Hi America, meet islamisation

[Rhyfelwyr]

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.
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.

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.

But for the government to ban women from wearing it in any public space is quite oppressive IMO.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

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.

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?"

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.

[Major Robert Dump]

@ 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.

[Hax]

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.

[Major Robert Dump]

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.

[rvg]

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.

[gaelic cowboy]

@ 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.

Anecdotal evidence is cool.

First cus of mine in Iowa recently helped stop an honour killing, he had to testify an all at the savages accused's trial