So I read the first extra credit link:
"Audience members, who afterward signed petitions against the Taleban in the thousands, pinned bits of fabric from burqas on their lapels in remembrance.

The burqa is a 'symbol of the total oppression of women,' says Feminist Majority Campaign's Norma Gattsek. . ."

Bits of fabric as a symbol of solidarity with those for whom we feel kinship despite not knowing them or belonging in their culture? It made me think of Mexican flag-raising on Texas school flagpoles last week, that a bit of colorful fabric and who puts it where, why, matters so much in different positive and negative ways to different people for different reasons.

Fabric as story and symbol is all easy for ME to understand no matter whose cloth is at issue but for others - well, it depends of the cultural weave. One woman's warp is another woman's woof. I grew up in the South, spent years watching wars both legal and literal fought at school over similar red-white-and-blue cloth flags that varied only in star configurations. I saw the whole spectrum, from banning and burning to mandatory display and saluting, for the same piece of cloth in the same culture! Plus ça change . . .

I agree sensitivity to symbols is a cultural "problem" but it seems to me one that cuts in all directions at once, that we each misunderstand the other because of hyper- as well as hypo-sensitivity. Is there or can there be any cultural symbol on which there has EVER been universal agreement?