Women in face veils detained as France enforces ban

[DarkFish]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

At what point did kilts become part of Scottish culture? was that scottish culture, highland culture or british culture? Irish maybe or norse? celtic perhaps or even french? such a mishmash ain't it that culture thing.

The small kilt or walking kilt (similar to the 'modern' kilt) did not develop until the late 17th or early 18th century
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_kilt

I do get your point however which I will address below.

So if they became part of that culture was it wrong to ban them? What on earth was a bloke from lower saxony doing telling the locals how to dress?

[...]

Nor were curry, kebabs, saris, turbans, mantillas and christianity.
So your point was?

Well first of all I don't see curry, kebab, saris and turbans as part of Western culture. You could have chosen better examples to make your point.

So let's continue with your kilt example, assuming it were indeed the Saxons who introduced the kilt. In the present time, the kilt is part of Scottish culture. Banning it would be senseless. But when the saxons introduced it, if the Caledonians disliked it, IMHO they would have been well within their rights to ban it.

Burqas may very well become part of our culture once. When that has happened, banning them would be just as stupid as banning kilts is nowadays. But until that day I will oppose them every bit I can.

A person choosing to wear an item of clothing doesn't really impact on anyone in any meaningful way so there is nothing real to override

Depends on the clothing. Burqas can have an impact, see below.

banning a person from wearing something overrides their freedom of choice.

Well we already have "clothing laws". I can't walk around naked. Now should I feel offended that my freedom of choice is overrided?

And since they could do still do both in a dozen different ways your arguement doesn't stand.

which is why I only used the argument in support of my fear argument The chances of a burqa-wearing person being a bankrobber are practically zero. There are a thousand other ways a bankrobber can dress, many of them much more likely. Fearing that someone wearing a burqa is a bankrobber isn't rational. But neither are our instincts. There could be an AK47 underneath that burqa. There could hide a criminal under that veil. And that alone is often enough to, either consciously or subconsciously, instill fear in the hearts of some.

Do you think your personal sensibilities requires national legislation to make people to conform to fit to your insecurities?

If many people share those sensibilities, yes I do.

Your only arguement that wasn't directly dealt with is your strange sense of fear, but it was indirectly dealt with by showing those fears to be irrational.

And I completely agree. Most fears are. But the fact that they are irrational and often instinctive doesn't mean they aren't real. And I think banning muslims from wearing burqas is a small price to pay to remove some of that fear from many Westerners.

Originally Posted by DarkFish

Well we already have "clothing laws". I can't walk around naked. Now should I feel offended that my freedom of choice is overrided?

Actually isn't there places all around Europe (Included districts in cities) where you can walk around naked?

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by MH

While there is a chance that it was her talking there is no way that in general women in Muslim society willingly wear burka.
Sometimes they may know nothing better since they are brought up in certain and submissive way from age 0 having no real choice in life.

I was in the cafeteria at school today and I walk up to use the microwave. There was this girl in a Hijab there waiting and another girl who was cooking her own food. The one girl finishes and walks away and the girl in the Hijab tells me to go ahead and use the microwave, I tell her "no, you were here first". She still tells me to use it first. I don't know if it was a cultural thing or what but I felt really bad standing there for three minutes while my food cooked and she still waited.

I don't know sometimes...

I do get your point however which I will address below.

You didn't, it was the saxon which banned it. I suppose it would be like if Hirsi Ali got to be beatrix and banned dutch people wearing jeans which are not really dutch

Well first of all I don't see curry, kebab, saris and turbans as part of Western culture. You could have chosen better examples to make your point.

You missed Christianity and Mantillas off that list, last time we had a discussion about dutch culture you was convinced that everyday christian practices which date back for many many hundereds of years in the Netherlands were also not part of Dutch culture.


@TLAM

I don't know sometimes...

Maybe she was Canadian, they have a reputaion of being very polite.

@Rilder

Actually isn't there places all around Europe (Included districts in cities) where you can walk around naked?

But that is errrrrr....freedom of choice.
We need to ban freedom to save errrrr....freedom

[MH]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

But that is errrrrr....freedom of choice.
We need to ban freedom to save errrrr....freedom

Come on you can do better than that.....or not?

[Penguin]

The burka is not a religious symbol, it's a political and patriarchal symbol, it has more to do with tribal culture than with faith. I can't recognise it as just a garment like a kilt or pants.

Even if you regard it as a symbol for a religion. Imo the freedom of religion is one of the "soft" basic rights. It becomes superseded by the right of self-determination. I agree that most women who wear it don't do it out of their own free will - when you are brainwashed you also don't have free will.
Dressing modest is a total different thing, but nobody can tell me that somebody wears a black burka voluntarily when it's 30° C outside.

However the whole talk and action about the ban is nothing but a fight against the symptoms, not the root of the problem. The real problem are men who have such low self-esteem that they want to hide their women and chain them to themselves. Or those who are so sick that they assume that they have no self control and jump onto the next women who doesn't hide her female features.
Maybe those nuts should wear horse blinkers instead of forcing their women to wear a sack.
This offends me as a man who appreciates women, that those morons want to put every men into the same category.

Come on you can do better than that.....or not?

In essence that is all it boils down to, all the arguements against a form of clothing fall down very rapidly.
So all that is left is the removal of freedom of choice to maintain freedom of choice which is perfect newspeak.
Personaly I think the burqa and niquab are silly tribal affections which cannot even claim the strange "merit" of gods orders that some claim over dress codes. But banning them is fundamentaly wrong on every level in a free country, and to do so on what are admitted as "irrational fears" is so indefencible it would be laughable if it wasn't really happening.
The government has no role in regulating what clothes people can and cannot wear, leave that to nuts like the maoists the sauds and the taliban.

but nobody can tell me that somebody wears a black burka voluntarily when it's 30° C outside.

Would you prefer pink burkas? maybe yellow ones with purple stripes?
Wasn't there a recent study on the best colours to wear for heat avoidance in hot climates that founds no noticable difference between black cloth and white cloth.
These people in deserts with hot weather, both male and female seem to wear big robes and head coverings don't they, maybe it hads something to do with it being over 30 degrees outside

[Skybird]

The battle over enforcing the burkha on Western streets makes it a political symbol. It is the same like waving a flag with an obscene symbol, or a swastika. Is a flag with a swastika just a rag of textile with some ink on it? Is it the same like a flag for a football club? Hardly, it is a political statement for Nazism, and a calculated, intended provocation. Is the burkha a dress like any other? Hardly, it is a statement for Sharia and it's ideal of what women should be like, and it is a wanted, claculat5ed, intended provocation to weaken Western resistence - by constant small callibre firing.

Recommended readings on the issue discussed here:

H.-P. Raddatz: Allahs Schleier. Die Frau im Kampf der Kulturen. Herbig 2004, 472 p.

the same^: Allahs Frauen. Djihad zwischen Scharia und Demokratie. Herbig 2005, 281 p.

I end this thread for me with saying this: I despise people who under the label of "free relgion" and "free speech" accept and tolerate the enslavement and almost racial discrimination of women, and who make cynic mockery of all those brave woimen who dare to stand up against this supression, who flee from their husbands, who turn their backs on their families and live in hiding for years and decades to go, who risk assassination by speaking out against slavery in Islam, who confess about enforced marriage and slave trades, violence in marriages and mutilations and family gang rape and accusing the victim of the crime afterwards, and dishonour murders, etc etc etc. There are many women of Islamic origin who came from Muslim countries to us and live here and hoped we would protect them from their abuses and would grant them safety and defence and the liberties we constantly boast with in the world. And we let them down - in the name of our precious values and freedoms...? How double-perverse is this a thinking?

Some people feel so bright by defending Idslam and they feel so clever by trying to hide Islam'S wicked nature by comparing it to everyday profanities of Western way of life. For some of them, it is a way to protest against the West in general, or to be anti-American and anti-Western for the sake of being "anti". The expotic must be better just becasue it is exotic. They think they know Islam better than Islam knows itself, they think they must explain Islam better than Islam explains itself, and they think they are more competent on Islam than even apostates from islam are who gained academic titles in oriental studies and Islamic studies and warn us Wetserners time and again that behave like a flock of stupid sheep when mistaking the hand that feeds us with the hand that leads us to the butcher's van. In Germany, Necla Kelec is such a women, an somewhat apostate and of Armenian origin and a academic researcher in social sciences, with special field in Islam and Islamic family structures and how they collide head-on with Western value system and living conditions. Another example of course is Ayan Hirsi, or Seyran Ates. Biogapohies like these show the combination of acadmeic insight and competence on the issues by own personbal experience. Before you think that you must explain them what they talk about you must make sure you can dela with them on same eye level.

And some people here cannot. Their clever tricks to minimize such opinions, or any opinion on Islam they do not like, are just this: tricks at some times, rethoric surrogates at other times.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Penguin

However the whole talk and action about the ban is nothing but a fight against the symptoms, not the root of the problem. The real problem are men who have such low self-esteem that they want to hide their women and chain them to themselves. Or those who are so sick that they assume that they have no self control and jump onto the next women who doesn't hide her female features.

Pointing at the right direction, but dig deeper. Why are the men the way you correectly outline above? They get taught to be that way, and that education ideal is influenced by patriarchalic traditions and - Islam. Again, you end up with the ideology laying at the basis of the problem.

[DarkFish]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

You missed Christianity and Mantillas off that list, last time we had a discussion about dutch culture you was convinced that everyday christian practices which date back for many many hundereds of years in the Netherlands were also not part of Dutch culture.

Exactly - were not part of Dutch culture. You confuse present and past here. If you go back to the Germanic times, christianity didn't even exist yet so how could it be part of Dutch culture?

You must also differentiate between christian culture and Dutch culture. Important people wearing a white robe is part of christian culture but absolutely not part of Dutch culture. Christian traditions are only part of Dutch culture as long as lots of the common men follow those traditions.

Originally Posted by Rilder

Actually isn't there places all around Europe (Included districts in cities) where you can walk around naked?

Only some isolated areas. Never heard of any city district where it's allowed.

christianity didn't even exist yet so how could it be part of Dutch culture?

The dutch didn't exist so how can they have any culture anyway?
Since christianity existed in those lowlands before there was any kingdom of the Netherlands then Dutch people must be banned as they are usurpers of the christian marshland culture.

[Armistead]

Any act of religious oppression shouldn't be tolerated by a government that believes in freedom. Muslims in more extreme nations shouldn't be offended. When a secular woman visits their nations, they expect them in full dress and faces covered by law. That gives our culture the right by law to say take it off. They'll cry religious freedom when here, but not give it when there.

Any act of religious oppression shouldn't be tolerated by a government that believes in freedom.

You do realise you are arguing against what you are argueing for

They'll cry religious freedom when here, but not give it when there.

So you want to become like the wahhibis. Well done.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Skybird

The battle over enforcing the burkha on Western streets makes it a political symbol. It is the same like waving a flag with an obscene symbol, or a swastika. Is a flag with a swastika just a rag of textile with some ink on it? Is it the same like a flag for a football club? Hardly, it is a political statement for Nazism, and a calculated, intended provocation. Is the burkha a dress like any other? Hardly, it is a statement for Sharia and it's ideal of what women should be like, and it is a wanted, claculat5ed, intended provocation to weaken Western resistence - by constant small callibre firing.

The swastika comparison is a good one, because it raises an interesting comparison. Here in the United States there was the famous case of Skokie, Illinois vs the American Nazi Party, in which the nazis wanted to hold a rally in a largely Jewish community, many of whose members were holocaust survivors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationa...lage_of_Skokie

An telling quote from Federal Judge Bernard M. Decker:
"It is better to allow those who preach racial hatred to expend their venom in rhetoric rather than to be panicked into embarking on the dangerous course of permitting the government to decide what its citizens may say and hear...The ability of American society to tolerate the advocacy ot even hateful doctrines...is perhaps the best protection we have against the establishment of any Nazi-type regime in this country."

Please note that the above is only in reference to the "Swastika" comments.

I end this thread for me with saying this: I despise people who under the label of "free relgion" and "free speech" accept and tolerate the enslavement and almost racial discrimination of women...etc.

I completely agree on this point. Religious freedom in a free country does not include the right to enslave or abuse others in the name of religion any more than it includes the right to ritual sacrafice, human or animal.

The question raised of whether the clothing issue is religious or cultural is an interesting one. The efforts of France to fight Islamic incursion is questionable, but I don't claim, as some do, to have the answer. I don't think such a law could fly here in the United States.

And some people here cannot. Their clever tricks to minimize such opinions, or any opinion on Islam they do not like, are just this: tricks at some times, rethoric surrogates at other times.

So anyone who disagrees with you is dishonest? Anyone who questions whether total ousting of Islam is the answer is actually a closet supporter of Islam?

I'm just looking for answers, and I don't think you have them.

[Armistead]

I think the better answer is how the US states that allow open carry of firearms deals with it.

If you don't want someone on your premises with their faces covered, put a sign up, just like we do with "no shoes, no entry." or "no guns allowed."

It only becomes a criminal offense if you're asked to leave and don't. I can see banks, courts, etc., not wanting covered faces around.

Islam will always be difficult to deal with, it's religion, but in most places opposes civil rights.
In the end the civil rights have to come first even if the people don't agree with it or know any better.

Sure, I would love to make my wife cook and twaddle at my command by law, just ain't gonna happen.