Criminalising women behind the veil
So the French lower house has voted to ban the burka or niqab in a public place. It was by a massive majority: 335 to 1. The Greens and some of the Socialists abstained.
There are still hurdles to be crossed, but France is heading to a moment when a woman wearing a full-face veil in public could be stopped by a police patrol and fined 150 euros (£125). If the police gather evidence that a woman is being forced to dress in a niqab, then the man faces a very heavy fine.
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The mood among MPs today heading into parliament was strongly in favour of a new law. No doubt some would have been influenced by polls that suggest that up to 70% of French voters support such a ban. One French MP described veils as "muzzles", and "walking coffins".
But the main motive behind this vote was to reinforce French identity. MPs believe that those who live in, or visit, France should embrace French values. Time and again in parliament MPs argued that hiding a woman's face violates the ideal of equality and encourages segregation. The fear behind this is of separate, parallel communities.
There are only about 2,000 women in France who wear the burka or niqab. Many are recent converts to Islam. I spoke today to 26-year-old Anissa. She has been wearing the niqab for two years. She says the new law is Islamaphobic and she will not remove her veil.
"I think it is against international law," she told me. "Personally speaking, removing my veil is against my conscience. And I won't take it off."
That will be one of the difficulties: enforcing such legislation. Initially there will be a six-month period where women who wear the full-face veil are stopped and told about French laws and the reasons behind them. But after that period a police officer could tell her to remove the veil or risk a fine.
Clearly, in some suburbs of Paris with strong Muslim communities it would be very sensitive to order a woman to remove her veil. It will also be hard to prove that a woman is wearing a veil against her wishes.
Another risk is that the ban will create martyrs. Frederic Lagache of the police union said to me today: "Our concern is that some people will be manipulated by extremists and cause trouble on the streets when we stop them."
Already a businessman has offered to set up a fund to pay any fines incurred by women.
There are also likely to be a series of legal challenges.
But today marked an important moment in the debate over multiculturalism. Increasingly the French want new arrivals and members of ethnic minorities to integrate more. There will be those in the banlieues - the suburbs where many minorities live - who will argue that they are the ones who are prevented from integrating into mainstream French society.
I'm 
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"Anna Chapman, one of the Russian spies deported from the United States, has been deprived of her British citizenship, the BBC understands.
She is expected to be "formally excluded" within the next few hours, meaning she cannot travel to the UK"
And she wasn't even hiding her nefarious acitivies behind a vail. ;(
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"It was by a massive majority: 355 to 1. The Greens and some of the Socialists abstained."
The usual suspects. Figures. :)
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A French official was quoted in the Independent as saying that the ban on the burka was not anti-Islam, it applied equally across the board to all face coverings. The official went on to list a host of exceptions such as motorcycle helmets, face guards whilst fencing etc.
What it means is that all face-coverings (except the exceptions) will be banned in public. This includes anybody on a protest marches who may want to cover their faces (they may have a legitimate reason, they don't want their employer to know that they support gay rights or fox-hunting for example)
The burka issue is a smokescreen, the French state, followed by the Belgian and Spanish states, wants to identify all dissenters.
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Most Hippies had a similar problem in the 60´s, but that was Worldwide ---From America to Europe to Asia.
It will become a privilege to see a moslem lady smile ?
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Hmm, you seem to ignore part of the law : you will be ordered to follow citizenship classes OR be fined, or both.
Political pseudo-religious and true backward customs apologists are free to whine and to make -again- political statements.
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I agree with the ban. The Burqa and Niqab have no scriptural basis in the Quran. There are two Surahs used to support it, An-Nur (24:31) and Al-Ahzab (33:59) where they tell women to draw their cloaks over their bosoms and around them. However, neither of them tell women to cover their faces, or that it is even recommended to do so. Such a belief comes out of INTERPRETATION. In addition, equating female piety with making oneself disappear is a very harmful belief. I say have men take responsibility for their own desires, and let women focus on the content of their character rather than the amount of fabric on their body.
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A very criminal act by French president and parliament. My question is; what does freedom of choice and democracy means? They say people need to "integrate" but I think what they mean is, be like the majority, i.e. you don't have the choice to keep your religion, culure and costumes.
Does Sarkozy's wife and all those Europeans wear islamic dresses when they visits Islamic countries? if the answer is No. Then surely those countries are more democratic than France and they are NOT a nanny state, like France.
I also wonder if there is any difference between the Taliban and French government. erm... one difference might be that Talibans have Turbins and Sarkozy don't!!
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A strong self-confident culture has no need to fear for it's identity, or that immigrants will not in their own good time both adapt to the culture of their new country and enrich it with the best of their own.
Today is a day of shame for France. By contrast we in the UK can be proud of our traditions of tolerance for other peoples' religions, civil liberties and multiculturalism and the better race relations we enjoy in multicultural Britain compared to countries like France and the USA which attempt to force assimilation into a stagnant monoculture. Vive la différence!
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The French have always been sensitive to their own culture. The right of a nation to determine how cutlure is expressed is a difficult subject but the onslaught of a global culture has been at the expense of individual cultures and as the main thrust of the global culture is consumerism, peoples should have a way to reject that without completely shutting their borders. There is also a security concern and a man could dress in this manner and be a bomber or creating other harm on society. The main issue is that of a minority imposing their culture on the host majority nation. Hiding ones face behind a mask or veil is usually not accepted in most countries when that individual is in public space. Although many Asian cultures remove their shoes before entering a house we would not make that a rule in other cultures but should adhere when in those countries. We do not accept men beating their wives and this is accepted in some cultures or beating a young woman with a cane for having a beer, and stoning to death for being in the presence of a single man. In the West there are religious practices but they are confined to religious settings and restricted in the work place. This is a religious practice and some can argue that it violates the separations most governments in the West claim. Many people have many agendas on this matter and they span from women's rights to security but whatever the rationale the question remains about the right of a government to restrict what is a religious practice (and these cultures do not make a separation of relgion and culture)in public spaces. History has shown that integration is a generational process and proceeds over time.
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I don't like seeing these things on the street, they remind me of oppressive cultures. But, I'm not sure that imposing a totalitarian law is the answer to totalitarianism.
There is also the question of whether this law will infringe upon the rights of those who want to cover their face for other reasons than submission to an oppressive husband. How about those who have been injured, have just undergone facial surgery, or suffer a disfiguring illness, for example? Does this mean such people must suffer public exposure when they would prefer to wear a veil?
Worst of it is, I'll have to give-up my part-time job as the Caped Crusader. Oh well, no masks means no more superheroes, so I guess crime is gonna flourish. Don't say I didn't warn you.
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The polls in France were showing that 70% of the population were in favour of the ban, the lower house voted it through by a massive majority.
whats this?
The will of the people being carried by their sovereign government?
whatever next?
that will be the European court of human rights steamrollering the new law into a red carpet that will extend all the way across the med, to usher in the relentless march of Islam.
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Freeborn John, this is not simply an issue of multiculturalism and tolerance, it's a question of safety. People, men, have donned burqas and Niqabs to get away with crime, such as the example that occurred in your own country with Mustaf Jama. He and a group of others were suspected of killing policewoman Sharon Beshenivsky, and it is believed he fled the country wearing a burqa and using his sister's passport. Burqa and Niqab have no scriptural basis. They are worn by women who wish to be pious and modest. They can be pious wearing hijab, or no headcovering at all. It's attitude and action, not layers of clothing, that makes one pious and modest.
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I find it odd that there are people who are finding it hard to swallow this new French legislation on the veil. Isn't it true for non-muslims to abide by the rules in place in muslim countries when we visit them. I mean do they have a choice? So simply, if you can't live by country's law, just leave. A lot of us who leave our countries of origin and move to another in search of a "better life", we need to accept the fact that we may need to change some of our ways just to get that "better life". If we don't want to change, don't leave then. Its not like the French government wants you to strip naked...they just want to see your face and therefore identify you!!!!
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SarahBH (12): Under the existing British law (1971 Immigration Act) travellers can be asked to lift the veil at passport control using a private room with a female official present. The existing law therefore covers the case you are concerned about without resorting to illiberal bans on the clothing of religious minorities in ordinary public places.
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SarahBH6
Re #6 & #12
Very well written: Excellent points put in a clear, unemotive manner that simply cuts through all the perspectives to reach the eye of the matter.
"..I say have men take responsibility for their own desires..": How many Male Muslims will now write on this Blog about their mental weakness in the presence of a Female with an uncovered face!?
"..they (Females) can be pious wearing Hijab or no head covering at all..": How many Male Muslims will now write on this Blog about their 'attitude' to a Female whose piousness must involve covering their face!?
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S-T said (13): “Isn't it true for non-muslims to abide by the rules in place in muslim countries when we visit them.”
Two wrongs do not make a right. We can’t defend western liberal culture by acting like an illiberal one ourselves. Better that muslim countries learn by our good example to become more liberal, than that we learn from their bad example to be intolerant.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
But Freeborn John (14), is it not more convenient and logical to have a women show her face, rather than have to go through the effort of having to privately unveil every Niqabi in order to ensure they aren't men? There is no religious reason or compulsion to wear a Burqa or Niqab, so I daresay the measure isn't narrowminded, it's not a religious issue, it's safety. And safety should come before such shallow personal preference.
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7. At 6:36pm on 13 Jul 2010, panjsheri wrote:
"...I also wonder if there is any difference between the Taliban and French government. erm... one difference might be that Talibans have Turbins and Sarkozy don't!!"
Another difference is that the Taliban throw acid in the faces of schoolgirls and the French don't.
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I suppose one way to fix a broken toenail is with an axe.
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8. At 6:36pm on 13 Jul 2010, Freeborn John wrote:
"..Today is a day of shame for France. By contrast we in the UK can be proud of our traditions of tolerance for other peoples' religions, civil liberties and multiculturalism and the better race relations we enjoy in multicultural Britain compared to countries like France and the USA which attempt to force assimilation into a stagnant monoculture."
I don't know about France, but when immigrants arrive in the US they're left pretty much to their own devices and not forced to assimilate. Our country was built on immigration, and our citizens come from every race, religion, ethnic group and country on the planet. If you think it's a stagnant monoculture you've never been here. I don't think we have any laws against Islamic coverings, except perhaps for state drivers license photos. By the way, we also don't have any laws prohibiting Sikhs from publicly wearing their ceremonial knives. Do you?
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*8 Freeborn John writes:
"By contrast we in the UK can be proud of our traditions of tolerance..."
Last weekend my husband was banned from taking photos of our granddaughter at the local lido despite the fact that her mother and I were with him. The lady attendant was rather embarrassed but stressed it was out of her hands. The same happened to a friend of ours who wanted to take a snap of his daughter on a swing in the local playground. New laws apparently to deter paedophiles. Traditions of tolerance indeed.
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@10 "I'll have to give-up my part-time job as the Caped Crusader. Oh well, no masks means no more superheroes"
Superman doesn't wear a mask. Indeed, its his 'human' alter ego that wears the spectacles.
I do not suffer this problem although I, too, am a superhero. I can not tell you any more but suffice it to say that my modus operandi includes disco music. And lots of it.
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"8. At 6:36pm on 13 Jul 2010, Freeborn John wrote:
A strong self-confident culture has no need to fear for it's identity, or that immigrants will not in their own good time both adapt to the culture of their new country and enrich it with the best of their own."
Hmm, that's rather a bold assertion, isn't it? Do you think that's what the Northern Indians did when the Islamic invasions happened? What about the native Americans? Or the Australian aboriginals? Nearly one hundred years after the Treaty of Trianon, many Hungarians still feel oppressed and unwanted in Slovakia. The Kurds have been in NE Turkey for thousands of years and the Turks are comparative newcomers- how well have the Kurds assimilated the Turks?
"8. At 6:36pm on 13 Jul 2010, Freeborn John wrote:
Today is a day of shame for France. By contrast we in the UK can be proud of our traditions of tolerance for other peoples' religions, civil liberties and multiculturalism and the better race relations we enjoy in multicultural Britain compared to countries like France and the USA which attempt to force assimilation into a stagnant monoculture. Vive la différence!"
No matter how many times you repeat a lie it will not become true. The UK does not have a history of tolerance- quite the opposite. A Roman Catholic can't be a monarch here. Until recently the Welsh language enjoyed very much second class status, with active suppression for many years. Gays could be prosecuted for their private, consensual acts until 40 years ago. The Jews were expelled from England (following the judicial execution of most of their menfolk) in the 13th Century. There are many more examples I can't be bothered to list here.
Also, I find your "stagnant monoculture" statement interesting. Are you suggesting that you know what is best for these other countries and their "stagnant monocultures"? Do you think that's a teensy bit ironic, given the thrust of your argument for tolerance? Why should the French not be able to decide what they want?
A seemingly vast majority of the French public and legislature are in favour of this law. Maybe they have the best idea of what they want?
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7.panjsheri wrote:
A very criminal act by French president and parliament. My question is; what does freedom of choice and democracy means? They say people need to "integrate" but I think what they mean is, be like the majority, i.e. you don't have the choice to keep your religion, culure and costumes.
When such a culture, or certainly the women-are-inferior part of it, is clearly inferior to our women-are-equal culture, then we should not have any respect for such a culture. All cultures are not equal and every aspects of every culture is not by definition an enrichment.
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The answer is easy then
Those who believe that it's a requirement of the quoran to wear a full face covering may still do so
Except now it won't be called a hijab or a burka - it will be a motorcycle helmet. Not quite as pretty, but it would do the job. And there's no fine imposed for coercing anyone to wear one.
I don't agree that face coverings should be forced on someone - but it seems like a breach of personal choice to ban them altogether.
And this comes from a white anglo-saxon protestant...
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@21 Ray "By the way, we also don't have any laws prohibiting Sikhs from publicly wearing their ceremonial knives. Do you?"
Are you talking state laws (which could of course vary) or federal? Or both? I'm guessing that a Sikh on Jury Duty would not get past the Sherriffs were he in a federal building.
Anyway, you're in Wisconsin, eh? Milwaukee is a great town. Was there a long time ago for a Grateful Dead concert. (still a bit hazy from that weekend!) I'm over in Mpls. We're neighbors!
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Racism in the disguise of popular opinion.
Liberty the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's behaviour or political views.
This is the cornerstone of being French along with equality and fraternity. So I cant believe that they can justify the ban by saying the scarf is not being french!
I think the 366 MPs and 59% of people are very unfrench and racist. I hope that this ban is challenged as a human rights violation.
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Hooray. I totally agree with La France. Sooner it happens in other parts of the Western world the better.
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"28. At 8:53pm on 13 Jul 2010, poorva wrote:
Racism in the disguise of popular opinion.
...I think the 366 MPs and 59% of people are very unfrench and racist. I hope that this ban is challenged as a human rights violation."
How is the ban racist? You could argue it's "religionist", but not racist.
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@(16) Freeborn John. you are living in cloud cuckoo land, sunshine, if you really believe that.
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(2.) At 5:54pm on 13 Jul 2010, powermeerkat wrote:
"It was by a massive majority: 355 to 1. The Greens and some of the Socialists abstained."
The usual suspects. Figures. :)
I would suggest the usual suspects abstained. By the way it's veil not "vail" (sic), or did you mean vial?
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IgnatiusA (26), when do people wear motorcycle helmets? When they are riding their motorcycle, to protect themselves. They have a tangible purpose. And from what little I know of French law one isn't allowed to wear them in shops and other such places. If there suddenly becomes a surge of people wearing helmets for reasons beyond their intended purpose, I'm sure the issue would be addressed.
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People are not able to wear whatever they want in the UK. I am fairly sure that you wouldn't be able to walk about town with a balaclava with holes for only eyes and mouth. In the street maybe but try going in to a shop or restaurant. Heck, try it in a bank or the post office!
There are reasons why groups want to be able to see peoples faces. It has nothing to do with religion.
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While I believe that people should be free to wear anything they so desire, I also feel amazed that any woman would actually want to continue covering themselves in a custom that was originally introduced because apparently every male alive is too weak to suppress the urge to want to be with every woman they lay eyes on so lets make it the woman's responsibility to not arouse others.
What really needs to happen is for the religious leaders of the Islamic faith to recognize the flaw in this design and give woman their freedom.
Now I do understand the modesty aspect of this tradition. And if one feels their only course of being modest is to cover themselves head to toe in order to protect their body and face from ever being seen by any male but their husband then that is their choice. This practice really makes a woman a possession to their husband. And no matter what guise is used to justify this practice I can never agree with it.
The banning of veils will cause just more strife though, and it is quite sad that we even have to discuss things such as these. Freedom and equality should be a given between all men and women.
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As a free woman, I applaude France!
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There was a fascinating news report on the BBC today showing the UK government inspectors turning up to count badgers in rural Wales - all hiding their faces behind balaclavas... Would the people wanting this ban in the UK extend that to wanting to see the identities of our government appointees....?
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
There was a beautiful poem written by a Muslim women who wore a Burka. In it she advocated the opposite of what many beleive. Rather than feeling confined, imprisioned, or subordinated, she felt liberated. She was completely free from the socially constructed and material pressures of conforming to an ideal of what "beauty" should look like.
It was about Inner beauty as a human being, and it was very insightful and thoughfully written. One shouldn't assume that everyone women in a Burka is a prisoner waiting to be released into the "freedoms" of the Western World.
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"A strong self-confident culture has no need to fear for it's identity"
Very true and I'm sure that the French people do have a very strong sense of their own identity. They know they are French and French culture is in their every cell. But they do know that many/most of the immigrants amongst them are not French and cannot be French. And the French have no wish "to celebrate diversity" and leave that to the likes of politicians like Tony Blair who used this phrase often.
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Though, as an afterthought, if the concern is with husbands enforcing unreasonable dresscodes on wives, how many schools in the UK enforce equally-unreasonable dresscodes on young people?
In truth, have we any right to criticise, or are we worse?
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At 9:48pm on 13 Jul 2010, dsinanan wrote:
It was about Inner beauty as a human being, and it was very insightful and thoughfully written. One shouldn't assume that everyone women in a Burka is a prisoner waiting to be released into the "freedoms" of the Western World.
---------------------------------------------------
Why is it a "western world freedom"? I do not see people in China covering their faces. I do not see people in Africa covering their faces to the public. And I do not view those places as having a "western mentality". Why does everything have to be a "western" idea when the entire rest of the world does not practice this.
Initially there may be some tendencies for people to treat women differently based on how they look but over time that disparity lessens. It takes time for people to get past superficial differences. And they get no practice at it if the very people they need to learn to treat as equals are concealed and treated as subordinates.
If there was true equality a woman could choose exactly how much skin to reveal and how many and what kind of clothes to wear.
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Last time I was in France, in Paris, was at the time of the previous World Cup. I saw a large crowd of French supporters, some carrying French flags going home.
Immediately afterwards I saw crowds of immigrant youths carrying Algerian and Palestinian flags barracking and trying to pick up a fight with a few French policemen.
There are videos on "YouTube" showing immigrants doing an Islamic service right on the pavements of one of the main streets in Paris.
I think the French do need to assert French culture and the prohibition of the burqa has to be only a start.
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33. At 9:24pm on 13 Jul 2010, SaraBH wrote:
IgnatiusA (26), when do people wear motorcycle helmets? When they are riding their motorcycle, to protect themselves. They have a tangible purpose. And from what little I know of French law one isn't allowed to wear them in shops and other such places. If there suddenly becomes a surge of people wearing helmets for reasons beyond their intended purpose, I'm sure the issue would be addressed.
I agree that motorcycle helmets are generally worn for a purpose. I was pointing out that in making an exception, a loophole has been left.
I'd be interested to see how the law would be phrased - it would be fun to see them ban the wearing of motorcycle helmets in public. Banning them whilst not on a bike would preclude their being tried on in shops or used by racing drivers.
I'm no expert in french law, but in the uk the need to take off a helmet - even in a bank - is not a legal requirement but is left to the premises owner to request.
what next - should we ban coats with pockets? - a guy with his hand in his pocket may well be concealing a gun or a knife. The worst a woman in a veil is likely to be hiding is bad teeth or a case of halitosis - (though it could just as easily be a friendly smile.)
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Criminalize the men who can't show where in the Koran it is written that women may be forced to wear.......
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Anteaus (41), you do realize you just compared women to children? How are school uniforms, worn solely during the school day, equatable with having to cover one's face every time they leave their house or are in the company of unrelated men? We have a right to criticize because this isn't a case of moral relativism: Niqab and Burqa aren't like school uniforms, and their use is detrimental in myriad ways. They can be abused by people wanting to escape the law. They are worn because women come to believe that piety is equal to becoming as invisible as possible. "It liberates me" - it liberates you because you become anonymous, not held up to the standards of people who have a face to be associated with their actions and words. You can be a nonconformist, modest, and pious without wearing Niqab/Burqa.
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I have to say this law confuses me slightly. Not in the French motivations for them (although I feel there may be more to it than the reasons expressed) but more in my response to it.
I understand the problems of unchecked immigration to our countries and I also understand the natural response to protect your own culture, it's certainly easier than admitting you're in the wrong. However I also firmly believe that if these women want to wear full veils then they should be allowed to do so. That said I suppose it also comes down to whether or not you wish to protect the rights of these people who cover their face (be they muslim women, political protesters etc.) or to protect the rights of those they make feel uncomfortable.
I suppose in conclusion I am ambiguously uncomfortable with this new law, I agree with certain of its justifications but not necessarily its implications.
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So Sarkozy has secured 2000 more customers to l'Oréal?
Was this part of the pre-electoral deal?
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Re 34. At 9:31pm on 13 Jul 2010, strcprstskrzkrk wrote:
"I am fairly sure that you wouldn't be able to walk about town with a balaclava with holes for only eyes and mouth. In the street maybe but try going in to a shop or restaurant. Heck, try it in a bank or the post office!"
Are you complaining about it?
You'd better be, because they'll soon be after internet anonymity (see Italian MEP Tiziano Motti's proposal).
Think about it: you'll have to give up your musical nickname and give your true identity every time you'll post a thought on HYS!
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The burka is a repressive and backward relic which should be banned from the UK too.
All the excuses of cultural diversity won't wash. (And BTW, should we accept "cultural diversity" as an excuse for female genital mutilation, 'honour killings' or any other 'quaint traditional customs' from mediaeval times?).
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Those who feel that it's acceptable to take away the freedoms of others out of fear should read the words of pastor Martin Niemöller.
THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
If I want the right to continue to practice my own faith in public, unmolested by a state that values secularism above personal freedom, then I should also stand by the rights of others to practice their own faith in their own way too - even when the requirements to do so are disputed, because there's very little worth anything in any faith or culture which isn't controversial in some way or other.
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As a Muslim from North America, I totally support the French ban on the Niqab. First of all let me clearly state as a Muslim that wearing a Niqab or a Veil is not a requirment of Islam and is not mentioned in Quran. What Quran says is to dress modestly and not like a ninja. Muslims need to move beyond such petty issues and focus on more important issues at hand. While the rest of the world pushes forward, we push ourselves backward because we refuse to let go of our dated values. Secondly, when moving to a new country you are expected to confirm to the new rules and culture of your host country. It is only normal. Muslims must integrate themselves and not shun themselves from their communities.
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IgnatiusA (44), I agree a loophole has been left, but I don't know how feasible it would be to attempt to use that loophole. As for banning other items of clothing, other items of clothing actually have a tangible purpose(such as, say, carrying items)rather than a purely ideological/preferential one.
And, while unlikely, the worst a woman in a burqa/niqab could be hiding is actually explosives and shrapnel (as seen in various suicide bombings, look into female suicide bombings in Russia and Iraq for prime examples)
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If the face veil is banned what about the other extreme, females walking almost naked on the streets with skimpy outfits in the name of social liberation? These indecent exhibitionist perverted attitudes should be banned first.
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#8 Freeborn John.
--- You won´t be able to see the difference !
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If Islamic countries can create laws forcing women to wear veils, then non-Islamic countries have the moral right to ban them.
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Vive la France! [Long Live France]. Just hours before Bastille Day, I as a moderate, secular American Muslim salute France on the triumph of republican values against Wahhabist extremism. For those people that defend the burqa / burka / niqab / face-veil under "freedom of religion," they should realise that freedom of religion means freedom from religion. Just as we should not permit child sacrifices and sati (suttee), we should not permit women to be enslaved in the niqab.
Furthermore, the Qur'an does not ask for the hijab, let alone the niqab. You can be modest without wearing a hijab or niqab. In fact, neither the hijab nor the niqab is a modest garment in the context of 21st century postmodernity. Praise be to liberty, equality, and fraternity!
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SaraBH (46) wrote:- you do realize you just compared women to children?
Yes. I made the point that in many UK schools, especially religious ones, requirements to wear unusual or distinctive clothing exist, along with extreme restrictions on other aspects of appearance, and this is for some reason regarded as acceptable. This may even be taken as far as denying a person an education because they have, for example, a facial piercing, or for that matter wear a headscarf. I do not quite understand the position you seem to take, namely that it is acceptable to inflict this on persons just because they happen to be under 18, when you agree that it is not OK to impose a functionally similar restriction upon a person in a different age-group.
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Integration does not mean having to renounce one's culture. This is an unfair law and it just goes to show how little we have really understood the Muslim culture and the value given to Islamic dress. In my opinion, this is not a step towards cultural unity. If we welcome people from different cultures in Europe then we need to respect their ways and not impose our ways on them in the name of integration!
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To whom who argue that the Burka issue in France is an issue of Safety. Do not kid yourself and see this as a law to promote safety.
It is not even a law to protect the rights of persecuted woman.
It is simply a law that allows the French to send a message that they will force thier "culture" on those who they think are not french enough for their liking.
Safety, Woman's rights, (although commendable goals) are just an excuse to gain the support of the people.
The fact of the matter is that this law will not improve safety and neither will it be, even the least bit effective in promoting the rights of persecuted women in French society.
It will be interesting to observe the consequences of this rash decision.
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When can we have such a rule in the UK for the good reasons, not subjecting women to this demeaning dress, but also limiting motorcycle head gear to people riding motorbikes and not permitting trouble makers to cover their faces to cause public harrassment.
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mvr512 Wrote:
When such a culture, or certainly the women-are-inferior part of it, is clearly inferior to our women-are-equal culture, then we should not have any respect for such a culture. All cultures are not equal and every aspects of every culture is not by definition an enrichment.
For you what you do look good and reasnable, but for someone else it may not. If you are saying that you and your culture are superior; IT is called Arrogance and bigotedness.
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Well done France and Belgium - it's about time we stood up to the Islamic threat to overtake the West. IF these people want to reap the benefits of freedom of speech, western values etc., then they MUST assimilate, they MUST adopt western dress and obey western laws. If they can't do this, then they must return to their countries of origin. Our own culture, values and history are being wiped out by the PC brigade and the invasion of ethnic minorities. WE would NOT have laws adapted to our ways if we moved to a Muslim country - by the way, how many westerners move to these places? Get rid of the turbans, the ceremonial daggers, the burka and start putting our OWN people first. Let the rest become westernized, or leave. They should also ALL learn to speak and understand the language of their chosen countries. If these basics are not acceptable, then stay where you are.
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A profane and sacrilegious act by France.
Some people are talking about whether veil is compulsory or not, This is not the case here, The case is about freedom of choice, Are you guys suggesting that people are only allowed to do something if it is in their religious books?
By the way it is not just Burka that France has banned, Muslim girls are not allowed to enter schools with their headscarf in France. How can you justify that???????
Today France has mocked all personal liberties, including democracy, freedom of choice, human rights and freedome of expression.
It is shocking to see some people in this forum claim to be muslims and condemn themselves, surely you are lying.
Sarkozy is encouraging other women to be like Bruni (distributing their naked pictures, like Bruni has) so others can not criticize his wife.
Freedom is has died in France on 14/07/2010.
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A number of people seem to be jumping to inaccurate conclusions.
Some of these facts have been presented in the French media (including Radio France International) but are being overlooked elsewhere -- the BBC also had summarized some of these points in other articles, but the public is not reading all the information. Here is a brief summary of some of the generally-ignored issues:
1) Only certain types of veil are being banned -- specifically, those which conceal the face to the point where the individual wearing the veil cannot be readily identified. Other types (the majority) of Islamic veil are still permitted. The fact is that a veil which conceals nearly everything except the eyes could serve as a disguise that could be worn by men as well as women seeking to conceal their identity.
2) Some Islamic organizations in France do not condone the wearing of the type/s of veil being banned.
3) Media have reported that some women have been mandated by spouses or others to wear the veils that are being banned, and therefore the law also serves to protect women who are under coercive pressure to wear veils that they would not otherwise wear.
4) The law may be more focused on concerns related to concealed identity and actions rather than targeting of religions or the bulk of religious adherents.
5) History shows, over and over, over the centuries, that religious institutions and customs have been used for covert political operations, including 'holy wars' and this is now rampant around the globe. Various religions, not just Islam, but also self-identified Christian, Jewish and even Buddhist (religion or not?) groups and/or cults with hidden agendas.
6) France has a right to protect itself from people abusing religion and religious costumes or icons to create social or political turbulence... and the same is true of all other countries on our planet.
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Facial and body coverings are being regularly used by some militants to disguise suicide body vests and hide the fact that a man is wearing traditional Islamic women's clothing! It makes suicide bombing runs easier to pull off for them.
When all Muslims or Islamic people finally absolutely decry and forbid all militant violence directed at other cultures. That is when wearing veils would be nothing to worry about.
To you Islamic Muslims - stop christian beheadings - stop stoning your mothers - stop honor killings - stop murdering your children - stop the blood bath you seem to be addicted to - stop the enslavement of people in your world - stop allowing child brides.
Use conversation to improve your acceptance rather than barbaric violence to all who do no comply with your religious values! Show the world that Muslims care and are a humane society - even towards the Jewish peoples!
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Darn, now what am I going to wear for Halloween?
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Lose the burqas. They have no place in the Western World. They are ugly, oppressive and more than a little scary. S-T put it best: When non-Muslims visit Muslim countries, they are expected to follow that country's laws. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. It's not disrespectful to anyone's religion, it's just common sense.
What's next? Are we to endure honour-killings and public stonings in the name of Islam?
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Wow, this law is even MORE oppressive to women! It sounds like men won't get arrested if they're wearing the veil, but women will! Unfair!
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The French fines anyone wearing the veil, the Saudis fine anyone not wearing the veil. Why can't we just let women wear whatever they want to wear.
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#56 JBinDenver.
-- when did one evil justify another?
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65. At 00:21am on 14 Jul 2010, panjsheri wrote:
A profane and sacrilegious act by France.
Some people are talking about whether veil is compulsory or not, This is not the case here, The case is about freedom of choice, Are you guys suggesting that people are only allowed to do something if it is in their religious books?
Freedom of choice? Well, most of us westerners have NOT had the freedom of choice. Had we been allowed this basic human right, then most of these ethnic minorities would not be overtaking our culture and heritage.
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I sincerely hope that the law will be vigorously enforced against police who hide their identity behind balaclavas.
It is a law against hiding you face, is it not?
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threnodio_II wrote:
"It is a law against hiding you face, is it not?"
Yes, in the same way that gassing jews is a matter for the municipal toxic substances review board.
This new french attempt at achieving cultural glory through legislation, which I suppose must be an attractive option if your science is mundane and your engineering is flunky, provides every pundit the opportunity to prove their intellectual dishonesty by agreeing that it has nothing to do with targeting female members of the muslim faith with the disruptive attention of the state.
The thing about people who are really capable of being helpful in cultural disputes is that nearly always find a way to do it at the same time as being very nice about it. That is called diplomacy.
Aggravating hatreds by using the state to pursue intrusive vendettas against one cultural minority is a policy calculated to milk popular emotional sentiment at the cost of long term social stability.
If anyone is in doubt about the unjust nature of this law, one needs only contemplate the thoughts of a muslim youth who understands that the police will be targeting his mother to force her give up her habits of faith, and that other religions are not being targeted for their unique predilections.
What we see in france is cheap right wing politicians playing the politics of hatred and intolerance, and of confrontation. For the sake of cynical votes in a poorly structured political economy, a few party members are starting a chain of events that can only end pitting one party of french society against another in furious hatred.
What a pathetic and negligent display of political power.
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"Criminalising women behind the veil"
or perhaps
"France enforces its societal secular values"
Shame on you BBC and shame on you Gavin.
Despite you being Europe correspondent you have FAILED to EXPLAIN why its is so important to the french culturally as it is the same way as burqua wearing it is to some muslims. UNTIL YOU DO THIS YOU YOUR ARTICLES WILL BE INACCURATE AND FAIL TO CONEVEY THAT ITS IS NOT JUST A RIGHT WING REACTIONS, BUT A SET OF DEEPLY HELD VALUES.
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"Criminalising women behind the veil" and lets not forget the men who are the main instigators of this medieval practice...
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I disagree with such laws. In essence, they are against freedom. The problem in the west is the ideological left, not ideological muslims. It is far more sensible to ensure any organisation, public or private, has the right if it so chooses to ban the wearing of veils on its property and be exempt from whichever human rights legislation would then be thrown at it. For instance, if the BBC doesn't want female employees wearing the veil, (as it clearly does not), then it can discourage them as it sees best. But if say, BBC Bradford wants to be entirely staffed by muslims in veils, then it is free to do so. The subject of veils is a symptom of the real problem in most western countries: lack of sensible immigration policies. Some immigrants are more beneficial to the west than others but no one in the political domain is allowed to say so.
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@ democracythreat : You are an ignoramus. Can you please explain why anyone would want to veil themselves. If it is cultural. It is wrong. If it is religious. It is wrong. It is based on the concept of treating women as inferior, unable to think for themselves. An object to be possessed.
Ever wonder why in these societies and cultures the men don't veil themselves, yet they insist their women should?
It is asinine comments like yours that give succor to those that want to enslave others using the pretext of centuries old culture and religion.
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To all who oppose this law, here is the logical conclusion of such a religio/cultural mindset:
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/front-page/16-woman-saved-by-villagers%2C-police-from-kari-death-370-hs-03
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Research have shown that people who use face coverings are less susceptible to airborne diseases such as H1N1 etc? What happen if their primary reason of covering their faces is to protect themselves from diseases? Will it be o.k then to take of the headscarf and wear the face masks ?
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This is just another political ploy by a ruling party that is dwindling in support which is trying to regain its support by inciting racial hatred under the guise of French nationalism. The ignorant public ( 70% of French population) bought the idea and will support the current government till the next election. While the real problem is a French economy which is heading into ruins and a president that has low moral values!
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This law will hopefully be declared a breach of human rights in Strasbourg.
The security risks are non-existent at least in the UK as laws already exist requiring women to remove their facial coverings in high-risk security areas. The anti-terrorist argument is entirely ridiculous since bombs are not hidden by a veil!!! They are hidden in bags, and under clothing,the face covering makes no difference.
The argument that this is about emancipating oppressed women is pretty illogical.Those woman who are so oppressed that they are forced to cover their faces by husbands or fathers will become more oppressed as it is likely that they will be forbidden from leaving the house. How will this help those women? And women who want to wear veils will be oppressed by predominantly male legislators.
If people are uncomfortable with a woman wearing a veil perhaps it is they that need re-educating to realise that a veil does not make a person a terrorist. Racism starts with picking on and demonising physical differences and this seems to institutionalise cultural intolerance.
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First, it is amazing that women cannot move foreward either they wish to be viewed as an object, whether religious or personal. I think it is outlandish to wear such an old and out dated item. I am not fond of religion to begin with, I am also not fond of men being neanderthals they would not be here if women could not conceive? Second can anyone imagine these ladies trying to be broadcasters. Their man directive is breeding and household and that is the limit of their growth. It's unfortunate and very sad!
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I noticed a number of Muslims support the ban. Hey, this is not about Islam. It is about protecting an individual right to express themselves the way they see fit aka human right ! Haven't you not learned that while you live in the West! Even in Islam there is no compulsion in religion! Even your prophet Mohamet did not force the "infidels" into wearing Islamic attire!
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There is no question that the issue and the timing are just a smokescreen to other issues but nontheless as I explained quite vividly in the other thread it is an 100% reasonable measure. Covering one's face is an aggressive act and goes against the very basic notions in western societies. Permitting things like total cover of face comes in pure contradiction with common nudism which afterall is perceived as much less aggressive.
This is not even a case for discussion. It is just a social convention that enterred the lew just like nudism, which is for long now forbidden in pubic places (apart certain exceptions). Most interestingly it is one of the very few laws that actually finds ok the bulk of society. There is nothing much to argue on that.
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This is not a political or religeous issue...it is a "fear" issue.
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As an American, I generally dislike the full veil. However, for the French to tout a multicultural nation is absurd since they decide to legislate laws against a minority group. Why can't the majority "bourgeois" Frenchmen form a simple dialogue with the poorer Algiers, 4th generation French born Algiers I might add. Simply undemocratic, if you ask me.
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89. At 03:41am on 14 Jul 2010, Ausboy wrote:
"""This is not a political or religeous issue...it is a "fear" issue."""
Are you too on that slurr about islamophobia and such? That is a common old tactic to attack a thesis accusing it of being "afraid", of having "phobias" and such.
There is no fear. There is simply the will of people not to have to do with the islamists. People just do not want any of this. They do not want any foreigner coming to their house and trying to impose to them a different way of thinking. As simple as that. People are not afraid, people are disgusted by what they see around them. Behind this non-issue (of course covering the face is illegal and should had been dealt years before, prior to the augmentation of the numbers of muslims in Europe) there hides a huge injustice against indigenous people. You and me will work all their lifes to buy our houses, but these people came and received houses (whatever houses, it does not matter) for free. Your parents fought to have a security and healthcare, these people get it for free. You work, they earn money for free. Now, that is the real problem of the people. The huge injustice behind.
The islamists case is just a front and it is just to put societies to constant unrest and that is something that many people know it well: it is the same centers who bring islamists in Europe that actually give rise to such issues - but that will take me some time to explain it to you unless you have the basic of knowledge in geopolitics. But that does not mean that people will just have to tolerate just about anything. They do not want any more empowerement of muslims and they do not want any mingling of muslims in legal and societal issues. Muslims in Europe have abolutely no right at all to speak as muslims. The maximum they can do is speak individually as citizens. When they start speaking as muslims they automatically considered themselves as some kind of invading force. If you do not like the term then you cannot refuse that if they speak as muslims, they automatically consider themselves as a separate political force in which indigenous people have absolutely no place (apart being converted...) and as such it is 110% natural they will find huge political resistance. You can denigrate it as "racism, fear, islamophobia" and as any other ridiculous accusation, that won't change the fact that the reaction of people is simply a healthy reaction to a very aggresive stance of a significant part of the muslim (often illegal) populations in Europe to which even moderate muslims do not particularly clarify their positions. It should make you sit down and think that Europeans do not react like that to the numerous Chinese or other non-muslim communities that install themselves in Europe. It should make you think even more that from Sweden to Spain, so many different European cultures have absolutely an identical reaction to muslims, hence it is not anything common to all these different societies but actually it is something with the muslims that provokes all that reaction.
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First of all, it is not right that all women who do niqab are forced to do that rather it is the personal values and belief of those Muslim women. Even if the majority is for banning niqab, the Muslim women are humiliated by this law. Does the ratio 355: 1 includes 2000 women who are living in France?
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From the article:
"""...There will be those in the banlieues - the suburbs where many minorities live - who will argue that they are the ones who are prevented from integrating into mainstream French society."""
Oh yes! Definitely.
The bad French have oppressed them since:
1) they gave them free houses against their will!!!
2) they have them inactivity funds, proper salaries if we count the money given for each of the kids of the family, against their will!!!
3) they try to drag their kids at shoool against their will!!!
4) they try to cure them for free at hospitals!!!!
Despeakable French.
Well, frankly do not ask me to tell you what means "integration" for a large number of these people.
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@ 76 democracythreat
I agree completely with the your rationale and argument. I couldn't have worded it any better.
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i agree completely with Asif well said.
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Well done the French.
There is certainly a case for banning the veil in public offices and schools, as religious extremism should not promoted by the state.
Those who call this racism simply do not understand the damage that has been done to community relations by Taliban supporters in the UK and elsewhere who are separating out Muslims from everyone else.
Islamic extremism has no place in a civilised society.
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#91 Sorry, I completely disagree Nik, the fear is patently obvious to anyone, if you care to look. For example, most folk would be at least a little uncomfortable being face to face with a person completely covered in most situations (especially those where you cannot percieve who it is, or facial recognition or expression). For example....on a typical winter day if I was to walk into a store wearing an "eyes-only" balaclava, I would expect people to be afraid. Not because I am a "scary" person, but because of the fear that is is associated with such a dress code. If I then decided I liked to wear said balaclava and took up baseball on my evenings as well I would imagine many shopkeepers and bank managers would be "concerned that I was on their premises".
Incidentally, I am English (Aus Citizen), live in Aus and have many friends of all religious beliefs including Muslim, Seikh, Hindu, Catholic, Protestant Jehovah's Witnesses and have no problem with anyone's beliefs, we all get along fine.
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The people who support this law seem to have forgotten the crucial difference between...the freedom to not wear the veil...and...the criminalization of wearing the veil. This law does not protect women or freedom; it makes a mockery of both.
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Multiracialism and Multiculturism are at the root of the problem .
Politicians and Globalists have failed to forsee the consequences of immigration policies , that have encouraged people of vastly different cultures to come to live in European countries . France has brought the problem upon herself , from her North African colonies .
Europeans , with an advanced culture , know to adapt themselves to the cultures of foreign countries they may visit ; whereas people of more primitive cultures do not .
Secular or otherwise , religion in Europe is not practised in public , neither do people dress to display their religion . Public demonstration of Christianism in a Muslim country would be considered a serious offence .
Europe has an advanced and longstanding culture , with slight variations from one country to another . One finds today that European culture is being swamped by that of islamic immigrants ; that we as host nations must give way in favour of those who wish to migrate to our countries .
The wearing of the Niqab or Burka in primitive Islamic countries , is to protect women from molestation or rape , which in those countries might be a reality . Husbands are fearful of their wife being seen by other men and the danger of their infedelity . These customs are ancient traditions and the people who practise them do not see the reasoning behind them . They do not reason that in a civilised European country , men do not Ogle , Molest , or Rape attractive women in the street ; that women do not have to be covered from head to foot for their safety .
In all religions chastity before marriage is encouraged , as a rule of the religion ; whereas , I suspect that the real reason was the prevelence of Syphilis and other venerial diseases . It was important for the continuance of a community , that young couples marrying and having children should not be perpetuating these fatal diseases .
Muslims do not eat pork ; but originally for health reasons , that pork in a warm climate might carry Salmonella . Even in western countries pork was traditionally eaten in the cooler months , when there was an R in the month .
To quote the USA as a multiculture where all cultures are accepted , is not correct in this case , as the US has been peopled by immigration . I note that several American Muslims support France's ban .
I have read references to children being forced to wear school uniform , it being contrary to their right of self expression .
School uniform is a part of the education too , that children will learn to dress properly . School uniform evens up the inequalities there may be between children in a school and makes them identifiable in or out of school . Writing as one who hated school and resented wearing school uniform ; I feel I can justly address this subject . School itself is an infringement of personal liberty , but in the interest of having an education . I have seen a man on television who had a university degree complain that he couldn't get a job . He was raggedly dressed and his long hair unbrushed and all over the place , when he spoke he was inarticulate and difficult to understand . My niece was working at the bar of her college a year after graduating with a degree . The principal passed by and said to her ," What are you doing still here , it's time you had a job ; get yourself a proper haircut and some decent clothes ". This done , within a week she had three offers of jobs from publishers .
People have to adapt to their circumstances .
I as an Englishman living in Italy have been greatly offended by suddenly being confronted by Muslim women wearing the Burka , in my small rural town . In Europe today women are looked upon as equals to men , to see them dressed that way is an affront to one's sensibility and feeling of respect for women . Some muslim women may argue that being hidden frees them from male scrutiny , that it does not matter what they look like or what they wear . For all we know they could be an ugly unwashes ragbag , or a beauty completely naked under the Burka . To westerners women hidden under the Burka become third class citizens , with little or no respect for themselves .
In European culture today we expect women to be free and to dress normally , if modestly , in the fashion of the day .
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Actually Nik, I read the remainder of your blog and realised we may be in accord than you think. I believe am very much a "common sense" person. Some arguments can become political or religeous when they actually aren't. I feel this is a case in point. I'm not pro-muslim, or pro anything in particular, but I have found every muslim I have known to be really nice people, kind, considerate and less likely to take offence than most (but that's in Aus, maybe it works different here)
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As a human being I have been brought up to participate in society by being sensitive to other people and to do this I check their body language and the expression on their face. For this I need to see the face.
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(@Asif) Great comment Asif. However, as your Muslim brother, it seems like you are not even moderate Muslim! If you go back to the Islamic teaching, every Muslim should be moderate. But there is no such thing as modernism or secularism in Islam. Islam is just Islam and will never change. People (example like you or me) just interpret the Quranic teachings according to their desires. This is a great misguidance. The only thing Islam teaches us to follow the scholars who have great knowledge than us. The banning of the Burqa is a matter of making laws against someone’s conscience which is against the basic human right.
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(@Huaimek and Nik) the banning of the Burqa is not something new in European system in terms of violation of human rights. This is an infringement of personal liberty and one’s conscience. I’m an Aus Muslim and don’t agree that the Burqa is an Islamic dress code. However, these women chose to wear the way they feel comfortable, just as western woman chose to go half naked in summer (which is by the way offensive to me but still have to accept it for the sake of multiculturalism) and this choice they made should not be challenged by anyone especially those who claim to be the defendants of Human Rights. The same Lawmakers who voted the Burqa ban are not different from those lawmakers who encouraged Racism in America and Apartheid in South Africa. They both made laws that targeted a particular group of people and are both politically motivated. Wake up mates, it is time to embrace multiculturalism and accept many ways of life from different people. Don’t expect that all people coming in Europe must all accept European culture. In other way, as Europe opens doors to migrants, it should accept that people will come with different cultures!
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Why do these people come to Europe if they want to wear a burkha? Why dont they go to Saudi Arabia or Pakistan? Saudi Arabia does not allow you to practice your religion there, and any one who goes there has to follow those rules, so why cant they accept European Rules in Europe. I think that this is using democracy as a basis for occupation, followed by multiplication till there is a majority, then domination. This is what they did in Kashmir and claimed this Hindu state for their own.If the Europeans do not wake up this will be their fate. France is paying the price for harboring Ayatollah Khomeini. It is predicted that by 2050, white British will be a minority in Britain, based on birth rates. It has been reported that European women are being abused in Holland, when they walk through Islamic dominated suburbs, in their own native country. Has it never struck the panjandrums of human rights in Brussels that the native Europeans have human rights too!?! LOL Good luck Europe, your hyper-civilisation will emasculate you!
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Re #20
Quote "...fix a broken toenail is with an axe."
Well, a 'democratic' vote adopted in Switzerland for the ban on 'minarets' & You certainly didn't write condemning that result - - in fact You bottled Your answer & argued 'for' & 'against' - - oh, but a nation other than the Swiss and suddenly its all so easy to find fault!
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Study after study have shown how important facial expression is in communication between humans; both verbally and nonverbally. Since humans are, by nature, a very social species, the blocking of visual perception of the face is unsettling and does nothing to enhance communication. My opinion has nothing to do with religion or ethnicity; I am, quite simply, not comfortable speaking to someone whose face I cannot see.
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This is clearly a difficult issue - trying to balance rights and responsibilities always is.
It is my belief that society should be secular, but true secularism respects the heterogenous nature of humanity and should strive to protect peoples' liberty (something I thought the French were supposed to be keen on?). Passing laws about what people should wear is not the job of government. People dress according to social contracts and personal choices and any infringement of this is illiberal and immoral.
I can understand the issues of identification and oppression. But it is these issues that governments should be addressing by focussing on those women who are forced into wearing some form of veil (the minority in France) and by implementing systems whereby when identification is required for official purposes muslim women, who choose themselves to wear a veil, can provide identification in a way that doesn't, at the same time, offend their sensibilities.
When it comes to the issue of intergration I don't see how a ban on veils will have anything but a negative effect. It reinforces difference rather than drawing people together under our common banner of humanity. Successful integration would allow women to wear veils as it would provide them with the sense of identity that everyone requires whilst they adjust to the culture-shock of living in, what for many, must feel like a totally alien environment.
I have worked in Luton for the last 10 years, which I'm sure many of you know has a large Pakistani population. What I have noticed throughout this period is that for along time the number of women wearing veils was going down as recent immigrants adjusted to life in the UK and began to feel comfortable moving about in public without one. In the last couple of years,however, I have noticed a (slight) increase in the number of veiled women. This, I believe, is because integration during these years has not been as successful, largely because of racist tension generated by right-wing, white groups in the area - namely the BNP and English Defense League. The antisocial behaviour of these groups is massively damaging to successful integration, for example the EDL throwing bacon off the roofs of buildings at unsuspecting foreigners (not just muslims - racist scum doesn't know the difference between a muslim, a hindu or a sikh - the racially motivated attack on the Mayor of Luton, a sikh, on the grounds that he was a muslim demonstrates this).
To adjust an oft used cliche, integration begins at home.
As a final note: I haven't read all of the posts on this board, but some that I have read also demonstrate the ignorance of the 'indiginous' populations that this legislation is supposed to protect. e.g.
99. At 06:56am on 14 Jul 2010, Huaimek wrote:
For all we know they could be an ugly unwashes ragbag , or a beauty completely naked under the Burka . To westerners women hidden under the Burka become third class citizens , with little or no respect for themselves .
In European culture today we expect women to be free and to dress normally , if modestly , in the fashion of the day .
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I stongly suspect that this poster doesn't respect women quite as fully as he posits. If he did I'm not sure the comment about the appearence of women under the veil would be there. In fact he is conforming to the Western culture of objectifying and marginalising women.
A woman in a burkha does not become a third-class citizen to me. That they do to him says far more about him than it says about burkhas or islam more widely. It is this kind of bigotted opinion that is creating such a huge barrier for succesful integration in all parts of the world.
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I also agree with 76 and 85.
I think that such women, who choose this rather than being forced, are usually misguided; but they certainly are not 'freed' by this law. The consequences of this law will include some women being effectively under house arrest.
The arguement about suicide bombers is also stupid - such bombs are in bags or under ordinary clothes, not attached to one's nose.
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"There are only about 2,000 women in France who wear the burka or niqab. Many are recent converts to Islam"
Interesting point. Look at me! I am so humble and pious! Meh...
I cannot remember who said it but the saying seems apt:
"There is something about born again types that make you wish they had not been born the first time".
The tent is not needed in Islam even under the most strict interpretation. The new French law is simply drawing a line in the sand after many years of giving ground.
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Message from the French can be simply stated as "We have been tolerant. Stop taking the p***"
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No. 104 speaks for the majority of indigenous eurpeans. There is no such reality as multiculturism - only an unworkable concept - similar to true anarchy!
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I do believe that WE are being unfair to women wearing the burkha.The great majority have been brainwashed from a very early age by their fundamentalist parents and teachers .Although not as extreme we see this in most other religions as well,From nuns in their habits to religious jews in all the 18th century eastern european paraphernalia they dress up in .The Amish likewise.Little girls like to dress up.Its just that these parents of these 3 year old girls tell their daughters what they have to dress up in, for the rest of their lives. BUT to be honest, this is not worse than the the parents of young children in Northern Ireland teaching their three year olds that attacking policemen and people of another branch of christianity is their purpose in life. I would take the burkha anyday.
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For the cultural relativists amongst us. There's a good video out to be seen on YouTube, its Bill Maher's reaction to the South Park/Muhammad 'controversy' (which really isn't a controversy because making a cartoon is never controversial).
In it Maher recognizes that we have and have had our share of fundies in the west, but that what the fundies of the middle east do is infinitely worse today than what our fundies do today. And also, at the end, a clear statement that certain things such as equality for women is simply not up for negotiation.
And that last bit, by advocating endless consessions to cultures with inferior aspects, the multiculturalists make radical islam believe that if only they exert enough pressure, thoise things such as equality for women ARE up for negotiation.
The thing is very simple, we adapt when we go there, they adapt when they come here, and we do not tolerate the idea that the basics of our free society and human rights can be negotiated to fit the agenda of radical religious folks.
Religion isn't anything special anyway, it's all ideologies and christianity (mainly then) and islam are without doubt the two ideologies in whose name most people have been killed/oppressed/subjugated. There just isn't doubt on that.
And those who use the 'freedom of religion' argument, well I think its wrong. It should be 'freedom from religion'. Besides, why should we listen to folks who believe in something that doesn't exist? I will never have respect for the malign ideologies of christianity and islam.
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There are only about 2,000 women in France who wear the burka or niqab. Many are recent converts to Islam. I spoke today to 26-year-old Anissa. She has been wearing the niqab for two years. She says the new law is Islamaphobic and she will not remove her veil.
I suppose she thinks german laws that prohibit nazi symbols are naziphobic?
And the recent converts bit, I've noticed that radicals are pushing a 'propaganda' version of islam to fool westeners into thinking it is something wonderful. Its basically islam, without all the murders and without mentioning that mr Muhammad (the dodgy 7th century character) had no respect for other peoples possessions or lives (to put it mildly).
I've encountered a few christian drones in my life, but really nothing compares to the level of brainwashing that islamic drones seem to have undergone. The same b.s. claims everywhere.
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63.panjsheri wrote:
For you what you do look good and reasnable, but for someone else it may not. If you are saying that you and your culture are superior; IT is called Arrogance and bigotedness.
Are you saying a culture that fully respects women as fully equal, and a culture that does not, are equal? Hogwash!
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Great. So now we have EU states and municipalities banning certain types of attire, while others (e.g., certain municipalities in Italy as I read in a recent news article) ban sitting on public stairs, public eating of sandwiches or licking of ice cream, kissing in a car or lying on a beach. Not to mention that there is obviously also a patchwork of local regulations regarding public smoking and consumption of alcohol (e.g., they are banned in certain streets or squares). Most of these regulations are not publicly advertised (e.g., through street signs), or at the best only in the local language, so that an unwary visitor is likely to get fined or punished for sometimes quite unexpected and outlandish reasons.
Given the potential for beaurocratic harassment and abuse in the various EU locations, I cannot recommend any visitor to visit the EU, until most of these regulations are repealed and the others get published in a regularly updated complete list published in English on easily accessible websites.
Bravo to the EU. The EU states are in the process of killing one of the last remaining industries in which they are still to some extent competitive, the tourist industry. Once Europe runs out of money for its welfare systems, it should not come begging to other countries whose residents have been subjected to this abuse in Europe. Any such begging will be rejected in the most abrupt fashion that a European is capable of imagining.
As regards EU residents, they simply have to accept that they do not live in a free place. If they do not like it, they can also move elsewhere, right. That is the European way - take the abuse or leave.
Given all this local creativity, I also fail to see what is the purpose of the EU, which should presumably make some of these things uniform? Nope, efficiency is not a purpose of the EU, its purpose is creating jobs for useless beaurocrats in Bruxelles, while the state and local authorities can continue in their arbitrary abuse at their whim.
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Re #76 & DemocThreat's views:
"..aggravating hatreds by using the state to pursue intrusive vendettas against one cultural minority.."
Nationwide opinion polls showed upwards of 70% of France's Citizens favoured a ban on full 'face-veils'. Following the polls & lengthy discussions in France's Elected Assembly & various departments a Law was passed by Democratic vote to ban full 'face-veils'.
DemocThreat proclaims: "What a pathetic and negligent display of political power".
Nationwide Opinion polls showed upwards of 60% of Switzerland's Citizens favoured a ban on 'minarets'. Following the polls a Nationwide debate was begun and a Referendum organised to ask the Swiss public to make a decision. The result was a Democratic vote to ban 'minarets'.
Strange, never read any contribution by the domeciled Swiss sage along the lines of, "What a pathetic and negligent display of political power."
Could it be there is a double-standard at work!?
Why this fine fellow also wrote in #76, "..If anyone is in any doubt about the unjust nature of this law, one needs only contemplate the thoughts of a muslim youth who understands that the police will be targetting his mother to force her to give up her habits of faith.."
Moving stuff! Human Rights to the fore! Valiant defence of the minority!
What the great pontificating sage of Switzerland is implying in his commentary of the France vote seems to misplace the sentiments of the France people. People from outside France presume that the French are frightened of radical Islam, and that the right-wing are tapping into ignorant hysteria.
I don't see that. The French just do not want to mess up their radical secularism with out-dated concepts.
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If one wants to be allowed inside a bank or any major public building one has to remove one's motorcycle helmet or balaclava.
Now, what a being hidden under a burka and chadoor is going to do?
And how does one know that what's hidden beneath is a woman, and not, let's say, a 200 pound gorilla?
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Re #48 "So Sarkozy has secured 2000 more customers to l'Oréal?
Don't know. But he might have secured a freedom of expression for at least 2000 individuals.
[It's hard to see somebody's expression beneath chador.]
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Frances descent into naturism continues...
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118.tossacoin wrote: You are clearly a very spiteful, hateful person. To say that one culture is like ice-cream and another is like horse dung IS RACIST. The fact that you cannot see this is precisely because you are racist.
You apparently don't even know the definition of racist. Which I am not. And I entirely dismiss your ludicrous (left wing inspired?) characterization of me.
A more apt analogy would be to say that one culture is like chocolate ice-cream, another like strawberry ice-cream and yet another is like vanilla ice-cream. Different flavours of THE SAME THING.
A culture that does not unequivocally recognize women as equal IS NOT THE SAME THING as a culture that does.
Is the idea that women are equal negotiable for you? How about freedom of speech? How about liberties we take for granted? Which ones would you not object losing in order to have this 'multicultural' 'dream'?
What is your opinion on genital mutilation? Those who practise it consider it to be culture. How about cannibalism? If some tribe considered it a culture, it'd be a-ok for them to continue? How about ritual sacrifices? Those were very much part of American indigenous culture before the Europeans came there. So, it'd be alright if their descendents continued to cut random people up for 'cultural' reasons? Oh, and whaling is in Japanese culture. You see, culture isn't just the bits you like.
On essential liberties, we should make no concessions and also make it very clear that they will also not be made at any point in the future.
As for you calling me racist, it just reinforces the fact that you don't have an argument here. In debate, slinging this 'accusation' around is a refuge for scoundrels.
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I am a Muslim, and i dont agree with the ban of the burqa not becuase i am a muslim but because i believe in freedom of choice. Islam does not state anyone to wear the burqa, in fact the burqa leads to more attention so therefore it has no reasoning behind it. i think all the FREEDOM and LIBERAL banter is a complete and utter farce, we say we indulge in freedoms and civil liberties when infact we contradict them. WHY SHOULD WOMEN NOT BE ALLOWED TO WEAR THEM, JUST AS YOU SEE NUDISTS WHY CANT PEOPLE COVER THEMSELVES UP COMPLETELY IF THEY FEEL SATISFIED. DISCRIMINATION AGAINST THE MINORITY when we see something that makes us feel uneasy we almost immediately want to ban it? WHY
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TO THE MODS
We reserve the right to fail messages which
Are considered likely to disrupt, provoke, attack or offend others
Are racist, sexist, homophobic, sexually explicit, abusive or otherwise objectionable
These are your house rules. I think you need to go through some of these posts (specifically 113 re. comparing certain cultures to horse dung) and then think whether or not these break the house rules. It seems absurd that you censor my post when all it did is point out the racism of others. Well at least mvr152 gets his way: the protection of hatemongers and marginalisation of people who are different to him.
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foscari
Re #112
Interestingly: Those "Parents in Northern Ireland" teaching their 3yr olds to hate another 'peoples' from a sector of religion are often to be found with their faces FULLY covered against recognition by their FELLOW Citizens!
As both types of people opting for the full face-cover stem from Medeivalist anachronisms I can't see how either one is preferable in a modern, progressive society.
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This is partly about politics. When economies are struggling polticians like to divert the attention of the public to other matters. It may be interesting to see what the EU says and if it can enforce any change on a member nation. EU members may all kow-tow to the bankers together but may be less joined on matters of internal governance. I believe the holy men of India would not be permitted to walk the streets naked in most European countries.
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Islam is entirely anti democracy, anti western and enslaves women.
The ban is a very good first step.
Keeping women free will weaken Islam, and that is a very good thing.
Islam = violence.
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123. At 12:35pm on 14 Jul 2010, mvr512 wrote:
Is the idea that women are equal negotiable for you? How about freedom of speech? How about liberties we take for granted? Which ones would you not object losing in order to have this 'multicultural' 'dream'?
What is your opinion on genital mutilation? Those who practise it consider it to be culture. How about cannibalism? If some tribe considered it a culture, it'd be a-ok for them to continue? How about ritual sacrifices? Those were very much part of American indigenous culture before the Europeans came there. So, it'd be alright if their descendents continued to cut random people up for 'cultural' reasons? Oh, and whaling is in Japanese culture. You see, culture isn't just the bits you like.
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Comparing the right of a group of people to wear an item of clothing to issues like female genital mutilation and cannibalism is horribly reductive.
If you read my earlier post you would see that I don't support the subjugation of muslim women by a branch of fundamentalist islam that sees men dictate the dress-code of women and views women as inferior.
It may surprise you that I don't want to see the protection of some quite barbaric cultural pratices in British society. Legislation is not the answer though. It was not so long ago that Anglo-Saxon culture incorporated some quite abhorrant notions, such as: the inequality of the sexes; rampant anti-semitism; the entire imperial notion of cultural, political and economic domination (admittedly this hasn't been fully purged from our psyches - America continues apace with its neo-colonial ambitions whilst many in the UK fail to recognise that the Empire doesn't exist anymore and that this is actually a good thing).
These opinions didn't begin to disappear because we legislated against them. They came through the provision of education and the slow drip, drip of changing cultural situations.
I had the pleasure of being at university with a Sudanese girl who had had genital mutilation forced upon her. She understood very well that telling the bedouin and other cultures who practice fgm that it was just wrong and trying to ban it would do nothing to make sure that young girls didn't have to go through the same ordeal that she did - it would just drive the practice further underground and make it far more dangerous (cf. abortion). Instead she resolved to make getting an education her highest priority so that she could then go back to her own culture and try to disseminate the knowledge she had aquired - the drip, drip effect.
"On essential liberties, we should make no concessions and also make it very clear that they will also not be made at any point in the future."
What, like our liberty to dress in the way that we want to? Should we ban goths because they look threatening to some people? Or hoodies for that matter? Given the choice of walking down one side of the street at 01:00 that was full of 'hoodies' and the other which was full of people wearing burkhas, I know which I would choose.
I do take issue with describing one culture as superior to another because it is then only a very small step to having a hierarchy of cultures - something that's, unsurprisingly, been very unfashionable since the 1940's.
Oh, and racism: The belief that some races are inherently superior (physically, intellectually, or culturally) to others. (from The American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy).
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Do we really care this much what clothes other people choose to wear?
I am not a muslim (I'm an atheist) but I oppose this ban - because I don't see that it's right for a government to force someone to expose part of their body in public, if they dont want to.
Yes wearing a burka seems very odd and oppresive to our eyes, but more importantly, it's none of our business.
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#124 "JUST AS YOU SEE NUDISTS WHY CANT PEOPLE COVER THEMSELVES UP COMPLETELY IF THEY FEEL SATISFIED"
As a society there are certain extremes which may need to be addressed. You have mentioned one which is illegal beyond very restricted areas. The opposite of this is the IslamoTent which the French have moved into the same category.
We should always be wary of banning things but I see the French Law as a natural reaction of a people who feel Islam is mocking them. I would agree to a certain degree; An element of Islam is doing just that.
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" they just want to see your face and therefore identify you!!!!" - S.T
So if I wish to go on a demonstration wearing a mocking mask of the President you will be arrested. If you want to wear a balaclava because it is so cold, yo will be arrested. What next? you decide to grow a beard or put make-up on, I will be arrested for that too. Kids being arrested for using face paint perhaps - why not? Oh I forgot - Father Xmas is now illegal too. Clearly he cannot be identified. It is a pathetically ill-thought out law and people are really stupid if they support it - they will certainly get what they are asking for. It will just be used in bad ways.
It is called FASCISM from a state that quite frankly should know better. They have learned nothing it seems. A silly government which is scared of its own people. All they appear to do nowadays is find ways of repressing anyone who wishes to express themselves differently or anyone who dissents.
Make no mistake about it. If it smells like it, looks like it then it probably is the elephant in the room after all. This is about identifying people for all types of suspect purposes. Even those demonstrating peacefully as is still their right to do so - but for how long will you even be allowed to do that.
Wakey wakey and smell that coffee. Freedom has real costs, except them if you want it and grow up to elect responsible governments.
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@rezausman: Isolated incidents don't make a religion/culture bad.
I don't agree with French ban because it was UK who was hit by 7/7 not France, yet UK has the courage to allow everything and France hasn't.
Regards.
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All cultures definitely are not equal as proven by the fact that there has been a tsunami of immigration into Europe, unneeded and definitely unwanted.
These people left their countries because their own culture had left them backward, or with internal wars, or with lack of freedom etc.
What we need is not "celebration of diversity" but to protect our culture especially when some immigrants are guided by a book which exhorts them to destroy unbelievers (us) and to treat women and girls like house animals.
So a well-deserved pat on the back to the French parliament and people who have shown that they unlike Britain, would not their country become a France of ever diminishing circles
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Apart from the overwhelming nature of this vote (only one parliamentarian voted agains) there has long been indications that Europeans have had enough.
We do not need and certainly do not want "multi-culturalism". We do not want "representatives" of immigrants. We do not want our children to waste their time learning about "other cultures" which basically means the habits/religion of immigrants and quite often includes obnoxious elements (eg treatment of women). We do not want our policemen to go to lessons to learn the culture of immigrants. We do not want to modify our terminology, rewrite or avoid learning about our history, remove, add to or change the name of our holidays because of the immigrants.
The Swiss, Dutch, Italians, Austrians and now the French have started to do something about it. They have in effect started to reclaim their culture. It's only natural and nothing can stop it.
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# 129
Putting aside the fact that the term culture is horribly reductive and so fluid that it doesn't really say anything at all if you use it in as say "American culture" or "French culture". Are you really claiming that no 'culture' as you are saying, is better than any other 'culture'. Because I'm quite sure that the culture that sprang from the Enlightment, is far better than Feudal European culture, or Roman-Greco, slave owning patrician culture. It is quite clear that it is, even if those cultures have aspects that we might 'admire', they are, overall, just not as good.
# 133
Little hint, terrorism didn't start on 9/11, or on 7/7 in Europe. Do try and understand that part. Neither is it valid to this discussion, as we aren't talking about terrorism to begin with.
As for the Burqa ban. I'm ambivalent. On one point, it's a horrible practice that I'm not sorry to see banned. On the other hand, it is not going to solve all that much, and banning these things seems like a step on a slippery slope.
On the other hand, you can't walk down the street naked either. So ...
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I completely agree and support the French on this one. They are standing up for tradition and their way of life. The UK is loosing its traditions and identity faster and faster now. Why should we keep accepting changes to our country and way of life? Go France. If others dont like it then either dont came here in the first place or leave.
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Should we condemn Bhutan for its strict immigration and visa policies? I am not sure that one can even contact their officials to find out if you can move there. They allow about 22,000 visitors a year and all must leave after a short stay. Shouldn't have mentioned that, there may be developers and their banker friends who read this page and they will claim some offense to a Christian woman and want the place invaded and a more responsive government installed..
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During term time here in Leicester one can walk through the entire university complex and be the only white person there. Well over half the women are covered from head to toe. English is spoken in broken form if at all; the preferred speech it would appear is Arabic. What country is this? My ancestors will turn in the grave in disgust. How long before this land of ours becomes a muslim state? 5 years? Ten?
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67. ...some women have been mandated by spouses or others to wear the veils that are being banned, and therefore the law also serves to protect (such) women...
Liberty? How does this law encourage integration/assimilation when the very people it (supposedly) wishes to engage may be cut off from society, confined to the home?
And... *Turkey*: A secular state with a majority Muslim population, the headscarf is banned in state institutions, including universities.
Consider: half my university prep class males went to namaz on Fridays. The religious girls wore hats/hoods *over* their scarves.
Many Turks argue against "their" (conservative religious people's) education as "they" will gain visibility & influence, thus endangering the secularism of the state. An Iranian-style "clothing" revolution is clearly not impossible, they believe.
Families send covered female offspring abroad to be educated.
When female education promotes family wealth & health, & contributes ultimately to the economy, what do you do???
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103. At 08:55am on 14 Jul 2010, Abusharif wrote:
"""(@Huaimek and Nik) the banning of the Burqa is not something new in European system in terms of violation of human rights. This is an infringement of personal liberty and one’s conscience."""
You a muslim protesting about personal liberties? Are you out of your mind? Go start from the likes of Turkey, Saoudi Arabia and Pakistan and when you reach Egypt, Soudan or Algeria then you might as well consider touching France.
For your information the ban of the "full cover" is as much infringement of personal liberty and one's conscience as the banning of nudity in public places. What is so difficult for you to understand in this? Laws must respect the basic social conventions. As one cannot go nude everywhere he likes, he cannot go either with face hidden. It is as basic like that. If you do not like change place of living and go elsewhere where the local social convetions are more close to yours.
"""I’m an Aus Muslim and don’t agree that the Burqa is an Islamic dress code."""
Frankly we do not care about what you consider about islamic dress codes. The issue is not that. This is simply a minor issue of a social convention that is infringed and that is finally delt with a law in France (as it should in other countries). Of course this issue is not the most important we are dealing right now, it is done to act as a smokescreen for Sarkozy's political deficiencies but as a law itself is absolutely correct, better late than never.
"""However, these women chose to wear the way they feel comfortable,..."""
We absolutely not care how they feel comfortable. There are many more people who feel comfortable naked. Should we let them go around as they like?
Do you understand the meaning of social convention or is your education so ineficient that has not equiped you to grasp the basics?
"""...just as western woman chose to go half naked in summer (which is by the way offensive to me but still have to accept it for the sake of multiculturalism)"""
Western women go half naked IN THEIR countries and in countries that have western-like traditions. When they are unlucky enough to find themselves in primitive societies like Saoudi Arabia - usually following the husband whose profession brought him there for some period - they do respect local customs. If they don't then they are subject to local law.
You are in OTHER peoples' country, it is not yours, it is not your people that constructed these societies. You have to have a lot of nerve saying that you "tolerate western women going naked in the summer" when you do that IN THEIR countries!!!!!!
Once again you prove your attitudes and I do not like them at all.
"""...and this choice they made should not be challenged by anyone especially those who claim to be the defendants of Human Rights."""
People chose to go naked and they should not be challenged but then there are social conventions too. The same social conventions apply to people covering their faces too.
"""The same Lawmakers who voted the Burqa ban are not different from those lawmakers who encouraged Racism in America and Apartheid in South Africa."""
Of course, muslims who are into all that carnaval-dressing are tolerant and not racist eh? Imposing themselves in other peoples' societies and while themselves show absolutely no respect for the local culture they have the nerve to impose their own primitive cultures and all what goes with it?
It is not a matter of racism here - the issue of racism should be dealt first among muslim immigrants rather than the indegenous people. I have travelled a lot and the most racist people I have seen around are Arabs, Turks, Pakistani, Somalis... quite the full muslim arrange there....
It is a matter of common sense: the law must respect the social conventions. In Saoudi Arabia the social convention does not permit women to circulate alone and they have to be covered. Unfair and unust and against human rights, it is a social convetion. And everyone unlucky that finds himself in that country has to respect the law. So same goes for France. If these people do not like it it is of our interest. We won't change our social conventions to accomodate for their likings.
"""They both made laws that targeted a particular group of people and are both politically motivated. Wake up mates, it is time to embrace multiculturalism and accept many ways of life from different people."""
Pfff.... look who is talking. You went to a foreign country to avoid living the miserable life they live in your pitiful regressive country of origins but instead of saying a thank you you still cannot respect the local culture. And then you talk about multiculturalism?
Of course you talk about multiculturalism ONLY when you need to impose you own weird customs upon others and not the opposite. Did not see you trying to sell to Saoudis or Yemenites to permit naked people in the Saoudi beaches... Spare us your advices.
"""Don’t expect that all people coming in Europe must all accept European culture."""
Now they have to accept it and live with it. Otherwise they come in an aggressive mode to impose their own values and that is an offense.
"""In other way, as Europe opens doors to migrants, it should accept that people will come with different cultures!"""
Accepting them does not mean destroying the local cultures to accomodate for the new cultures. It is the guest that needs to accomodate his manners not the host.
You are a typical example of a muslim showing absolutely no respect for other cultures who uses the tolerance of others as a weak point to impose your own ideals. You need to change. You should be ashamed of what you are.
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137. At 7:43pm on 14 Jul 2010, MercThrasher wrote:
"""I weary - this is the third or fourth tedious time we've been expected to comment and supply the imaganibation-free, lazy and largely incompetent Beeb journalists with material - they ask the question, we supply the expertise, experience, pro, cons, thinker and bigots the article should have covered."""
I agree. I have said repeatedly that this particular issue is a minor one going in front of bigger issues. However it is an issue of basic social convetions that should be represented by common law. There is nothing much to discuss on it afterall.
"""Public, effective, and extensive facets of Islam are attacking the west on many levels, and there can be no doubt that something must be done"""
Yes but you must understand both the origins of that phenomenon and the real menace:
Origins:
US has found a nice way to control European societies from the inside.
Way of attack:
Demographics. It is not the terrorists and not even the bearded shouting priests of hate. It is simply the demographics. One must be completely illiterate in history to understand that. Did any of you know the recent history of Jugoslavia to know why happened what happaned? I suggest you read Emmanuel Todd. Mind you, this is not going to be a particular critiscism to the whatever cultures, good people were all of them but there is a line of events that keeps repeating in history. Demographics is the only thing that counts. States may change, nations are born and dying, but demographics is what shapes historic events.
"""Unfortunately, all our politicians lack the stomach"""
Politicians are the counter girls at MacDonalts. They can't do much more than give you warmer fries. If your burger tastes bad you have to speak to the franchise.
"""... for a fight that's going to put a lot of blood on the streets sooner or later (Good Evening, Enoch), but want the bllyboy bigot vote."""
Ask the Yugoslavs on that.
"""So they choose the softest of soft targets - women. As if the Moslem woman didn't have enough to put up with without being used as a political punchbag."""
And why women are soft-targets? Oh, do you too consider muslim women as weak, illiterate and a short of subhumans? I really did not expect that from you.
Women are not soft targets, they are the primary targets when you want to provoke a desired... or undesired situation.
"""It is a cowardly, underhand, dishonourable law with ramifications that extend into some very smelly areas of politics."""
The really smell areas of politics are those that bring illegal muslim immigrants in Europe, mate. It is a form of slow paced ganocide against European societies. Go learn the basics of history. Ever heard the lovely history of those nice people Goths - you know, they were christians too! Good God-fearing people...
"""It is sexist and non-empathetic in the extreme (dsinanan's excellent wee comment). It does nothing to address the pngoing asault on our generosity and values."""
As said, the whole debate is a smokescreen. The actual law is however representing a basic social convention and as such is correct. Nobody should be discussing, unless you want nudists start campaining for their right to go around naked.
"""Yet again, Britain has an opportunity to lead by example. We must not bog down in daft debate about covered faces. We must grasp the nettle, identify ringleaders and agitators and adjust legislation to throw out the male rabble-rousers who have raked over the very worst embers of 7th-century barbarism in the Koran, pointedly ignored over a thousand years of progress, and are actively waging war against us."""
That is where you make the hugest mistake. Fanatic islamists are a US creation. They did not exist 50 years back. They did not exist even till quite recently. It was US that created them consciously as yet another tool for global domination and a convenient means to control Europe. The main attack is demographics.
Go read Emmanuel Todd. Go read about Bosnia and Kosovo. Get yourself a bit more education on the issues. These are not issues for everybody however, you have to go at it step by step.
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@ 128. At 2:14pm on 14 Jul 2010, Eastvillage wrote:
"Islam is entirely anti democracy, anti western and enslaves women.
The ban is a very good first step.
Keeping women free will weaken Islam, and that is a very good thing.
Islam = violence."
What a well thought out position. Enlightening.
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136. At 6:06pm on 14 Jul 2010, Leo_Naphta wrote:
"""... Because I'm quite sure that the culture that sprang from the Enlightment, is far better than Feudal European culture, or Roman-Greco, slave owning patrician culture."""
Actually today there are far more slaves than they ever existed even in the Roman Empire let alone in the earlier poorer Greek states. Slavery today is much more rampant, it found on ALL continents and funnily it comes much much cheaper than ever. Wake up and see reality.
"""It is quite clear that it is, even if those cultures have aspects that we might 'admire', they are, overall, just not as good."""
Depends on how you see it. In some of these societies there was much more respect for the citizen. Ancient societies, apart Romans, were rarely commiting genocide or povoking mass famine (and both were very much feasible back then) even to their worst enemies. Enlightment societies so often shower a complete lack of respect for the human being let alone showing any respect for the citizen who is dealt only by giving the pseudo-illusion of having an opinion that matters and who is called to chose every 4 years a face among the ones prepared for him. Back in the old days, a commoner could rise to the top statistically more easily than today...
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cbw, I grow tired of your repeated false accusations.
If you had read my opinions on the minaret ban in Switzerland, you would know I was absolutely and consistently against it. However, I made arguments in favour of the democratic procedure which allowed the public vote.
Just as in this case, I am against the ban and I make arguments against the lack of democratic procedure which denied the public vote.
In both cases, I would hope that proper safeguards in human rights law would allow the courts to overturn the ban on the grounds of state violation of fundamental human rights, although in the case of minarets it is less clear if the individuals human rights are affected. But I am against the ban on minarets and I would try to make the case that it does affect the individual human rights of Swiss muslims. Even if that legal argument did not fly, it would be the right thing to do to have a go and set it out for the court.
Further, despite my great admiration for the swiss political economy, I have often raised my doubts about the quality of human rights law in Switzerland. Although I have been pleased with everything I have seen in the higher courts, not every issue goes to the higher courts. Casual police brutality against bosnian immigrant refugees, for example, almost never reaches the fine courtrooms of swiss justice. Nor does the systematic denial of rights to 20% of the population who work and live here but are denied reasonable participation in the political process.
That is why I say the good arguments ought to be made, even if they are shakey in hard law. If lawyers never make them, courts can't consider them, and then there is never any possibility to use the law as a proper safeguard of constitutional provisions.
But the point here is worth making that this proposed ban is materially different from a ban on minarets, even if both are a very similar targeted reaction against Muslim culture. The crucial and very important difference is that with the ban on women's clothing, the very personal rights of large numbers of individuals will be directly affected by the forced intrusion of state police officers. That affects the families of those women, and through them the entire wider community.
I think it is unsafe thinking to happily suppose that this aspect of the ban, the targeting of Muslim women directly, was not encouraged exactly because it is calculated to enrage their male family members. That is exactly how cultural disputes evolve: with cruel taunts, each against the other.
Now cultural disputes that involve taunts against the females of the opposing culture are as common as people and as old as the sun. We can see them as often as we wish in any playground, football stadium or bar.
But when the law, and the armed officers of the state police, are called upon to take part in the taunting and the aggravation of cultural disputes, then the role of the state and of the law has been perverted well beyond the bounds of civil society and human rights law.
The state should not be getting involved in how women dress, unless the behaviour of individual women is causing frequent and unavoidable unrest in the community.
Muslim women wearing veils have not been causing such open sedition or disquiet by their habits. They are therefore being politically targeted by the forces of the criminal law.
I will pay a rare compliment to Hewitt now, and note that the title to this blog is exactly right, and cuts to the very heart of the primary legal matter that is wrong in this scenario.
Hewitt notes that these women are being "criminalized" for their previously acceptable dress. That is exactly correct. The state officers in charge of addressing criminal matters, the police, are being called upon to intrude upon something which was previously acceptable.
That is a purely political act, there was no demand for the ban due to public disorder complaints from the police themselves, and therefore the force of the state is being used as a weapon against individuals.
The state ought never be allowed to intrude on the civil liberties of individuals for purely political reasons. If it can, there can be no such thing as true human rights, either in a system of representation or direct democracy.
If a political party can criminalize muslim women on political grounds, it can criminalize jews or negros or cripples or frenchmen. Or other parties.
This is a very delicate and fragile part of law, and there is no question that the french are on the wrong side of it with this terrible exhibition of cheap politics and chest thumping.
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141. At 9:12pm on 14 Jul 2010, AlevDurmaz wrote:
Alev? Does that mean you are Alevi muslim? A more dignified version of islam certainly but mainly since Alevis are simply descendants of people that got islamised (most often under violence) in the later stages of the Ottoman Empire...
"""Liberty? How does this law encourage integration/assimilation when the very people it (supposedly) wishes to engage may be cut off from society, confined to the home?"""
No. The law does not deal with any assimilation or integration or gender equality issues. It deals with a deficiency in law: it may covered other basic social conventions such as banning nudism from public places (apart specified exceptions) but it did not cover other basic social conventions such as the cover of the face. This law establishes a further coverage of social conventions in dress code and behaviour. As a law itself is 100% ok, but certain at the current timing, it is used as a smokescreen.
"""Consider: half my university prep class males went to namaz on Fridays. The religious girls wore hats/hoods *over* their scarves."""
As I said demographics. Openly religious people in Turkey have been getting more and more and becoming a majority over the Kemalists, they require changes. It is pure demographics. But that is not the problem in Turkey which is anyway an islamic nation afterall - the major problem is Kurds. And Kurds are not necessarily islamists - in fact Turkey (and US behinds it) fosters a slow paced change towards islamist in order to accomodate for the rise of Kurds. It failed to sell to them the "we are all Turks" so it will sell to them "we are all muslims".
"""Many Turks argue against "their" (conservative religious people's) education as "they" will gain visibility & influence, thus endangering the secularism of the state. An Iranian-style "clothing" revolution is clearly not impossible, they believe."""
Everything is possible in Turkey. Turks are a people that cares only about ruling over others. If islam promises them doing so, they will follow accordingly. What I see is a dual future for Turkey where the massive percentage of people will be islamists and where a small minority of Kemalists will be used as an excuse of a secular state, the secular state that Turkey has never been since it has been the most murderours and genocidal muslim state ever - 3 genocides in the 20th century totalling 4 million massacred people, 3 million destitute refugees and the total complete ethnic cleansing of the 40% of the population of Minor Asia which did not comply with the turkish-muslim ideal.
"""Families send covered female offspring abroad to be educated."""
I have studied in UK, but all the Turkish females we had around were very liberal. In fact most of them were around our (more populous) student community and the good looking ones had Greek boyfriends (do not ask me why, better ask Turkey's media that sell only "Greek-like men" actors in a pluralist country ranging from Caucasian to Middle Easter where the Greek-resembling people are actually less than 10% of the country's population...).
"""When female education promotes family wealth & health, & contributes ultimately to the economy, what do you do???"""
Same question in Indonesia where women work and try to participate actively in the public life of the country. For Turkey there is no such question - the question is only how to expand. If Islam aids it so, then prepare to see many more such issues rising in your society.
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#76 - democracythreat
"threnodio_II wrote:
"It is a law against hiding you face, is it not?"
You took that comment out of context and without regard to the central point I was making. The following paragraph is therefore uncalled for if direct at me and you should withdraw it.
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"Sarkozy Akbar!!"
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Darling Mikey wrote:
"I completely agree and support the French on this one. They are standing up for tradition and their way of life. "
Well that isn't quite logical, Mikey.
You see, the women behind the veils are just as french as anyone of the worthies who drafted the legislation.
So rather than "standing up for their way of life", as you so warmly put it, this law is actually a direct attack of their way of life. "them" being the French Muslim women who like veils.
And given that you "support the French", one presumes you intend to support these french muslim women just as passionately as you intended to support, for example, white christian french citizens?
And given that you are not a religiously inspired racist, and therefore you stand by your intention to support the french, and thus these french women, it follows that you are arguing that these women are standing up for their traditions by having the police interfere with their personal dress code.
And that makes no sense.
Somewhere, above, I have made an error of reasoning. Can you see where it is, Mikey?
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"133. At 3:35pm on 14 Jul 2010, Fwd079 wrote:
@rezausman: Isolated incidents don't make a religion/culture bad.
I don't agree with French ban because it was UK who was hit by 7/7 not France, yet UK has the courage to allow everything and France hasn't.
Regards."
Wrong. The UK has the fear.
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"135. At 4:32pm on 14 Jul 2010, giltedged wrote:
Apart from the overwhelming nature of this vote (only one parliamentarian voted agains) there has long been indications that Europeans have had enough.
We do not need and certainly do not want "multi-culturalism". We do not want "representatives" of immigrants. We do not want our children to waste their time learning about "other cultures" which basically means the habits/religion of immigrants and quite often includes obnoxious elements (eg treatment of women). We do not want our policemen to go to lessons to learn the culture of immigrants. We do not want to modify our terminology, rewrite or avoid learning about our history, remove, add to or change the name of our holidays because of the immigrants.
The Swiss, Dutch, Italians, Austrians and now the French have started to do something about it. They have in effect started to reclaim their culture. It's only natural and nothing can stop it."
Giltedged - your comments 134 and 135 are much appreciated and shared.
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I wonder whether it has occurred to these politicians what the unintended effect of these laws might be. Does it not occur to them that they might be condemning some of these women - not permitted by law to cover up in public and not permitted by their customs to go out uncovered - to become permanently housebound
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The niqab is not for everyone, but for those women who feel that they need a veil to protect their piety, the state's duty is to help them either feel safe and secure without it, or allow them to wear it. Banning it will only create resentment and stir the extreme elements into unwanted, thoughtless and idiotic actions.
Nik, your grasp on history and various statistics is very impressive, but if you were to go back in time you will find that population movement has been customary.
Even if we don't go back as far as the origin of man, and start with the Roman empire and work our way forward you will find that people have moved in every direction.
Then we can talk about the lands that European countries took over and created colonies, which were looted for all their treasures, natural and otherwise, and the same european countries grew richer, while subjugating the local populace of the colonies with force or religion (or simply just killing them all). Now we see the citizens of these same colonies migrating to where their money and property went to.
There's a certain symmetry in play here and regardless of how you feel, what comes around goes around, so I think you need to grow up and accept your fate in a multi-cultural society.
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Nik wrote:
"Everything is possible in Turkey. Turks are a people that cares only about ruling over others."
Ade re this is quite some nonsense..Just because you bear a grudge they dominated you for 400 years. Well guess what, you should read some Darwin..
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what is going on. referred for interchanging "Sarkozy" with "Allah" in "Allah Akbar"? Where is the humour??
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...as well as calling English culture too "polite". May I add, too politically correct as well. In fact, too politically sensitive to accept any criticism. If debate is censored, it leads to more problems. Sad.
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Ok, Ill say it in English: "Sarkozy is great" and, perhaps more fittingly, in French: "Vive Sarkozy"!
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"Does it not occur to them that they might be condemning some of these women - not permitted by law to cover up in public and not permitted by their customs to go out uncovered - to become permanently housebound"
threnodio - as much as you're permitted to go around naked at home, you're permitted to wear whatever you want. Its simply a question of decency. Social Norms. What society deems as "acceptable". There is no right or wrong. But there is "our" right or wrong and "their" right or wrong. Laws only reflect this.
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Nik,
"Actually today there are far more slaves than they ever existed even in the Roman Empire let alone in the earlier poorer Greek states. Slavery today is much more rampant, it found on ALL continents and funnily it comes much much cheaper than ever. Wake up and see reality."
Only because there are more people now, than there were back then. Also, you're implying that enlightment as such, always equals capitalism. It does not. Not to mention that I don't believe ways of finding to build on previous progress are inherently closed after the enlightment, or that culture, any culture, as such is worth preserving if you find something that works better.
Slavery, back in that time, was also found on just about every continent. From the Americas to Asia to Europe.
"Depends on how you see it. In some of these societies there was much more respect for the citizen. Ancient societies, apart Romans, were rarely commiting genocide or povoking mass famine (and both were very much feasible back then) even to their worst enemies. Enlightment societies so often shower a complete lack of respect for the human being let alone showing any respect for the citizen who is dealt only by giving the pseudo-illusion of having an opinion that matters and who is called to chose every 4 years a face among the ones prepared for him. Back in the old days, a commoner could rise to the top statistically more easily than today"
No, there was just as much respect for the citizen as there is now, considering that citizens back then, are the equivalent of what the capital-powerful, bourgeois is now. In fact, regular people were far less respected. Why do you think they killed Caesar? To preserve democracy? ;) A commoner, back in the 'old days' could not just 'rise up' and you know that as well as I do. Class society was just more blatent than it is now.
Also, I'm aware of various civilisations committing genocide, apart from the Romans - who were not as much an exception -. Case in point, Alexander, Thebe. Or, if you prefer another example, Aztecs. You're saying Aztec or Mayan or Chinese Empire/Kingdoms - also, big on the whole genocide thing, way before Mao - culture was inherently of equal value because it was a different culture? It might not have been inferior to say, Conquistador culture, but it was far inferior to a mode of thinking that brought about the declaration of the rights of men (and women, a few years later).
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First criticizing Switzerland for banning minarets.
Then for arresting Roman Polanski.
AND NOW THIS:
German prosecutors have raided 13 branches of the Swiss bank Credit Suisse in connection with an inquiry into tax fraud.
The prosecutor's office in Dusseldorf said on Wednesday that about 150 investigators took part in searches.
The search is focusing on allegations that bank staff assisted clients to evade taxes. (BBC News)
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France is making the right decision , Lets see which other European country follows.
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DemocThreat
Re Your #146 & "...cbw I grow tired of your repeated false accusations."
Gosh, I'm sorry about that!
And, sorry to say, I have to admit to plagiarism in my #119 in which I was critical of Your views on the banning of the veil in Your #20 & #76.
Only, I thought You would have recognised my closing remarks in #119!?
You should recall those few sentences because You wrote them on 30th Nov 2009, "..commentary of the Swiss (*French*) vote seems to misplace the sentiment of the Swiss (*French*) people. People from outside Switzerland (*France*) presume that the Swiss (*French*) are frightened of radical Islam, and that the right-wing are tapping into ignorant hysteria..", followed by,
"I don't see that. the Swiss (*French*) just do not want to mess up their nice, clean radicalism... with outdated concepts."
It was not just the above made my #119 query were there "..double standards at work.." in Your writng? In Your case it is a given. Only after considering the implications of the following also written by You I made the 'double standards' comment:
24th Nov'09, ".. But we must not blame the Islamic society for this failure (**to integrate**). It is entirely a failure of the western community. If we cared about our own law, and if we honoured our duty of **care to children of Islamic families** who are left **victim to Sharia law**, then Islamic folks would integrate perfectly into our societies."
Advocating 'State intervention' on behalf of a minority!?
25th Nov 09 You went further, "..I have no respect at all for 'believers'. I think freedom is a myth that fails to account for respoinsibility, and I think **'forward thinking Muslim leaders'** is a contradiction in terms..."
So, where does that leave Your #146, "..cultural taunts against females of an other culture."?
You wrote this 1st Dec. 2009, "..As it happens, I personally disagree with the vote on the minarets... But I **respect** the right of the people of Switzerland to make their law..",
followed by,
"..because religious rights override human rights. Because it is fashionable to defend Islam as an exotic spiritual adventure, rather than condemn it as **an outdated and aggressive system of rules by which to live**. Because it is not fashionable to **defend the rights of young women living in Islamic communities**. Those Citizens do not deserve the protection of the law.."
Now let us be clear (?): 1st December 09 You advocate intervention on behalf of people within the Islamic community and on 14th June 2010 You advocate no intervention.
Oh well, so long as we are clear!
Doubtless, You will claim I misread Your #146 in which to my mind You are categoric, "..The State ought never be allowed to intrude on the civil liberties of individuals for purely political reasons. If it can, there can be no such thing as true human rights..." and,
You go on to claim, "..there is no question the French are on the wrong side of it." (i.e. Law & Faith).
So, yes I do know how You felt about the 'minarets ban': Alongside Your high moral tone of condemnation of France's law-makers in the area of Faith & Secularim there lurks a convenience store of less ethical views.
Through these Blogs You pontificate without let or hindrance, switching sides, views, ideas, prejudices even, according to what flits in & out Your mind - - it is glaring lack of consistency as evidenced here - - and undermines all Your credibility.
In short: Typically Your 'respect' for people to make law does not extend over the border from Switzerland to France the moment it suits You to change Your argument.
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Gheryando
Re #154, #157, 158 & 159
You see: Some people are more equal than others when it comes to labels!
In all honesty I sympathise: The BBC Moderation process is a disgrace.
This week I had my very lengthy piece on N.Ireland unpublished and the Mods gave no indication in their e-mail as to why. I suspect it was because it carried first-hand accounts of what it was like to be a soldier there & BBC Mods CANNOT stand the thought of REALITY - - it just frightens the litigious life out of them.
And as for Your attempt to imply the English Language could be used by anyone when some 'expressions' have been taken over by a certain Faith - - well, that was never going to happen - - BBC News, a Worldwide News gathering organisation, responsible to hundreds of millions of People Worldwide for disseminating NEWS, wouldn't show the Danish Cartoons, so we all know it left its moral-ethical principles at the barricades a very long time ago.
As I have had occasion to remark before: The descent of the BBC as the World's outstanding NEWS SERVICE is remarkable & lamentable. From the colossus of Human dignity in 1945 & the BBC's Richard Dimbleby reporting with unembellished and frank detail from the grave sites of Belsen to a 21st Century BBC cravenly afraid of displaying a few cartoons for fear of offence!
Can anyone at the BBC explain what was the purpose of Dimbleby's report if not to attempt to ensure no group of people would ever again hold sway over the rest simply because of what they believed!?
You, in this instance Gheryando, are a small victim of that much larger abnegation of responsibility by the BBC to present news & views irrespective of its implications.
Shame on the BBC! Shame on BBC Moderation!
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#160 - Gheryando
So look at it the other way round. A woman has a husband with - let us say - unusual tastes and forces his wife to only go out naked. She knows she is going to prosecuted for indecent exposure so she is trapped in her home.
Surely it is the same thing. Husband will only let her out of the house wearing the niqab, she knows she is going to be arrested and fined so again she is trapped.
This is neither cultural nor religious. It is overtly sexist and racist.
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""""# 156. At 00:16am on 15 Jul 2010, Gheryando wrote:
Nik wrote:
"Everything is possible in Turkey. Turks are a people that cares only about ruling over others."
Ade re this is quite some nonsense..Just because you bear a grudge they dominated you for 400 years. Well guess what, you should read some Darwin.. """""
Absolutely wrong. This does not refer to the Ottoman Empire necessarily but to today. Open a newspaper and read how Turks project themselves. When they talk with Balkan states it is with the menace of aggressive war against them (the usual "we are 70,000,000 you are 10,000,000 etc.). When they talk with central Asian Republics it is to play the "rich Turk ruling over poor underdeveloped Turks" (and his has already cause a lot of discontent to central Asians who do not like them much), while now Turkey that plays against Israel it brandishes itself as a potential leader of all muslims in Middle East. There is absolutely no case where Turks accent others as equal partners - there has to be always a definition of who is the boss. Of course in the same line of thinking when they talk with UK or USA, they fully bend to 100% of what these two ask. Don't ask me to narrate you events only of the last 50 years (who talked about Ottoman Empire?) cos we will sit here discussing till tomorrow.
"""Turks as group of people have this specific particularity: they cannot understand the notion of "equal". For them human relationships are strictly a comparison and the in a dual relationship there is always the strong and the weak. Hence, when you open to them a discussion on friendship, to their understanding you openly admit to them that you are weaker than them. This is something deeply ingrained in Turkish culture."""
Do you think this is my saying? This is what Prof. Sarris, a Greek Turkologist of the most prominent ones internationally (note he is born in Konstantinople and was brought up there, he is bilingual in Turkish too) has said. I am sure you will say that Sarris is Greek and thus biased but then is he more biased than English and Americans for whom Turks are the local shou-shous? Sarris knows Turkey better than Turks themselves and I tend to trust his opinion. He is a Scientist with capital S.
# 155. At 00:11am on 15 Jul 2010, sliml wrote:
"""The niqab is not for everyone, but for those women who feel that they need a veil to protect their piety, the state's duty is to help them either feel safe and secure without it, or allow them to wear it. Banning it will only create resentment and stir the extreme elements into unwanted, thoughtless and idiotic actions."""
Oh spare us the religious piety. In Bosnia not even a single woman was circluating in muslim dress and then in the early 90s right before the civil war Saoudis started paying women sums equalling almost to a months' wage for wearing muslims dresses (as well as paying men that knew little about religion, to visit mosques).
Now banning hashish created even more problems so what? There are other more stupid bans too but did not see you react. At the end of the day hashish was not as contrary to basic social notions (that accept wine for example) than covering one's face which is a basic social "must not". Going back over this is giving ground to primitive religious fanatics. And this is unacceptable. It is their problem, not ours.
Would you speak if anyone came to you with his genitals exposed? No. Why not? Eveyone has genitals, it is a natural thing, the unatural is not having any genitals, what is so bad with them? Would you speak to anyone that came to you swearing at you? No. Why? He did not hit you or something. He just exhaled some sounds forming some random words of little meaning. So why would you be upset? Would yo utalk to someone that shows you the middle finger? No. But why? Why you take it so badly? He just shows the middle finger, so what? Well for exactly the same reason, the vast majority of European cultures do not accept anyone approaching to them with the head fully covered. Why? Because it is a very basic social convention that European societies have since prehistory and they won't change this now.
I very well understand your point of view that the law is very difficult to enforce but you really do not see the point so I will give you a very good example:
Take a civil servant sitting in his desk and then this king of black-clothed thing (since it does not resemble much a human being) appoaches to him and starts talking. Rare thing that these women will go to a service to open a discussion but see when they have to ask money from the state or they need to go to hospital they go on. Why on earth the civil servant is obliged to respond to her when she is not willing to respect him?
However till now the civil servant was obliged to tolerate that unacceptable situation since he feared a judicial attack on the basis of racism.
Well that is where the law will work. Do not imagine policemen patrolling for veiled women. Under the new law the civil clerk is not obliged to serve someone with his face covered and thus he can simply avoid talking to her. If the public building has a guard then the guard will simply stop the woman outside the building or call the police if she wants to cause a trouble (and many of them are anything but religious women, they just want to cause trouble). It goes withoutsaying that some muslim fanatics will use their women to create trouble but then they won't be able to sue for racism, rather the opposite, they will be sued on such a ground.
"""Nik, your grasp on history and various statistics is very impressive, but if you were to go back in time you will find that population movement has been customary.
Even if we don't go back as far as the origin of man, and start with the Roman empire and work our way forward you will find that people have moved in every direction."""
Yes. And don't you ever think it was about holidays. It was about profit, expansion, conquest, genocide.
"""Then we can talk about the lands that European countries took over and created colonies, which were looted for all their treasures, natural and otherwise, and the same european countries grew richer, while subjugating the local populace of the colonies with force or religion (or simply just killing them all). Now we see the citizens of these same colonies migrating to where their money and property went to."""
Wrong wrong wrong. There are many other countries that have nothing to do with that, Sweden for example: they too have a problem with their muslim immigrants. There are other countries that not only were not colonisers but were actually slave nations to muslims and they suffered a genocide, Greece being a primary example.
"""There's a certain symmetry in play here and regardless of how you feel, what comes around goes around, so I think you need to grow up and accept your fate in a multi-cultural society."""
I guess in WWII Germany you would say to a democrat "Why don't you grow up and accept your fate in a Nazi society". The only thing I accept mate is that in this world the only people that you can count on are the ones very close to you, your family and even that is not standard. For the most of it you are alone. You must accept absolutely nothing and absolutely none. There is nothing like a multi-cultural society, there are only caste-societies. Did not see a Rothchild (the family that rules Britain and France for the last 300 years) marrying any Algerians and even Diana that got pregnant to an Egyptian of lowly origins she was more probably murdered than not as punishment - yet it is these extremely racist people that sell mutli-culturalism for the simple reason that this is a vehicle for world conquest.
Nobody says that in the age of traveling the world in 1 day people wouldn"t move. The problem is not people moving. The problem is how this is done. You really do not get it, but then just sit down and think of the following notions that form a stable society:
1) Property
2) Sovereignty
3) Cohesion
None of these requires that people must be of one ethnic/religious/cultural origin but none of it can work when people have different aspirations on basic social conventions. Chinese immigrants in Europe have not, muslim immigrants in Europe have. Those that bring muslim illegal immigration in Europe do it on purpose since muslims work better in that sense and aid them in retaining the grip over European societies. Who? Well US, not Americans, lets say certain power circles residing (but nor restricting themselves) in the US. In some cases it is really eye-hurting: Indians are of the most poor, yet almost none of them arrives in European countries (apart Britain) and they all go to work as slaveforce for worse wages and animal-like conditions in the UAE all that while muslims do not want to go to fellow-muslim UAE and are pushing themselves in Europe. There is a whole plan here and it has been actually well described by several political analysts. Mind you, it is no different to the case of Goths in the Roman Empire or the Turks in the Byzantine Empire. The ruling class always uses the foreigner to create a situation for retaining a better grip - then things at some point backfire but the ruling class has already ivested elsewhere (to the east, to the west etc.).
I insist on that: go read a bit of Emmanuel Todd. He is a demograph and politologue. He writes very interesting books and articles.
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I hope 169 got through. Recently the moderators removed my post only for Gavin to say the same thing.
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161. At 00:47am on 15 Jul 2010, Leo_Naphta wrote:
"""Only because there are more people now, than there were back then."""
No. There are more slaves even in %. The fact that slavery today is paid changes nothing. Or the fact that the modern slave has the choice to scrub floors or to play with nasty chemicals to gain less of a payment than a Roman slave would receive, changes little. You don't get it necessarily but it is alright?
"""Also, you're implying that enlightment as such, always equals capitalism. It does not."""
Correct, it also led to communism. 50,000,000 dead in Russia, what else can I say?
"""Not to mention that I don't believe ways of finding to build on previous progress are inherently closed after the enlightment, or that culture, any culture, as such is worth preserving if you find something that works better."""
As said, direct comparisons are difficult. The core remains the same since the human nature works that way. There is no better or worse, just different. Most of the "positive" things are not the result of our societies but of simply technological advances that occured in the recent past but in much different societies than today's. In fact, today's societies quite decelerated the learning curve which should be exponential from this point on but we do not realise it.
""Slavery, back in that time, was also found on just about every continent. From the Americas to Asia to Europe."""
And today too.
"""No, there was just as much respect for the citizen as there is now, considering that citizens back then, are the equivalent of what the capital-powerful, bourgeois is now."""
Yes. So?
"""In fact, regular people were far less respected."""
Like today.
"""Why do you think they killed Caesar? To preserve democracy? ;) A commoner, back in the 'old days' could not just 'rise up' and you know that as well as I do. Class society was just more blatent than it is now."""
Class society exists today, only that they sell it that way to your eyes to tell you that it has changed. No it has not. 80% of your rulers are chosen on the basis of their class and the rest 20% are clowns chosen for reasons of image-selling. Studies in countries like Britain and France that have long records show that these supposedly very progressive societies that showed immense social changes in terms of production of wealth actually showed extremely slow social evolution, in fact they almost remained fossilised. The rich of today are 80% the rich of yesterday and the poor of today are at 80% the poor of yesterday.
"""Also, I'm aware of various civilisations committing genocide, apart from the Romans - who were not as much an exception -"""
The Romans commited regional slaughters and their main 2 slaughters that can be equalled to genocide are the campaign against the Jewish revolt and the campaign against Dacia, both comitted in the late 1st, early 2nd century A.D. (the top of their power).
""". Case in point, Alexander, Thebe."""
Alexander comitted genocide in Thebese Egypt? Or the Egyptians? The Thebans of Thebe, Greece? Alexander did not commit genocide to anyone. The word means to eradicate a nation, or an effort to eradicate a nation. Alexander was leading an attacking army and naturally threatened resisting cities with total destruction - eee... the only way to convince a city to surrender I guess! Hence, some of the cities that particularly resisted to him were totally destroyed, half population killed, half sold as slaves, like Tyros in Phoenice but these were selective cases. This happened more often in Afganistan where he found most resistance. However , it was not a genocide in the sense that he did not aim at eradicating a particular culture or a population or a nation unlike the case of Romans in Israel or in Dacia where they particularly aimed at neutralising completely these nations.
"""Or, if you prefer another example, Aztecs."""
The flower wars? No they were far from being genocides. In fact Aztecs wanted the subjugated tribes around them.
"""You're saying Aztec or Mayan or Chinese Empire/Kingdoms - also, big on the whole genocide thing, way before Mao - culture was inherently of equal value because it was a different culture?"""
I am aware of extensive wars among Chinese kingdoms but these had usually as a target domination, not genocide, since most kingdoms had cultures quite compatible to each other and it was mostly a push match of who would get the leadership. The only East Asian nation that did things that approached the term genocide, these must had been the Mongols.
"""It might not have been inferior to say, Conquistador culture, but it was far inferior to a mode of thinking that brought about the declaration of the rights of men (and women, a few years later)."""
Declarations are nice. In fact in the past we had even better declarations of equality, like the christianic and muslim religions that played that role. In the exact way that these religions di did not change anything, such declarations of human rights did not change anythign either. I am quite ok established in life, yet I can find you 10-15 cases where my human rights are infringed and none cares and even if I go to court my case won't be heard.
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#164 - cool_brush_work
I am a little confused about this direct comparison between the Swiss vote on minarets and the French vote on the burka. An item of clothing is a totally different issue. If someone is told on the street that they must uncover their face, they have the choice of complying or paying a fine, just as if someone sunbathes naked on the wrong beach, they can be told to cover up or move to the nudist beach.
A minaret is a physical structure. It has a long term impact on the the town scape and environment. I have posted before that it is a town and country planning issue. Moreover, there is the question of what goes on underneath. The brka wearing lady could, for all we know, be wearing the most outrageous lingerie underneath it. it is none of our business and nobody cares. The mosque on the other hand is a place of worship. What goes on inside is matter of official interest. If people are at prayer, fine but what if there is a madrassa or the preaching of racial hatred and even terrorist related philosophies are being promoted?
By confusing these issues, everyone has the convenient fall back position that these are religious and cultural icons. We come to rely on the symbolism and forget the practical implications. The Moslem can worship without a minaret just as easily as a Christian can without a spire above him. The ban of the burka, on the other hand may prove to be a direct assault on the rights of Muslim women trapped between family pressures to comply with tradition and state pressure to comply with the law.
I too frequently have cause to take issue with DT but he does have a point when he says that this was the direct choice of the Swiss people. Direct democracy my not always have the desired outcome but it is, at least, democratic. The French decision, by contrast, seems to me a knee jerk reaction to a climate of political opinion. The better comparison to my mind is with the recent controversy over crucifixes in Italian schools and I rather suspect that this issue is going to go the same way and be overturned by the European Court when the inevitable complaint comes to be heard.
Like so much legislation that stems from political correctness, it may be well intentioned but it has been badly thought through and ought not to stand.
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129.tossacoin wrote: I do take issue with describing one culture as superior to another because it is then only a very small step to having a hierarchy of cultures - something that's, unsurprisingly, been very unfashionable since the 1940's.
All cultures are not equal. This is my opinion and I believe it is also a fact. As I've said a few times before, a culture that does not unequivocally see women as equal cannot possibly be considered equal with a culture that does. And in 'radical' islamic culture, the niqab or whatever it is called is not worn because of a woman expressing her freedom of choice, it is worn so a woman displays she recognizes (or had forced upon her) her inferior status to men. Certain religions, islam included, specifically consider women to be inferior and have specific verses in their 'holy' (*ahem cough*) books that tell us this.
Oh, and racism: The belief that some races are inherently superior (physically, intellectually, or culturally) to others. (from The American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy).
Now, kindly explain how islam is a 'race'...
It isn't.
And what I meant, and I think you know this, is that western culture is in many aspects far more enlightened than certain other cultures. Now, anyone can be 'western' and anyone can be 'some other culture'. It has nothing to do with race.
And besides, saying a culture that respects women as fully equal is 'better' than a culture that does not, is not 'racist' or 'bigotry' but quite likely a fact.
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@Gheryando :
UK doesn't fear buddy, although UK is just as alert as any other country and perhaps more, but we do not try to hold the rope from the wrong end.
Regards.
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So, instead of Niqab or Burkha or whatever these women will now be wandering about in massive trenchcoats and balaclavas? That is a loophole right?
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ThrenodioII
Re #172
Then I think we will just have to differ.
I cannot see how it is possible to differentiate the correctness of lawful intervention on behalf of a society in any aspects of a Faith - - be they of a building, a person, or ideas - - either a Democratically elected National Legislative assembly has the Right & Responsibility to make Law or it does not.
There is no 'confusing' of issues on my part: The Muslim Female can 'worship just as easily' without a full face-veil just as a 'minaret' is not essential to a Mosque's effectiveness.
Neither did I disagree with the domeciled Swiss sage about the 'direct democracy' choice made by Switzerland's Citizens.
DemocThreat's peculiar habit of never following his own line of argument as soon as it is convenient to take another I am always keen to point up.
However, quite why with regard to 'Faith' You (& he, though unsure of his view as it changes so often) adopt the attitude a Democratically elected Government should be more circumspect making Law on an issue that has come to Public notice is something You failed to explain.
"..knee jerk.." implies the variety of Law-making more akin to the UK Parliament's infamous 'Dangerous Dogs Act' - - written & passed into Law in 5 calendar weeks - - whereas the France Assembly has only undertaken this Law-making measure after extensive consultation with France's various Departments inc. Constitutional oversight bodies: Indeed even now, it is subject to challenge on HR grounds, and wíll doubtless be fully tested, as it should be. This Legal ban on the full face-covering does not actually specify any Islamic mode of dress: Whilst there is no doubt of its cultural intent neither can there be any doubt it has been considered at the very highest level of 'political' & 'legal' avenues within France as to its effect on France's society as a whole.
The new Laws' paramount intention is to safeguard the Secular nature of French Life.
I totally reject Your 'Political Correctness' viewpoint: On that PC basis this legislation would never have seen the light of day - - on the contrary in my view it is a direct contradiction and step back from Political Corectness and is to be wholly welcomed on that ground alone.
As for the EUropean Court: I am unsure as to which one You are referring: IMO that a bunch of unelected Judges, wholly unrepresentative & unaccountable to the Citizens of a Nation should see it as their role to intercede and possibly negate the expressed wishes of the Swiss, French, Italian etc. Citizens through their Democratic Votes and/or Democratic Legislature would be yet another example of the dreadful & dangerous decline of Democratic Principles and Purposes currently infecting Governance of Continental EUrope and the British Isles.
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On a slightly different note but relating to just how 'confusing' all this Faith business can be I have just read a Vatican announcement on the "..speeding up.." of methods to deal with "..sexual abuse..".
True enough, the new rules are much stricter, the recognition of the rights of the victims is much more delinetaed, the Roman Catholic Church has extended the time in which abuse cases' can be complained of & investigated.
All very, very worthy stuff.
In the same Vatican announcement & document, Monsignor Scicluna, also explained, "..child pornography is a crime against Church Law.." (incredibly it hadn't been!) and also that, "..the attempted Ordination of a Woman as a 'grave crime'.." which was to be handled by the the RC's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
So what, you say!?
Well, as that RC organisation also deals with 'abuse cases' it seems clear the Vatican views a Priest sexually assaulting a child is about as serious as a Female member of the Catholic Church studying for the Priesthood!
Good to know the Vatican is finally taking abuse allegations seriously, isn't it!?
Oh the wonders of Faith!
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Okay, so I've been reading through about the first 100 of the comments here, and so far I have not seen a single comment decrying the wearing of burkas or niqabs that points a finger at racial Europeans who converted to Islam and chose to dress like salt shakers or cloaked ninjas. This although several articles in various media expressly state that many of the women who chose to dress this way are recent converts to Islam. I guess they are largely unstable people who feel the need to prove their piety to their new religion and god.
Instead, there have been a slew of criticisms about immigrants not assimilating and foisting their primitive cultures on us Westerners. Which says a lot. This is the main problem, and for many the burka ban is just a way to express this larger displeasure. That is not right.
panjsheri and others are completely wrong in that it is the obligation of an immigrant to assimilate into his or her new culture. Immigrants have a right to keep their religion, but they should to some extent renounce their old culture and some of their old customs (but there is no obligation to denounce their former culture and customs). The oath immigrants take when becoming new American citizens does include this renouncing of allegiance to other nations, even if today many choose to remain dual citizens.
And it is not only Muslim immigrants who are guilty of this. Almost every major city in the West has a Chinatown, for instance.
Burkas and niqabs should be banned for security reasons only. Public service advertisements should be used to encourage all French people to be less misogynistic and less supportive of terrorist groups, etc; additionally more should be done to get immigrants and their posterity to view themselves as French and only French, as well as getting French to view these naturalized citizens and their progeny as truly being their countrymen. Most of the time you cannot change people's hearts through laws but you can through gradual social engineering.
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"167. At 10:55am on 15 Jul 2010, threnodio_II wrote:
#160 - Gheryando
So look at it the other way round. A woman has a husband with - let us say - unusual tastes and forces his wife to only go out naked. She knows she is going to prosecuted for indecent exposure so she is trapped in her home.
Surely it is the same thing. Husband will only let her out of the house wearing the niqab, she knows she is going to be arrested and fined so again she is trapped.
This is neither cultural nor religious. It is overtly sexist and racist. "
In this case, threnodio, the husband is to be punished. Unfortunately, the woman will probably fear him even more than the law (honour killings etc) and thus pretend as if she enjoys walking around naked. I agree, the Niqab/Burka is sexist. Banning it is not racist. It is a sign to those who do not agree with our values that there is a clear limit we will accept as to how much they are allowed to implement their value system within our society.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
"174. At 12:06pm on 15 Jul 2010, Fwd079 wrote:
@Gheryando :
UK doesn't fear buddy, although UK is just as alert as any other country and perhaps more, but we do not try to hold the rope from the wrong end.
Regards."
Sorry buddy, she does. Otherwise, why all this apologism (sending a convincted mass murdered home to libya, preventing English towns to celebrate Christmas and instead call it "winter fest" or whatever as well as councils sending out leaflets in a language I can't even read. That is not even from this continent. Well, at least the UK doesn't show fear in Afghanistan. I salute the UK armed forces for their sacrifice and bravery. However, politicians in this country are a joke.
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"54. At 11:15pm on 13 Jul 2010, fmzubair wrote:
If the face veil is banned what about the other extreme, females walking almost naked on the streets with skimpy outfits in the name of social liberation? These indecent exhibitionist perverted attitudes should be banned first."
Hmm. It sounds like you have some major issues regarding women, my friend.
I've never understood the way people think that the human body (God's creation) is a shameful thing that should be hidden away and mortified.
The fact that people (you?) regard women's dress as "indecent" (you also say "perverted") says rather a lot about you and your, frankly disgraceful, attitude to other people. Maybe women do need to be covered to protect themselves from the sort of attitude you have displayed.
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Nik,
"No. There are more slaves even in %. The fact that slavery today is paid changes nothing. Or the fact that the modern slave has the choice to scrub floors or to play with nasty chemicals to gain less of a payment than a Roman slave would receive, changes little. You don't get it necessarily but it is alright?"
What are you driving at? I say that we live in a more advanced society because we find slavery, as you owning the somebody else as if they were property, abhorrant. You then claim there are more slaves than there were back then, and promptely refer to wage slavery. As if the Roman empire or Greek states did not have a large class of 'free men' that were in that situation as well? Saying we're not in a better situation, is ridicilous, as most of Western Europe at least recognises the fact that you have a right to schooling - even if access isn't perfect - and a right to medical care - even if access isn't perfect -.
"Correct, it also led to communism. 50,000,000 dead in Russia, what else can I say?"
Don't be silly. If you're going to defend some Orthodox-Christian point of view, just come out and say it.
"As said, direct comparisons are difficult. The core remains the same since the human nature works that way. There is no better or worse, just different. Most of the "positive" things are not the result of our societies but of simply technological advances that occured in the recent past but in much different societies than today's. In fact, today's societies quite decelerated the learning curve which should be exponential from this point on but we do not realise it."
Human nature is a construct. Saying it's all "technological advances" is horribly reductionist. If you want to believe those fairytales. Go ahead.
"And today too."
No it isn't, wage slavery yes, but that's - let's be honest - a semantic leap you're making there. Not very honest at all. Besides, you claimed that it didn't exist before on all continents, not me.
"Yes. So?"
Read it again, and think about it. You are really claiming that the average people were more respected 2000 years ago?
"Like today."
No. They were LESS respected than they are today.
"Class society exists today, only that they sell it that way to your eyes to tell you that it has changed. No it has not. 80% of your rulers are chosen on the basis of their class and the rest 20% are clowns chosen for reasons of image-selling. Studies in countries like Britain and France that have long records show that these supposedly very progressive societies that showed immense social changes in terms of production of wealth actually showed extremely slow social evolution, in fact they almost remained fossilised. The rich of today are 80% the rich of yesterday and the poor of today are at 80% the poor of yesterday."
It has changed somewhat, I didn't say it didn't exist anymore. I said it's less blatant. Don't find things to disagree just for the sake of it. Yes, slow evolution is very much what it is. Not exactly a brand new theory.
"Alexander comitted genocide in Thebese Egypt? Or the Egyptians? The Thebans of Thebe, Greece? Alexander did not commit genocide to anyone. The word means to eradicate a nation, or an effort to eradicate a nation. Alexander was leading an attacking army and naturally threatened resisting cities with total destruction - eee... the only way to convince a city to surrender I guess! Hence, some of the cities that particularly resisted to him were totally destroyed, half population killed, half sold as slaves, like Tyros in Phoenice but these were selective cases. This happened more often in Afganistan where he found most resistance. However , it was not a genocide in the sense that he did not aim at eradicating a particular culture or a population or a nation unlike the case of Romans in Israel or in Dacia where they particularly aimed at neutralising completely these nations."
Don't be silly, Thebe was a nation as much as that concept can be translated back to Ancient culture. But we're getting awefully close to transposing values onto historical eras where they do not belong. Still, I think we've come quite a way from just chopping off every man's right hand. When Godfroy of Bouillon took Jerusalem, the blood was knee-high in the street.
"Declarations are nice. In fact in the past we had even better declarations of equality, like the christianic and muslim religions that played that role. In the exact way that these religions di did not change anything, such declarations of human rights did not change anythign either. I am quite ok established in life, yet I can find you 10-15 cases where my human rights are infringed and none cares and even if I go to court my case won't be heard."
Really, the Bible is a better declaration than the rights of men? You are one of those Orthodox apologists, aren't you? They changed quite a few things, only you're so busy stretching every comparison to ridicilous lenghts, that you can't see the forest through the trees.
A culture that treats women as equal, that gives one man one voice (and you can talk about how this doesn't change anything, but clearly you are not big on parliamentary history), outlaws slavery, torture or the death penalty is far superior, despite its flaws. To cultures that don't. Even though 'culture' in this instance has devolved into a rather meaningless phrase.
Culture is not a stagnant thing either, it is not possible to 'preserve' any culture as they will CONSTANTLY be in motion. What is one defining aspect of French culture? German culture? American culture? It's such a fluid concept it's almost meaningless, just like the term 'nation' is.
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mvr512
Re #173
Agree on all points: Particularly that the 'west culture' in general terms is far in advance in terms of enlightenment, law, stability, economic development etc. of anything offered by any other.
If it were any other case then millions upon millions who have departed since post-1940s those 'other cultures' to settle in the 'west' cultural environment could not possibly have deliberately chosen to do so.
It is so obvious: This topic debate is about a ban on face-veils in a western Nation not about European females prevented from exposing their arms & legs in the Mid-East etc. There is a clash of cultures and it is only in the advanced & enlightened 'west' this debate could be held. Few, if any, Islamic Nations are going to allow a Political debate and/or Legal argument on wearing of a mini-skirt, kissing in public etc.! Islam views it all as immoral & decadent and the Faith takes precedent over Human Rights.
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For the past several years I've been following with no little astonishment the French headlong rush to force everyone in France to conform with some idea of what it is to be French, including the banning of any kind of head coverings or the wearing of noticeable religious symbols in their schools, to the new ban on burqas/full covering of the face -- unless it's a motorcycle helmet, etc. The next thing to go, to ease French discomfort, is any kind of (cloth) head covering in public, although I'm pretty sure this won't include nuns. Note: the new law probably violates the French constitution and may be struck down, as it should be.
I live in Brooklyn, NY, am a feminist and a lefty and even I can see that forcing women to go against strong cultural imperatives is wrong, folks, plain wrong, and you certainly won't get assimilation out of it, you'll get separation and seclusion. In the area I live in I see Muslim women and girls wearing all kinds of head coverings and it's pretty clear that the head covering will be the last thing to go, if it ever does completely, while dress becomes more and more westernized. Burqas, etc. are extremely rare in the U.S., and, except for certain identity photos, are absolutely permitted. Per the Constitution, we have freedom of religion in the U.S. and you can't abrogate that, no matter who you are and how much you want to. What's astonishing to me is how the French have created a form of fascism by trying to legislate French identity, one which cannot include outside influence; but then that's nothing new, look at the longstanding attempts to purify the French language. What they're doing is racism, plain and simple. As for me, well, I'm not particularly comfortable with women being forced to cover up either, but per my upbringing and my belief in the U.S. Constitution, I know I have to let them make the decision: I cannot make the decision for them, nor am I allowed to. A point of view the French might want to consider.
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#177 - cool_brush_work
I seem to remember the last census when the only question you were not required to answer was your religion but if enough people put the same religion then it became an 'official religion'. Somebody started a mischievous campaign to get people to put Jedi Knights and it worked and is a recognised religion.
Well if we have legislation recognising religious freedom and enough people sign up next time to an ancient Mayan or Inca faith, can we start practicing ritual human sacrifice?
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#176 - cool_brush_work
Perfectly valid arguments well made. I am inclined to agree except for my natural liberal instincts which tell me telling people what they may or may not wear seems to me like control freakery. Now if you want to argue that some of these people are wandering round with plastic explosive belts in their knickers or the police cannot identify shop lifters from video footage, the I will go along with you.
It's the 'cultural' thing that worries me. I simply don't trust the motivation.
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"It's the 'cultural' thing that worries me. I simply don't trust the motivation."
threnodio - there is nothing wrong with showing other people the boundaries of your culture. The Western culture is the most liberal, accepting and progressive you will find in the history of mankind. It works amazingly when its members all share the core values. It becomes complicated when these hard-earned rights and values are challenged through exactly the means, which have enabled these rights and values to develop. We have now reached a critical point. Having been accepting ever since, it has now come so far in that we have to "force" people to accept our ways. That it ever had to come to this just shows the extreme leniency with which we have been operating in terms of accepting cultural norms that are, inherently, incompatible with ours.
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NancyL
Re #185
You were making some good points but You fell foul of Your onw words mid-way through, "..Burqas...except for certain identity photos, are absolutely permitted.."
Now, how do You suppose the Muslim Lady posed for the 'certain identity photo' unless she took off the aforementioned Burqa!?
So, if the lady has to pose for that photo and then walks around face covered what was the point of the photo!?
To pass through airports, cross international borders, identify herself to Police when stopped, probably whenever making any significant Contractual arrangement (although managing a business, buying the house, car etc. is a male perogative in Islam), serious Medical treatment (Ok the face does not have to be uncovered for a hysterectomy etc. but I've yet to read of the Surgeon who operates under that constraint especially when the anaethetist is taken into account) and so the list goes on...
Not to be facetious, but to trip-up Your 'leftish' tendencies: When the Burqa clad mother goes to collect the newborn baby kept in for a few extra days from the hospital are You actually going to let her just walk off with the child!?
In which case the Burqa is a redundant & wholly non-essential item of head clothing, isn't it?
As for Your US Constitution: Tried driving a Car without strapping on Your seatbelt, riding a motorbike without a helmet... Just how many times & ways did You or was it Your Government made up Your mind for You!?
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"UK is just as alert as any other country and perhaps more, but we do not try to hold the rope from the wrong end."
Vide Anna Chapman (aka Anya Kushchenko) losing her British citizenship.
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Hi all,
I am french and I have to say that it is really strange to read all these reactions there.
Everybody there is speaking about the law, without using the only word that can explain the massive french support: Laicité.
Laicité is more than secularism, La Laicité is a kind of cultural "jihad" against... religions...
This is a really old war that has begun in France in 1789 with the destruction of a lot of religious materials.
The well known (at least by the french) law adopted in 1905 successfully lower the religious role until the new raise of bigotry seen with Islam... This is a new battle around this subject that is getting out...
We as french are massively and deeply against all forms of religions' power, this is what this law is saying.
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To NancyL, 185:
I agree with your comments, and I'm amazed the French taxpayers want to waste resources on enacting and enforcing such nonsensical laws. Instead of receiving their salaries, the French MPs should pay damages to the French state for passing such laws. Checking identity and taking passport photos (together with certain medical procedures and a few other life situations, I imagine) are just about the only reasons where this could be even a relevant issue, and it seems unnecessary and silly to try to write special laws to address these situations. There is no justifiable reason for a broad ban of all types of face covers in public places at all times - such a law is unreasonable, vague, overbroad and unpredictable from the point of view of the addressee of such law. I am also concerned that if these and similar types of laws and regulations mushroom in different states, regions and cities in Europe (e.g., France, Bavaria, Barcelona, etc.), then temporary visitors may not have sufficient notice of these unreasonable requirements and may be unfairly exposed to prosecution or harassment. This type of law seem not only unconstitutional (within the jurisdiction of the French constitutional court and the Strasbourg Court), but also contradicts the principles of free movement of persons and services, which are the central principles of EU law (and need to be challeagned by the EU institutions and before the EU court in Luxembourg). I have spent a few years in the USA and my family is not from the EU. I am concerned about the direction Europe is taking - I fear there is a trend in most of Europe of replacing the constitutional rule of law by an increasingly authoritarian system pandering to a mob of voters who despise Muslims, Jews, non-whites and any other "minority" members. I am genuinely puzzled, why so many people on this forum have so much discomfort with something that personally does not at all affect them (veil). If such measures are enacted throughout Europe (which is something I am against), I agree that the right thing would then be to apply the same rules also to nuns and comparable non-religious outfits.
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Where is the law to support the law?
Isn’t it well-known that this burqa bill violates Article 10 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which states: “No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views, provided their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law.”
As well as the European Convention of Human Rights, in Article 9: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance”.
What happened to state neutrality in matters of religion?
There is no law to support this law!
PM François Fillon fast-tracked the burqa legislation,though the legislation itself is unconstitutional and contrary to the European Convention of Human Rights.
But here is the most ominous part: Fillon said: “We cannot encumber ourselves with prudence in relation to legislation that is unsuited to today’s society..."
Excuse me?
Today the burqa, and after that what will encumber the French Government?
The French, like many other countries, are fixating on Muslims to divide people and detract from the economic collapse. France’s 5-million-strong Muslim community have a right to believe that the French state is illegally targeting them because there is no law to support the law.
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@8 Free_born_John
Vive la difference! You say. Well, if the French and the Americans are wrong in their well founded approach to stop any further enlargement of the parallel societies, where behind the burka, one can surprisingly discover an evident non respect of the secular society laws and standards, we must agree, that the UK authorities have already found another, more efficient way to deal with these sensible, cultural ways of coexistence…
May you please support your argument with some, more detailed proofs and facts concerning the British experience in these matters. I would welcome any good, non aggressive suggestion provided it is good enough to integrate the Muslim people. We, in Bulgaria have absolutely the same problem…And for the time being we are preparing the same laws as the French…
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Unfortunate/improper law - but predictable consequence of yrs of Islamic terrorism combined with no apparent desire to assimilate into host country.
I suspect that Islam will either reform and eliminate violence or face further exclusion from the West.
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@ 193 BluesBerry
"As well as the European Convention of Human Rights, in Article 9: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance”.
What happened to state neutrality in matters of religion?
There is no law to support this law!"
The "...worship, teaching, practice and observance" do not necessarily suggest and legalise to wear burka and niqab in public places. Second, if "the ..worship, teaching, practice and observance" serve as a motive to interpreter wrongly or to violate the established secular laws that would guarantee equal rights to all of us /including those Muslims who are more or less embarrassed by their parents to practice other ways of existence, such as the non respect of the Ramathan restrictions/, then we have to pass laws that would interpret more precisely what is in violation of what, i.e. we must follow the French example.
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#191 - loran
I will bow to your superior knowledge because I am not French although I know the country well. My understanding, however, has always been that the determination to keep the state as a secular institution was about maintaining a strict separation of the state from matters of faith. This appears to be the opposite of that. Since the burqua is worn through a tradition which stems from religious faith, how can it be any different from monastic robes, nun's habits or priests' frock coats and collars. These are simply the outward manifestations of faith.
If the minister concerned is honest in his interview for the Independent, then this has nothing to do with religion and is simply a law against clothing which hides the identity. Presumably it will apply equally to 'hoodies' or anyone else who is not on a motorcycle or fencing. But this is not how it is being sold. It is being 'sold' as a measure against the muslin veil. That is not the separation of the state and religion - it is direct intervention and as such, undermines, not enhances the secularism of the state.
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threnodio_II wrote:
"#76 - democracythreat
"threnodio_II wrote:
"It is a law against hiding you face, is it not?"
You took that comment out of context and without regard to the central point I was making. The following paragraph is therefore uncalled for if direct at me and you should withdraw it."
You are quite right. I do withdraw it. In fact I did so as soon as I realized my idiotic mistake but that comment was moderated into oblivion.
I did not take you out of context, I stupidly failed to comprehend what you had clearly written. I am sorry for that piece of foolishness.
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razausman wrote:
"@ democracythreat : You are an ignoramus. Can you please explain why anyone would want to veil themselves. If it is cultural. It is wrong. If it is religious. It is wrong. It is based on the concept of treating women as inferior, unable to think for themselves. An object to be possessed.
Ever wonder why in these societies and cultures the men don't veil themselves, yet they insist their women should?"
Well, it isn't really my place to explain why people choose to wear veils. Nor is it yours. It is their business what they wear, and if that doesn't affect my behaviour I see no reason for me to have an opinion on the subject.
Secondly, I do wonder why "in these societies" (here you refer unwittingly to France) certain women veil themselves, and why men do not. I had come to the conclusion that it is due to many factors, not the least of which is that their mothers told them that doing so was virtuous.
Thirdly, I must thank you for calling me an ignoramus. i find it refreshing, given what I am usually called, and it supports my view that nobody has an exclusive handle on the quality of intelligence.
Except for yourself, of course.
"It is wrong." is a statement you make repeatedly, and the awe felt by ignorant folks such as myself when you make your declaration is inspiring.
I intend to take your example of wise reasoning into court and into my workplace. I have no doubt it will make me a great hit with everyone, and perhaps it will go some small way towards convincing my peers that I am less of an ignoramus than I was.
It is a pleasure and an honour to discourse with you, razausman, and I look forward to your continued comments on every topic with a hunger that can only be described as indecent.
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CBW, with the greatest possible respect, I have long since lost faith in your ability to follow my arguments, let alone counter them.
You have repeatedly demonstrated a lack of integrity and an emotional ferocity which undermines your attempt to set yourself out as some kind of intellectual force.
I am sorry, but you must earn my respect. You will not bully it out of me.
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It took the french society decades to put religion in its place.
Being reprimanded by the US is laughable - easy way to make Gitmo ,rendition planes ,secret prison, Abu Ghraib , torture less of a concern at an ally expense.
The day someone not anglican will be allowed to be PM , French people and MPs might take whatever that country has to say seriously ...
England should stick to dealing with their homegrown suicide bombers instead of dwelling on what a country they despise does.
A few religious fanatics wanting to live in a sharia state will not change that.
99% of french muslims despair at being "represented" by these medieval fanatics.
Enough negotiations with these degenerates.
Some here obvioulsy fails to see that secular states like France and Turkey are targeted by these nutters.
(Burqa now ; sharia law English style tomorrow)
No Thanks.
That ridiculous costume is also forbidden in Mecca that anti-muslim hotbed ...
Why is that ?
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200 - democracythreat
Thank you - that was gracious of you. Appreciate it.
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If I were to walk into a bank with a balaklava on I would probably be arrested before I had left the building.
Should someone walk into a bank, purportedly a female, wearing something (what can that be I wonder) covering her face it is her right? I don't think so.
What happens if a shop owner is deaf? I imagine they would not be allowed (by our wonderful laws) to refuse to serve someone wearing a veil over their face, and yet they would be unable to do so. What is more, the veil wearer would scream 'bigot' if they were asked by sign language to take it off. I suppose it would be better to ban deaf shop owners and the like. Or maybe not.
Visual identity is very important in our society - it is a marker of Western Europe that we identify one another by facial characteristics, as well as communicate with one another (and that includes the important communication which is made with people we do not know). Those who bring in a cultural activity that undermines the societal methods of interaction that are applicable in the country they (culturally speaking) are invading should not be allowed to do so.
Our way of life works, our communication works, our culture works. If you wish to live here you are welcome to join us - but join us, don't cut yourself off from us and don't act in ways which undermine what we are... after all, you chose us, so accept us the way we are please.
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#203 - raoulbitenbois
Well - we have another rabid Anglophobe on the books do we?
Do you want to pursue the logic?
"Being reprimanded by the US is laughable - easy way to make Gitmo ,rendition planes ,secret prison, Abu Ghraib , torture less of a concern at an ally expense.
The day someone not anglican will be allowed to be PM , French people and MPs might take whatever that country has to say seriously ..."
The United States does not have a prime minister, it has a president and a Catholic, one John Kennedy has held that office even in my lifetime. Unless, of course, you mean the UK? Well of course you do, stupid of me.
Technically, there is no reason why a non-Anglican should not hold the office although presumably someone else would have to advise on ecclesiastical appointments. But there have certainly been Ministers of the Crown of different faiths and ethnicities including a number of Muslims - oh yes and a woman prime minister. Remind me of your last woman president, Muslim or Afro-Caribbean minister. You mean there were none?
"England should stick to dealing with their homegrown suicide bombers instead of dwelling on what a country they despise does"
So remind me. 7/7 was the only occasion when suicide bombers successfully attacked in the UK. Every other attempt has been foiled. I thought that was dealing with them. And what is this country that we are all supposed to despise - France? Surely not. A lot of us live their for heaven's sake.
You are clearly confused. It is clearly you who hates the British, the Americans, the odd 1% of Muslims who lead the other 99% by the nose (where the hell did that come from?) and I imagine you are not too fond of the led either. And as for "sharia law English style" - 'Publc' reader are we.
Why don't you take a nice cold shower and lie down in a dark room with a bottle of Pernod. It will pass.
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205 Dorfkcots.
Very well put. I nearly said that myself earlier but got myself caught up in a theological and moral argument that has confused the moderators. My fault for not making the points more clearly.
I will however state that modern Western culture encourages individuals to assert themselves. Now we have an assertion which is offensive to Western culture. To deal with it we should be promoting what we all have in common rather than our differences.
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I would like to comment on the fact that everyone seems willing to beat up on France while nations all over the world drag people off to prisons, kill them outright, discriminate against minorities or in some cases majorities and have open political corruption. Such outrage over requiring that people not cover their face in public. It is strange times when almost everyone would agree this is a outcome of the radial Islamic militants and their actions but that cannot be said. Public fears, justified or not can and do become public policy. These are always sticky questions in a democratic form of government and how the majority of people can impose something on a minority. I think the quoting of international human rights legislation is very hollow in this world where it is violated every day in many places with nothing at all being done but letters being sent in protest. As the US Secretary of State said on her first visit to China: the US would not let human rights or enviornmental issues get in the way when discussing economnic cooperation.
What else needs to be said.
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201. democracythreat
Surely it will require a surgeon to remove your tongue from your cheek.
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threnodio_II : I was refering to the UK concerning the PM thing ,bad editing made it look like I was speaking of the US , I wasn't.
//Remind me of your last woman president, Muslim or Afro-Caribbean minister. You mean there were none? //
Last muslim minister ? Hmmm , the present Secretary of State for Urban Policies for one.Who incidentally is dead against ninja costumes (a woman against that debasement of womanhood who would have thought ?).
The sports secretary is not only from the muslim faith , she was born in Senegal and happened to be a woman !
Imagine that.
Last Afro-Caribbean member of the cabinet ? Marie-Luce Penchard.
But don't let those facts get in the way of your obviously extensive knowledge of French politics.
Did I made this up ?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7690809.stm
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//You are clearly confused. It is clearly you who hates the British, the Americans, the odd 1% of Muslims who lead the other 99% by the nose //
I love americans , but not when they're willing to look the other way while their govt is willing to use methods they prosecuted after WWII when it was used by the Japanese in prison camp.
I don't hate English people either , I cringe at your govt subserviency to whatever Washington decides (sometimes against your own national interests).
A lot of British people do as well.
But keep bashing France , it's easy , it feels good , french people in their vast majority couldn't care less - not only because they don't read the british press but french people are too busy being lazy ,eating cheese , surrendering to the germans , collecting EU subsidies and oppressing legitimate religious claims ...
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Re 54. At 11:15pm on 13 Jul 2010, fmzubair wrote:
"If the face veil is banned what about the other extreme, females walking almost naked on the streets with skimpy outfits in the name of social liberation? These indecent exhibitionist perverted attitudes should be banned first."
Get off it. No one is forcing you to look at them.
The state should not tell women (or men) how to dress (or undress).
They'd better start doing something useful with our taxes.
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#210 - raoulbitenbois
I don't bash France. I love it dearly. And I would certainly never accuse them of being the lazy, surrendering to the Germans types. I was responding to your extraordinary allegation that only an Anglican can be prime minister. You have replied with a list of ministers who fit my criteria. Fair enough, match drawn. I mean you and your nation no offense - quite the opposite - but revisit your original post and it reads like a rant. Sharia law English style? Fostering home grown suicide bombers? Give me a break.
If we have started off on the wrong foot, I apologise and we can agree to differ about Islamic dress codes but please don't tell me I was not entitled to react to your original post. It was full of precisely the kind of stereotypical images of which you accuse me. If we are going to have serious exchanges of views, we need to go beyond that sort of thing.
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206 threnodio writes:
"Technically, there is no reason why a non-Anglican should not hold the office although presumably someone else would have to advise on ecclesiastical appointments."
Advise on ecclesiastical appointments? I thought in a true democracy church and state were strictly separated.
And to answer raoulbitenbois at 211 when he says "But keep bashing France , it's easy , it feels good , french people in their vast majority couldn't care less" I can assure him it is pure jealousy. Remember the 100 year war? The loss of their French possessions is as painful to the English as the loss of their empire. Just imagine being stuck in their rainy little island surrounded by the despised Welsh, Irish and us Scots when they would love to be in charge of the world. So in desperation they hang on to the coattails of the yanks hoping to play a bigger part on the world stage and probably waiting for their chance to have another go at dominating it.
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what the Koran actually says on the subject:
"the faithful women must keep their gaze focused below, on the ground and cover their sexual organs. They must not put their beauty and their jewelry on display.
They must hide their breasts behind Purdah.
They must not exhibit their beauty to anybody except their husbands, brothers, nephews, womenfolk, servants, eunuch employees and children.
They must not move their legs briskly while walking because then much of their bodies can get exposed." (Sura Al Noor 24:31)
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#214 - margaret howard
"Advise on ecclesiastical appointments? I thought in a true democracy church and state were strictly separated".
Yes. This is a curious anomaly. In progressing to a 'true democracy', the British have thought it meet to remove executive powers from the monarchy (Queen being the titular head of the Anglican church) to the elected government. This includes the appointment of bishops. This could be resolved by transferring that power to the General Synod but ultimately the answer is disestablishment. I favour this but do not necessarily think that the satus quo mitigates against the country's democratic credentials even though it may appear that way to outsiders.
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@199 - threnodio_II
This discussion is really interesting.
I am not sure of what the PM has said to the Independent..
And the discussion around separation of state and religion is interesting.
You are right to say that the 1905 law is separating the two "powers". This is what is, literally, in the text. But you have to understand the context, at this time, the spirit of this law was to weakness the religious power.
This has to be related to the "hussards noirs" of the 3rd Républic (that ended in 1940). These teachers, that were State's "evangelists" went all over the country and fought both the religious power and the traditionalism to put in place the state we know today. This story that could be seen as an old one, is in fact still accurate, since the Education Nationale, is still constructed on this model. All the roots of this huge entity are there. State oriented, anti religious. This is how the modern states has been constructed.
That is part of what is getting out these days. And this is even stronger since the high classes of the society are trying to get rid of the State in order to construct EU against the people (remember the 2005 referendum...)...
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I find skinheads with docmartins offensive, can we ban skinheads? i find middle aged white men on computers scary because most peadophiles are middle aged white men, can we ban them owning computers! i find jews wearing black and having lots of unkept facial hair distrubing and think they may be forced into wearing it, can we ban that, i think a nazi supporting party based out of leeds is offensive to those who died and fought int eh 2 world wars, so why they a legitimate party! freedom goes both ways not just the anglo illegal war and torturign persons way only!
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threnodio:
"I favour this but do not necessarily think that the satus quo mitigates against the country's democratic credentials even though it may appear that way to outsiders."
Have you any idea how North Korean that sounds?
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Well done France !
One step along the way to restoring my faith in the EU, they have shown some backbone, where the other nations are running scared of extremists who justify ridiculous restrictions in the name of religion.
Next up, please ban all organised religion, if someone has faith, then they should be able to pray without having to go to a church, where there are told what to say and do by out of touch octegenarians more interested in hiding their own sins of the flesh or by mad eyed lunatic dictators who hate the democracies because of the theoretical freedom they offer.
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Re215: Each time someone recites suras from the Koran suddenly the atmosphere gets so depressive. No wonder people who are occupied with this religion suffer from complexes and psychological problems. There is a similar effect with other religions too but the Koran is simply the champion in doing so. Are you aware of a sura that talks about how to rape the infidels' women?
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" Are you aware of a sura that talks about how to rape the infidels' women?"
I'm not Nik. Perhaps you could quote it.
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threnodio_II :// I was responding to your extraordinary allegation that only an Anglican can be prime minister.//
Why did Tony Bliar wait to get out of number 10 to convert then ?
The fact that Disraeli was PM does mean that my anglican argument was wrong.
Duly Noted.
Concerning the Belphegor (google it , you'll see) costume "controversy" and its fanatical backing , it's the latest attempt at undermining a secular country , Turkey faces the same kind of concerted attacks, to not see that is either naive or malicious.
It's demands to have public swimming-pools have women-only days , women demanding to have female doctors while visiting public hospitals , public roads being blocked on friday afternoon in the 18th arrondissement to have outdoor prayers (while nearby mosques are empty).
The common thing about these examples ? Public facilities (paid by everyone).
In France when your picking your kids off kindergarten you have to prove that you are who you say you are.
So you say Hi to the teacher or staff then bye and go on your way. Crazy stuff I know.
The solution proposed by the advocates of the Burqa ?
They're willing to take the burqa off to prove to the staff that they're are the legimitate person but due to their modesty they want a private room to do it.
So 36.000 villages in France , let's make it 50.000 schools all needing major construction work just to accomodate "religious" rights .
We'll pass.
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It all depends on who's "infidel" to whom. From the Christian point of view, Muslims are infidels, i.e. Mohammedans.
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# 221. At 10:52am on 16 Jul 2010, you wrote:
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# 223. At 11:32am on 16 Jul 2010, you wrote:
This comment has been referred for further consideration. Explain
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I guess some people do not like to be told some basic truths since they reveal the poverty of their own thinking.
There was absolutely nothing out of the rules in these messages apart the fact that they pinpointed the lack of basic education of some people here who fail to see the following:
- All societies have basic social convetions.
Does anyone has any objection to it?
- Nudism in public places is a basic social convention in western societies
In many western countries untill recently there was no particular law on nudism since no people would go around naked and if anyone tried he would be 1) either beaten on spot by bystanders or 2) closed in a primitive psychiatric institution
However, one the one hand after a slight change in peoples' attitude towards nudism not being a psychological illness (which did not change of course the basic social convention on nudity), as well as the rise of civic sense so that beating people on spot or closing them in the mad-house was neither permitted, the law came in and defined that nudity in public places is an illegal act punishamble by law.
- Full face cover is another basic social convention in western societies
Up to now, few if any countries have legislated on it since if in the past anyone circulated with his face covered, people would refuse to approach him, they would refuse his entry in any public building, and in some cases he would try to communicate with people he could get beaten up by irritated people, in other cases of enterring guarded places, he would be gunned down to death instantly.
However, on the one hand the changing attitudes of the general civic sense that does not want anymore lynching people for infringing the basic social conventions and on the other the influx of muslim immigrants some of whom are not willing to adapt to the local basic social convetions (which is the strict minimum), calls in for the creation of the face-cover ban law.
There is absolutely nothing to discuss on it, this is a non-issue. People who are against the ban actually admit having absolutely no respect for any basic social convetion and thus being willing to accept people circulating in public naked and - why not (it is a 100% natural thing!)? - with visible erections. If they do not accept the later then they are fascists of the worst kind trying to impose their own distorted views on society and at the same erase long standing views existing in society, i.e. they are absolutely aggressive to the point that only an enemy would be.
The law is not at all about sending policemen to patrol for veiled women. It is about protecting the basic human right of the citizens to refuse to communicate with people that have covered face. Until now, any public service or bank employee refusing to serve a veiled person would risk being sued for racism, destroying his career and up to completely losing his job. The law comes in the protection of his basic human right not to communicate with people that do not want to reveal their identities.
I am again and again surprised that people can have any objection to the above on whatever grounds. That is what I call fasicsm.
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Unbelievable as this law may sound to those who recognise its contempt for choice and cultural difference, I can tell you it is more sinister than you can imagine. I have spent my entire life in conflict zones and this move is a text book,declaration of war on the muslim way of life designed to provoke a reaction. The results will be an immediate formation of a muslim defence orgnisation which in turn will give political elements the excuse to further erode basic civil liberties. Make no mistake, this is not about helping a woman select her wardrobe, this is about taking the power away from the people and back into the hands of the few.
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Re228: Oh really mate? Are you afraid? Why don't you go tell Londoners and New Yorkers to start reading the Koran so as to avoid future bombings! That is what you tell us right now.
Of course the law is a smokescreen and it is there to create impressions and reactions since politicians could not care less if the citizens rights are infringed - and I am not talking about the right of muslims to hide their faces but I am talking about the human right of Europeans to refuse to talk with people that hide their faces which so far has been denied provoking a huge injustice.
However, you do not have the sufficient basis to grasp the basics: the law itself it is correct: it addresses an issue that should be addressed. The issue is all about making a law on a basic social convention that is the "must not" of face cover in the exact way that the "must not" of nudism is already illegal. Nothing more nothing less.
Now if muslims become more hardliners then that is their problem. It will be dealt. The state cannot alter its functioning to accomodate for people who have no respect for it.
If you think that everything was ok up to now and that it is this law or such measures that will cause a fight between the communities you are far from the truth.
Take this:
"""Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened their very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government."""
Henry Kissinger at Bilderberger Conference, Evians, France, , 1991
Do you have the substantial analytical capacity to grasp what it is all about? Do you think that by giving concessions it will stop?
No mate, I am sorry. It has started long before you were born - cos you are young I suppose. It started with the arbitrary, uncostitutional and illegal installation of muslims in most countries of Europe. From there one, anything can be an excuse. And if you give one concession for the shake of this misty thing called multi-culturalism next day there will be something else. It is a trap and there is no way out apart two cases: the newcomers putting water to their wine and accepting to respect the basic social conventions of the host society or the host society losing completely ground to the newcomers.
Face cover is a basic social convention. It is not a choice to take or not to take. Nudism is also a choice of take or not to take and down to the basics it is much more a human right than full face cover. If you accept full face cover is of course the equivalent of accepting from one day to another people coming to your shop completely naked, often sporting and even entertaining erections, why not afterall?
If muslims want to impose the host society to have their women or anyone else circulating with full face cover, it means that in their turn they will have to accept that fully naked men can also circulate in public. It is as simple as that. Either we respect social convetions or not at all. Any other approach is pure fascism imposing a caste system of dual speed and a true communautarian organisation that will keep reproducing tension and constantly giving new issues of division.
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Gheryando, 186 wrote:
"there is nothing wrong with showing other people the boundaries of your culture. The Western culture is the most liberal, accepting and progressive you will find in the history of mankind. It works amazingly when its members all share the core values. It becomes complicated when these hard-earned rights and values are challenged through exactly the means, which have enabled these rights and values to develop. We have now reached a critical point. Having been accepting ever since, it has now come so far in that we have to "force" people to accept our ways. That it ever had to come to this just shows the extreme leniency with which we have been operating in terms of accepting cultural norms that are, inherently, incompatible with ours."
Amazing! The Western culture is the most liberal, accepting and progressive you will find in the history of mankind, to an extent where it even finds the moral generosity to tolerate people who accept all its cultural norms. That is quite a moral achievement which epitomizes the intellectual peaks to which the "Western culture" has risen and can provide leadership for the rest of the world! Admittedly, it would be even more admirable, if Europe could tolerate people who are slightly different, but apparently that would be too much to ask of Europeans. So let us rejoice that they tolerate at least people who are the same, which makes it the most morally advanced civilization on Earth, as per Gheryando.
I also note the expression "core values". I assume what you mean is that this includes also wearing or not wearing this or that piece of clothing, right. I would have thought that core values would mean something more general, along the lines of the Ten Commandments or the Categorical Imperative, but no, there you go, Europe's core values also include your clothes, and if you don't watch out, they will soon label you as a non-European element. So I have to be careful to keep track of what is considered European by the likes of Gheryando.
Which reminds me, a few years back an EU "expert" was trying to help me understand why Turkey cannot be admitted to the EU. If I understood correctly, his main argument was that most Turks do not eat pork, which is supposedly a big problem since most EU laws relate to agricultural products, and the free circulation and eating of pigs is the first and foremost core principle of EU law. Glad I didn't mention to him that I am something of a partial vegetarian - that would have been a very un-European thing to say and might have offended his European sensibilities.
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@199 Threnodio
“That is not the separation of the state and religion - it is direct intervention and as such, undermines, not enhances the secularism of the state.”
Sorry to intervene without any invitation. For the first time maybe, I should disagree with your vision on the interpretation of the main principle of any secular state. I agree that this discussion concerns the core, the mere foundation of any modern society where the church normally is independent from the state, thus guarantying to all citizens equal right for practising a religion of their own choice. But what happens in practice, not only in France /where the second generation migrants from Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania constitute more than six percent of the population with a clear tendency to increase even more/, not only in Germany /where the residents of mainly Turkish origin constitute more than five percent of the citizens, and if we add to that the total number of the non residents still working in Germany, we may presume that the total percentage of the Muslims may exceed ten percent of the total German inhabitents/, but almost in any central/eastern European country including Bulgaria, where the local Muslims already reached the critical ten percent of the whole population. Needless to say, we managed so far to reach some kind of a well balanced relationship between Muslims and Orthodox Christians at the cost of many compromises, including the establishment of a political party which members are mostly Muslims. But, at the same time, we noticed that under the cover of the free religious practices, many alarming news started to come from the towns/villages inhabited mainly by Muslims, such as marriages of young girls of under 16 years, marriages of youngsters previously arranged by the parents against the will of the couple, organising of illegal islamic courses in the mosques by people of unknown nationality, foreign investments coming from neighbour Turkey presumably in districts inhabited mostly by Muslims, and last but not least deliberate speaking in Turkish in public places /hotels, banks, etc., held by Muslim proprietors/. If we add to that, the practice of wearing burka/niqab in public places, and the numerous protests of Muslim women against the normal requirements concerning the make of a portrait photography for the IC, you may constitute the picture of the present situation here, which may hide many risks both for the secular society and the national security. If I should resume the reasons of my personnel concern in brief, I should say, that the Orthodox majority here do respect the principle of separation of the state from the church, while the Muslim minority does not respect it. In the mean time, there are evidences of even more provocative manifestations of some extreme Islamic groups, such as the illegal building of monuments commemorating ‘the exploits of the unknown Ottoman soldier’, etc.
You see friend, the ghosts of the past are still alive here, and our authorities have to work even harder in order to guarantee the civic peace and the civic rights of the citizens in Bulgaria…
Sofia, July 16th 2010
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" MPs believe that those who live in, or visit, France should embrace French values."
So every visitor to france will have to learn how to play football very, very badly?
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232. At 10:38pm on 16 Jul 2010, HabitualHero wrote:
"""" MPs believe that those who live in, or visit, France should embrace French values."
So every visitor to france will have to learn how to play football very, very badly?"""
Yes dear. If the French esteem that playing badly football is a basic convetion of their society you wil have to learn to play football very badly and you will be forced to abstain from training sessions. If you find this prospect horrible, you jump to Spain. It is your choice afterall.
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" Rascality has limits, stupidity has none."
-- Napoleon Bonaparte. Emperor of the French.
Napoleon wasn't 'Emperor of the French' for nothing! He knew his people best. Sarkozy has limits, but the French seems to have none...
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65 Million people against 1900 ! 34,210 french against 1 Burqa-clad woman! The french feel culturally threatened by 0.00002923th of a burqa per french head! Will it cover even one of their toe-nails? Will most of the french ever get the chance too see a Burqa-woman once in their life-time? What are these people? Yet, most of the posters here seem to agree with them! I am speechless. All I can do is to quote the author Terry Goodkind :-
“People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want it to be true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People's heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.”
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Re #202
Been away: Just read that, DemocThreat. Another raspberry of trivial pursuit by You!
".. I'm sorry but you (cbw) must earn my respect.."
To which I can honestly say I look forward to Your continued comments on every topic with a hunger that can only be described as 'indecent' and to obliging You by repeated exposure of Your wholly inconsistent and often illogically made points of view.
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MargaretHoward
Re #214
Give it up Margaret!
Your variety act as the grumpy Scot has been done so many times by others with a much better ratio of one-liners about the English!
"..100 year war.." and "..empire.." , plus "..rainy little island..", concluded by "..'us' Scots.." all in the same paragraph: About as relevant as haggis is to a decent meal!
If You really are a Scot then its Your 'rainy island' too, or hadn't You noticed because You were too busy complaining about all things English!
Come now, You've long since had Your Stone of Scone returned and the English really are sorry they kept it since 1296 - - Your THISTLE now encircles the GARTER and the Scottish CREST has replaced the English in the Royal Arms of Great Britain - - what more could You possibly be wanting from the English!?
TeeHee!
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Liliput
Re #236
All I can do in riposte is to suggest a reliance on a quote from Terry Goodkind is a rather 'stupid' action as the opinion carries no more weight and is no more substantiated than Your's, mine or anyone's!
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CBW, did you finish high school?
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237 cool_brush_work writes about democracythreat:
"To which I can honestly say I look forward to Your continued comments on every topic with a hunger that can only be described as 'indecent' and to obliging You by repeated exposure of Your wholly inconsistent and often illogically made points of view."
Are you sure you are not describing yourself here?
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MargaretHoward,
Re #241
Please, please do go ahead and give chapter & verse of my alleged 'inconsistency' because I am quite sure it is DemocThreat to whom I address that critique.
You may disagree wholeheartedly with all I write, but until now inconsistency is certainly not a factor in any criticism You or others have made of my contributions.
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i concur with CBW, margret.
His hysterical accusations and arrogant bullying have been thoroughly consistent. So have his delusional opinions of himself as an intellectual.
Indeed, I have come to expect nothing from him except a constant whine and emotional outpourings of bile.
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If I can sidestep the inevitable hysterics from the peanut gallery and come back to the topic of this blog entry for a moment, I think the issue that seems to have become distilled from the many posters is fairly simple.
For my understanding, it boils down to "They are disgusting, so we are entitled to behave disgustingly also."
When I lament the degradation of French civil liberties, I am not at all making an argument in favour of radical Islam. Or even moderate Islam. I am not saying or implying ANYTHING about Islam at all. I am simply talking about the standard of civil liberties in France.
And that seems to be lost in this debate. One cannot comment without being seen to take a side regarding Islam. Either you support the ban, in which case you do not side with Islam, or you reject the ban, in which case you are, to use the charming americanism, a "terrorist enabler".
It is the politics of "If you are not with us, you are against us.", and that is an appalling state of affairs.
Now if you doubt this analyses, have a careful read of the arguments and counter arguments above.
Note that every time a poster comments on the degradation of civil liberties, the response is always the same: an argument about the undesirability of Islam.
Now this CAN make sense, but only if you accept a specific premis: that the ONLY way to deal with Islam is to revise civil liberties in the west, and enhance the power of the state over all individuals.
I dispute that premis absolutely. It seems to me a recipe for complete disaster.
I mean, how far do we go down that road? Do we create a secret police force that can disappear people and torture them for a while, and then dump the brutalized bodies into the sea from helicopters?
Will that be sufficient power for the state to make us all safe from Islam?
Or do we need to repeal the law entirely, and authorize the establishment of citizens courts, to try and execute those who enable Islam as soon as is possible?
Should we, for example, create a law which says that if any three white christians gets together and passes judgement on a muslim, then it is lawful for that muslim to be put to death on the spot? If you think that sounds insane, welcome to the law of the USSR during the great purges.
What confuses me most is the desired outcome of those who claim to be protecting us from harm. What is that they wish to see come to pass?
Do they wish to force people into giving up their faith and embracing a better one?
Do they wish to demonstrate that western law is a superior way of living because in the west we throw human rights out the window at the drop of a hat? (or veil)
Or do they wish to obtain votes from a public frightened out of its wits by tabloid journalism of the most ridiculous kind? Or do they wish to push through large state contracts for "security services", which will enrich the family members of the party elite?
They only thing we can be certain of, in this debate, is that the people who wrote and passed this legislation have absolutely no desire to reach a detente, and no real desire to demonstrate the qualities of french law as superior to Islamic law.
If there was a single shred of desire to bring a peaceful reconciliation, or even to win an argument about whose law is better on the grounds of human rights, this legislation would never have been adopted.
It is, at best, hate mongering. It is a testament to the quality of the french political class, and the utter moral bankruptcy of the french party based system.
It is no better, in its moral authority, than nazis screaming abuse at jews and encouraging the mob to smash their windows and burn their shops on the night of the broken glass.
Indeed, what these french politicians have done is a disgrace to france. It is cultural treason, and legal vandalism. these politicians have grown up in an environment of tolerance, and they have been educated in a state where people were free and civil liberties were a reality.
They have repaid their ancestors by tearing this incredible legacy to shreds, all in an effort to gather cheap votes from those who wish to visit anger and hatred upon their neighbours.
And that has absolutely nothing to do with Islam. It is not Islam which can destroy the french tradition of liberty and civil rights, but only the french political class. And if they succeed in so doing, who can then stand up and say that the deplorable system of human rights under Islam is worse than the french alternative?
France is being dragged into the mud, in a stupid fight with Islam that does not need to descend to this level. And it is the political class of france, not the islamic weirdos, who have taken this course of action.
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DemocThreat
Re #244
Well, I support the right of France to make Laws suitable to France and have not suggested Islam or its followers are beyond the pale.
Your sweeping generalisation about those who write in support of the ban just does not hold up to inspection. E.g Comments #3, 6, 9, 11, 12, 24, 33, 36.... and so it goes on made no mention of opposition to Islam per se.
You then lost it completely with the analogy of Nazis & jew-baiting! How even someone as relatively weak on argument could just drop that in with Your, "..it is at best, hate-mongering.." simply exposes You as having neither understood nor studied the issue in any serious manner.
The France 'political-class' as You label them have not picked a fight with Islam as You imply: They have, as all the evidence of the last 16 months show if You cared to look at the development of this proposal, after careful & lengthy consideration taken forward a Legal measure concerning the protection and evolution of France as a Secular State.
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Re #243
Oh bless You!
Now You have 2 friends... the MAscaridII & a nice but frumpy Scots lass.
Next time DemocThreat why not bring all Your friends along and maybe between all 3, one argument worthy of the label could be set-out!
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It's very,very simple, if muslims want to continue any tradition or act that the sovereign nation of France deems unacceptable and muslims or any other immigrant
group does not want to cease, the foreigners should GO HOME! To me, as an American that is watching the whole "socio-economic" balance of the United States be altered by an illegal "collusion" between the federal gov't and illegal immigrants, it is
clear that most migration of third world folks to developed nations is not based on a desire to assimilate!
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185.NancyL wrote: For the past several years I've been following with no little astonishment the French headlong rush to force everyone in France to conform with some idea of what it is to be French
Don't like it? Don't go live in France, then.
including the banning of any kind of head coverings or the wearing of noticeable religious symbols in their schools
Which I support 100%, if not 1000% Religion and state and also religion and education need to be completely and rigidly separated. Throughout the ages religion (in particular the abrahamic variants) has been a malign influence (to put it mildly) and has cause many deaths, much suffering and subjugation and many many other things.
I live in Brooklyn, NY, am a feminist and a lefty
Which to a degree might just explain your 'ignorance' (my opinion, not stated as fact) on these things. Leftists tend to have rose tinted glasses about 'multiculturalism'. The 'melting pot' stuff does not work in Europe. As I said countless times before, all cultures and all aspects of cultures are not equal, in fact some aspects of some cultures are very undesirable.
and even I can see that forcing women to go against strong cultural imperatives is wrong, folks, plain wrong, and you certainly won't get assimilation out of it
Why is it wrong? What if a 'strong cultural imperative' forced women to undergo genital mutilation? Those suffering it would just have to accept it? Or do we have a moral duty to do something about it?
What's astonishing to me is how the French have created a form of fascism by trying to legislate French identity
The self-proclaimed 'lefty' uses the word 'fascism' to describe something she doesn't like, what a surprise. Lefties usually go for that word when out of arguments.
As for me, well, I'm not particularly comfortable with women being forced to cover up either, but per my upbringing and my belief in the U.S. Constitution, I know I have to let them make the decision: I cannot make the decision for them, nor am I allowed to.
Except that they don't make that decision ot of own free will. It is forced on them by men. And they have to do it under threat of social exclusion, and also they are told to tell gullible westeners (lefties may qualify here) that they do it 'out of free choice' and threatened with violence and 'honor killing' if they don't. Sadly, most of them are brainwashed from birth to accept their status as inferior to men. That's how it works in this kind of 'extremely radical' islam. Free choice my bottom.
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cool_brush_work
Re # 239
Well, rely on Napoleon then (as in : #235). He ruled the French (and a lot of others too!) for a long time. Still a hero to many. He couldn't have done it without knowing them inside out. Surely, his opinion carries a lot more weight and substance than Your's, mine or anyone's here !!
Or, perhaps take a listen to what a Brit Oscar Wilde says:
"Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives."
- Oscar Wilde
=> The Vuvuzeleers of the Ban-Ban-Ban movement are not shy of claiming the "noblest motives"!
or
"The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid."
~ Art Spander
or
“Get all the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything.”
- Frank Dane
=> Sarkozy knows that best. He must have read that Napoeon quote1
or
"If you attack Stupidity you attack an entrenched interest with friends in government and every walk of public life."
~ Robertson Davies.Canadian writer.
or
“One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona-fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork.”
=> Yap. Million strong teamwork ! Unbeatable!
or
“The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so.”
-Josh Billings
or
"Individual stupidity is an intensive property. However, it appears that collective stupidity is an extensive property."
- Robert C. McWilliams
or
"There is no adequate defense, except stupidity, against the impact of a new idea."
~ Percy Bridgman (1882-1961)
American physicist, philosopher, professor
=> Many will have to adopt that defense sooner than you may think.
or
“There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.”
- Robertson Davies
=> and reduce their IQ to 0.00002923 (as explained in #236)
or
“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.”
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
=> Therefore, stupidity reigns supreme. In fact, as per Einstein, we can call it God. Now I know the true meaning of : "Vox populi, vox dei" !!!
or
“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
=> Politicians are humble. They know their own limits, and the limitessness of Vox populi, at times.
or
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
- Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
=> The former can always learn through education etc, but the latter never Un-learns1 That's the real problem.
or
“No one in this world, so far as I know- and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me- has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
-H.L. Mencken
-> Nobody knows this better than Sarkozy ! Apparently many here, or in france, don't.
or
“The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views . . . which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that need altering.”
- Unknown
-> Unfortunately, the 1900 Burqa-women find themselves in the position of such facts, among 65 million (or 70% of it) of the other kind!
==>>Take your pick, CBW. :-D
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I think the Hijab is fine in modern society.
But can someone please explain how do these women proceed through passport control when fully veiled?
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I cannot quite understand why we have this debate, i.e. official ban of burqa via a law.
Every property owner, whether it is a residence, a school, a shopping centre, even a tenant who rents a shop, has the right to admit or refuse any person's entry.
If the bank manager decides to put up a sign 'no face covering', the person who enters wearing a balaclava or a burqa can be removed. Every school principal has that right to refuse entry to disguised people and so does the bus conductor or subway overseer. It does not require national laws for someone to apply house rules. Leave it to the individuals in charge and their security staff!
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This is a culture clash issue to me; I am simply insulted when a person with whom I'm conversing hides his or her face. Even Aviator style sunglasses are suspect. Or a paper sack with holes in it.
It is not clear to me that legislation prohibiting such public attire is appropriate. Perhaps when trying to converse "face-to-face" with someone in a Niqab or Aviator Sunglasses we should all just put a ghost-mask sack over our head and show them the soles of our feet?
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So it is still ok for women to wear the Niqab or Burka in Britain and many other western countries except France. Is it also legal to wear full face balaclavas or football shirts in pubs? What about hoodies then? Britain's tolerance rules are not logical at best of times.
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I hope all the Arab states introduce a law that all French women should cover up their faces completely when in their countries. As well as all the 190 or so countries only allow 24,000 British workers carry out their business, thats 126 per country...126 in China, 126 in Germany 126 in Indian and so on....fair is fair
rob
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I agree the ban of the Islamic veil is justified in France because it does not allow a woman to interact in the western society.Criminalising a women for wearing it will be against her Human rights however I would propose a ban of the Islamic veil in public places such as Airports,banks,post office and school.A right not to serve and engage with anyone wearing a veil or Burka will be a more effective way to deal with it.They used to have a poster in all public places and airports in Singapore in the 70s depicting a untidy long hair man with a cross over showing a right to not serve any man with long hair (indirect ban to the hippy culture)
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as always it is the french that say "i give up"
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236. At 06:10am on 17 Jul 2010, Liliput wrote:
"""65 Million people against 1900 ! 34,210 french against 1 Burqa-clad woman! The french feel culturally threatened by 0.00002923th of a burqa per french head! Will it cover even one of their toe-nails? Will most of the french ever get the chance too see a Burqa-woman once in their life-time? What are these people? Yet, most of the posters here seem to agree with them! I am speechless. All I can do is to quote the author Terry Goodkind :-""""
Some excellent logic!!! According to your logic, since there are no more than 2000-3000 forced marriages of muslim underaged persons in France, France should permit it happening isn't it? Afterall, as long there is no physical rape, there is nothing wrong with the family coercing the little girl/boy to marry the boy/girl of their choice. And in that way the French will respect the customs of the immigrant muslims. Isn't it?
Well in a reasonable society it does not work that way. The law does not measure how often it happens. It acts to represent the basic social conventions when they are infringed. As simple as that.
"""People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want it to be true, or because they are afraid it might be true."""
You are criticising yourself there I guess which I can only appraise!
"""People's heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool."""
Some of us here are trained quite hard to tell the difference between corn & horn so do not underestimate anyone. We all know that Sarkozy puts the law now as a diversion and a smokescreen and that the law won't solve any issue. But speaking of the law itself it is an 100% reasonable law in the sense that it expresses the French society's basic social conventions (for which you seem to have absolutely no respect and you express it in the most fascist way). French - perhaps unlike you - have the habbit of finding completely direspectful and immensely offensive having anyone appearing in front of them with their head covered. Down to the basics there wouldn't be so much of a problem if these women stayed in their house to perform their face-covering hobbyhorse. But then, being they definitely need some social contact with the outside society they despise so much e.g. to go to the supermarket but then more importantly for them to go ask social benefits or to go to the hospital and as such they violently impose themselves upon the bulk of society. This law is done to protect people who do not wish to socialise in anyway in their professional environment with peopel that cover their faces.
255. At 10:55pm on 18 Jul 2010, harris wrote:
"""I agree the ban of the Islamic veil is justified in France because it does not allow a woman to interact in the western society."""
Good that you agree but you agree for the wrong reason. The socialisation of the fanatic muslim woman is mostly her problem. This law is done to protect the basic social convention of the bulk of society and protect their basic human right of not being forced (referring to their working environment) to socialise with a hidden face.
"""Criminalising a women for wearing it will be against her Human rights"""
... yes, as much my basic human rights of circulating naked in public are criminialised. This is called basic social convention mate. Some people here cannot grasp this simple reality.
"""however I would propose a ban of the Islamic veil in public places such as Airports,banks,post office and school.A right not to serve and engage with anyone wearing a veil or Burka will be a more effective way to deal with it.They used to have a poster in all public places and airports in Singapore in the 70s depicting a untidy long hair man with a cross over showing a right to not serve any man with long hair (indirect ban to the hippy culture)"""
This law aims at doing so. Everyone knows that police has better things to do than stop women from wearing it and it is certain that women in their banlieus and in muslim shops and such they will be allowed pretty mich unhindered. The law will be mostly applied in public services protecting the basic human rights of the employees. As simple as that.
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People tend to go overboard with this rather practical and logical law.
People shouldn't look beyond what is obvious and create things that aren't there to suit there personal agenda's.
You aren't tolerant if you allow woman to be caged up in clothes like this.
And you aren't "Islamophobic' if you want to ban these garments from being worn.
People are using this made up word "Islamophobia' to claim that being against any Islamic practice is irrational and racist.
I can be against burqa's and against female genital mutilation and against halal ritual slaughter of animals and against stoning and cutting off peoples hands without being "Islamophobic' it's all very rational and not based on some kind of mysterious "Islamophobia".That word was probably invented to try and mirror the use of "anti-semitism" which is also a term that is often abused.
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Re258: Precisely spoken.
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The debate seems to be between a total ban or not and has only come about because of the number of women choosing to take the veil has substantially increased worldwide over the past decade.
There is a midway point between nothing and a full public ban - and this is banning all full face coverings in certain professions, situations and places. What we need to understand is why are more women choosing to take the veil in the last 10 years? And whether there is any coercion in Islamic education (especially for recent converts)?
My worry would be if my children were taught or doctored by someone wearing a Burqa or Niqab. I also would not like to be judged by someone wearing a full face veil - or be tried by my peers, half of whom were veiled. This is common sense and not racist, Islamaphobic or feminist.
I do believe, though, that the veil does knock women's equality back a good few years as I can't ever see a burqua'd ballet dancer, diver or astronaut. But as long as it's their choice and a choice arrived independently of others, then each to their own.
I think there will be a UK law in the not too distant future against wearing any full face covering in carrying out certain professions; in all public buildings; and where you need to pass through security. It will also likely give companies and shops the ability to decide for themselves whether they require faces to be shown (veils, motorcycle helmets, balaclavas, masks, etc) on their premises.
Yes, I am uncomfortable talking to a woman wearing a niqab or burqa but that's because I've grown up relating to people through facial expressions - like humanity has done for eons. However, what women wear when they walk down the street is their business and I always tell someone who is veiled how I feel.
We already have laws on decency, so it would be rather contrary to also have an outright ban on modesty!
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I'm contrary to people keeping their faces covered and most things done with the excuse of religion. I feel sorry for these women. However, there must be a better way of treating the problem than making a law against it.
If we want to spend time on legal matters and immigrants, we should be discussing the organised crime activities that are growing in north-west Europe. They are come from southern and eastern European countries and don't have convenient markers like veils, headdresses or dark skin. But they are far more dangerous.
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Strongly agree with 258. In the UK, can women drive a car wearing a burka or niqab? Perhaps fundamental Muslim men would not allow women to do so, or at least, not until it is against the law, then they may want to demonstrate how unfair such legislation would be.
And if the burka clad women suffer from a lack of vitamin d and live in tenements without an area to safely display any skin to sunlight, what should their doctors prescribe?
The right to wear the burka does seem to be more loudly demanded by more recent converts, French, English or American, whereas a large number of moderate Muslims seem to be for the ban.
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Am i missing something here? How is it that we are supposed to respect their wishes (sorry, 'rights'!) to wear the veil, when my partner who works as cabin crew for a major airline, cannot leave the hotel when in some middle eastern countries without having to wear a full burka! They expect us to respect their right to wear what they wish to in our countries, but then refuse to extend the same courtesy to visitors to theirs. Double standards?!?
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Liliput
Re #249
And exactly as I said for the aforementioned Terry Goodkind applies to all those quotes.
Wecould get into a p........ contest & I could quote back contrary, however, I just stand by my own assertion: The quote is no more use than any other (or Your's or my opinion) in a debate on this particular topic.
Mind, as You must have worked so hard, I will end on one quote:
'The world must be made safe for democracy.' Woodrow Wilson 2 April, 1917 and it makes about as much sense today as it did then!
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its just a shame that the french government still doesnot realise the benefits of the full veil.
family life is almost finished as no male or female wishes to marry and staying as unmarried couples has become a sort of fashion.
divorce and break ups have become norms of life as people tend to dislike their spouses when they see a more attractive man or lady roaming in th streets or at their workplace. infidelity is so common that it is hard to find a man who is loyal.
virgin male/female are non existant for marriage.
dozens of women are raped every day just because of their provocative clothing and being a fashion celebrity is becoming a source of pride as the women is now public property.
all these aspects are degrading the women who are now seen as an object to be looked at especially when nude.
these are all marketing gimics being played by immoral men to fulfil their desires which will eventually cause an end to family life and open sex in the markets between stranger men and women.
then this society will get to know why the veil is important and most people will only then revert to islam..
guys wake up.. cant you see where the world is going with all this nudity.
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I do find it funny that quite a few of the pro burka brigade are comparing wearing one to the dress code of a nudist! When was the last time you saw a naked person in your local post office or bank? And if you felt intimidated by a naked man you are only suffering from penis envy......
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The thing I dont get is that I see sometimes on bill boards, naked women/men (atleast their bum is showing and you can see clearly that they are naked..).. but no one objects... your kids are seeing it and you have no problem yet a woman covering her face is giving you problems why?
The women are wearing less and less.. which by my standards is not modest but no one bats (sp?) an eyelid.. yet people have problem with modesty? hypocricy?
Doesnt the govt have better things to do like employment, terrorism etc...
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
It would appear that the mood to ban veils is sweeping across a number of countries, Syria and Turkey included.......A sign of the negative times.
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Incidentally, in the case of Turkey, a predominantly muslim country (99%), there has been a ban even on the wearing headscarves, a story that has rumbled on for decadessince 1984! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headscarf_controversy_in_Turkey
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Moreover, for many many thousands of years, way back to the Babylonians and beyond, history teaches us that religion seems to have the uncanny knack of rearing it's head during economic downturns; time after time after time.........A sign of the times.
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There are worse inequalities. You can't even smoke a little innocent weed in your own home, after all.
And you couldn't walk down the street without any clothes to exercise your right as a naturist.
Let's not confuse the religious piece either, most muslims don't wear veils, just a wacky minority. We don't let Mormons have multiple wives do we? What about THEIR rights?
In practice there are many situations where you could not wear a full veil in public. I have seen the police remove head gear from innocent protestors to enable their video cameras to record their faces. Increasingly we rely upon surveillance cameras to keep our streets safe, and that becomes impossible if full face coverings become acceptable.
We probably shouldn't ban the veil, but we should make it clear that, as a society, it flies in the face of our customs, culture and safety and should be as taboo as walking down the street naked.
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265 (opinion) Your argument is why women have been treated as 2nd class citizens for centuries! Men punish women by forcing them to wear uncomfortable and restrictive clothing just because they can't control their own desires!!!! Men should wear blinkers and not leave their house without a female escort, if that's your argument.
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The veiled-woman interviewed mentioned that "wealthy" French individuals are offering to pay any fines imposed by French police on Veil-clad woman. I wouldn't be surprised if there is an increase of woman wearing veils in the streets of France as a direct result of this ban:
On one hand, you have the French Government with a trickling cash flow coming directly from "Wealthy Individuals", and on the other hand veiled-women feel empowered; they are getting paid to strut down the sidewalk making a fashion statement. In a twisted way, isn't that an accurate description of the stereotypical French woman?
I find it quite entertaining that a country with a population of 62 million people feels that its cultural values are threatened by a mere 2 thousand woman who seem to have an abnormal fashion sense. For the sake of those supporting the existance of a "cultural clash", ill even describe it as borderline abnormal cultural sense.
Is this ban in any way or form conducive in promoting "french cultural values"? don't think so...
One may argue that the issue is security? nope that idea was shot down.
What about womans rights? nope, that idea was shot down too.
french cultural values? nada 0.00003% women walking around in colored bed sheets don't have that influence.
still the annoying question remains. Why so much effort going into this ban? aha the magician at the behest of the "fair minded" guardians of these supposed French values, waves a wand and pulls out a piece of paper from his hat. Written on it is a 4 letter word, oops my mistake, I meant 8 letter word: religion.
my apologies, It isn't religion either.
Ban the veil for the sake of security. Sure
Ban the veil for the sake of womans rights. Sure
Ban the veil as a ploy to direct public attention from economic and political woes by vilifying Muslims.
I say NO.
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Opinion
Re #265
Quote, "...dozens of women are raped every day just because of their provocative clothing.."
Sorry, but I read that and checked the date - - for a moment I thought I'd returned to some Medieval Age where a dirty old man couldn't stop himself blaming Females for his repulsive thoughts & actions - - then I realised, no, it is JULY 2010!
You know I think You will find that Police investigation tends to find that women are 'raped' by MEN.
Now, if You are one of those sorts of MALES who cannot control Your bodily functions when my 2 daughters or other females venture outdoors in short skirts & tight tops then I suggest YOU WEAR A FULL FACE-VEIL & only go out in public when escorted by other RESPONSIBLE MALES/FEMALES.
Better still, get Yourself to a Doctor and have him admit You to a Psychiatric Clinic as a PUBLIC MENACE!
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274. At 12:05pm on 20 Jul 2010, Aaron wrote:
"""I say NO."""
No. You say whatever.
"""The veiled-woman interviewed mentioned that "wealthy" French individuals are offering to pay any fines imposed by French police on Veil-clad woman."""
I laugh at your "-" on wealthy leaving French nude. You are ineed funny.
"""I wouldn't be surprised if there is an increase of woman wearing veils in the streets of France as a direct result of this ban:"""
Given the increased illegal/barely legal immigration and the propaganda done in some mosques there would be anyway an increase. Down to the basics it is their issue, not ours, the more fines paid the more money in the bank.
"""I find it quite entertaining that a country with a population of 62 million people feels that its cultural values are threatened by a mere 2 thousand woman who seem to have an abnormal fashion sense."""
People that would want to enter a public place completely nude sporting an erection might be even less than 2000. But such an act would be punishable by law, and much more severely than the veil.
"""For the sake of those supporting the existance of a "cultural clash", ill even describe it as borderline abnormal cultural sense."""
Those that support eh existence of "cultural clash"? You mean the muslims?
"""Is this ban in any way or form conducive in promoting "french cultural values"? don't think so..."""
No. It is supporting the human right, and basic citizen freedom to refuse to talk either in a social or professional environment with a person that refuses to reveal his face.
"""One may argue that the issue is security? nope that idea was shot down."""
It is not an issue of security though there cases where this becomes one too.
"""What about womans rights? nope, that idea was shot down too."""
What the veil has to do with women rights? What about my rights to circulate naked. I am nicely built, and quite god-blessed down there and would be proud to circulate around but the law forbids me doing so. Where are my rights? Did not see you protesting for me.
"""french cultural values? nada 0.00003% women walking around in colored bed sheets don't have that influence."""
Me and my nudist mates are also a 0,000% inside France, we do not have that influence, yet we are severely punished with a severe law using extremely offensive language against this cultural aspect of ours.
"""still the annoying question remains. Why so much effort going into this ban?"""
Of course it is a smokescreen by a Sarkozy government that kept it in the freezer to put it out in a difficult moment to change a bit the discussion. Other governments might have kept similar freezer chicken like "fighting street violence" or "corruption" etc. The fact that it is frozen chicken does not mean that such laws are wrong. This law represents a basic social convention and aims to protect the basic human rights of the citizens who do not wish to communicate with hidden people thus it is a law that is right.
"""aha the magician at the behest of the "fair minded" guardians of these supposed French values, waves a wand and pulls out a piece of paper from his hat."""
Why you ridicule French values? Do you have any particular problem over them? Did French go to Mecca in Saudi Arabia to ridicule the Saudi values? Why all that hatred against French and their values? What are your complexes?
"""Ban the veil as a ploy to direct public attention from economic and political woes by vilifying Muslims."""
Muslims have vilified themselves in every single (e v e r y single) country they went far more than any other community. Common logic says that it is them responsible for that. Time they do some self-assessment and change their habits. For a change, respect towards local cultures would be welcome.
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272. - Nic Oatridge wrote:
"There are worse inequalities. You can't even smoke a little innocent weed in your own home, after all."
What an un-European thing to say! Have you not heard of the recent decision issued at the EU Court of Justice (Advocate General’s Opinion in Case C-137/09, Marc Michel Josemans v Burgemeester van Maastricht)? Marihuana is an illicit narcotic which does not benefit from the protection of EU law and the buying and smoking of which threatens the EU's internal security. Luckily we have institutions which will see to it that genuine European culture is duly defended and the evil un-European elements are weeded out. Europeans may booze out their brains and smoke away their lungs, but that does not give them a licence to get high on ganja. Unlike tobacco and alcohol, the herb is really, really dangerous and offensive to a genuine European. Just like a face veil or (as recently realized in Denmark) the same minimum wage applicable both to native-speaking indigenous people and immigrants or non-native speakers. :-)
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@ 276 Nik
Do you actually expect me to start a long winded pointless argument with you. Blog trolling isn't exactly one of my strengths. I have read your many reactions/arguments to "ideas" that are not congruent to your way of thinking. These arguments usually mostly result in a race of who can write the most in a single post and successfully drown the other in as much information/ideas/irrelevant examples as possible. I don't think the purpose of these blogs is to promote such unproductive tit-for-tat confrontations.
anyways, respond to my posts as much as you like, but don't expect me to reciprocate.
Ciao.
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MattG wrote:
"Am i missing something here? How is it that we are supposed to respect their wishes (sorry, 'rights'!) to wear the veil, when my partner who works as cabin crew for a major airline, cannot leave the hotel when in some middle eastern countries without having to wear a full burka! They expect us to respect their right to wear what they wish to in our countries, but then refuse to extend the same courtesy to visitors to theirs. Double standards?!?"
Absolutely I am in favour of double standards.
You, by shocking contrast, wish for only one standard, and it is theirs, not ours.
The miserable idiocy of this policy rational is breathtaking.
This whole debate boils down to opinions about a decision to throw out what is good in French law as a protest against perceived faults in other cultures.
That is why I say this is a cynical and outrageous attempt by the political elite to harness the very worst in french society. They have made a deliberate overture to all that is hateful and, worse, plain stupid in french public life.
Those with even a modicum of intelligence will discern what this says about how the french political elite estimate the character of their subordinate fellows. They clearly have utter contempt for the average french citizen.
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278. At 7:14pm on 21 Jul 2010, Aaron wrote:
Due to my lifestyle I pass a lot of time on the laptop. I also write more fast than you can imagine. I also have as a hobby (geo)political blogging and tend to chose a given blog for a given period. BBC is one of the favourite ones. So evidently yes I write a lot...
... which normally should be an excellent opportunity for anyone wanting to "catch" me somewhere to find points where I am wrong.
Somehow that is not the case. I have stated on another discussion that people cannot do a proper discussion and you are coming yet another one in the line to prove me right. Thank you by the way.
You do not need to try and reply to me. All you need to do is to explain to me what is according to you a basic social convention.
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Re279: DT, double standards are characteristic of caste societies. And we all know what means a caste society.
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To 278 Aaron, to 280 Nik:
I agree with Aaron. These exchanges can get never-ending. Nik, you never responded to my answers on the 10 June Geert Wilders threat. With your permission I take it to mean you agree with my points.
To condense our discussion, I think your philosophy can be summarized by the following general statement you previously made: “It is not up to the host to prove OK, it is above all up to the guest to prove OK. Unless 3-4 generations pass, muslims in Europe ARE guests. They are not born there, they do not derive from there, they are newcomers and it is first of all up to them to prove they deserve to be accepted by the locals. Until now they have done everything they could to prove the opposite.”
I find this a shocking statement, and I have to utterly disagree with it.
Clearly your second sentence contradicts your third sentence, because if a person and its ancestors have lived somewhere for more than a generation, then they will frequently be born there. Leaving simple logics aside, if I understand correctly, you propose to introduce regulations which would distinguish between “hosts” or “locals” (who hail from families that have lived in Europe for at least 3-4 generations) and “guests”. The gist of these regulations would presumably be that the “guests” would be obliged to act in ways so as to please the “hosts”.
I fail to understand in particular (i) how you wish to define “guests” and “hosts” (and how these terms relate to the concept of “citizenship”, “residency”, “domicile”, etc.), (ii) how you expect to determine whether or not someone is a “guest” (e.g., whether you are proposing a Nazi-style law which would require everyone to prove their ethnic ancestry), (iii) how you wish to treat “hosts” that move to a different country (i.e., whether you wish to strap them of their status as “host” by virtue of their relocation and what would be the waiting period in their new place of residence – e.g., 3-4 generations), (iv) what would be the constitutional basis for making this distinction and how it respects the basic rights of the affected individuals, (v) what obligations you wish to impose on the “guests” and whether the same obligations will also apply to the “hosts”, (vi) whether these obligations would be enforced by impartial authorities or only by “hosts” against “guests” in their arbitrary judgement (self-help).
Therefore, I am not in a position to assess how these new regulations would apply to me, my family and other people and I ask you to clarify your proposals before I can respond in more detail. This is an important topic to me because me and my family may qualify as “guests” and I wish to understand what are the limitations to which you are seeking to subject me (and by the same token I want to know whether you consider yourself as a “host” or a “guest” and for what reasons).
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re 279, 281:
Nik is trying to misrepresent what democracythreat is saying. France and other European states need to stick to their own constitutional standards. Whether or not some other country has comparably favorable constitutional rules has no bearing on this discussion, but would be a worthwhile separate discussion.
This is not a question of double standards. Unquestionably it is regrettable that there are still countries around the world with very low standards of human rights protection, and those countries (regardless of which their laws say) are acting in violation of natural basic rights acquired by each human by birth (which cannot be legislated away). Unfortunately, the world today lacks workable legally binding mechanisms to enforce these natural rights acquired by birth at an international level. It is important for the public to keep pointing at these injustices so that pressure can be exercised against the relevant governments. It also helps explain the importance of a responsible asylum policy which does not narrow-mindedly pander to anti-immigrant voters.
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282. At 08:37am on 22 Jul 2010, oulematu wrote:
"""To 278 Aaron, to 280 Nik:
I agree with Aaron. These exchanges can get never-ending. Nik, you never responded to my answers on the 10 June Geert Wilders threat. With your permission I take it to mean you agree with my points."""
There you are you got your answer on your last message asking me to answer (you were refering to that weren't you?). You asked for it, you got it. It worths to note though that you had absolutely no point there, just a random reference to a terrible event of uknown origins, nothing else.
Now, these exchanges will never end for the simple reason we are dealing with you, a person that judges by religion, not logic. You have declared that you are a muslim and you hate Europeans, they make you vomit as you said. What else can you say more?
The common sense is that you can't discuss with religion.
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282. At 08:37am on 22 Jul 2010, oulematu wrote:
"""To condense our discussion, I think your philosophy can be summarized by the following general statement you previously made: “It is not up to the host to prove OK, it is above all up to the guest to prove OK."""
Correct.
"""Unless 3-4 generations pass, muslims in Europe ARE guests."""
Yes. Especially when you define the generation in the exact term, i.e. a 3rd generation person is one whose both parents are born and raised in the host country. Which is definitely not the case for a huge chunk of muslims.
"""They are not born there, they do not derive from there, they are newcomers and it is first of all up to them to prove they deserve to be accepted by the locals."""
Yes. Do you have any objection?
"""Until now they have done everything they could to prove the opposite."""
Precisely.
"""I find this a shocking statement, and I have to utterly disagree with it."""
Why?
"""Clearly your second sentence contradicts your third sentence, because if a person and its ancestors have lived somewhere for more than a generation, then they will frequently be born there."""
Absolutely no point there. Where did you hear that the 2nd generation has the same characteristics as the equivalent generation of local people? And as said, a 2nd generation risking marrying a fresh arrival then how the kid can be described as 3rd generation? Quite more complicated case it is.
"""Leaving simple logics aside, if I understand correctly, you propose to introduce regulations which would distinguish between “hosts” or “locals” (who hail from families that have lived in Europe for at least 3-4 generations) and “guests”."""
No you do not understand. You speak of "distinguishing". I speak of rationalisation of giving citizenship. For me citizenship is something that is given to people that "comply". "Comply" means that the citizen would die for the state against any kind of threat. In modern societies where this need might nor arise, "comply" would mean that the citizen would remain faithful to the state under any kind of threat.
Do you need to point to you examples of communities that are simply not complying to that? I wish to avoid this discussion here cos it gets nasty.
"""The gist of these regulations would presumably be that the “guests” would be obliged to act in ways so as to please the “hosts”."""
Not at all. That is your understanding. The host did not invite the guest, the guest has no roots there and his reasons of going there down to only personal interest. The guest has a freedom to chose where to go. He is responsible to know what are the characteristics and the basic conventions of the country he wishes to go and install himself.
Is that so difficult for you to understand?
"""I fail to understand in particular (i) how you wish to define “guests” and “hosts” (and how these terms relate to the concept of “citizenship”, “residency”, “domicile”, etc.), (ii) how you expect to determine whether or not someone is a “guest”"""
"""(e.g., whether you are proposing a Nazi-style law which would require everyone to prove their ethnic ancestry)...impartial authorities or only by “hosts” against “guests” in their arbitrary judgement (self-help)."""
No not at all. That is an internal issue of every country to judge by itself. For example, the general rule is to avoid having large concentrations of people of the same ethnic or religious (if different to local) origins for the simple reason that these will naturally form a caste inside the country. It is very different having a single 20% minority of immigrants comming from the same background than having a 20% minority of immigrants coming from 5 different backgrounds. Integration and community relations are much easier to establish. In the first case, the size of the single community will very quickly create a caste. This is to the detriment not only of the locals but also of immigrants first of all.
From there on, it is natural for a country to wish to control the influx of populations that are basically negatively positioned towards the local society.
What is so strange in all these? Don't you know that the basic notion of a "state" is propriety? The state belongs to the citizens and it is their propriety. It should be natural that they will open the door of that propriety on will not blindly. If it is not the case, that is because this notion is not respected, as ALL societies are not ruled by their constitutions or their democratic theoretical foundations but by imperialistic oligarhies whose interest is to yield control over people and rule their states in an autocratic manner as their own private propriety.
"""Therefore, I am not in a position to assess how these new regulations would apply to me, my family and other people and I ask you to clarify your proposals before I can respond in more detail."""
You would see absolytely no difference in your life. In the mid-run and long-run you would see an end to the process of caste-forming and an appeasing of all communautaristic conflicts.
"""This is an important topic to me because me and my family may qualify as “guests” and I wish to understand what are the limitations to which you are seeking to subject me (and by the same token I want to know whether you consider yourself as a “host” or a “guest” and for what reasons)."""
Oulematu. I am living between 3 foreign to me countries and spend a small part of my time back home. I declare myself as guest. It poses me absolutely no problem. I am a real citizen of the world. I show absolute respect for local cultures, I show respect for the local legislation and I do not try to impose to locals my own view.
You ask me my view on your position and I simply do not have. You do a basic error here: changing levels on the discussion - i.e. bringing it down to the personal level which is wrong. The fact that someone talks about a different immigration policy does not mean he hates all foreigners and that he is unable to socialise with them in his everyday life. In my experience in France, Britain, Belgium and Holland it is very often the people described by the politically correc as racist people that have the most socialisation and personal relations, often very friendly, with foreigners and it is the political corrrect preachers who would change house if any minority family moved 5km from their neighbourhood.
Here we discuss in general. When I use strong language on the case of muslims, it is that I criticise strongly their general attitudes. Do you know how many people of muslim background I meet and deal professionally? Excellent people, excellent professionals. But that is down to the level of personal relations. This is not what we talk here.
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283. At 08:47am on 22 Jul 2010, oulematu wrote:
"""re 279, 281:
Nik is trying to misrepresent what democracythreat is saying. France and other European states need to stick to their own constitutional standards."""
Exactly. If they ban nudity in most public places on the basis of it being a basic social convention "must not", they are by constitution obliged to ban face cover too in most public places.
"""Whether or not some other country has comparably favorable constitutional rules has no bearing on this discussion, but would be a worthwhile separate discussion."""
Yes. But it worths noting that I personally ignore any european country permitting full nudity in public places. I also ignore a European country where face cover is not a basic social convention "must not".
"""This is not a question of double standards."""
The case so far amply raises the question. A bank clerk refusing to serve a customer that approaches him fully naked cannot be attacked for social racism. A bank clerk refusing to serve a customer that approaches him with face fully covered today risks to be attacked for social racism - the risk may go up to losing his job and destroying his carreer.
There is definitely a question of double standards. Up to know, there is something unconstitutional here: either nudity (or whatever other weird attire) has to be allowed on all social occasions, either face cover has to be dealt also as a "must not".
"""Unquestionably it is regrettable that there are still countries around the world with very low standards of human rights protection, and those countries (regardless of which their laws say) are acting in violation of natural basic rights acquired by each human by birth (which cannot be legislated away)."""
Regrettable but their problem, they short it out. Not our problem.
"""Unfortunately, the world today lacks workable legally binding mechanisms to enforce these natural rights acquired by birth at an international level."""
The world does not need it either. We do not need a world government preaching us you know.
"""It is important for the public to keep pointing at these injustices so that pressure can be exercised against the relevant governments. It also helps explain the importance of a responsible asylum policy which does not narrow-mindedly pander to anti-immigrant voters."""
Again, that is down to each country and each society to decide. Germany is not Italy and Italy is not Libya and Libya is not Chad and Chad is not Central African Republic etc. Let each country decide what works best for them.
The side questions you open are very interesting. We can go on and discuss them in details if you like giving all the examples you want (you pick coutnries and specific examples and we discuss). But if I bring the discussion back to the original issue there are two basic lines:
1) The law on burka is brought forward in the most populist way by Sarkozy to occupy the public opinion with this side-issue and distract it from more major issues.
2) The law itself is correct as it corrects a gap in the legislation reagarding a basic social convention "must not" and a repair of the injustice towards the quasi-totality of citizens for whom being forced to socialise in professional environment with people covering their faces is the equivalent (or often worse) than being forced to socialise with people naked or of other weird attire.
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to Nik, 285:
Ok, so now you are somewhat relaxing your requirements so that a "host" is someone who was born and grew up in the host country and both of whose parents were born and grew up there; a "guest" is everyone one. That is some progress, at least this is not a pure Nazi-style blood test (i.e., even non-indigenous individuals can become "hosts" if they stay long enough and never travel) and most people will not have to conduct elaborate ancestry investigations to find out whether they are a "host" or a "guest" (except as regards the bit about "growing up" - can you define what you mean by "growing up"? It can be quite difficult to establish a legal proof where someone grew up and what will be the required degree of presence in the "host" country? Is a 2-month absence ok? 1 year? 10 years? How do you prove this about your parents? Or even yourself - I mean do you really keep all these records?)
Anyway, it is still nonsensical to distinguish on this basis, and I do not understand where you are going with this. What counts is whether someone is a "citizen" or a "resident". A "citizen" or "resident" has certain rights regardless of whether he/she is a "host" or a "guest". A "citizen" will also not lose its nationality merely by virtue of residing abroad. I understand you are critical of "guests" as a group (regardless of their individual merits), and that is your personal view (in my view clearly unjustified), but nothing more. However, if that "guest" is a "citizen" or a "resident", then you cannot take away their rights simply because you do not like them or do not trust them. So, I do not understand what you are trying to achieve with this in practical terms.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only practical suggestion I was able to identify in your comments is that you want to tighten the requirements for acquiring citizenship or right of residency. I think this is not a beneficial policy, but I agree that it is a matter of legitimate policy debate. Of course, you must understand that such policy change cannot retroactively affect any rights of individuals who are already citizens or residents. In addition, it seems problematic and unreasonable (and possibly even illegal) to make the acquisition of such rights subject to conditions that are unrelated to a specific individual (e.g., country of origin quotas or the requirement that citizenship can be acquired only by an applicant who was born and grew up in the country and both of whose parents were born and live there). So can you please identify in simple words what precisely you are proposing in practical terms? And please do not use vague expressions such as "compliance with the basic characterictics of the host country" because I have not the slightest clue what you mean by that.
Please consider the following hypothetical situation: person A is a "host" and a citizen of S (an EU host state). A's spouse, B, is a "guest" and a citizen of another country (e.g., a non-EU OECD or non-OECD country). A and B live in state S and have children C (who in your definition are "guests", because B is a "guest"). Please explain the rules that you want to apply to C (in contrast to existing rules, which may vary somewhat state by state), what will be the objectives of such rules and how you are hoping to achieve such objectives. Personally, even from an anti-immigrant point of view, I do not see any reason to be hostile or unaccepting to C who are children of A, a citizen of S. This would seem to be quite counterproductive and would only serve to expel A, B and C and push them into the country of B (where they would face the same situation, should that country be similarly unenlightened).
I also do not understand what religion or a lack thereof has to do with any of the above.
And I agree with you that individuals should not impose their views on others. This applies to any individual, including "hosts" and "guests".
to Nik, 286:
You want to ban everything that does not comply with the prevailing social conventions. To me, that is not the standard for a modern constitutional democracy that I though many European states wish to aspire to. Any dictatorship or totalitarian regime can meet that standard. A modern constitutional state should regulate only such behavior of an individual which causes unjustified harm to another individual (e.g., physical assault or a threat of one) or to the public (e.g., spewing out an oil leak). Other types of behavior should be unregulated even where they are unpopular or impolite. There seems no strong public interest in imposing a general ban of face veil anywhere in the public. Nudity has nothing to do with this. By the way, even nudity is not formally banned in quite the same way. I see nothing that terribly wrong if someone is naked (even outside any designated area) in a public lake, on a boat or at a public demostration or festival, or if someone has sex in the woods or other nature settings. It really depends on the place and time. Anyway, it seems to be a non-issue - I have not heard of any initiatives for a fully fledged legislative ban on public nudity at an EU state level, and I would suspect any such ban might be unconstitutional. I think it is also necessary to distinguish between public places and private places (e.g., a bank, museum or music club). I think it is reasonable to impose stricter requirements at private places (although such requirements still need to be non-discriminatory in terms of groups defined by suspect criteria - e.g., ethnicity or religion).
I also insist that the rules applicable in a certain jurisdiction (e.g., France) must be assessed based on constitutional standards of that jurisdiction and not a different jurisdiction. You also seemed to be concerned about human rights standards in other countries, which is why I pursued this topic, but now you are telling me that it is the problem of those countries. So, I'm lost - you need to make up your mind. Personally, I would not take such a narrow-minded approach. Like it or not, we all live in the same world and we are our brothers' keepers in some ways.
I also understand that you are against the ability to enforce basic alienable individual rights even against the sovereign will of the country that seeks to take those rights away. Personally, I find this attitude quite offensive as a matter of general life philosophy, but it is a matter of your choice. I also think this is a very short-sighted approach, which may come back to haunt you. There may come a day when you or your children may be members of a minority in one or another sense, and maybe then they will need any protection they can get against abusive government authorities that seek to violate their basic rights. Also, subjecting abusive sovereign governments to outside control is helpful in mitigating international policy excesses and conflicts, and would also go some way towards reducing some of the reasons people choose to migrate (which is something you are keen to minimize).
"1) The law on burka is brought forward in the most populist way by Sarkozy to occupy the public opinion with this side-issue and distract it from more major issues."
I agree.
"2) The law itself is correct as it corrects a gap in the legislation reagarding a basic social convention "must not" and a repair of the injustice towards the quasi-totality of citizens for whom being forced to socialise in professional environment with people covering their faces is the equivalent (or often worse) than being forced to socialise with people naked or of other weird attire."
I disagree, as explained above. No one is legally forcing you to socialize with people who are dressed not to your liking. If do not like them, just do not hang out with them and look away. There is no need to legislate on such non-issues, and such legislation is positively harmful, because it takes away rights of certain individuals to do something which does not infringe upon other individuals' rights and is not harmful to the public. This is not the standard that a modern constitutional democracy would aspire to.
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Many posters seem to be deliberately dense, continually asking "Why the problem w/burkhas?" This question is answered over & over again in many ways, such as SECURITY pertaining to a covered face etc. Those who disagree with the ban rarely actually address the many common objections to women wearing burkhas in non-Muslim countries. This is not helpful to a mutual effort to understand the overall situation which is really the topic here: Muslims immigrating in huge waves to formerly non-Muslim countries & then beginning to push for their "rights" to practice Islam without hindrance in whatever way they see fit. This is not a problem with a harmless piece of cloth, as surely everyone should realize by now. It is much larger & more serious, revolving around entirely justified concerns about the overtly stated goal of many Islamists to take over the world, put simply. See the documentary 'Obsession: Radical Islam's war against the West', for some quite disturbing footage on this. Obviously every nation must decide, and quickly, what our policies & expectations regarding immigration & assimilation are to be in the face of the Muslim challenge to laws & customs in host lands. In my view, it is absurd to consider everyone who moves into France a Frenchman or -woman, same with any country. Assimilation into and contribution toward quality of life in one's new society is what makes you a part of that country, deserving of the name Frenchman (or British, American, whatever)--and that takes time, & proving yourself. I am an American, & once lived in Bali for almost a year--did that make me Balinese or Indonesian? Hardly! It is the FACT that Muslims are making these aggressive demands to be allowed to recreate the very society they left behind, whether through wearing of the burkha or any of the many ways they practice their religion--including those which conflict directly with European or American customs & norms--which we should find of great concern. This makes their actual motives for immigrating to these countries quite suspect; obviously they never intended to "become French" or to adopt the way of life in the new country, so why have they gone there? It is very hard not to see it as a deliberate means of conquest by attrition, and I do agree that they are using the host countries' efforts to be democratic & tolerant with immigrants against them. I strongly urge everyone to invest some time in reading books about Islam, by Muslims AND non-Muslims, check out some passages in the Quran on dealing with "infidels", find out what Muslims are saying on their radio & TV stations and newspapers and so on. This goes way beyond the usual debates on tolerance, freedom, & rights as generally experienced in western democracies--it is a profound challenge to ALL those ideals, while using them to infiltrate and co-opt.
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to 288, learntogether:
It seems very highly likely that the French criminal ban on burkas is not a measure adopted in a compelling governmental interest, narrowly tailored to meet that interest and capable of meeting that interest. If the concern is subjugation of women, they should instead strengthen measures to help victims and potential victims of family violence (improving law enforcement, enabling such women to seek shelter and helping them become independent). If the concern is about international terrorism, they should improve the operation of security agencies and the policing of public places, and should embark on a major public communication and information effort aimed at explaining to the world's population the benefits of and contributions made by modern constitutional democratic systems to humanity, the importance of human rights for human dignity, and the benign interests of these democracies that do not seek to act to the detriment of other countries. The criminal ban does not achieve any of this, is counterproductive in many respects, and by violating the constitution undermines the credibility of the French constitutional system.
It is also unacceptable to label all Muslims as extreme "Islamists". There are over 1 bn Muslims in the world, the majority of them are ordinary people who are not ideological violent extremists, and you will need to co-opt the cooperation of many of them if you want a peaceful world. Many of these people live in countries that do not provide free access to objective (or at least diverse) sources of information, and engaging with these people (instead of antagonizing them) will take you a long way towards achieving your stated goals. I grew up in a totalitarian country, so I have a good idea of the effect that totalitarian and omnipresent propaganda, censorship, repression and spying has on the human mind (even on the dissident minority, not to mention the malleable majority of ordinary citizens). Finally, I am happy that you had a good year in Bali, but that does not mean there are no people who might relocate somewhere on a long-term basis. They do not want to be treated as permanent outcasts and always labelled as "un-French" for no good reason other than someone's bigoted narrow-mindedness, and surely you are intelligent enough to understand why such treatment would be counterproductive.
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287+289. At 09:29am on 23 Jul 2010, oulematu wrote:
Interesting feedback Oulematu and it would be a perfect ocnstructive answer well focused on points if you avoided including reference to my opinions bordering with nazism or such. You have to realise that you speak to a totally de-complexed individual who won't be socially intimidated by such unilateral labelling and attributions.
Even for me that write huge messages it will take really long to answer all your points though I see you revolve around 2-3 basic questions. Let me tell you that your questioning on how to define "host" and "guest" (and in here both we understand we talk about very general labels) is very reasonable and well expected.
This leads to both a very detailed discussio but also a very short one:
1) long discussion: blah blah blah....
2) short discussion: it is up to each country to define what is "in" and what is "out".
Having any problem with no2 you reveal instantly:
a) Your total disrespect for the country and its political processes (guess how much if these come from democratic procedures).
b) Your will to impose upon them your onw point of view which is of course translated as aggresiveness.
Now if a country wishes to have both parents local to give citizenship or can recognise the one parent, or can recognise only the father or can give citizenship after 10 years or just gives citizenship for free that is the problem of each country and you can have absolutely no opinion on it. If you are a 2nd generation still having an opinion on such issues is a tricky one since you will eventually fall in the trap of preferring "open doors" so more "people like you" arrive and make you more socially empowered - which for you is more important than the real interests of the country and its society.
Again, my view is that this has to be up to the citizesn of the country to vote on such issues since accepting a stranger as "one of our own" is not something easy nor something to take lightly. The fact that this has never happened in the past in any country just shows the "amount" of democracy that circulates around despite everyone advertising it - to my eyes China is no less democratic than any other EU country. European countries are ruled by oppressive oligarchies just like any other part of the world and citizens are trapped in them having less rights on their land than they had even 300 years ago under phenomenally more autocratic regimes.
Back to our issue:
I think you agree with me that Sarkozy brings this law as a smokescreen
I think you agree with me that clothes are not our major issue.
However where we disagree is on the exact definition of basic social conventions and how these should be expressed by law. I pinpoint you the current imbalance in treatment by law between two extreme cases, nudity and full cover. What I ask is a more comprehensive and more standardised approach: i.e. to enforce law equally on all social conventions and not make presents here or there. A differential approach is what establishes formally caste societies.
And I think you are smart enough to know what is a caste-based society and how fair it can be.
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To Nik:
STATEMENT no. 1
"Interesting feedback Oulematu and it would be a perfect ocnstructive answer well focused on points if you avoided including reference to my opinions bordering with nazism or such. You have to realise that you speak to a totally de-complexed individual who won't be socially intimidated by such unilateral labelling and attributions."
ANSWER
It was a compliment. I simply noted that you retreated from your previous extreme position involving the definition of "guest" as everyone who is not a pure-blooded 4th generation indigenous person and proposing special rules for any "guests" as opposed to "hosts". I'm lost - are you now going back to this definition? Then I need to go back to the previous label - I do not how else to describe such extremist position that you previously tried to defend.
STATEMENT no. 2
"(…) Let me tell you that your questioning on how to define "host" and "guest" (and in here both we understand we talk about very general labels) is very reasonable and well expected. (…) (2) short discussion: it is up to each country to define what is "in" and what is "out". Having any problem with no2 you reveal instantly:
a) Your total disrespect for the country and its political processes (guess how much if these come from democratic procedures).
b) Your will to impose upon them your onw point of view which is of course translated as aggresiveness."
ANSWER
Now you cannot descend any lower than that, can you? As per Nik, a state can adopt any rules on who is "in" and "out" in its unfettered discretion, and whoever (citizen or non-citizen) who does not like it is showing a total disrespect for the country and imposes his/her views through an act of aggression. What are you smoking?! Example: A state will decide to strip all Jews of their citizenship and relocate them to concentration camps. Per Nik, this is totally ok, there is not recourse against this, and anyone who protests against this is "disrespectful" and "aggressive". You lower your standards so far that any country can comply with them. Any notion of human rights, checks and balances and constitutional review fly out the window. Dictatorship of the majority. Do you not see the total absurdity of this? It is glaringly obvious to even the most casual observer who has ever spent five minutes thinking about the principles of individual rights, rule of law and constitutional review, and has the most rudimentary knowledge of political history. You misunderstand the most basic principles and values on which European societies are based - and these are the core principles, as opposed to whether or not someone wears burqa or runs around naked. I do not know how else to explain it to you. Other than that, I can only add that your own statement no. 2 provides also a good illustration in response to your statement no. 1.
STATEMENT no. 3
"Now if a country wishes to have both parents local to give citizenship or can recognise the one parent, or can recognise only the father or can give citizenship after 10 years or just gives citizenship for free that is the problem of each country and you can have absolutely no opinion on it. If you are a 2nd generation still having an opinion on such issues is a tricky one since you will eventually fall in the trap of preferring "open doors" so more "people like you" arrive and make you more socially empowered - which for you is more important than the real interests of the country and its society."
ANSWER
Who told you that I can have absolutely no opinion on that? I don't know where you live, but where I live, I can have an opinion absolutely on anything. I don't see how anyone or anything could prevent me from that. Anyway, if I am citizen A and you are telling me that my children C are not eligible for citizenship because spouse B is a non-citizen, then I see such exclusionary policies as a serious infringement of my and my family's rights. Surely this is not only a matter of what the relevant country wants, but also of what I and my family wants and is entitled to. I do not what you mean by 2nd generation, but obviously your implication that any 2nd generation person is inherently untrustworthy and should be stripped of its rights because it will not act in the real interests of the country is extremely offensive and based on pure prejudice. Where I live, people (whatever their citizenship status) are free to pursue their own interest, and there is no expectation that each individual's interest will coincide 100% with the interests of the country or society (not to mention that it is impossible to precisely define the sum of interests of a society and such interests are subject to continuous evolvement and it is also not possible to define society so as to exclude certain groups of people). There used to be such expectation (that people would do nothing that is not in the official state interest) in the part of Europe where I was growing up; but that regime is now over. I find your prejudiced and spiteful way of thinking genuinely scary. If most Europeans share your ideology, then Providence help us - I'm afraid the world will see some really nasty things coming out of Europe in the near future.
STATEMENT no. 4
"Again, my view is that this has to be up to the citizesn of the country to vote on such issues since accepting a stranger as "one of our own" is not something easy nor something to take lightly."
ANSWER
In most European countries, the voting right belongs only to citizens (except partly for municipal elections and a few other narrow exceptions). It is not the only conceivable approach, but it is certainly possible and common. I never said otherwise. However, that does not mean that the Parliament can enact any law - only subject to constitutional review, checks and balances and fundamental human rights. The laws that were passed by Nazis were illegal, and that is why Nazi leaders were tried after the War for their crimes even though they may not have been enshrined in the Nazi Criminal Code. And that is also why certain Communist crimes have been prosecuted after the regime change, and rightfully so.
STATEMENT no. 5
"However where we disagree is on the exact definition of basic social conventions and how these should be expressed by law. I pinpoint you the current imbalance in treatment by law between two extreme cases, nudity and full cover. What I ask is a more comprehensive and more standardised approach: i.e. to enforce law equally on all social conventions and not make presents here or there. A differential approach is what establishes formally caste societies."
ANSWER
We disagree on more than just the definition of basic social conventions. Social convention means an customary way of doing things - something that is normally done as a matter of custom, but sometimes may not be depending on the specific circumstances. In a modern constitutional democracy, the role of the government is to ensure the protection of individual rights and prevention of harm to the public, but definitely not to enforce uniform application of social conventions (unless non-compliance with them infringes individual rights or causes tangible harm to the public). By definition, social conventions are changeable in time and place and cannot be enforced uniformly by law. This is possible only in a state-controlled ossified society which is not left to evolve on its own. This is a fundamental misunderstanding on your part, or maybe an intention misrepresentation, I don't know. If the latter is the case, you need to come out and openly say what model of society you defend - authoritarian suffocated society in which individuals are not free to do anything that is not sanctioned by the state. It is extraordinarily unfortunate and scary that someone like you, who has not the slightest clue about the constitutional principles and values on which European societies are based, seeks to harness government power in order to enforce your fallacious notions of Europe's basic values and principles and impose them on free humans.
I will be very busy in the coming couple of days, and I would suggest that you should use this time to reflect and educate yourself a bit on these topics instead of posting mindless comments.
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Logjams
Re #253 & "..what about hoodies..?"
Think You've read the tabloid headlines a couple of years ago & got carried away on what is/isn't English Law.
There is NO ban on hoodies in Law anywhere in the UK. What there is, as with all such face-head covering is the Right for proprietors, e.g. Bank, Pub, Shop, Office, Shopping Mall etc. to Publish at their entrance specific details of what is/is not permitted/acceptable clothing.
Thus You may find some Pubs, Clubs etc. perfectly happy to allow singlet & shorts & others require an entirely different Dress-code: This also applies to 'hoodies', crash helmets etc. & in fact the Burqua too, as each establishment under English Common Law does have the legal right to determine what is permissible - - those local Bye-Laws have pertained for almost half a century - - and as with most cases in the UK there has been a very liberal attitude taken to all such matters (with exceptions made when particular incidents/problems occur, e.g. the Bluewater shopping mall banned hoodies for a time as roaming gangs/mischief-makers were using them to hide their identity).
England does not need a Law on the Burqua/Niqab: Bye-Laws are in place should establishments wish to use them - - in my view, hopefully, the illiberal/antagonistic attitude of France will not carry across the Channel - - that said, I fully support France's elected Government's Right & Responsibility to make such a Law if it sees fit to do so in the interests of France.
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"MPs believe that those who live in, or visit, France should embrace French values.".
Isnt the freedom to wear whatever clothes they wish part of the "french values"?
I am myself from Iran and for me veil in general is a symbol of oppression. But if one day my own daughter came home with a veil I will not in anyway force her into some other clothing. I just believe it her right to choose as it should be in every (free) country around the world.
I understand that in some places (e.g. banks and airports) it might be necessary to enforce such rules. But all public places?
I would however fully support the law against forcing someone to wear veil.
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As reported by the New York Times, a US Federal court recently issued a decision in which it stated: “Moral disapproval alone ... is an improper basis on which to deny rights to [gay] men and women.”
See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/opinion/05thu1.html?_r=1&hp
Nothing new to those familiar with US constitutional law, but what a discovery for those that want to enforce the "dominant culture" in Europe through legislation! And look at that brevity but clarity of formulation!
Does this principle also apply in Europe? I think so, if Europe aspires a free society and a constitutinal democracy. Most of the arguments in favor of banning the burka can be rejected simply by reference to this principle - i.e., that moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to humans.
Some may argue that this is only a US principle which has no place in Europe's constitutional culture. But that inevitably plays into the hands of those who argue that, at least as regards the protection of minorities, society in Europe is at a significantly lower level of development than society in North America. So I really think that the likes of threnodio need to thrash it out with the likes of Nik before they can maintain a credible rebuttal of MAII's critique of Europe.
Btw, did you notice that Sarkozy now wants to strip French nationals of their nationality if they are foreign-born and commit a crime or threaten a policeman? He would also automatically take away French nationality from any non-indigenuous youngster who commits an offense and would hold parents liable for any actions of the minor children. See http://euobserver.com/9/30570
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How many niqabis have you seen comitting crimes?
Covering up fully is one extreme while wearing next to nothing is another extreme. You cannot attack one extreme and not the other.
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Since you evoked this closed discussion, let me give the final answer to Oulematu on the issue (cos I see now he really did try to answer back - and failed again).
Dear Oulematu, once you try to speak a little bit reasonably, then you get the logical answer so that you quickly jump back into lies and distortions. Do you really think you are the first such propagandist I speak to?
"""....I simply noted that you retreated from your previous extreme position involving the definition of "guest" as everyone who is not a pure-blooded 4th generation indigenous person"""
First you once again lie, since you once again attribute to me words I have never said. I never gave a definite definition of what is "guest" - a general term I used to make the basic distinction, unlike you who will call "French", "German" whoever accidentally finds himself legally, or illegally within the borders of these states.
Secondly, as I said, I have left the "in" and "out" up to each country, something which you are not ready to recognise.
"""and proposing special rules for any "guests" as opposed to "hosts"."""
I propose no rules. I say that people should be able to chose what is best for them, not what is best for any random soul that found its way inside.
"""I'm lost - are you now going back to this definition?"""
You are not lost. You are evading the point through lies and distortions.
I will repeat the point:
"""It is up to each country to define what is "in" and what is "out"."""
Having any problem with no2 you reveal instantly:
a) Your total disrespect for the country and its political processes (guess how much if these come from democratic procedures).
b) Your will to impose upon them your onw point of view which is of course translated as aggresiveness."
And then check your answer:
"""Now you cannot descend any lower than that, can you? As per Nik, a state can adopt any rules on who is "in" and "out" in its unfettered discretion, and whoever (citizen or non-citizen) who does not like it is showing a total disrespect for the country and imposes his/her views through an act of aggression."""
Your answer is not merely propaganda, lies but also reveals a lot of hatred too against anyone that refused to abide to your distorted view. You treat as "violence" and "act of aggression" even the most basic liberties of citizens. Is the basic right of any society to refuse entry to random people an act of aggression? Really?
"""What are you smoking?!"""
Certainly not your drug.
"""Example: A state will decide to strip all Jews of their citizenship and relocate them to concentration camps."""
Is the right of a country to say no to the entry of random individuals it considers as negative elements or useless elements equal to concentration camps organised for citizens Jewish in WWII? What kind of logic is this? For propaganda everything goes by I guess if you mention the Jewish.
"""Any notion of human rights,"""
Is there any human right that can say that humans can impose their entry against all laws into any country they wish? Really? Show to me where did you find that?
"""Dictatorship of the majority."""
Fuzzy title. You represent Empire, caste societies, extreme social injustice, civic violence the good old rule by oligarchy? And it hurts you the rule of the majority.
"""Do you not see the total absurdity of this?"""
I see nothing absurd. I am a democrat. You are a supporter of oligarchy. I am supporter of conscious, responsible societies. You are supporter of animal-like caste societies. Naturally you despise everything that has to do with democracy or conscious self-determined societies and you will fight views like mine with every lie possible, since you have no proper argumentation (as you cannot sell easily your real ideas of the rule of oligarchy, the imperial system, the caste society).
"""It is glaringly obvious to even the most casual observer who has ever spent five minutes thinking about the principles of individual rights"""
State is the property of its citizens. You do not recognise that, you are the last to speak about individual rights. You speak "Empire".
"""rule of law"""
You have repeatedly shown to be a keen supporter of illegal immigration. You are the last to speak of the rule of law.
"""and constitutional review"""
A basic article of all constitutions is the one referring to the protection of the state's physical borders and that is it up to the responsibility of all citizens. You are the last to speak of constitution.
"""and has the most rudimentary knowledge of political history."""
Do you have the rudimentary knowledge of political history? Make me laugh and give me for once a historic example.
"""You misunderstand the most basic principles and values on which European societies are based"""
I know very well the "principles" and "values" and even if I stop laughing with you refering to them, I cannot still make the link of these values to the fact that you insist that every random soul that finds itself for whatever reason in any random state has to be instantly tolerated.
"""Anyway, if I am citizen A and you are telling me that my children C are not eligible for citizenship because spouse B is a non-citizen, then I see such exclusionary policies as a serious infringement of my and my family's rights."""
You are blatantly wrong. If a country has had such laws all the way through then you should have known it and you are not excused to bear a grudge. If there is a new such law which represents the voice of the majority, then you have nothing to do with it, agree or disagree with it. If the law however acts retro-actively, then that is an injustice to you since you were not informed in the past about it and now your kids are paying the price of losing certain rights. However, a democratic society would rarely vote for a retro-active application hence referring it as a case is simply a smokescreen.
"""Surely this is not only a matter of what the relevant country wants, but also of what I and my family wants and is entitled to."""
Oh really? So your personal interests lie above law and constitution? And since when you and your family is entitled to something? Is there a nature law that you should be entitled to be citizen of any random country you chose? Perhaps you are entitled to pick up anyone's property too? You know very well what this sounds like...
"""I do not what you mean by 2nd generation, but obviously your implication that any 2nd generation person is inherently untrustworthy and should be stripped of its rights because it will not act in the real interests of the country is extremely offensive and based on pure prejudice."""
It is offensive to you since it reveals your real motives. Of course the reality is that for many countries particular populations of particular backgrounds and even the 2nd and even their 3rd generations are particularly untrustworthy and especially in national crises they constitute an additional danger sometimes grave danger.
"""Where I live, people (whatever their citizenship status) are free to pursue their own interest, and there is no expectation that each individual's interest will coincide 100% with the interests of the country or society"""
What you describe are citizens of multiple speeds, a heavily caste society, which is of course your ideal.
"""I find your prejudiced and spiteful way of thinking genuinely scary. If most Europeans share your ideology, then Providence help us - I'm afraid the world will see some really nasty things coming out of Europe in the near future."""
Absolutely not. I am neither prejudiced nor spiteful, this is what you are as proven by your inclination to lie and distort. I speak sense. Wars are the outcome of macro-financial distputes. The most war-like state ever created that has been the US, a state that by and large abides to your ideal and it, for 200 years has been in uninterrupted constant warfare. The theoretical type of state (since it is not applied in reality) I describe is a democratic state with conscious citizens who self-determine their future and as such much less prone to wars. It is the caste-based imperial-like states you admite that tend to be more warlike.
"""However, that does not mean that the Parliament can enact any law - only subject to constitutional review, checks and balances and fundamental human rights. The laws that were passed by Nazis were illegal, and that is why Nazi leaders were tried after the War for their crimes even though they may not have been enshrined in the Nazi Criminal Code. And that is also why certain Communist crimes have been prosecuted after the regime change, and rightfully so."""
You are really deluded. You have absolutely no clue of what is the notion of legality. Where do I have to start? Obviously from the basics? That there is no law out in nature defining any lawcode system?
"""In a modern constitutional democracy, the role of the government is to ensure the protection of individual rights and prevention of harm to the public, but definitely not to enforce uniform application of social conventions (unless non-compliance with them infringes individual rights or causes tangible harm to the public)""".
So what harm would cause you if I enterred naked in your office? It would excite your female collegue next to you and would make jealous or something? Aren't my rights infringed right here?
"""By definition, social conventions are changeable in time and place and cannot be enforced uniformly by law."""
There exist and they are very much enforced. You should be aware that it is illegal for me to come inside your office naked. It is called "indecent dress code". Moreover there are numerous places - even public ones - where there is enforced a dress code.
"""If the latter is the case, you need to come out and openly say what model of society you defend - authoritarian suffocated society in which individuals are not free to do anything that is not sanctioned by the state."""
I did not even propose anything of what you mention. I said that in any kind of constitutional democracy the same measures should be applied to all cases without exceptions favouring "special parts of population". When nudity, a social must-not is sanctioned, face cover, another social-must not which is even worse since it includes the loss of possibility to identify the person hidden underneath, should be also sanctioned.
"""It is extraordinarily unfortunate and scary that someone like you, who has not the slightest clue about the constitutional principles and values on which European societies are based, seeks to harness government power in order to enforce your fallacious notions of Europe's basic values and principles and impose them on free humans."""
You make me laugh. You have never even a read any country's constitution (I guess you have read only Britains one....!) and you try to speak on it. You talk of European values when you ignore even the basics of them (hence you do not even refer specifically to them).
"""I will be very busy in the coming couple of days, and I would suggest that you should use this time to reflect and educate yourself a bit on these topics instead of posting mindless comments."""
No need to think of anything. I need a more thoughtful answer from you to put me in the process of thinking anything particular. I just saw your answer some minutes back and concocted the most easy answer to you. End of story, you are someone who preaches "religion", "Empire", "caste-society" and above all "oligarchy". For someone who is a convinced democrat and a believer of peoples' personal rights (the right to property, the right to sefl-determination) like me it will be impossible to find consensus with you.
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