30th, 2006 at 8:04 am
Well, among Indians and Pakistanis, Burkha/Burqa is what the full form-concealing muslim woman’s clothing is commonly called, though in Arabia, it’s know as an Abaya, with or without the Niqab.
But even then, to think that she’s concealing her form with that, is well, balderdash.