Please take a look at this article from the Toronto Star. It describes a proposed new law in Australia that would compel women whose face is covered by a veil to show their face to a police officer if requested to do so by said officer. Assuming I’m correct about the salient points of the new law and its requirements, is it racist?
Personally, I think it is most definitely not racist. First, as I understand it, women covering their face in Islam is a cultural tradition not a religious dictate. Second, the woman will need to show her face only briefly, only to police, and only (like all “search and seizures”) when the officer has good cause to require her identification. Third, and most importantly, is that the proposed law will avoid a repeat of the debacle that occurred to provide its impetus.
What debacle? A veiled Muslim woman accused an Australian police officer “of racism and of attempting to tear off her veil during their roadside encounter”. As noted in the Star article, the woman was evidently unaware that her encounter with the officer had been filmed and showed that her allegations were baseless and false. She was subsequently convicted of deliberately making false statements to police. But, get this, her conviction was overturned because it was not certain that she was the one who lodged the false complaint. Why not - because when she signed her deposition accusing the cop, she was wearing a veil. The justice of the peace who witnessed all this had not looked beneath the veil to confirm her identity!
And now, a law which if passed would prevent the above type scenario is called racist! Please.
a) not racist , its a cultural thing - as far as I understand it ‘muslim’ is not a ‘race’ in the classic definitions.
b) not racist, as its not targeting them by race, but by the fact the face (and therefore identity) is hidden - we have no idea what ‘race’ is under the covers.
c) provide an alternate way to prove identity - require fingerprints to prove identitiy - they can keep the veil, but the thumb (and the prerequisite time to validate/match) may take alot longer until the biometrics catches up - when they get their license, they can provide a thumbrint where the picture would be.
That’s how you understand it, and, honestly, that’s how I understand it as well. Islam does require both men and women to dress modestly but the methods by which they achieve this goal varies from culture to culture. So if a Muslim woman says she needs to wear the veil to practice her religion she is 100% correct. That’s how she interprets the religious requirement for modesty. The fact that other Muslims achieve their modesty in a different manner is not relevant. By the way, how exactly does one separate religious requirement from a cultural requirement? Religion is part of a culture.
It’s not racist. If during the course of their job the police need to identify someone they should be able to identify them. That means seeing their face at the very least.
Do orthodox jewish women have to remove their wigs or allow themselves to be touched by a male police officer? I guess that’s where it hinges for me. If other religious groups are given some sort of accommodation, then similar accommodations should be made for Muslims. If other groups aren’t given any accommodation, then I wouldn’t view this as being racist per-se.
Of course, even if it’s not racist, it may not necessarily be good policy. I tend to favor finding some sort of middle ground. Like, if there’s not an emergency or shortage of resources, letting the woman wait until a female officer shows up.
The problem is though, are they similar accommodations? A wig or a refusal to be touched by a man doesn’t make you unidentifiable. Religious exemptions go by the wayside generally when they block enforcement of the law; you couldn’t for example get out of jail time because your religion forbids imprisonment.
This was a big deal in Dearborn a couple years ago. The muslims won in court. That means they did not have to show their face in drivers license photos, which in turn allows them to not be identified when they vote. It does not feel right to me. I am sure it is ripe for abuse. If a muslim girl got a bunch of auto tickets, she could drive with her sisters license . How could the cop tell? she could vote for her as well.
Out of curiosity, how do majority Muslim countries deal with this issue?
In anycase, I agree its not necessarily racist, but they ought to put in policies to mitigate any discomfort Muslim veil wearers are likely to have. Allowing woman to just reveal their face to woman officers unless there isn’t one present, and doing it in sight of just one officer if thats possible, for example.
As a practical concern, with a population of 2,000 veil wearers in a country of 20 million, most of whom probably don’t drive, this is probably only going to actually come up once every couple years, if that often.
Well Saudi Arabia “deals with it” by not allowing women to drive. Though IIRC Saudi women are required to show their faces (& possibly hair) in passport & ID card photos (neither of which they can obtain without permission from their male guardian).
You’ve identified two categories of issues here: (1) inability to identify and (2) the larger issue of blocking enforcement of the law. Both wigs and a refusal to be touched by a man can be used to block enforcement of the law. So, if we’re going with category #2, then the accommodations are similar.
If we’re looking at #1, we have the technology to identify people who are veiled, if we want to (eye scanners, hand scanners, thumb print scanners, etc). So, it’s not that the veil prevents identification, it’s that we choose to not use alternate identification methods. In an emergency, I don’t expect anyone to haul out a retinal scanner anymore than I would expect them to wait forty minutes for an officer of the appropriate gender. But if we’re talking non-emergencies, then it is a choice, not a requirement, to identify people by their face.
So, the question is: in non-emergency situations, should we force people to violate their religious beliefs even though we have other options? And if that’s okay, why should we make accommodations for people who don’t want to be touched by a man or want to remove their wigs?
Is purchasing & maintaing thousands of portable fingerprint machines or retinal/iris scanners (& maintaining the corresponding database) at taxpayer expense a reasonable accommodation for a subpopulation that’s less that one hundredth of a percent of the total population? Most of whom don’t even have driver’s licences and hence would never be entered into the database in the first place.
Saudi Arabia is just one asshole Muslim country. None of the other majority Muslim countries ban women from driving, and the vast majority of Muslim countries do not require women to cover their faces.
That said, I personally think the issue is simple: it’s not racist. Raise the veil if required to if it is reasonably required to identify you.
“Obligate ‘lifting of the veil’ for Muslim women if asked to by a police officer - racist?”
Quite the opposite: the suggestion that being the member of a specific religion grants you extraordinary rights in the eyes of the law, that is discrimination. If a muslim woman was not required to reveal her identity to police, neither should anyone else.
Muslims are not a race. Why do so many people seem to think they are? I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve heard - including on this very board - people call anything anti-Muslim “racist”.
If it is for ID, the veil should be off. That includes drivers licenses, state IDs, voter ID and passports . Otherwise it is not an ID at all. That is not racist.
I don’t know what happens in Australia, but here in the US, we routinely spend tax payer money or drive up the cost of government programs to accomodate various religious groups. If you want to argue against it on cost grounds, that’s fine. But the claim that it’s necessary simply isn’t true. That’s a choice that’s being made. Which is the point that I am making here.
As for not being in the database, again, I don’t know how Australia does things, but in the US, almost everyone is going to be in a government database somewhere, unless they are an illegal alien. But you could also require that if you want to protection of not being able to remove the veil, then you have to go and get into the database for the protection to attach.
EDIT: I’d be curious how much finger print scanners actually cost, because it seems like cheap technology that would be useful to have in police cars anyway.
But a lot of non-asshole Muslim countries presumably still have woman who cover their faces by choice. Do they still require photo ID’s to require woman to reveal their faces?
As of a few years ago, VT still didn’t require driver licenses to have photos (and still don’t so far as I know). So I question that an ID without a photo is automatically not an ID, though of course almost all do nowadays.
(and most places specifiy they need a “photo ID”, which suggests that non-photo ID’s are still out there).
Without a photo on the ID the only way to tell if the ID belonged to them would be an instant scan of fingerprints with one or more being on the ID. While I have no qualms with that sort of identification, I don’t feel the cost of the equipment should be allegated to those in a society where the face is the normal mode of doing so. The OP shows the result of having no concrete ID so that is not an option.
The epithet racist gets thrown like a weapon for the mere mention of anything race related so recognition of reality makes me racist naturally.