Moral Issues in Society: Muslim Clothing - Essay Example

This paper tends to analyze this moral issue with respect to utilitarianism and tells whether or not, Muslim women should be prohibited from covering themselves up with scarves and shawls.

The utilitarian approach of evaluating an issue tells whether a decision is justified or otherwise by looking at the outcomes. The effect of covering the body and head fully can be estimated by comparing it with the effect of traditional western outfits for women. Nudity is associated with lust. Wherever there is nudity, there is lust. The lust of people makes them indulge in unethical acts. Nature has associated nudity with sex. Sex has to be private and hidden. Societies in which people do not respect the limits of exposure are morally weak and are highly corrupt. In many advanced societies, rape and all kinds of sexual assaults are very common and frequent. The more the women cover themselves, the lesser the frequency of incidents of rape in society gets. This can be estimated by comparing the rate of rape in Saudi Arabia with that in the USA, where women in the former dress up completely as per the instructions of Islam. Rapes per capita in Saudi Arabia have been recorded as the lowest. The rate in Saudi Arabia is 0.00329321 per 1,000 people whereas the number of rapes per capita in the USA is 0.301318 per 1,000 people (NationMaster.com). From the results, it can be seen that in a society in which women dress according to the instructions of Islam, the number of rapes per capita is the lowest. This essentially speaks of the importance of covering the body for women. This makes sense. Women are visualized as the symbol of sex. They are portrayed like this in media, songs, movies, magazines as well as literature. They appeal to the opposite gender, and being the weaker of the two sexes, are at great risk. A covered woman is much safer than an uncovered woman.

In the workplace, all that matters is the competence of an individual, irrespective of the individual’s gender. Being fully covered, women feel protected and can thus, fully concentrate upon the work. This results in increased productivity and high quality of work. Again, the results being positive, the utilitarian approach condemns all such measures that prohibit Muslim women from dressing up according to the instructions of their religion. In light of the analysis made in this paper, Muslim women should be totally allowed to dress according to Islam’s teachings.