Dutch to ban wearing of Muslim burqa in public
The article says this won’t affect many people, but I have a bad feeling about this. Frankly, it seems like pretty stupid legislation, especially coming form what has historically been the most tolerant country in the world. How long until we hear the word “outrage” bandied about in the press? Will it be justified this time?
Thoughts? I put this in the pit since I expect it to get nasty.
It doesn’t seem like a very good idea, but since so many other European nations have done this, there might not be so much edge to the outrage.
How does this make things more secure? Is there a facial expression for, “I’ve got fifteen pounds of C-4 strapped to my torso,” that police are trained to look out for? Are they worried that someone’s going to try to smuggle a hand grenade into a public place by holding it in their mouth?
Which ones have done this? Not trying to be snarky or anything-- I just wasn’t aware that it was policy anywhere (except, oddly enough, in Turkey).
Now see, this just makes me want to wear a burqa in protest.
I’m sure everyone who lives in your neighborhood would support this action.
:d&r:
Disclaimer: I am sure you’re actually gorgeous - it was just a line I couldn’t resist.
Yeah. Relax your jowls. . .now curl the left side of your upper lip back to expose your incisor. Then, when you’ve managed that, raise your right eyebrow 1/4 of an inch, flare your nostrils and close your eyes halfway.
Voila!
Now, the 1/4 of an inch is of vital importance. An eighth more and you’re saying, “I would like an extra side of rice with my kung pao shrimp.” An eighth less and you’re saying, “Rip this burqa from me and make hot jungle monkey love to me for as long as it might take.”
According to your link, France and Italy have. Though upon re-reading, they’ve only banned them in specific locations.
Maybe it’s a security camera type thing. Are women in burkas knocking over 7/11’s and banks over there?
This kind of thing just makes me crazy…I don’t even know what to say. So much for being “enlightened.”
That presents an interesting delima. I see where you’re getting at, but do you don a symbol of female oppression in order to protest an iffy law? I personally don’t believe that any woman* wears a burqa by choice and you probably agree. Basically you’d be saying that you support the right of women to be oppressed by men. Kinda weird, no?
There was a case somewhat similar to this in my area. An Afgahn-American woman (mother of 6) was slain in broad daylight for no apparent reason. Many people are assuming it was a hate crime, since she wore a hijab. So, women in that town got together and held a “wear hijab for a day” protest. There was a certain amount of unease about this, though, because many people saw it as giving approval to an idea which, at its root, is anti-female. (Hijab is just the head scarf, not the total body covering like a burqa, just to be clear.)
*Yeah, there’s probably a handful that do, but you know what I mean!
I don’t know that this is all that outrageous. There are some US states that have anti-masking laws on the books–tailored more narrowly than this measure, but they exist. How seriously do the Muslims take this stuff? Do they believe they’ll go to hell for being seen unmasked, or is it something less serious?
Please cite a US state that has a law that bans wearing a burqa. After you look for it and do not find it take a look at the Bill of Rights.
But do they affect women who want to cover their faces for religious purposes? Has a woman ever been arrested for wearing niqab?
I know this is really a stretch, but I’m pretty sure Oklahoma has or had a law on the books outlawing masked organizations. From what I heard, it was specifically aimed at the Ku Klux Klan. One of the University of Oklahoma’s student clubs (the Knights of Old Trusty) had an exemption.
So, Islamic women = masked organization?
This is silly. Burqas don’t kill people, people kill people. You’ll ban my burqa when you pry it from cold, dead, umm, head. When burqas are outlawed only outlaws will have burqas.
And so forth and so on.
The face? 
Well, no; precisely because of those few that do. For that matter, there are apparently mere dozens of women in the Netherlands that wear the burqa at all; hardly enough to warrant such paroxysms of populist handwringing (and what are the odds they were consulted on this legislation?). No matter what you think about people’s choices and their motives, it seems completely incongruous to fight coercion with coercion, simply supplanting the “wrong” choice with the “enlightened” one. Wearing a burqa in protest would only be supporting female oppression if you’re utterly confident that every sane person would agree with you; the very assumption against which you’d be protesting.
I don’t know anyone who wears a burqa to ask, but I certainly know several people who wear varying degrees of veil and scarf with no apparent coercion or ill feeling, and I would have absolutely no compunction about donning one in protest were my government to propose any legislation so ill-considered as this.
No, you cite to me where I said there was such a state, and stuff that snark right up your ass while you’re at it.
What I said was that there are states with anti-masking laws on the books, and that those laws are tailored more narrowly than the measure under discussion here. Apparrently, New York is, or was as recently as 1999, one of them:
http://www.cnn.com/US/9910/23/klan.03/index.html
I have not commented on whether such laws would apply to muslim women, or even whether they should. I did say that the measure under discussion here may not be all that outrageous.
If you want to flame me, please bother to flame me for something I actually said.
Why must it be unanimous? As long as some women are oppressed through compulsory burqa wearing, that’s enough for me. And I’m confident enough from my reading that most women would gladly throw off their burqas if they could. Not only does it dehmanize the women, but it is fucking dangerous to make people walk around with limited visibility. Your cultural relativism here is waaaay off the mark.