As a followup to the extensive comments left about my article While the World Debates Burqas, Fashion Designers Show Beautiful Abayas at Paris’s George V Hotel, I want to report that Pixie, our most prolific article commentator and author of the blog I Love Hishma, and I are communicating about how to leverage her voice into Anne of Carversville, given her very busy schedule.

In my exchanges with Pixie and reading other comments, especially Noor’s — a former Jewess from Wisc., now a hijab-wearing, Muslim woman — I’m clear that like most issues in life, the subject of burqas and dress for Muslim women is lodged in grey matter.

To read that some Western Muslim women are dressing more conservatively than their husbands and/or husband’s family wishes or advises, underscores the fact that some Muslim women are choosing their preferred dress. I haven’t fully considered the ramifications of this fact as it applies to my own position on burqas, but I’m clear the no one is twisting Pixie’s and Noor’s arms, regarding their street attire. I believe this can be said for each of the Muslim women commentators on this topic.

Luxist, is the LAST place I’d expect to see this subject under discussion, yet it is. Kristin Young features an oversized photo from Givenchy’s recent couture collection. I’ve pulled another for us at Style.com:

Givenchy Fall 2009 Couture Collection

Luxist isn’t known for concerning itself with women’s issues, and yet Kristen correctly, I think, called out the fact that AP reported that Sudan arrested 13 women for wearing trousers in public and flogged 10 of them.

The 10 women who pled guilty were flogged at once.

Journalist Lubna Ahmed Hussein was among the women, who were arrested in a raid on the capital in Khartoum.

I just checked her Twitter account, and it is blank — wiped out.

Hussein said, “This is retribution to thousands of girls who are facing flogging for the last 20 years because of wearing trousers,” reported MSNBC. “They prefer to remain silent.”

Lubna’s boldness goes far beyond confronting Sudanese authorities. ANHRI, Arab Network for Human Rights Information, has expressed deep concern about the case.