Ya. And no matter how islamphiles mentally block it, the women have precious little rights in the islam. More disrespect pleaseQuote:
Originally Posted by Major Robert Dump
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Ya. And no matter how islamphiles mentally block it, the women have precious little rights in the islam. More disrespect pleaseQuote:
Originally Posted by Major Robert Dump
So all other things pertaining to security should be handled with laws, but when it comes to muslims, we should just ask 'pretty please' and hope they are in a good mood?Quote:
Originally Posted by Hax
It seems pretty simple to me - "our country, our laws". Don't like it - stay out.
If persons entered the UK who were used to being topless we'd not be saying how we just need to adapt to their customs, and similarly Westerners need to adapt to the norms of Islamic countries. Want to avoid ever uncovering one's face to a man? Pop off To Saudi Arabia, they'll be far more sympathetic.
~:smoking:
Funny thing is, it's already illegal here to cover your face because of security. Makes the leftist confusion even more hilarious, not only do they see the burqua as female emancipation, but they also demand special treatment for religion. Could things get even more confusing, I could show you an election-poster from the seventies but it would be breaking forum rules on nudity, and these same guys now want to put on a burqua out of protest. The mother of wtfQuote:
Originally Posted by Vuk
That's the thing, isn't it? It's already handled by security laws, we don't need another one applying only to the burka, as it's already covered by other laws. I just don't get the idea of women not being able to choose, as we've already established that this is a matter of personal autonomy, what they want to wear in public.Quote:
So all other things pertaining to security should be handled with laws, but when it comes to muslims, we should just ask 'pretty please' and hope they are in a good mood?
Do you want to live in a country where the state tells you what you can't or what you can wear? Doesn't sound very American to me.
The American ideal is maximum freedom to the extent that it doesn't infringe on someone else's freedom. When you go through airport security and choose to wear a face mask (no matter what you call it), you are creating a security problem that threatens many others. I live in WI wear it can get pretty cold. It is not unusual to see guys outside of a FleetFarm with ski-masks, chatting. When they get a driver's license photo, go into a building, or go to an airport they are not wearing them though. You have to be reasonable.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hax
How far are you willing to take the 'right to wear whatever you want'? If I walk around in full body armour and a face mask, with a pistol on my side, am I not threatening other's security? It is legal to wear a pistol, so why not in combination with concealing my identity and wearing body armour? There have to be limits.
When it comes to the burqa I think women should be free to wear whatever they want so long as it complies with public decency laws. But at the same time, we should not do anything further to accomodate them in the name of 'freedom of religion'.
So if Mrs. al-Wahabi wants to wear her burqa while she goes to get her groceries, I see no problem with that and I think it is bizarre when people do have a problem with that. But if she wants to board a plane but doesn't want to show her face for airport security, then that's tough luck for her, no plane ride.
Don't get me wrong. I think the burqa looks ridiculous. It comes from an alien culture that I don't like seeing on my streets. But the proper legislation for dealing with this would relate to immigration, not what people can wear.
Anyway, the concern that some women might be forced to wear the burqa is a valid one. However I see no reason why that issue would not be covered by existing laws.
And as for the discussion on Arab culture here, it is irrelevant. I don't see why Fragony or myself should feel obliged to know anything about national or ethnic cultures besides our own. It is perfectly fine for our viewpoint on the burqa to be shaped by our own legal/security/womens' rights concerns.
Actually, my brother was asked at a hardware store to remove his hood once, because it covered too much of his face. When you go into someone's home or business, you have to obey their laws, and people feel uncomfortable when you conceal your identity like that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rhyfhylwyr
If you want to walk down the street in a burqa, more power to you, but if you are coming into a bank or store, my guess is that if it was not for people being afraid of religious discrimination suits, they would ask them to remove it. In what other circumstances would it be ok for a masked man to walk into a bank and not be asked to remove the mask? (and for all you know, whatever is beneath the burqua is a man. Even if it is not, you don't know if it is a woman with criminal intent)
If I was running a business, I certainly would not want people coming in wearing masks.
Because we can't just sit back and say "well, it's covered by our laws". For example, we don't just make drugs illegal, we actively try to intercept the drug boats bringing the stuff into the country, not a great analogy but whatever. Same with the burqa--there's no feasible way to just stop domestic abuse by making it illegal, so we try other things with the goal of actually decreasing domestic abuse.Quote:
Anyway, the concern that some women might be forced to wear the burqa is a valid one. However I see no reason why that issue would not be covered by existing laws.
Though I agree with Hax that there's no reason to prevent born again/islamic converts from wearing it. In the future the ban will likely (hopefully) become irrelevant.
I don't think you are aware of the exact extent of the burqa ban. When it comes to matters of entering buildings like banks, airports, grocery shops to sports halls, the legislation already exists. Of course they're going to have to be able to identify themselves.Quote:
The American ideal is maximum freedom to the extent that it doesn't infringe on someone else's freedom. When you go through airport security and choose to wear a face mask (no matter what you call it), you are creating a security problem that threatens many others. I live in WI wear it can get pretty cold. It is not unusual to see guys outside of a FleetFarm with ski-masks, chatting. When they get a driver's license photo, go into a building, or go to an airport they are not wearing them though. You have to be reasonable.
The bill is going to talk about what women can wear in public. That's right, it's banning burqas from being worn when a woman goes out of the house, which basically infringes on a woman's autonomy.
But let's be serious here. This is a quote from the article I linked to earlier on:
367, 400, 100. Amazing figures. We're going to come up with seperate legislation to talk about these people, most of whom weren't even born in a Muslim country but rather chose to don the burka themselves. Is this a serious political issue that warrants discussion in parliament?Quote:
An article on the interesting Swedish site islamologi.se picks the story up:In France, where there is an inflamed debate on the matter right now, the first investigation carried out by the police last year found that there were 367 women in France who wore burka or Niqab – 0.015% of the population. This was so low that the secret service was told to count again, and came up with a figure of 2,000; in Holland there seem to be about 400, and in Sweden a respectable guess suggests 100
The implication was made that the burqa is a direct result of the importation of Arab culture in the West. I asked Fragony to back this up, but he refused. Now, seeing as I'm quarter Arab (not half, mind you), is it unthinkable that this strikes me as being somewhat offensive, and as such, I really wanted to know why he thinks this is somehow an integral part of Arab culture, when in fact it was basically declared an idiotic tradition over a century ago.Quote:
And as for the discussion on Arab culture here, it is irrelevant. I don't see why Fragony or myself should feel obliged to know anything about national or ethnic cultures besides our own. It is perfectly fine for our viewpoint on the burqa to be shaped by our own legal/security/womens' rights concerns
Employers should be free to impose their own restrictions on what people wear when in their property. That's something that is well within their rights.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vuk
But for the government to ban women from wearing it in any public space is quite oppressive IMO.
If you think the link between the burqa and domestic abuse is so significant that the piece of clothing merits a special mention in domestic abuse legislation, then you have to provide some figures to back that up first.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro
I mean, if the burqa emerged in the Middle-East as a way for husbands to conceal the wounds they inflicted on their wives, then I would definitely consider it a ban.
But as it stands it is currently just part of their belief system. In fact, more than anything it is most likely an attempt at making a political statement.
I think everyone here realises that the burqa is not part of mainstream Arab culture anymore than it is part of a mainstream interpretation of the Koran/Hadiths.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hax
The thing is though I always think in your posts that while you are obviously very well learned in the thought of the 'Muslim world', you are a bit quite to dismiss what we would consider to be the extremist element.
I mean, you say the burqa was "declared an idiotic tradition" by that Egyptian grand mufti fellow over a century ago, as if he somehow speaks for all of Sunni Islam. The thing is not all Sunni's follow him and the Wahhabi's seem to be like radical Proddies in that they put their scripture before anything else. That Sunni leader can't claim to speak for all the Sunni Muslims, to suggest so it to say that just because I'm a Protestant, whatever the Archbishop of Canterbury says reflects my views.
At the end of the day, the Wahhabi version of Islam did come out of the Arab world. And it is the dominant version of Islam today in Saudi Arabia, the heart of the Arab world. And it is a strain of Islam that exists throughout the whole (Sunni) Islamic world. Wahhabi extremists bomb Chechnya and Dagestan every day. They came second in Egypt's recent elections and did well in Tunisia as well. A group allied with al-Qaeda is the closest thing to a functioning government throughout half of Somalia. They've provided the Muhijadeen in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Kashmir etc. They are all over the Muslim world, from the Arab heartland to Indonesia.
And now, of course, this Wahhabism is popular with second generation Muslim immigrants in the developed world.
I think you are really understating the impact and prevalence of Wahhabism in the Islamic world.
But what would you say to someone who didn't want to wear it and was made to? "These other women want to make a political statement?" "This other woman is really religious?"Quote:
If you think the link between the burqa and domestic abuse is so significant that the piece of clothing merits a special mention in domestic abuse legislation, then you have to provide some figures to back that up first.
I mean, if the burqa emerged in the Middle-East as a way for husbands to conceal the wounds they inflicted on their wives, then I would definitely consider it a ban.
But as it stands it is currently just part of their belief system. In fact, more than anything it is most likely an attempt at making a political statement.
If only a few hundred women wear them then it's obviously not an important part of the religion or culture, it's just an idiotic tradition like Hax said. Let's not fall all over ourselves to protect some enthusiastic converts. You guys can't both make the argument that there's so few that it's not significant enough to legislate and that it's a serious infringement or quite oppressive. It's just as symbolic as insisting on gay marriage rather than civil unions really. I don't think that kind of thing is always a waste of time.
There is a pervasive trend for people to have an extremely skewed sense of proportion when it comes to civil liberties...it makes it difficult to understand each other I think. I think when people flip out about this stuff it's because they don't have any sense of the history behind those liberties being put into the law. Must be some other reason too though.
@ HAx, I do not have proof or numbers to back my claim of domestic abuse/pressure to wear the burqa, especially in your country.
What I do have is examples in my country of fathers killing their daughters for becoming westernized -- to include not covering their heads, albeit not a burqa just a scarf -- and the good ole anectdotal evidence that comes from living in a "liberal" college town and watching Kuwaiti and Saudi exchange students whack their girlfriends around for making eye contact in the hallway, or by the swimming pool, where I might point out, that the man is shirtless and rockin the pool and the woman is dressed like a mummy dangling her feet in the water. I am sure that she had no desire whatsoever to get into the pool, or show a little skin to the sun, and she probably wasu nder the impression that she was just so utterly smoking hot and sexy that if she didn't stay covered all the Americans would rape her immediately because hey we have a thing for moustached chics.
Rhyfhylwyr said it best regarding this "stupid tradition" as deemed by the Arabs. if it's so stupid, an awful lot of them still do it. I have passed through Kuwait/Saudi airports probably 12 times in 3 years and easily a quarter of the women I see are wearing burqas. Are they all aRabs? who knows?. Probably not, just like many of the uncovered women I see are not Arabs. IS the backlash sentiment you speak of really anti-arabic or anti-muslim? I mean, techincally they are not Arabs in Afghanistan, and the Burqa is strong there. Afghans and Pakistanis look up to Arabs, they view them as the shephards of the muslim worlds, even though quite the opposite is true.
Mind my wording, I was talking about the west. Also my statement about Muhammad ‘Abduh, who isn't just anybody, was more an illustration of the diversity of trends within the Islamic world.
In any case, I have to go back to my Arabic classes now, so I'll probably write a longer response at a later point.
And I don't think most people distinguish between Arab and Muslim, it is a shame, but that is the way it is. In a lot of cases Arabic is intertwined with muslim, and in a lot of ways it is not. The same can be said of Latinos and Catholicism.
Yep, especially since about 50% of Arabs living in the States are Christians.Quote:
Originally Posted by Major Robert Dump
Anecdotal evidence is cool.Quote:
Originally Posted by Major Robert Dump
First cus of mine in Iowa recently helped stop an honour killing, he had to testify an all at thesavagesaccused's trial