– Word!

The French View: Ban the burka. On the streets of France today there is a crisis of liberty vs liberalism. The French feel that they have already gone too far in accommodating Islamic ideology. To many French citizens the burka and niquab represent the most illiberal mode of dress conceivable. Being both offensive to women and men. To women, because it forces them to live their public lives under a black sack. To men, because it assumes them all to be potential rapists; unable to resist the temptation derived from so much as glimpsing a curvaceous hip or a bare ankle. They regard the attire as seventh century desert garments that have no place in twenty first century France. They are proud to have always been at the forefront of Western fashion. How you dress is an important mode of self-expression to the French, which they feel the Burka and niquab restrict. As passionate, exuberant communicators, the veil in particular, forms a barrier of communication to many French people, whose instinctive psychological reaction is one of distrust. Finally the French are very proud of their record on equality, many French feel any woman is relatively safe, free and equal there, and should assimilate to their culture not assert their own.

However, if women in France are free and equal, why can’t they dress how they want? After all, isn’t religious freedom also protected in France?

The Middle Eastern View: Every religion has a distinctive quality, and the distinctive quality of Islam is modesty. In most countries in the Middle East there is no strict separation of the church and state, as there is in France. The vast majority of citizens in those countries are practising Muslims. To Muslims, far from being a seventh century desert garment, the burka and niquab are the only garments that respect modesty in public. They don’t serve to conceal a woman’s identity. Being loose and thick they cover her shape and form. This removes any aspect of sexuality and in so doing allows that woman to be a person. To be judged on her ability and intelligence, rather than her appearance, which would be superficial and irrelevant. Citizens of the Middle East feel that this makes women more, rather than less free and equal. The Middle East does not have a tradition of painting portraits, strict interpretations of Islam forbid figurative artwork altogether. The face has a different currency in the Middle East, religious adherence naturally takes priority over self-expression. The spiritual focus, they feel safeguards them from the slippery moral slope represented by Western fashion. From an Islamic perspective, the padded bras and Playboy hot pants in the West are terrifying examples of that slippery slope, and how their religious choices protect them.

However, if women can never express themselves as directly and forcefully as men in public, isn’t their concealment a slippery slope to their marginalisation? Could the Ayatollah Khomeini have expressed himself so forcefully and successfully, if he were addressing his audience from behind a veil?

In my opinion, women should have the right to reveal as well as the right to conceal.

For an interesting video on this topic go to
http://wordplayblog.co.uk/2011/04/niqab-ban-views/

In private, one has the freedom to indulge in anything one likes, as long as nobody else is hurt. (vzc1943)

Restricting the choice is something so deeply ingrained in our societies that we hardly can notice it. In some cases, women are forced to cover themselves up, while in other cases, the man made, established norms make them reveal, ensuring enough access into their body parts to the male eyes, what they would not have revealed otherwise. Flashing in sleeveless and shorts during cold winter is a part of the norm for women, when men are cozying wrapped in warm cloths. Popular perception labels it “liberation”! Is it, truly?

When women chose not to reveal themselves, we force them to reveal. We go even to the extent of making it illegal for them to pursue their choice. So we end up curbing the very freedom we claim to ensure. Both these enforcements hinder the freedom of choice. And hence, both deserve equal condemnation. I say with much contempt, how ever much is achieved, if the basic freedom of choice is not provided, women will remain far from being empowered.

http://www.srtalukdar.com/articles/women-empowerment

http://thevividwriter.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/global-revolution-i-shot-the-sheriff/

“..too bad for the rights of women who wear such identity-hiding garments freely out of religious conviction.”

– Nonsense. Keep the part which prohibits **enforcement** of burqa and niqab by third party within a household. And leave the women alone. Oppressing them with such a law just to prove some nationalistic/fascist point is forcing many to question exactly who here is attacking dignity.

Is it just me, or when it comes to ensuring broader draconian powers for government agencies, greater FUNDING and plain old deep-state MILITARISM countries such as France appear to be ‘uneducated’..and stigma must prevail. As though they have never touched ‘International Marketing’..It is difficult to market yourselves as a tolerant nation and then fail at looking at things from burqa and niqab wearing women. Surely, some of them may be forced and feel opressed by such religious dress codes. But, to apply a Nazi-law? What’s next? An armband and chest patch with a Crescent Moon? Kristalnacht?

No wonder Europe (including England & the confiscated Co)
is having this anti-Multiculturalism fever.. Afterall, militarism requires a switch to some other minority will have to be made. And being anti-Multiculturalist now will help ensure that there is a portfolio of “ethnic” minorities to choose from in years to come.
Depending on where the natural-resource-compass falls next decade or so.. Who knows, perhaps we will all have to be afraid of the Budhists and Catholics again.. Venezuela has oil, quite a few South American countries have Cocaine, Brazil has nukes and is rapidly developing into an international force to be reckoned with..On the other side of the world, you just never know when North Korea will fire another barrage so that some US envoy can deliver more tribute-billion$ and walk out saying “we taught them a lesson”..and of course, the rare earth minerals in the South and East China sea.. So, it won’t always be about Opium, gas pipelines and Middle Eastern/North African oil.

http://thevividwriter.wordpress.com