Pres. Sarkozy in the wake of the Iranian chaos is amping up rhetoric against the religious enforcement of female subservience among certain Muslim groups in France. He’s quoted as saying:
Now, I’m an atheist and find the use of religion as an excuse to practice hate or oppression to be anathema. I agree with the spirit of Sarkozy’s words and I’m interested to see how this will play out. I realize that politically this is liable to be a complete powder keg. In the U.S. such a thing might even be unconstitutional.
Anyways, I thought I’d open the floor to debate on the topic.
Good for him. But women should have the freedom to choose to wear it or not, as they decide.
France is just as enthusiastic about the separation of Church and State as America, so I can see him banning the garment in all government buildings. But it’s actually a bigger issue: if you’re banning the burka, do you ban the niqab? At what point do you draw the line? What about the yarmulke? The turban?
I tend to agree with him, although generally I can’t stand the man. If a woman is wearing a burka it is almost impossible for her to interact on a normal level in society, particularly a Western one. It has always seemed to me that this is in fact the point of the burka.
For me the counter-arguements just aren’t persuasive:
Women wear it because they want to: You can make people do pretty much anything you like given enough childhood conditioning. It doesn’t mean it’s good for them or society.
Religious freedom: There are already lines drawn here. If a religion said it was fine for men to beat their wives it would still clearly not be permitted. This would just be another line.
I would personally never go as far as to ban a specific religious garment however. I believe the correct line to draw is that you may wear absolutely anything you like providing that your face is visible enough that you can be visually identified and freely interact in society. This has the advantage of not singling out a single religion, permitting the less opressive versions of the garment and actually has some legitimate non-religous arguements too.
I suspect this would actually get passed quite quickly if something I’ve been expecting for a while happens and armed robbers start wearing burkas. Currently in the UK I don’t think you’d ever be asked to take it off but you would be completely unidentifiable and could quite happily carry a shotgun under there. Genius
Blatant bullshit. First of all, he might as well have said “elephants are not welcome in France”, considering the prevalence of the full burka among Muslim women here. And secondly, why should anyone, much less the government, care what the fuck anyone decides to wear, for whatever reason ? Do we force-liberate nuns from their veils, too ?
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Hey, come to think about it, that’s not a bad idea. Halter tops and low-rider jeans for nuns, NOW !
Do get back to us with more of this analogy. Get back to us when you are born a nun and Christianity penalises you, up to and including death, as an apostate for stopping being one.
A burka is a garment designed to parade ones sexual fetishes and sado-masochistic tendencies in public. It’s little different than a gimp-suit – except for the extra baggage of religious fanatism. Sexual perversions should be practised in the bedroom, not in your local shopping centre.
So I guess no problem either way. Although the Saudi style niqab should obviously be treated much the same as the burka.
In public? There are already numerous restrictions on the kind of clothes one is allowed to wear in public. You can’t walk around naked for instance. I also doubt going shopping in a gimp suit or dressing your woman up as a naked dog with a spiked collar and parading her down the street would be considered within the law.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
This could not be any more cut and dried.
Sarkozy is right about the meaning of the burka, but this is a sleazy play on anti-Muslim sentiment, and it’s every bit as stupid and disqueting as the headscarf ban from a few years ago. Europe’s cranky old man confrontation with Islam continues unabated, unfortunately.
Except that Sarkozy explicitly stated that the burka has nothing to do with religion. This is a statement you can disagree with of course. I think it is rather silly to tell somebody that when they say their choice is a religious choice, that they are wrong. But a person could invent another religion mandating for instance nudity. In such a case would it be against the US constitution to prevent people walking down the street naked? And I seem to recall that the rastas were not successful in making marijuhana legal even though many say it is a necessary part of their religion. So it seems religion does not trump all. Not in the USA either.
And I do, because it’s a stupid statement. It’s a repressive and patriarchal custom, but so are a lot of other practices that are clearly religious, most of which are allowed.
Since that’s already illegal, I think it’s not much of an issue.
Why don’t we walk up to them and ask them what they think about wearing the Burka? Oh that’s right we can’t. It’s ok though, I’m sure that they love wearing it.
Are women forced to wear them in France? Does the French system have no means for a women to flee a battering spouse or - assuming that French Muslims to put women to death or beat them if they do not wear the burka - an abusive culture? How big an issue is this in France, and is there any evidence that the women of France are being oppressed - for some women a burqa IS a choice - as much as a nun’s habit is.
Seems like all you do is make sure that women who are forced to wear a burqa who are coming in from oppressive countries cannot enter France. And if they cannot enter France, you don’t have to deal with them when they seek amnesty.
Many women have no problem with the full veil, and would laugh at suggestions they are “not free” in wearing it.
The job of the state is to make sure that if a person doesn’t want to wear it, they don’t suffer ill harm from that decision. But if they are happy wearing it then the state has no part to play.
I agree that an uncovered face should be used on passport photos and other instances where identification is necessary. But many people in the Far East wear face masks (i.e. medical masks) on the street and in the office and they seem to cope fine.
It’s anti-Muslim populism and classic “fear of the other”. If a woman sits in a office wearing a full veil you can see just as much of her face as a female scientist in a biolab clean room; so the only issue must be the paternalistic concern that women are “forced” to wear it, and while that’s no doubt true it’s not up to Govts to enforce a change.
Imagine yourself a Muslim woman. From the time you were old enough to attract the attention of men, you have worn a burka. Fast-forward to today. You are a 40-year-old Muslim woman who has worn a burka all your life. Your government tells you that you may no longer wear it.
How naked do you think you would feel without it?
Yes, there are plenty of Muslim men who more or less force their wives and daughters to wear these. But it’s not simply a case of “liberating” the women from this. If you take away the burka, they will wear head-to-toe clothing of some other cut, and a thick veil. They will not go out in public “naked”.
The burka is certainly not a 21st century feminist concept. But I think the current wave of prejudice against Muslims is informing this more than any real empathy with Muslim women.
I’m no fan of religiously-obligated clothing. But you cannot force freedom on people. You can offer it, subject to their acceptance of it. But you can’t MAKE people be free of this or that. When you start doing that, it’s not freedom anymore.
I have no love of Islam. I think it’s a religion with a lot of unanswered questions, including how it treats its women. The adherents of Islam–like of any other religion–quite often preach one thing and do another.
That said, focusing on the burqa is wrong. To begin with, in America at least, plenty of women wear it by choice. I’ve met a few single muslim women living on their own who wear it because they want to wear it. For them, wearing a burqa is like a Christian wearing a cross: It’s a way to identify yourself with your faith. It’s just not correct to say women wear the burqa because of oppression.
Now I’m quite sure many Muslim women are *forced *to wear it, and I believe that’s wrong, of course, but if Sarkozy was so interested in women’s rights, he wouldn’t concentrate on the burqa. He’d go after the abuse behavior itself. What does he think is going to happen? The burqa gets banned, and suddenly, the abusive fathers and husbands and imams or whatever are going to see the light and stop the abuse? Those guys don’t need a religion to be abusive, but that doesn’t really matter, because even if you assume the burqa to be a symbol of oppression, when you ban women wearing it, all you’re doing is banning the symbol. The underlying oppression and abuse will still be very much alive.
By calling for the banning of the burqa, Sarkozy isn’t banning the oppression. He’s just getting it out of the faces of “decent” (read “non-Muslim”) French people, so they can pretend it doesn’t exist. He’s also singling out Islam for behavior that one could find in any race, color, or creed, and he’s doing it based on an uninformed opinion.
Let’s get it straight - we’re talking about the most all-encompassing garment here. The BBC has a useful picture. It also has this, with a link to various different kinds of Islamic dress.
