{"id":2126,"date":"2011-06-26T14:04:41","date_gmt":"2011-06-26T18:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/on_the_front_lines_of_the_culture_wars\/?p=2126"},"modified":"2011-06-26T14:17:45","modified_gmt":"2011-06-26T18:17:45","slug":"singer-prince-says-women-like-being-forced-to-wear-burqas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/on_the_front_lines_of_the_culture_wars\/2011\/06\/singer-prince-says-women-like-being-forced-to-wear-burqas.html","title":{"rendered":"Singer Prince says women like being forced to wear burqas"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_2129\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2129\" style=\"width: 403px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/218\/2011\/06\/prince.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2129\" title=\"prince\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/218\/2011\/06\/prince.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"403\" height=\"594\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2129\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The artist now called &quot;Prince&quot; again<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s only one religion. There&#8217;s order. You wear a burqa. There&#8217;s no choice. People are happy with that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s why the pop singer Prince likes traveling in Islamic countries, according to an interview\u00a0this weekend in\u00a0the\u00a0British newspaper\u00a0the<em>\u00a0Guardian.\u00a0<\/em>A burqa is a full-length veil concealing everything except the woman&#8217;s eyes.<\/p>\n<p>Asked why he wears flamboyant outfits, he said recently he went out in public in ordinary clothing and nobody recognized him, so, he&#8217;s never going to dress &#8220;raggedy,&#8221; again.<\/p>\n<p>The performer, whose real name is Prince Rogers Nelson, a few years ago forbade the press to call him by any name. Instead, he provided a stylized monogram-like symbol and said that was his name. So for a decade, the media called him &#8220;the artist formerly known as Prince.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But things have changed.\u00a0The 53-year-old\u00a0has become a devout member of the Jehovah&#8217;s Witnesses. He said he refuses to sing many of his old hits, such as\u00a0&#8220;Gett Off&#8221; which told\u00a0of &#8220;23 positions in a one-night stand.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In\u00a0his exclusive interview with the British newspaper, Prince said: &#8220;It&#8217;s fun being in Islamic countries, to know there&#8217;s only one religion. There&#8217;s order. You wear a burqa. There&#8217;s no choice. People are happy with that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>When asked about the fate of those unhappy with having no choice, he replied: &#8220;There are people who are unhappy with everything. There&#8217;s a dark side to everything.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Of his new life as\u00a0a Jehovah&#8217;s Witness, he told the <em>Guardian<\/em>:\u00a0&#8220;I was anti-authoritarian, but at the same time I was a loving tyrant. You can&#8217;t be both. I had to learn what authority was. That&#8217;s what the Bible teaches. The Bible is a study guide for social interaction.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If I go to a place where I don&#8217;t feel stressed and there&#8217;s no car alarms and airplanes overhead, then you understand what noise pollution is. Noise is a society that has no God, that has no glue. We can&#8217;t do what we want to do all the time. If you don&#8217;t have boundaries, what then?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He told the <em>Guardian<\/em> that his distaste for the internet has\u00a0not changed. He has long criticized anyone who posts his music or his image online. In 2007, his lawyers instructed a number of his fan clubs&#8217; websites to remove all photographs and images related to his likeness.<\/p>\n<p>He told the <em>Guardian:<\/em> &#8220;I don\u2019t want to get up on a soapbox. My view of the world, you can debate that for ever. But I\u2019m a musician. That\u2019s what I do. And I also am music.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Even though he\u2019s been touring, Prince said that he doesn\u2019t want to release a new album, even though he\u2019s written lots of songs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe industry changed,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We made money before piracy was real crazy. Nobody&#8217;s making money now except phone companies, Apple and Google. I&#8217;m supposed to go to the White House to talk about copyright protection. It&#8217;s like the gold rush out there. Or a carjacking. There&#8217;s no boundaries. I&#8217;ve been in meetings and they&#8217;ll tell you, Prince, you don&#8217;t understand, it&#8217;s dog-eat-dog out there. So I&#8217;ll just hold off on recording.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I personally can&#8217;t stand digital music,&#8221; he told the <em>Guardian.<\/em> &#8220;You&#8217;re getting sound in bits. It affects a different place in your brain. When you play it back, you can&#8217;t feel anything. We&#8217;re analogue people, not digital.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He criticized the organizers of this weekend&#8217;s music festival in Glastonbury, England,\u00a0claiming that the annual rumors that he\u00a0will play there are just an attempt to sell tickets.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They use my name to sell the festival,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s illegal.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 &#8220;There&#8217;s only one religion. There&#8217;s order. You wear a burqa. There&#8217;s no choice. People are happy with that.&#8221; That&#8217;s why the pop singer Prince likes traveling in Islamic countries, according to an interview\u00a0this weekend in\u00a0the\u00a0British newspaper\u00a0the\u00a0Guardian.\u00a0A burqa is a full-length veil concealing everything except the woman&#8217;s eyes. Asked why he wears flamboyant outfits, he&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[381,271],"class_list":["post-2126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-news","tag-prince"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Singer Prince says women like being forced to wear burqas - On the Front Lines of the Culture Wars<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/on_the_front_lines_of_the_culture_wars\/2011\/06\/singer-prince-says-women-like-being-forced-to-wear-burqas.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Singer Prince says women like being forced to wear burqas - On the Front Lines of the Culture Wars\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u00a0 &#8220;There&#8217;s only one religion. There&#8217;s order. You wear a burqa. There&#8217;s no choice. People are happy with that.&#8221; That&#8217;s why the pop singer Prince likes traveling in Islamic countries, according to an interview\u00a0this weekend in\u00a0the\u00a0British newspaper\u00a0the\u00a0Guardian.\u00a0A burqa is a full-length veil concealing everything except the woman&#8217;s eyes. 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