France Bans The Burqa

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Are men so weak that they can't stand seing a woman's hair without thinking of God-knows-what - how ever young or old may be that woman?
And I don't even speak of the view of bare hands or ... bare feet, navels and what else?

Who is indecent here?

Plus the security as Ruveyn and a few others said.

It's not only the burqa which is forbidden since yesterday, it's everything that hide people's face in public places.

There are certain areas where they need to be able to identify your face, but why just burkas? And why all public areas? This is complete BS. There should be a policy in certain areas telling you to remove whatever article of clothing covers your face (bandanas, ski masks, burkas, etc... etc...) but a building's policy has no place in all public areas and to only include women who wear one type of clothing that covers your face is discriminatory garbage. btw are burkas just one complete piece of clothing like a jumpsuit or is it more like a scarf?

Last edited by AceOfSpades on 12 Apr 2011, 12:01 pm, edited 2 times in total.

You THINK I meant all Muslims when I said " Islamists"...but I didn't...You also make a lot of assumptions about me because I am opposed to the Burqa...Islamists refers to those who hold the fundmentalist beliefs that created the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. If you don't think their are many of them, you are either naive or not knowledgable about the situation of radiclization within the Muslim community. You THINK i have a problem with them wearing the clothes in their own private house, areas, etc...but I dont. I could care less...What DOES concern me is when it reflects on the Public and infringes on our rights as a Public. Maybe you should look at those in France who back the ban, many of them are secular muslims or not fundmentalist muslims, who see the practice as a modern form of female slavery. You are trying to make this a larger race issue than it really is. Perhaps you should spend some time in a Muslim country, Like i have done, and see it firsthand what Islamic fundmentalists believe in and how disgusting it can be.

And no, Tequila, you won't be authorised to wear your balaclava if you're only walking in the street for instance Only if you ride a bike of if you go skiing.

In more primitive countries where near-nudity is commonplace, they would think the same of us- the "line" of what is private and what is not has merely shifted.

An interesting perspective:

I will never forget a visit I made to Ilana, an old friend who had become an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem. When I saw her again, she had abandoned her jeans and T-shirts for long skirts and a head scarf. I could not get over it. Ilana has waist-length, wild and curly golden-blonde hair. “Can’t I even see your hair?” I asked, trying to find my old friend in there. “No,” she demurred quietly. “Only my husband,” she said with a calm sexual confidence, “ever gets to see my hair.”

When she showed me her little house in a settlement on a hill, and I saw the bedroom, draped in Middle Eastern embroideries, that she shares only with her husband—the kids are not allowed—the sexual intensity in the air was archaic, overwhelming. It was private. It was a feeling of erotic intensity deeper than any I have ever picked up between secular couples in the liberated West. And I thought: Our husbands see naked women all day—in Times Square if not on the Net. Her husband never even sees another woman’s hair.

She must feel, I thought, so hot.

Compare that steaminess with a conversation I had at Northwestern, after I had talked about the effect of porn on relationships. “Why have sex right away?” a boy with tousled hair and Bambi eyes was explaining. “Things are always a little tense and uncomfortable when you just start seeing someone,” he said. “I prefer to have sex right away just to get it over with. You know it’s going to happen anyway, and it gets rid of the tension.”

“Isn’t the tension kind of fun?” I asked. “Doesn’t that also get rid of the mystery?”

“Mystery?” He looked at me blankly. And then, without hesitating, he replied: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sex has no mystery.”

No I was just curious to know, thanks.
John Toshack coached football in Turkey. A Turkish friend told me his surname is the Turkish word for bollocks.

Edit: off topic thanks for bringing Turkey up, now I can't stop think about one night in Istanbul full of Turkish delight in beating Berlusconi (2005 UEFA Champions League final).

Last edited by cdfox7 on 12 Apr 2011, 12:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Anyhow, I'll tell you something in case you don't know but in France all governments have been prefering putting more and more policemen in the streets and less and less educators since at least three decades. It's a choice they do and I don't understand why.

(Sorry for the grammar)

Oh, I'm sorry. When someone refers to a group, I guess I assume they're talking about...the group.

"Catholics" refers to those who hold the fundamentalist beliefs that created witch hunts.
"Pro-life" refers to those who hold the fundamentalists beliefs that created doctor murders.
If you subscribe to guilt by way of someone bad believing something similar, that's fine,
but it's piss-poor public policy.

Perhaps. And throwing Muslim mothers in jail for wearing face veils does what, exactly to counteract that?

Interesting idea, since I never asserted such once.

There's a "right" to dictate to others what they may or may not wear?

No- they see women as synonymous with frightened, deferential prisoners of men, if they presume to think that NONE of the women could possibly be wearing a face veil of her own accord.

Nope. Haven't mentioned race once.

Nah. I'm sure it wouldn't convince me that this ban is remotely related to "security" and not everything to do with the political unpopularity of the Muslim presence in France.

Ok to be fair to women & of security reasons ban hoodies & scallies from hiding theres faces in public.

Nobody will be thrown to jail for that
The more they'd get would be a fine of 150 €.

Bethie, may I ask you if you know anything about the long relationship between France and some african countries?

It's quite complicated and the youg generation who want to dress like that, despite being born and raised and educated here shock everybody - included their own families most of the time.

The first ones who did that, just starting with a little scarf on their heads and did it
1) for religious beliefs
2) for provocation, teen-agers provocations at school.
3) But it was also and in the meantime a kind of security for them.
You obviously don't know much about what it's like to live in some suburbs and areas here

So if you act like an attention whore THE GOVERNMENT WILL BAN YOUR CLOTHING.

Got it.

What someone wears is a matter the Government should stay the f**k out of (unless it violates some non-discriminatory law such as say public nudity). Some places need to identify you by your face, but that should be a private policy not a public one. Also, the policy should apply to all articles of clothing that cover your face, not blatantly discriminate against a specific group.

So because they haven't discriminated against everything practice of Islam, it's okay for em to discriminate against one of em?

This is obviously discriminatory BS. One piece of clothing and it only applies to women. If it's a security issue, then first off it's only a security issue in certain buildings or areas. Secondly, it should apply to all articles of clothing that conceal your face. Thirdly, why does covering your face only become a security issue when Muslim women do it? Anyone who robs a store or a bank with their face covered up is a security issue. Any extremist who uses politically motivated violence and hides their face is a security issue. Never mind that a bunch of hooded up anarchists firebombed a couple of cop cars and smashed windows up in the G20, it's only the brown women we should be worrying about

And last time I checked, extremism isn't exclusively an Islamic thing. Yes, most of the terrorists in the last 30 years have been Islamic extremists, but that's because of how the political circumstances in the middle east happen to be which makes it more prevalent, not cuz Islam is inherently more evil than Christianity or w/e. Most Christian terrorism I've heard of occurs in the UK, and if the political circumstances were the same in Canada or the US then it would be just as prevalent. But no, our political circumstances aren't the same so we don't have the same void extremists wanna fill.

Last edited by AceOfSpades on 12 Apr 2011, 12:59 pm, edited 4 times in total.

If that interests you, i've also read that some women from Africa, which are educated in western schools, have a career, and such, become quite religious at the time they need to fetch a husband. Being educated apparently makes this rather complicated as well. They usually do this by organizing groups for women to discuss about religion (since they cannot do this while the men are present, iirc) and what social activities to do. This pretty much shows how they are a good muslim, and can be wed. It's a bit more complicated than that, but i "could" dig out the article if you're ever interested. ^.-

(I can't remember 100% about the concerned country, but i think it was Côte d'Ivoire, i could be wrong)

What a fatuous remark.

It is not acceptable for either a woman's husband and family or her government to dictate to her.



Who are you to presume what these women can or cannot choose? If even one woman wants to veil herself, that should be her right. You put yourself in exactly the same position as the men who seek to control women when you deny them the right to self-expression and self-determination.

You might not respect these women for the choice that they make--but no one is asking you to have the basic human decency to respect another person. All you should be ask to do is mind your own business.



Then the issue lies not with the veil, but with the conservative muslim societies. The veil is merely a symptom of a much deeper problem that should be addressed at its root, not at its symptoms.

Banning the veil will not stop conservative men from trying to control their wives and daughters. So the proper response is not to ban the veil--but to put means in place whereby women can safely reject the attempt to control them.



Nothing prevents a woman from reaching up under her veil with a handkerchief.

No I talked about what the burka is before in another post but for your benefit I'll quote that post.




sorry I forgot to touch on the issue of Polygamy & Latter-Day Saints. The current official view of it from the church is best expressed by Gordon B. Hinckley back in 1998.

Last edited by cdfox7 on 12 Apr 2011, 1:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It is just as much their country. If France is truly founded on the principles of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité then the public law must support the liberty of all people in France--not merely those whose views happen to match the political will of a xenophobic majority.



We're not talking about "your house." We are talking about people moving freely about in public. Unlike your private property, within a public space the government cannot arbitrarily restrict the freedom of its citizens unless government is pursuing a legitimate public policy objective. Show me that the chador has an impact on public health and public safety, and I will revise my opinion.



What a patronizing comment. Who are you to comment on another person's decisions about her identity? A woman herself, and only she, has the capacity to decide what is right for her.



That is precisely what is wrong with the law. It seeks to impose limits on personal freedom within public space where no legitimate government interest is being protected or enhanced.



Ah, but we don't ban wearing a mask or wearing a stocking on one's face. The fact that a practice might be used to avoid detection during the commission of an offence does not make that practice in and of itself a criminal offence.

This ban is specific, and targetted at religious face coverings, not face coverings in general. If government's intention was to assist police in combatting crime, and religious face coverings got caught up in that law of general application, I would be far more sanguine about it. But that is precisely what government did not do.



Frankly, I think the religious argument is irrelevant. This is a question of personal liberty, freedom of expression and security of the person. This is an example of government seeking to infringe on these freedoms without a legitimate public interest in doing so.

In a modern, pluralist, democratic state, it is entirely possible for traditional practice and secular public law to coexist. To suggest otherwise is to betray the very principles of individual liberty that lie at the foundation of those states.