Fisher comments on the above chart showing how people in several Muslim countries think women should dress in public:
The result I found the most interesting is the one not on this chart:
how many people in each country say that women have a right to dress how they want. You might expect that countries where people answer “yes” to this would also be the ones where more people say women should go unveiled. But that’s not quite how it lines up. Saudis are much more supportive of this freedom for women than are Egyptians and Iraqis, for example, even though Saudis tend to approve of much more conservative clothing. Here’s how many poll respondents in each country said women should have a right to dress as they wish:
Tunisia: 52%
Turkey: 52%
Lebanon: 49%
Saudi Arabia: 47%
Iraq: 27%
Pakistan: 22%
Egypt: 14%That last result should be a reminder for us that, even though we often equate the two in the West, a preference for veiling is not always the same thing as a belief that women shouldn’t have the right to choose their own clothing. Piety and feminism are not necessarily mutually exclusive forces. Still, it’s too bad that, even in the countries most supportive of this very basic freedom, only about half support it.
The Dish 