Yes, ladies and gentlemen, a woman wants to obscure her entire face (except for her eyes) for a driver’s license photo.
Quoth the sleazeball who took the case:
What I find spectacularly amusing about this case, is that CNN provides a helpful sidebar about some states that do not practice religious liberty, and their driver’s license photo practices:
So in seven countries where state policy is based on Islamic law, women have to get their pictures taken with their (gasp) faces showing.
If it’s that fucking important to her, she can take a cab.
Wasn’t there a similar thing about a year ago? I swear I remember reading a pretty heated debate about it on the boards. Both sides actually had some reasonable arguments, IIRC.
Yes it is. No one’s forcing her to remove her head cover, UNLESS she wants the privilege of a DL, which MUST be linkable to her in a typical traffic stop. That requires a photo.
In my view, the key issue here is that driving is not a right. If some personal belief or religion prevents one from fulfilling the prerequisites of driving, then I guess one doesn’t drive. It’s not like oxygen or food.
And yes, there are many places where driving is almost mandatory. I guess these people then need to live elsewhere, where there is usable public transportation.
I suspect that if her ID was stolen/shared, it would be very easy to use her photo ID for just about anything, by just about anyone in her height/weight class.
British driving licence regulations require photographs to be “A recent and true likeness, showing the full face, with no hat, helmet or sunglasses”.
There are no exceptions, although I wonder how this applies to people who wear turbans for religious reasons, as well as to people wearing veils.
British passport regulations specifically allow a hat or turban if worn for religious reasons, but again specify “full face”.
US passport regulations (and here) say photos should be “full face” but allow “headpieces if worn daily for religious purposes”.
Maybe they could allow fingerprints if people don’t want their photo on their licence and passport. Except everyone hates their passport photo, so everyone would take the time-consuming fingerprint-checking option.
No, it is not nudity. It may be moderate immodesty to some extremists in the Wahhabite camp, but even the Muslim Brotherhood does not support this POV.
I do note that the list of countries above can not be characterized as one where Islamic law reigns, e.g. neither Egypt nor Jordan fits that description, for all that there are Sharia inputs.