Burka ban

[Clint Planet]

Okay, I could start with the empires, that would be the obvious place to start. You said the last two hundred years so that covers the peak of the british Raj, of the interference in the far east and of Imperial africa.

Then there would be christian missionaries, they still exist and again the last two hundred years covers arguably their peak. Charity workers could be construed in the same manner, in particular the ones educating about condoms and the like in aids ridden countries or giving advie on irrigation.

Then you've got to talk about the industries, the mcdonalds in istanbul, the workers in bangladesh being taught english so they can do call centres, the africans being given free nestle milk so they don't breat feeed and then can be charged more for mik later (despite their culturally being a strong taboo against not breast feeding), the way Japan's isolationist government was toppled by the american navy to secure trade. The market forces are doing a lot to westernise the world because the industry leaders are often western. Sweatshop kids being given free nike tops and such like.

Then there's crime and the drug trade and the way western drugs and alcohol are exported to non western societes (american indians and aborginies for instance).

Then there's military force, and governments like Allende's or Hussien's overthrown by western governments because they were leading those countries in a path we didn't approve of. That's the defeniton of interfering with their laws.

There's enviromentalism and the numerous times it has tried to stop other cultures from hunting animals when it's built into their values. The trade for stuuf like ivory and chinese medicals is a long standing part of various cultures as is whale hunting.

There's the campagin against slavery (part of the culture of a lot of societies, though it sometimes can be only traced back to earlier western interference).

There's tourism (how many countries have signs in english now or accept american money? Lots because there's a demand for it.)

There's immigration (USA and the indian territorites for one but also Spain has english towns where there is no spanish spoken and everyone eats fish and chiops from an englsih owned pub.)

There's prostitution.

Need I go on?

 

[neonleon]

I noticed most of my posts have been judiciously avoided to fire down Tubey's position.

Anyone care to answer them?

Particularly about racial harmony and cohesion and why people who choose to frame the argument as a matter of cultural respect aren't planning on legalising honour killings, arranged marriages featuring children with adults, the death penalty by stoning for being raped or homosexuality, the end of universal suffrage, bigamy,

features of some islamic cultures around the world. How dare we deny them their cultural rights?

 

[chicoazul]

The English are bad little obnoxious islanders who are drunk of their own misguided sense of self importance.

 

[neonleon]

The English are bad little obnoxious islanders who are drunk of their own misguided sense of self importance.

I wouldn't dispute that either.

 

[Clint Planet]

You're giving that short arsed Sarkozy way too much leeway here. He's doing stuff like this and launching attacks on Libya/Ivory Coast because he's well down in the polls and has an election coming up so he's trying to outflank those parties to the right of his own. This isn't about human rights, far from it.

Nope. It's rather racist, in fact. Criminalising otherwise eminently law-abiding women - decent people with names and children and values and aspirations for their kids and educations and stuff - merely for following what they believe in?

Hmmm...

A steamroller is being used to shell a peanut here and plenty of people, all too predictably, are jumping at the chance to spit (literally, in France) on "these people." We should be priding ourselves on our tolerance and rising above all of this. Britain is admired throughout the world for certain values, not least tolerance.

 

[neonleon]

Funny, the only Muslim girl they got to talk to on Newsnight said, 'we do it because we are told from an early age to wear it.'

Then she says, 'its our choice.'

yeah its well your choice. Family ashamed and ostrocising you for being a **** if you dont wear one. Honour killings.

 

[Clint Planet]

I noticed most of my posts have been judiciously avoided to fire down Tubey's position.

Anyone care to answer them?

Particularly about racial harmony and cohesion and why people who choose to frame the argument as a matter of cultural respect aren't planning on legalising honour killings, arranged marriages featuring children with adults, the death penalty by stoning for being raped or homosexuality, the end of universal suffrage, bigamy,

features of some islamic cultures around the world. How dare we deny them their cultural rights?

I'll happily answer this tomorrow, mate. Bed soon.

 

[chicoazul]

Honour bummings would be better.

eyes up fit second cousin*

 

[neonleon]

I'll happily answer this tomorrow, mate. Bed soon.

Giraffe's go to bed so early these days.

 

[Clint Planet]

Giraffe's go to bed so early these days.

It's the lazy prejudice what does it.

 

[neonleon]

It's the lazy prejudice what does it.

Ok, sorry. I'll rephrase.

The only giraffe I know in my experience is going to bed early on this one particular instance (I dont deny the right to go to bed whenever he wants).

Better?

 

[neonleon]

Now wind your neck in.

 

[chicoazul]

How can someone got to bed when someone has called them a tit on the internet?

Baffling.

 

[padefc]

*peeps in dives out* too much of a hot potato for me lids

 

[Clint Planet]

Believe in liberty, equality, fraternity? This time, don't follow the French

There are deep failures of civic liberal integration across Europe, but a burqa ban is the wrong way to address them

by Timothy Garton Ash

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/07/dont-follow-french-burqa-ban?INTCMP=SRCH

I believe people should be free to publish cartoons of Muhammad. I believe people should be free to wear the burqa. In a free society, men and women should be able to do, say, write, depict or wear what they like, so long as it does no significant harm to others. Those who support a burqa ban, like the one that comes into force in France next Monday, must therefore show us the harm that comes from women walking around with their faces covered. So far, the supporters of a ban have advanced three main arguments.

First, they say the full-face veil is a threat to public safety. Jean-François Copé – the leader of Nicolas Sarkozy's party, the Union for a Popular Movement – has cited an armed robbery conducted "in the Paris suburbs by criminals dressed in burqas". Others point to would-be suicide bombers hiding under burqas. But how many such incidents have there been? For the London and Madrid bombers, a backpack was an easier hiding-place for a bomb.

Meanwhile, violent street demonstrators have for decades hidden their faces behind balaclavas, while a stocking (or modern equivalent) over the head has long been the native dress of the armed robber. It is ridiculous to suggest that the fewer than 2,000 women who are thought to wear the burqa in France, or the fewer than 500 in the Netherlands, suddenly constitute a security threat worse than those muffled and hooded men of violence who have been at work for decades.

This takes us to the second argument: an open society is one in which we can see each other's faces. I have much sympathy with this view. Most free societies have some rules about how we appear in public: no full frontal nudity, for example, except in designated locations. If for the last 50 years the uncovering of the face in public had been the settled legal norm of European societies, as is the covering of the pudenda, it would be reasonable to insist that those who choose to live here should abide by it. But while the French law is now presented in an egalitarian, universalist way, this is so obviously not what it really is.

In 2009 Sarkozy took up with a vengeance the demand specifically to ban burqas. It is being implemented in the context of his party's fierce defence of French-style secularism (laïcité) against the encroachments specifically of "Islam", reaffirmed at a controversial meeting this week. And that is now very much about attracting voters back from Marine Le Pen and the xenophobic far right. This is a highly politicised burqa ban hiding behind a thin universalist veil.

Finally, it is argued that the unacceptable harm is to the veiled women themselves. Silvana Koch-Mehrin, a vice-president of the European parliament, says the burqa is "a mobile prison". And the claim is often made that women only walk around in these mobile prisons because they are compelled to do so by fathers or husbands.

Again, I start with sympathy for this view. When, on a hot day in London, I see a woman wrapped in a black sack tagging along beside a guy in light T-shirt, jeans and sneakers, my first reaction is: "How bloody unfair!" John Stuart Mill, who enunciated the liberal's classic harm principle, was himself passionate against "the almost despotic power of husbands over wives". But before we leap to this conclusion, shouldn't we ask the women themselves? Or do we paternalistically (or maternalistically) assume they don't know what is good for them, and must be forced to be free?

A study by the At Home in Europe project of the Open Society Foundations, to be released on Monday, reports in-depth interviews with 32 women who wear the full-face veil in France. All but two say they are the first members of their family to do so, and almost all insist this was a matter of free personal choice. Several chose to wear it against the initial resistance of husbands, fathers and mothers. (The families often feared hostility on the streets, with some reason. In a tragicomic parody of French reactions, one of these women – Omera, 31, from the south of France – was threatened by an old Frenchman wielding pétanque balls.)

They often describe donning the niqab or burqa as part of a spiritual journey, very much in the terms in which devout Christian and Jewish women of old might have explained their decision to "take the veil". Some also explain it as a protest and defence against a highly sexualised, voyeuristic public space: "For us it's a way of saying that we are not a piece of meat in a stall, we are not a commodity" (Vivi, 39, south of France). Nearer my God to thee – and further from Joe Leering Public.

We may not like their choice. We may find it disturbing and offensive. But it is, in its way, as much a form of free expression as cartoons of Muhammad – which these women, in turn, will find disturbing and offensive. And that's the deal in a free society: the burqa-wearer has to put up with the cartoons; the cartoonist has to put up with the burqas.

How will these women feel on Monday? Listen to Camile from Paris: "Why should I remove my niqab? … I'm not a terrorist. I'm not a criminal. I'm not a thief. I, who today respect all the laws, the laws of God and the laws of the republic, will become an outlaw."

Yes, there surely are also cases of women – much less easy to reach – who wear the niqab or burqa out of fear of their menfolk. Every possible resource must be put at their disposal: anonymous helplines, community support, safe houses, relocation and fresh start chances. They, too, must be free to choose. But how will a burqa ban help them? Will not the reaction of such tyrannical men be to keep them even more tightly locked up at home?

Because one is so liable to be maliciously misinterpreted on this subject, I want to be very clear about where I stand. I think there are huge problems with the integration of people of migrant background and Muslim faith into most west European societies. I think we have made bad mistakes of omission and commission in this regard over the last 40 years, some of them in the name of a misconceived, morally relativist "multiculturalism". I think we need a muscular liberalism fit for what are in reality already multicultural societies.

But let us, in the name of reason and common sense, concentrate on what is really vital. Let us defend free speech against violent Islamist intimidation. Let us ensure that children of migrant background get a good education in the language, history and politics of the European country in which they live, and are then equipped to do useful work and contribute fully as citizens. Let us not be distracted by a facile gesture politics, which legitimises far-right xenophobic parties even as it attempts to claw back votes.

The burqa ban is illiberal and unnecessary, and will most likely be counterproductive. No one else should follow the French example, and France itself should reverse it.