I am pretty sure walking in public while 99% of your body is covered with a black piece of cloth is fairly extreme.
So is walking around dressed as your favorite animated character. But it's not banned.
Walking around dressed as your favorite animated character is not a religious requirement.
So? It's extreme to most people. Are we now only banning things that are extreme to religion, and by extreme to religion we're actually talking about Islam and only Islam?
One argument you hear a lot of is that it is a 'progressive' step towards women's equality. How is curtailing what women may wear liberating? If a women does not wish to wear the burqa in Belgium or France, then she is under no legal requirement to do so.
She may not be under a legal requirement, but she is under a religious requirement.
Women aren't wearing burqas becuase they enjoy it. They wear it because they are required by their extremist sect.
You're conflating the wearing of the burqa/niqab with extremism.
I am pretty sure walking in public while 99% of your body is covered with a black piece of cloth is fairly extreme.
Really, as a practice it isn't any less wacky than a whole host of other religious rites and practices, which many people don't bat an eyelid at because they're familiar.
Such as?
Surgical genital alteration, feeding children wine and telling them that it's blood, smearing ash on one's face as penance, etc.
The percentage of circumcised males in the U.S. is ridiculous, so glad I didn't have to go through that.
Yeah I've heard similar stories about the conflict between hardline Islam and Dutch tolerance. Judging how the PVV are doing in the polls it's becoming more and more of an issue. The elections later this year will be the true test I guess.
I am pretty sure walking in public while 99% of your body is covered with a black piece of cloth is fairly extreme.
So is walking around dressed as your favorite animated character. But it's not banned.
Walking around dressed as your favorite animated character is not a religious requirement.
And that makes a difference because....
I thought it's pretty self-explanatory but let me help you. It makes a difference because it's the difference between it being an individual's conscious choice vs. them being forced by a system of rules, specifically because said system of rules is designed to oppress half the population into submission.
The moment we have a religion that says you must wear your favorite anime character costume in public at ALL times, we can start worrying about the practice. At the moment however, it is not.
I thought it's pretty self-explanatory but let me help you. It makes a difference because it's the difference between it being an individual's conscious choice vs. them being forced by a system of rules, specifically because said system of rules is designed to oppress half the population into submission.
Again, you don't really seem to understand the basic fact that a woman (or a man) can choose to be a traditional Muslim.
I thought it's pretty self-explanatory but let me help you. It makes a difference because it's the difference between it being an individual's conscious choice vs. them being forced by a system of rules, specifically because said system of rules is designed to oppress half the population into submission.
The moment we have a religion that says you must wear your favorite anime character costume in public at ALL times, we can start worrying about the practice. At the moment however, it is not.
You are vastly oversimplifying Islamic practice so you can rail against a bogeyman of your own invention.
Islam is jurisprudential. There are a variety of ways to interpret the scripture and individual adherents follow that which makes sense to them under the guidance of an Imam.
What you're talking about is hijab, which is the set of rules governing public modesty. This is sometimes interpreted to mean the burqa at one end, via long sleeves and headcovering, through following the prevailing social standard, to a prohibition on public nudity at the other end. I work with Muslims that wear niqab, and Muslims that don't wear niqab and just dress according to the general standard here. Some of them even go to the same Mosque and study under the same Imam.
If people are being compelled or otherwise oppressed, then that's a problem. However, the wearing of Islamic dress is not evidence of compulsion, and banning it doesn't do anything to address that particular problem.
I thought it's pretty self-explanatory but let me help you. It makes a difference because it's the difference between it being an individual's conscious choice vs. them being forced by a system of rules, specifically because said system of rules is designed to oppress half the population into submission.
Again, you don't really seem to understand the basic fact that a woman (or a man) can choose to be a traditional Muslim.
But this isn't a case of a moderate Muslim woman one day deciding "oh hey, I think I am going to become a traditional Muslim because walking around covered in blankets sure does sound fun!"
It is not a choice for them. They genuinely believe that Koran tells them they must wear that stuff all the time (it doesn't), and they get insane amounts of pressure from their communities, friends, and husbands to act in certain ways as to not express their sexuality.
I thought it's pretty self-explanatory but let me help you. It makes a difference because it's the difference between it being an individual's conscious choice vs. them being forced by a system of rules, specifically because said system of rules is designed to oppress half the population into submission.
Again, you don't really seem to understand the basic fact that a woman (or a man) can choose to be a traditional Muslim.
But this isn't a case of a moderate Muslim woman one day deciding "oh hey, I think I am going to become a traditional Muslim because walking around covered in blankets sure does sound fun!"
It is not a choice for them. They genuinely believe that Koran tells them they must wear that stuff all the time (it doesn't), and they get insane amounts of pressure from their communities, friends, and husbands to act in certain ways as to not express their sexuality.
I would dearly love to know what you think the effect of banning Islamic dress will be on people in that situation.
I thought it's pretty self-explanatory but let me help you. It makes a difference because it's the difference between it being an individual's conscious choice vs. them being forced by a system of rules, specifically because said system of rules is designed to oppress half the population into submission.
Again, you don't really seem to understand the basic fact that a woman (or a man) can choose to be a traditional Muslim.
But this isn't a case of a moderate Muslim woman one day deciding "oh hey, I think I am going to become a traditional Muslim because walking around covered in blankets sure does sound fun!"
It is not a choice for them. They genuinely believe that Koran tells them they must wear that stuff all the time (it doesn't), and they get insane amounts of pressure from their communities, friends, and husbands to act in certain ways as to not express their sexuality.
I would dearly love to know what you think the effect of banning Islamic dress will be on people in that situation.
I thought it's pretty self-explanatory but let me help you. It makes a difference because it's the difference between it being an individual's conscious choice vs. them being forced by a system of rules, specifically because said system of rules is designed to oppress half the population into submission.
Again, you don't really seem to understand the basic fact that a woman (or a man) can choose to be a traditional Muslim.
But this isn't a case of a moderate Muslim woman one day deciding "oh hey, I think I am going to become a traditional Muslim because walking around covered in blankets sure does sound fun!"
It is not a choice for them. They genuinely believe that Koran tells them they must wear that stuff all the time (it doesn't), and they get insane amounts of pressure from their communities, friends, and husbands to act in certain ways as to not express their sexuality.
The fact that you are socially pressured to make and stick with a choice does not mean it's somehow not voluntary. What you said applies to practically every ideology, from religious to political. I get pressure from my liberal friends and fiancée to continue supporting Barack Obama.
Women in Europe have the freedom to leave Islam if they choose. Most of them don't. Despite whatever social pressures that help persuade them to such a choice, it's their choice.
Some Muslims do force women to remain in traditional Islam through threats of violence. This should indeed be illegal, and cultists who use violence to enforce cult allegiance should all be prosecuted and brought to justice. This also has about as much to do with burqas as the Trench Coat Mafia has to do with trench coats.
Why don't these abused women just leave their relationships? God.
The problem of dominating, oppressive family members is in no way unique to Islam. Many American children belong to oppressive, cultish Christian families; they could leave and seek help but it is very, very difficult for them. Battered women can ostensibly choose to leave their abusive husbands but often don't.
I am sympathetic that making such choices is very difficult for such people and often does not even seem like an option.
However, it is very easy to propose a solution to such problems that create even worse problems—for example "to prevent abusive parents, the government should raise children/the government should outlaw religion." Banning burqas is such a solution. Actually, it's not even a solution because it doesn't solve "anything," it simply eliminates the most superficial expression of the underlying problem.
Behind the Burka. In which Hewitt interviews a muslim woman who wears the veil by choice. In it she answers questions on the religious requirements of the veil and how convering the face affects communication.
Why don't these abused women just leave their relationships? God.
The argument that a lot of these women are in abusive relationships (because I won't deny it is a problem) is an argument for a well-funded and effective Social Services agency, not for banning Islamic dress.
Banning Islamic dress is a way of hiding what people perceive as the public expression of the problem so they can ignore it, because Social Services reform is difficult and expensive.
The fact that you are socially pressured to make and stick with a choice does not mean it's somehow not voluntary. What you said applies to practically every ideology, from religious to political. I get pressure from my liberal friends and fiancée to continue supporting Barack Obama.
Would you get ignored, shunned, or beaten for not supporting him?
The fact that you are socially pressured to make and stick with a choice does not mean it's somehow not voluntary. What you said applies to practically every ideology, from religious to political. I get pressure from my liberal friends and fiancée to continue supporting Barack Obama.
Would you get ignored, shunned, or beaten for not supporting him?
If you're going to continue to claim that this is what routinely happens within Muslim communities you're going to have to start citing some evidence.
The fact that you are socially pressured to make and stick with a choice does not mean it's somehow not voluntary. What you said applies to practically every ideology, from religious to political. I get pressure from my liberal friends and fiancée to continue supporting Barack Obama.
Would you get ignored, shunned, or beaten for not supporting him?
If the veil is symptomatic of an abusive relationship then banning it will do nothing for the woman involved. In fact it may make things worse for her.
There are various support services for abused women, that's how to tackle this problem. You can't sure a disease by treating the symptoms.
The argument that a lot of these women are in abusive relationships (because I won't deny it is a problem) is an argument for a well-funded and effective Social Services agency, not for banning Islamic dress.
Banning Islamic dress is a way of hiding what people perceive as the public expression of the problem so they can ignore it, because Social Services reform is difficult and expensive.
The argument against this would be that it's far harder to do so with the common usage of the burqa. Having an entire gender of a religion wearing a specific uniform harms intergration, furthers otherisation and a whole host of specific effects that are hard to counter whilst it remains. After all clothing (for right or wrong) is fairly important in personal discource and interactions.
The argument that a lot of these women are in abusive relationships (because I won't deny it is a problem) is an argument for a well-funded and effective Social Services agency, not for banning Islamic dress.
Banning Islamic dress is a way of hiding what people perceive as the public expression of the problem so they can ignore it, because Social Services reform is difficult and expensive.
The argument against this would be that it's far harder to do so with the common usage of the burqa. Having an entire gender of a religion wearing a specific uniform harms intergration, furthers otherisation and a whole host of specific effects that are hard to counter whilst it remains. After all clothing (for right or wrong) is fairly important in personal discource and interactions.
The thing is that it isn't a uniform. There are plenty of Muslim women that wear it, and plenty who don't and there is interaction between them and the non-Muslim population. I also dispute the importance of it in terms of personal communication. It strikes me that if someone has trouble communicating with someone wearing a given item of clothing, the problem is really with that person, not the clothing. There's an element of insisting that people reject their own background and then blaming them for the actions of the intolerant to this debate that I find pretty distasteful.
I don't see why it being extreme is a bad thing. Unless that particular form of extremism is causing serious problems, I don't see why being extreme is a reason to ban anything. We don't ban every form of extreme clothing. The proponents claim it is about helping the women, but the actual wearing of the burqa has about as much to do with the problem as swastikas have to do with the Nazi problem.
The argument against this would be that it's far harder to do so with the common usage of the burqa. Having an entire gender of a religion wearing a specific uniform harms intergration, furthers otherisation and a whole host of specific effects that are hard to counter whilst it remains. After all clothing (for right or wrong) is fairly important in personal discource and interactions.
Sounds like a personal problem dealing with people who ain't like you. Who is forcing who to conform here?
The fact that you are socially pressured to make and stick with a choice does not mean it's somehow not voluntary. What you said applies to practically every ideology, from religious to political. I get pressure from my liberal friends and fiancée to continue supporting Barack Obama.
Would you get ignored, shunned, or beaten for not supporting him?
If you're going to continue to claim that this is what routinely happens within Muslim communities you're going to have to start citing some evidence.
I was raised in Iran. I lived there between ages 3 and 13. I remember very specifically what happens when a woman shows a little too much skin (or a speck of hair) when walking in public, as it happened to my older sister.
Your nice Islamic community in Birmingham UK may not have such harsh attitudes, but they are pretty common elsewhere.
The number of women who actually wear burqas is very small everywhere in Europe. In Denmark, an estimated 150 to 200 do so. In Belgium, fewer than 300 female Muslims cover their faces. In France, 2,000 women go about in burqas, a number dwarfed by the total French Muslim population of five to six million souls.
The fact that you are socially pressured to make and stick with a choice does not mean it's somehow not voluntary. What you said applies to practically every ideology, from religious to political. I get pressure from my liberal friends and fiancée to continue supporting Barack Obama.
Would you get ignored, shunned, or beaten for not supporting him?
If you're going to continue to claim that this is what routinely happens within Muslim communities you're going to have to start citing some evidence.
I was raised in Iran. I lived there between ages 3 and 13. I remember very specifically what happens when a woman shows a little too much skin (or a speck of hair) when walking in public, as it happened to my older sister.
Your nice Islamic community in Birmingham UK may not have such harsh attitudes, but they are pretty common elsewhere.
The problem with your argument is that Belgium and France, unlike Iran, are, um ... not totalitarian theocracies.
The thing is that it isn't a uniform. There are plenty of Muslim women that wear it, and plenty who don't and there is interaction between them and the non-Muslim population. I also dispute the importance of it in terms of personal communication. It strikes me that if someone has trouble communicating with someone wearing a given item of clothing, the problem is really with that person, not the clothing. There's an element of insisting that people reject their own background and then blaming them for the actions of the intolerant to this debate that I find pretty distasteful.
I don't see how it's not a 'uniform'. Yes it's not required, but it's used pretty much solely by muslim women making it a defacto uniform marking out those who do. And there's a reason that various organisations use uniforms outside of making their members obvious. My point is the idea behind banning the burqa is that it seems obvious that it will have an affect upon various things, such as intergration, and it would be hard to argue that banning it wouldn't change these. Now it could do a lot of bad things as well (such as limiting the ability for women in these communities to interact with the community), but I don't think you can claim it's just a symptom.
Several Belgian municipalities have used municipal by-laws on face-covering clothing to ban public wearing of the niqab and burqa.[9] The town of Maaseik was to first to implement a ban. A Moroccan immigrant, Khadija El Ouazzani, was fined €75 under the by-law for wearing a burqa: in 2006, a local police court upheld the ban and the fine. According to mayor Jan Creemers (Flemish Christian Democrats), 5 or 6 women in Maaseik had "caused feelings of insecurity" by wearing a burqa, and he had received complaints about them. He personally warned the women to stop: after that only, El Ouazzani continued to wear the burqa, and the by-law was activated.[10]
In late 2004, at Creemers request, Marino Keulen, Flemish-Liberal interior minister in the Flemish government, created a standard prohibition for burqas, and sent it to all 308 municipalities in Flanders.[11] The regulation states that persons on the public street and in public buildings must be identifiable at all times, "to protect the social order, which allows a harmonious process of human activities". It prohibits covering the forehead, the cheeks, the eyes, the ears, the nose and the chin. Carnival, Sinterklaas, and Father Christmas are exempt. According to Keulen:
As Minister for Integration I respect culture tradition and belief, but wearing a burqa has nothing to do with religious belief, but with traditional dress in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Besides, wearing a burqa has an intimidating effect, and it can not be tolerated that Muslim women are excluded from society because they are isolated behind their burqa, and can't communicate with the world around them.
All municipalities can choose if they want to adopt the regulation: six have done so. In August 2006, mayor Creemers called for a national ban.[12] The anti-immigrant and separatist party Vlaams Belang, formerly Vlaams Blok, had earlier advocated a ban at Flemish level, and locally in Antwerp.[13] Although Vlaams Belang is excluded from power in Antwerp, by a coalition of all other parties, the ban was adopted. It was first applied in 2005, when a woman was fined because only her eyes were visible.[14]
On 31 March 2010 the commission internal affaires voted on a bill to ban Burqas in public places. When implemented, this will be a nation wide ban. The vote was unanimous, now the bill will go to the Belgian Chamber of Representatives. It is expected that the bill will also be adopted unanimously[15]. This final vote will be mid april. When the law is signed by the King and afterwards publicised in the Belgian Official Journal the law will be in effect 10 days after the publication this will be in the end of april. Belgium will be the first country in Europe to adopt a nation wide ban on Burqas.[16]
The thing is that it isn't a uniform. There are plenty of Muslim women that wear it, and plenty who don't and there is interaction between them and the non-Muslim population. I also dispute the importance of it in terms of personal communication. It strikes me that if someone has trouble communicating with someone wearing a given item of clothing, the problem is really with that person, not the clothing. There's an element of insisting that people reject their own background and then blaming them for the actions of the intolerant to this debate that I find pretty distasteful.
I don't see how it's not a 'uniform'. Yes it's not required, but it's used pretty much solely by muslim women making it a defacto uniform marking out those who do. And there's a reason that various organisations use uniforms outside of making their members obvious. My point is the idea behind banning the burqa is that it seems obvious that it will have an affect upon various things, such as intergration, and it would be hard to argue that banning it wouldn't change these. Now it could do a lot of bad things as well (such as limiting the ability for women in these communities to interact with the community), but I don't think you can claim it's just a symptom.
I suppose it depends how general you want to be. If you mean that, in all likelihood, a woman wearing a burqa is a follower of a particular form of Islam then I suppose I agree.
I suppose the difference between us is that I would consider personal liberty to be more important than social integration, so even if I granted for the sake of argument that banning the burqa would have a positive effect in those terms, I wouldn't support it.
I was raised in Iran. I lived there between ages 3 and 13. I remember very specifically what happens when a woman shows a little too much skin (or a speck of hair) when walking in public, as it happened to my older sister.
Your nice Islamic community in Birmingham UK may not have such harsh attitudes, but they are pretty common elsewhere.
What relevance do social attitudes in Iran have to a proposed law in Belgium?
I agree that personal liberty is one of the most important elements of social policy. But earlier in the thread a number of people kept arguing that it is merely a symptom and removing it won't have any affect. I uh dissagreed.
I agree that personal liberty is one of the most important elements of social policy. But earlier in the thread a number of people kept arguing that it is merely a symptom and removing it won't have any affect. I uh dissagreed.
Well, I don't think removing it will have any effect on the abusive relationships that people proposing the ban are claiming they're targetting. The most likely upshot of such a ban would be that the abusers would simply prevent the abused from leaving the house at all.
Anyone wearing it as an expression of personal modesty would likely have to severely curtail their own social interaction if they were to act in accordance with their principles.
So, unless the presumption is that banning the veil will cause people that wear it to just go about their lives in the same fashion they did before, but sans veil, I don't see there being much of a positive effect.
I agree that personal liberty is one of the most important elements of social policy. But earlier in the thread a number of people kept arguing that it is merely a symptom and removing it won't have any affect. I uh dissagreed.
I still disagree with you. The religious reason the burqa and niqab exists is due to the interpretation by certain Islamic schools of thought of the Qur'anic passage on modesty, combined with anecdotes from the life of the prophet and/or an attempt to emulate the dress of the wives of the prophet.
Yes, yes, there is a huge element of control over female sexuality and holding women responsible for male sexual crimes as well. I don't think anybody here is disputing that.
If you ban the burqa/niqab, you don't make either of those situations go away. You don't make men control women any less in communities where that is the norm (we can't even stamp out polygamy), and you don't make the adherence to the religion go away, and you don't make the interpretation of the scriptures and traditions they revere go away.
You might even have the unpleasant side effect of making some women, who would not ordinarily wear the niqab, go "hey, fuck you, who are you to tell me what I can and cannot wear?" and then boom - you get a nice added rise in militancy in the younger generation.
the burqa is a tool for the oppression of women. people "wanting" to wear it doesn't mean this much in this case, as many girls who wear it are pressured by their family and friends to find it socially unacceptable to not wear one.
I for one welcome a ban, I have to say.
Makeup is a tool for the oppression of women. people "wanting" to wear it doesn't mean this much in this case, as many girls who wear it are pressured by their family and friends and the media and employers to find it socially unacceptable to not wear it.
Perhaps that's a bit extreme, but really, there is an enormous amount of social pressure for women to wear all sorts of things that are not only psychologically unhealthy, but physically unhealthy -- think of all the chemicals in makeup, hair dye, and nail polish. The dress code at many stores insists that female employees wear high heels, despite the fact that they've been proven to harm ankles/feet when worn regularly for long periods of time. And yet somehow the Belgian government isn't particularly concerned about these sorts of female appearance standards.
Perhaps this is because the burqa hides women from the male gaze, while high heels/makeup cater to it? Really, I see high heels, makeup, etc and the burqa as two sides of the same coin: both revolve around male perception, and how to deal with it. Sure, one has religious connotations while the other doesn't, but women are intensely pressured from a variety of sources to wear all sorts of harmful things.
Problem: Some men force their wives/daughters to wear certain articles of clothing.
Solution: Making it illegal to force someone to wear certain articles of clothing.
Actually, this might already be illegal.
Not a solution: Punishing people forced to wear certain articles of clothing.
How the hell is this so hard to get?
Sure, it's a good idea in theory, but it's totally unrealistic. Do you really think the women who are being forced to wear this clothing would admit to it if asked? Women deny domestic violence all the time, even when they're obviously being beaten up by their S.O. It seems it'd be even more likely that women would insist they chose to wear the clothes, even if they didn't, since to say otherwise would tear their families apart.
(Note: I'm not saying this means the current ban is a good thing -- like others have said, it's criminalizing the results of oppression, which is just absurd.)
Edit: Of course we do criminalize beating up one's S.O., but as bruises are an obvious sign of harm, while clothes are. . .clothes, it would be nearly impossible to tell whether the outfit was a result of oppression or a personal choice. Which is why I wouldn't really be against making it illegal to force someone to wear certain clothes, I just think it would be almost impossible to enforce.
Posts
Walking around dressed as your favorite animated character is not a religious requirement.
So? It's extreme to most people. Are we now only banning things that are extreme to religion, and by extreme to religion we're actually talking about Islam and only Islam?
And that makes a difference because....
The percentage of circumcised males in the U.S. is ridiculous, so glad I didn't have to go through that.
Yeah I've heard similar stories about the conflict between hardline Islam and Dutch tolerance. Judging how the PVV are doing in the polls it's becoming more and more of an issue. The elections later this year will be the true test I guess.
I thought it's pretty self-explanatory but let me help you. It makes a difference because it's the difference between it being an individual's conscious choice vs. them being forced by a system of rules, specifically because said system of rules is designed to oppress half the population into submission.
The moment we have a religion that says you must wear your favorite anime character costume in public at ALL times, we can start worrying about the practice. At the moment however, it is not.
You are vastly oversimplifying Islamic practice so you can rail against a bogeyman of your own invention.
Islam is jurisprudential. There are a variety of ways to interpret the scripture and individual adherents follow that which makes sense to them under the guidance of an Imam.
What you're talking about is hijab, which is the set of rules governing public modesty. This is sometimes interpreted to mean the burqa at one end, via long sleeves and headcovering, through following the prevailing social standard, to a prohibition on public nudity at the other end. I work with Muslims that wear niqab, and Muslims that don't wear niqab and just dress according to the general standard here. Some of them even go to the same Mosque and study under the same Imam.
If people are being compelled or otherwise oppressed, then that's a problem. However, the wearing of Islamic dress is not evidence of compulsion, and banning it doesn't do anything to address that particular problem.
But this isn't a case of a moderate Muslim woman one day deciding "oh hey, I think I am going to become a traditional Muslim because walking around covered in blankets sure does sound fun!"
It is not a choice for them. They genuinely believe that Koran tells them they must wear that stuff all the time (it doesn't), and they get insane amounts of pressure from their communities, friends, and husbands to act in certain ways as to not express their sexuality.
I would dearly love to know what you think the effect of banning Islamic dress will be on people in that situation.
• Is traditional Islam largely an oppressive authoritarian cult?
Yes.
• Are people in Europe sometimes forced into traditional Islam against their volition?
Yes.
• Is every muslim in Europe forced into their religion?
No.
• Is choosing to join a traditional Islamic sect a stupid decision?
Yes.
• Should European governments ban people from making such a decision?
No.
• Is the burqa a superficial expression of traditional Islam's misogyny?
Yes.
• Is this the only reason women wear burqas?
No.
• What good will banning something that is sometimes a superficial expression of Islamic subjugation do towards fighting said subjugation?
Jack shit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlIm-riMN6Q&feature=player_embedded
Edit: The relevant part is the last 25 seconds of that vid.
Why don't these abused women just leave their relationships? God.
Women in Europe have the freedom to leave Islam if they choose. Most of them don't. Despite whatever social pressures that help persuade them to such a choice, it's their choice.
Some Muslims do force women to remain in traditional Islam through threats of violence. This should indeed be illegal, and cultists who use violence to enforce cult allegiance should all be prosecuted and brought to justice. This also has about as much to do with burqas as the Trench Coat Mafia has to do with trench coats.
I am sympathetic that making such choices is very difficult for such people and often does not even seem like an option.
However, it is very easy to propose a solution to such problems that create even worse problems—for example "to prevent abusive parents, the government should raise children/the government should outlaw religion." Banning burqas is such a solution. Actually, it's not even a solution because it doesn't solve "anything," it simply eliminates the most superficial expression of the underlying problem.
They are articles done by Gavin Hewitt, the BBC's current European editor on the issue of the veil.
France stirs the Burka debate.
French Burka ban looms.
The most interesting one though is this:
Behind the Burka. In which Hewitt interviews a muslim woman who wears the veil by choice. In it she answers questions on the religious requirements of the veil and how convering the face affects communication.
The argument that a lot of these women are in abusive relationships (because I won't deny it is a problem) is an argument for a well-funded and effective Social Services agency, not for banning Islamic dress.
Banning Islamic dress is a way of hiding what people perceive as the public expression of the problem so they can ignore it, because Social Services reform is difficult and expensive.
Would you get ignored, shunned, or beaten for not supporting him?
If you're going to continue to claim that this is what routinely happens within Muslim communities you're going to have to start citing some evidence.
If the veil is symptomatic of an abusive relationship then banning it will do nothing for the woman involved. In fact it may make things worse for her.
There are various support services for abused women, that's how to tackle this problem. You can't sure a disease by treating the symptoms.
The argument against this would be that it's far harder to do so with the common usage of the burqa. Having an entire gender of a religion wearing a specific uniform harms intergration, furthers otherisation and a whole host of specific effects that are hard to counter whilst it remains. After all clothing (for right or wrong) is fairly important in personal discource and interactions.
The thing is that it isn't a uniform. There are plenty of Muslim women that wear it, and plenty who don't and there is interaction between them and the non-Muslim population. I also dispute the importance of it in terms of personal communication. It strikes me that if someone has trouble communicating with someone wearing a given item of clothing, the problem is really with that person, not the clothing. There's an element of insisting that people reject their own background and then blaming them for the actions of the intolerant to this debate that I find pretty distasteful.
I was raised in Iran. I lived there between ages 3 and 13. I remember very specifically what happens when a woman shows a little too much skin (or a speck of hair) when walking in public, as it happened to my older sister.
Your nice Islamic community in Birmingham UK may not have such harsh attitudes, but they are pretty common elsewhere.
http://www.nrc.nl/international/article2516657.ece/European_countries_ponder_banning_the_burqa This is a solution in search of a problem.
I don't see how it's not a 'uniform'. Yes it's not required, but it's used pretty much solely by muslim women making it a defacto uniform marking out those who do. And there's a reason that various organisations use uniforms outside of making their members obvious. My point is the idea behind banning the burqa is that it seems obvious that it will have an affect upon various things, such as intergration, and it would be hard to argue that banning it wouldn't change these. Now it could do a lot of bad things as well (such as limiting the ability for women in these communities to interact with the community), but I don't think you can claim it's just a symptom.
I suppose it depends how general you want to be. If you mean that, in all likelihood, a woman wearing a burqa is a follower of a particular form of Islam then I suppose I agree.
I suppose the difference between us is that I would consider personal liberty to be more important than social integration, so even if I granted for the sake of argument that banning the burqa would have a positive effect in those terms, I wouldn't support it.
What relevance do social attitudes in Iran have to a proposed law in Belgium?
Well, I don't think removing it will have any effect on the abusive relationships that people proposing the ban are claiming they're targetting. The most likely upshot of such a ban would be that the abusers would simply prevent the abused from leaving the house at all.
Anyone wearing it as an expression of personal modesty would likely have to severely curtail their own social interaction if they were to act in accordance with their principles.
So, unless the presumption is that banning the veil will cause people that wear it to just go about their lives in the same fashion they did before, but sans veil, I don't see there being much of a positive effect.
I still disagree with you. The religious reason the burqa and niqab exists is due to the interpretation by certain Islamic schools of thought of the Qur'anic passage on modesty, combined with anecdotes from the life of the prophet and/or an attempt to emulate the dress of the wives of the prophet.
Yes, yes, there is a huge element of control over female sexuality and holding women responsible for male sexual crimes as well. I don't think anybody here is disputing that.
If you ban the burqa/niqab, you don't make either of those situations go away. You don't make men control women any less in communities where that is the norm (we can't even stamp out polygamy), and you don't make the adherence to the religion go away, and you don't make the interpretation of the scriptures and traditions they revere go away.
You might even have the unpleasant side effect of making some women, who would not ordinarily wear the niqab, go "hey, fuck you, who are you to tell me what I can and cannot wear?" and then boom - you get a nice added rise in militancy in the younger generation.
Makeup is a tool for the oppression of women. people "wanting" to wear it doesn't mean this much in this case, as many girls who wear it are pressured by their family and friends and the media and employers to find it socially unacceptable to not wear it.
Perhaps that's a bit extreme, but really, there is an enormous amount of social pressure for women to wear all sorts of things that are not only psychologically unhealthy, but physically unhealthy -- think of all the chemicals in makeup, hair dye, and nail polish. The dress code at many stores insists that female employees wear high heels, despite the fact that they've been proven to harm ankles/feet when worn regularly for long periods of time. And yet somehow the Belgian government isn't particularly concerned about these sorts of female appearance standards.
Perhaps this is because the burqa hides women from the male gaze, while high heels/makeup cater to it? Really, I see high heels, makeup, etc and the burqa as two sides of the same coin: both revolve around male perception, and how to deal with it. Sure, one has religious connotations while the other doesn't, but women are intensely pressured from a variety of sources to wear all sorts of harmful things.
Solution: Making it illegal to force someone to wear certain articles of clothing.
Actually, this might already be illegal.
Not a solution: Punishing people forced to wear certain articles of clothing.
How the hell is this so hard to get?
Sure, it's a good idea in theory, but it's totally unrealistic. Do you really think the women who are being forced to wear this clothing would admit to it if asked? Women deny domestic violence all the time, even when they're obviously being beaten up by their S.O. It seems it'd be even more likely that women would insist they chose to wear the clothes, even if they didn't, since to say otherwise would tear their families apart.
(Note: I'm not saying this means the current ban is a good thing -- like others have said, it's criminalizing the results of oppression, which is just absurd.)
Edit: Of course we do criminalize beating up one's S.O., but as bruises are an obvious sign of harm, while clothes are. . .clothes, it would be nearly impossible to tell whether the outfit was a result of oppression or a personal choice. Which is why I wouldn't really be against making it illegal to force someone to wear certain clothes, I just think it would be almost impossible to enforce.