But would banning it solve any problems? What is the root cause of the problem? An item of clothing or the source which insists that women have to wear that item of clothing?
You could ban the burqa but it wouldn't address the root cause of the problem.

When it has come to banning alcohol or drugs and making them illegal by punishing the users, did it ever actually eradicate the problem if the businesses largely got away with it and simply moved their trade elsewhere to where the business is?
No it's not a great analogy but I hope that you sort of get what I mean.

Banning the burqa makes a target of the most vulnerable person in the chain. If they are being forced to wear the burqa by societal or cultural pressure then they don't really have much of a choice, and it would be they who may reap some unpleasant consequences.
Of course I'm not speaking of those who wear it by choice and are exercising their free will, which for all I know there may be some.

And if I say that I'm okay with the burqa being banned because I simply don't like it, it makes it difficult for me to engage with the person, or I find it creepy, that isn't good enough. I need a much better argument than that which is based on more than how I feel about something because it isn't to my taste.

Yeah, brilliant point!

Let's overturn the ban on FGM for the same reason.



Maggie

Not a very convincing argument.

The fact that some might see it as "sinister" is not an argument for banning it.

Physical assault, and causing actual or grievous bodily harm has been a crime for a very long time.

Wearing certain clothes hasn't.

Are you really comparing something as heinous as FGM with someone merely wrapping themselves in a piece of cloth? Seriously, get a grip.

Meaningless cowardice. Pick on the easiest and most helpless targets with the grim irony of using anti-Islamic misogynistic victimisation to likewise claim to be protecting Muslim females.


And the women who choose to wear the burqa?

It certainly isn't allowing freedom or equality to select only Muslim females and not allow them their choice of clothing. So more to the point, why do you or anyone else need to control them?


Let's consider and compare, an item of clothing and female genital mutilation. Not so brilliant point. Unless you really don't know what female genital mutilation is.

Two sides of the same coin.

Females in some cultures are no better than chattels to be traded and treated on the whim of males.

Sexual pleasure that is for men only, freedom to move around and associate freely with others, men only, wearing garments as to your personal choice, men only etc etc.

I think physically assaulting women to impose your will is also against the law but is encouraged by many in certain cultures.

Where do you start and where do you stop?



Maggie

No it's not. As I've said in a previous post you can't just ban something because it isn't to somebody else's taste. You need a better argument.
If the reason for banning it is for reasons which are plain wrong because they infringe on somebody's human rights then you have a decent base to argue from and debate with.

The irony is that in the same post of mine which Maggie 55 was replying to I was putting down an analogy of my own saying it probably wasn't a good one.
Luckily for me I don't feel so bad about it now because Maggie 55 responded to my post by using one which was even worse than mine.

Strikes me that many of the anti-Burka brigade don't know why they want to ban it only that they should.

I know it is not against the law that is the point. I do not know if the woman down the street has black eyes because she falls over a lot or because her husband hits her. Just ignoring it is your chosen option. Not usually accepted as a way to secure the safety of citizens. In Islam the husband can admonish his wife physically if she does not behave and that behaviour is as indicated by Islam and decided by the husband. What she wears falls into that bracket if her husband so decides. Choice of cultural behaviour is fine enforcing cultural behaviour on a person who wishes to behave otherwise is abuse.

I have a bit of a problem with that though. It's true that some women may wear it out of choice, and even though I still probably wouldn't advocate a ban on it I'd have to question those women's fashion choices due to what the burqa represents.
They may be inadvertently causing harm to those women who don't have a choice by normalizing it.

Another crap analogy, it might be a bit like a Jewish person wearing full Nazi regalia at a Bar Mitzvah.

Ban physical assaults
Don't ban someone's choice of garments.

Simple.

It is a symbol of the repression of women and an adherence to a medieval backward ideology that has no place in a modern society.

Ataturk was right in Turkey, he wanted to move this Islamic nation into the modern world and he started by proscribing a religious symbol, the Fez, people were prosecuted, even executed but the wearing of it stopped.

Funny enough he did not ban the hijab or make declarations about female dress as he thought as his new secular based society took hold they would give it up themselves. He was right to a large extent in the cities but not in the more backwards Islamic controlled parts of Turkish society.

By the 1970s, though discouraging headscarves had taken on the force of law. The headscarf was banned in government offices, hospitals, universities, and schools.

Of course we have seen the rise of Islam again in Turkey, now the ban is overturned, Erdogan and the Imams are taking all the control to themselves, dissenters, journalists and teachers jailed.

Erdogan is well on his way to indoctrinate his future generations and backwards they will go. Still someone will come on and say it is all free will and choice.


"The most significant change, bulldozed through parliament amid fistfights and protests in March 2012, expanded the imam-hatip religious schools and introduced Quranic studies and the life of the Prophet Muhammad as courses in public schools, among other changes. The opposition has long decried the Islamization of education, while President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has insisted on raising a “devout generation,” lauding imam-hatip schools, which train Muslim clergy and offer extensive Quranic studies.

The number of secondary imam-hatip schools grew to 1,961 at present, while imam-hatip high schools increased to 1,149 in the same period. Meanwhile, the number of students attending them has risen from 932,000 to 1.2 million. Back in 2002, the figure stood at 71,000,"



Maggie

Since when was the fez a "religious symbol"?

You said it!
Why do you think it might be inadvertently causing harm?
One of the things women who choose to wear the nijab, which is actually the garment being referred to, say is it's liberating which I can understand to some extent.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/wom...ol-debate.html

Its not in many parts of the world.

In Turkey though it became a cultural symbol and form of identity and Ataturk was intent on changing this. He knew that a culturally inclined Islamic nation would never be able to compete with the Western secular societies and there was no mechanism that could enforce change internally on Islam.

He decided to make change happen through the force of law and unless Islam is willing to change naturally and internally what else is there to be done?

He was right and had the strength of conviction to follow through.

Erdogan is wrong but also has the strength of conviction to follow through and he will effect change.



Maggie

I agree the burqa should not be banned. Do you not agree thought women should not be allowed to cover their face in areas where no one else is permitted to cover their faces, such as airports?

Oh definitely, yes. Should be the same rule as for any other facecovering.

I agree. It makes me very uncomfortable if the state tell people what they can and can't wear, but it also makes me uncomfortable when religious people are allowed to circumvent rules that the rest of us follow - everyone should be treated equally.

I do wonder though if maybe there should be a ban on children under 18 wearing burqas, as they should be able to make their own choice when older whether to wear one - and the lack of vitamin D in their childhood could be very damaging.

So it's not a religious symbol.

As for the burka, what if a woman decide to wear it of her own free will? Are you going to force her not to wear it? If you then consider items of clothing to be oppression then what are you to do about the Sheitel?

More whataboutery.

The fact is Germany already prevents the wearing of symbols of a certain ideology.

Should they do? How dare they restrict the right to freely express an opinion or ideology? Should society have the right to limit peoples free expression?

Should society draw the line at certain ideologies, if so what sort of ideas should be restricted?

Rights of women, homosexuals, freedom to be an atheist, freedom to change your mind, restriction and preferable destruction of a racial group, those sort of things would you say?



Maggie

Whats worse - a religion telling its women how to dress, forum members telling women how to dress, or politicians telling women how to dress?
Hard to tell the difference.

So the burka is the same as the Swastika?

In that the wearing of it indicates support of an ideology that has little place in a modern, equal, democratic, secular society, yes.




Maggie