The veil

I am a New Zealand Citizen of Indian origin. I grew up in Madras now Chennai where people of all religions inter-mingled freely without any trouble. Right from my young age I have moved with Muslim families and it was quite common for us to see many Muslim women walking, shopping and inter-acting with rest of the society, while wearing burqua (head to toe covering). We never even thought about it consciously and it was just part of the society and taken for granted. I am sure they were not desparate are trying to be different. It was just the way they lived and was easily accepted by others. Not only this, each religion had its own peculiaritie requiring its adherents to wear somethings, either signs on their bodies or a particular type of dress and it was all accepted as natural. We also had several visitors from overseas who used to wear shorts and revealing tops and they were also tolerated and not made fun of. In fact they were welcomed and given due courtesy as revered visitors.
Only now with mass migration of people moving to western countries, the natives of western society feel that anything different is bad, without trying to understand the culture/religious circumstances. I am sure like any religion, Islam also requests its adherents to treat women with respect and it is being followed by most. Treating women as sex objects and portraying them in a cheap way is a purely western concept, propogated by Advertising and we can see this on-going degradation on TVs, newspapers, billboards, internet etc.
So it is sad that inappropriate remarks are made by persons occupying positions of high office, about Muslim women wearing veils and interpreting this in a wrong way and genralising it with stupid assumptions. This will only alienate muslims and other migrants and will be very much counter-productive.
Let everyone live his/her life in his/her own way. Dont be scared of different ways of living/values. The so-called split or confrontation between Western and Islamic societies is more in the minds and imagination of politicians and vested interests and is being fuelled by newspaper articles giving prominence to these mindless utterances.
I think a bit of cooling-off is necessary. 9/11 was a great tragedy. But it is in the past. Let us move on without the hangover causing more damage than the original incident as it has already done in Iraq and other places.