Posted by elbows:
“And noone has yet addressed what they will do should all the non Muslim women, in solidarity with their sisters, ALL take to wearing headscarves? As fashion, not religious statement. Will they throw them all in jail? How will the state decide who’s making a religious statement and who’s just expressing their fashion sense?”
I find I am confused how your response here, relates to my words that you’ve quoted. Could you explain please?
That part about wearing headscarves as Fashion Statement - I agree with and wanted to Point out how absurd it is that one way, a scarf is a Fashion Statement, and another, it’s a religious Statement (or as some French Mayors claimed when trying to bann burkinis from the beaches: “supporting Terrorist organisations” because “all muslims = terrorists” which is of course bigoted nonsense; and burkinis, or Long-sleeves and wide Pants on the beach are sensible against sunburn).
Not only historically, but recently, too. Just ask any Tibetan.
I thought it was more a political issue than a religious one. If the Dalia Lama is willing to bow down to the Chinese govt. A lot of the conflict would go away.
Most Chinese are Buddhists anyways, although not the Tibetan version.
There seems to be in this thread a notion that laws like these are only suggested by chauvinistic men with no thought given to the opinions of women. If a headscarf ban is truly popular in Quebec a lot of women are in support of it as well. There are women also against abortions and female reproductive rights. A western politician cannot suggest laws like these and stay in office if they don’t have female support. It’s dangerously naive to believe women can’t be bigots too.
Going into conspiracy territory, in some circles of the Internet there’s a belief that the Canadian federal government is intentionally settling immigrants in larger numbers in Quebec as an attempt to dilute possible votes for independence. An immigrant is assumed to be more likely to vote against independence. If this belief was widespread it would make sense to be more hostile towards immigration.
I don’t know, but if I ever get an antique shop I’m going to call it “Bigoted Dickery.”
These women suffer from patriarchal religious cultures where their dress is dictated to them. We’ll show them the freedom of the West by dictating their dress.
Well, the reason is because headscarves are used as a tool of bigoted dickery. If you are a person who is against bigoted dickery, then you can make an argument against headscarves.
I don’t think the argument would succeed in Aus or the USA, but it is clearly a valid argument that could be made.
In Aus there is a fairly recent tradition of older Greek women wearing headscarves. They were, without any question, bigoted dicks, who understood that any women not wearing a headscarf was a prostitute, but they did not pass that belief down to their children. Any move to ban headscarfs in Aus would run into the problem that, whatever it means to one bigoted section of the community, it means something different to most of the rest.
A belief, but not fact. The Canadian government accepts immigrants, but does not tell them where in Canada they may settle. Assuming that they are accepted as legal immigrants, they may go anywhere in the country they wish; and settle and work there: Charter s. 6(2).
Unlike the other provinces, the Quebec government vets and accepts immigrants (which it can do under Constitution s. 95), but these tend to be French-speaking immigrants, from places where French is the primary or secondary language: France (of course), Haiti, Algeria, Morocco, Vietnam, and so on.
At any rate, the Canadian government does not put legal immigrants anywhere in Canada. They are free to settle anywhere they please after their arrival in Canada.
It is in fact a Long-Standing Argument between some (not all) Feminist organisations, who want to liberate the uneducated oppressed women from backwards countries by forbidding headscarves and veils; and the Green-Left multiculturalists who think that nobody has the right to force People from one culture to completly Assimilate to the new culture going as far as Dressing correctly, instead of keeping their own culture as far as it harms noone and they follow the laws and General human values of the new Country.
However, there are several factors beyond that Long discussion:
While originally, the women who came here (from Turkey to Germany) in the first Generation were largely uneducated (also about Religion) and had been taught to obey the Patriarch without talking back (it was deliberate by the Turkish govt. to send unskilled uneducated People from the countryside).
But now, there’s a second and third Generation of Muslimas who, while having Immigrant parents, have grown up going to German Schools, and getting real religious lesson. They often do Research as Teenagers into what their Religion means, and decide to wear the headscarf deliberately, not just because their father tells them to.
Actual Research from both Feminist organisations, but also Christian charity Groups (as the only ones who actually bothered trying to reach out and get contact with the foreigners, while the govt. was ignoring reality and repeating “they will only stay here fro 4 years, so we don’t Need to provide language courses or do anything about Integration and Immigration at all” even when it became abundantly clear that Young men who let their wives follow, and had children, and bought a car and a house in Germany, were going to stay here) showed that the best way to get those women who actually were oppressed out under the thumb was Meeting them on their Terms, by organizing weekly coffee/ tea meetups, where they could talk with other Immigrant women and learn that not everybody was treated as badly. Forbidding them to wear the allowed Dress meant that the Patriarch would no longer allow the women to leave the house “improperly dressed”. That’s what Happening in France with the veil ban.
Both the feminists and the lefts arguing among themselves had Little voice and power in the total political discourse. It was for years a minor Topic in parliament. It only became important when the right-wingers (Pegida and AfD, Le Pen in France, Wilders in NL) started getting Attention from the Media and then the Mainstream parties picking up their talking Points in the old, wrong attempt to out-right the extremists, instead of staying rational against the lies of the populists.
That’s why most of the European countrie’s bans are very recent, the last 5-10 years, although Muslims have been living here since the 1950s.
This.
And it leaves a bad taste for many who are in favour of freedom to fall into the old pattern of “everybody must Assimilate to our culture, our way of doing things, down to Dressing the way of the majority” instead of accepting that different styles of Dressing doesn’t mean disrepsecting human values.
That’s an arguing for headscarves not being mandatory. Banning them, however, is basically this:
I have a Muslim friend who used to wear a headscarf everywhere in public - her husband didn’t require it, but she had grown up in a culture where it was the norm and she was more comfortable with it on. When attacks on Muslim women were on the rise she became afraid she would be targeted because of her headscarf and stopped wearing it. And now she’s used to going around without it on. She wasn’t oppressed by wearing it and her life hasn’t changed since she stopped; really, the only oppression by a ‘patriarchal religious culture’ she experienced was fear of the dickheads going around ripping headscarves off innocent women.
I’m not Muslim, but I wear a scarf over my hair a sometimes, for non-religious reasons. Would I have to stop if a law like this got passed? The whole idea is just weird, and makes no sense.
In my humble opinion should be banned in all Europe countries, reason why?
It is a symbolic of religion identity, it’s should be in there gathering or there assmbaly room only, not in public, offices, schools, universities and similar kind and of public assambly so on, to be a very religious symbols and identities would be banned.
Do you want to ban crosses on neckchains, Jesus/God etc T-shirts? Bumper stickers? Lapel pins, tie tacks?
Or is it only symbols of a religion you don’t like?
It’s not a symbol of anything. No more so than wearing a bra is a symbol of religion.
If a woman grows up in a culture in which she feels uncomfortable exposing certain parts of her body, it ought to be respected as her own comfort zone.
When I was traveling in Africa, it was very common in many localities for women to be topless. My wife would have felt very uncomfortable if she had been told that she had to ride the bus or go shopping topless. But at the same time, she did wear long skirts to cover her ankles, because that, too was the custom, and Africans would have been very offended seeing a woman’s ankles being flashed in public.
It’s not a question of what you are wearing, but one of what you are not wearing. It’s never wrong to cover a body part, but may be very wrong to expose it.
I’m just going to repeat the caveat I made previously about there being valid reasons to prohibit face coverings in some contexts. Otherwise I agree.
The state should just keep its nose out of religion - trying to restrict it is as bad as trying to impose it. The state has business in controlling things that are harmful, especially if harmful to unconsenting parties. Headscarves do nobody any harm.
I come from a country that actually has a state church - but we have none of this bollocks about headscarves.
Just standing outside a very long queue yesterday, watching ~30yo women-wearing-scarfs (probaly first generation migrants as children) pushing into the queue. Since, for the last 40 years, muslim women in Aus have been reporting* that the purpose of the scarf** was to indicate a separate identity, and since queueing behaviour is a socially-moderated behavior based on a common identity, I took the scarf-wearing and queue-jumping to be related behavior.
*With the exception of one report 30 years ago, in a left-liberal publication, from a young university-educated moslim women who wore a scarf because she wanted too. and it was nobodies business what she wore.
**40 years ago it was only the scarf. In Aus full mask with veiled slot is more recent.
That’s true, but thee needs to be a pretty compelling reason for “some context” to be universally applied under circumstances where it is easy to interpret it as culturally discriminatory when viewed in its historical and social context.