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U-Know! Forum » The French banning the niqab/burka |
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MrsSevenrealm 204 posts |
Apr 18, 2011, 21:53
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Absolutely.
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IanB 6761 posts |
Edited Apr 22, 2011, 13:20
Apr 21, 2011, 19:35
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Moon Cat wrote: Dont like the burka and what it represents, or at least what it represents from my perspective. But I'm more against the notion of banning it. Choice and expression are things of value even if what they represent is pretty abhorrent to one's values. It's the classic liberal conflict. A lady wearing a burka doesn't really do any harm apart perhaps to one's sensibilities. Let's face it, unless you go and ask every individiual lady why she's wearing one, the practical and sober assesment must be that she is practicing her faith and lifestyle in a way she desires. Shell-suits and their 21st Century equivalent though are genuine things of malignant evil and should be banned ;^) I am with you all the way though coming from a less libertarian left position. Additionally, and this chimes with what you and ratcni01 and HandofDave and Joudicca are all saying, I see this as just one great big right wing dog & pony show deliberately intended to make sexism something that we associate with cultural difference (ie the problem of Johnny Foreigner and not ours) while completely ignoring stuff in our own back yard like the normalisation of the sex trade (which has fairly successfully rebranded itself as being about choice and empowerment rather than slavery) and the ubiquity of consumerist body fascism which leads to far more dangerous forms of self-denial and self-abasement (speaking as the father of three daughters) and dangers to our collective sanity than the wearing of a fucking faith accessory. Revolting as the burka may be to a generation that grew up with Sally James and Pans People I think we could be doing more to get our own house in order before making top-down pronouncements on public display. Where faith groups encourage and actually defend acts of vile criminality (usually acts of violence against women of one kind or another) then the state should not hesitate to clamp down and send people to jail rather than be thinking about respecting cultural borders. Talk about fighting the wrong battle for the worst reasons.
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geoffrey_prime 758 posts |
Apr 22, 2011, 01:36
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No, this is not a contest - we are both are entitled to our views and opinions. At least we do understand each others positions. And by the way, I have worked in France for a couple of years...and love the French passion for the things "the people" (how ever you define that) find important..... and I would gladly live there.. but I like living "here" ..
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IanB 6761 posts |
Apr 22, 2011, 13:04
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ratcni01 wrote: Its not "insenstive" so much a simply to pander to the extreme right wing in french politics. In the same way Cameron made that speech yesterday about immigration, its no more than an attempt to win votes from those who'd rather note vote fascist but will do because they feel so strongly about immigration, unless they feel listened to by the right in politics Agree totally.
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IanB 6761 posts |
Edited Apr 22, 2011, 13:18
Apr 22, 2011, 13:15
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joudicca wrote: there's not that much difference at all, they're both being brainwashed by negative influences. I agree. It depends on how you define choice doesn't it? If you start unpicking what drives consumerism (including outsider consumerism that finances the outer fringes of rock n roll) then there are few behaviours in modes of dress or whatever that are free of one kind of malignent influence or another. We are all slaves to our own self-image and like it or not some or all of that sense of self is driven by the media or the faith group you belong to or whatever. The idea that we are making entirely free choices where consumerism is involved is pretty absurd. Are a Playboy bunny t shirt or pole dancing classes any more "free choices" or any more empowering than wearing a burka? Seems to me it it's all the same shit at heart. I would be less than thrilled if any of my kids fell into either trap.
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Lump Of Green Slime 56 posts |
Apr 24, 2011, 11:48
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From Reza Aslan's excellent introduction to Islam, 'No God But God'. This extract is a bit long in the context of a forum post but is well worth a look: "Although long seen as the most distinctive emblem of Islam, the veil is, surprisingly, not enjoined upon Muslim women anywhere in the Quran. The tradition of veiling and seclusion (known together as hijab) was introduced into Arabia long before Muhammad, primarily through Arab contacts with Syria and Iran, where the hijab was a sign of social status. After all, only a woman who need not work in the fields could afford to remain secluded and veiled. In the Ummah, there was no tradition of veiling until around 627 C.E., when the so-called "verse of hijab" suddenly descended upon the community. That verse, however, was addressed not to women in general, but exclusively to Muhammad's wives: "Believers, do not enter the Prophet's house... unless asked. And if you are invited... do not linger. And when you ask something from the Prophet's wives, do so from behind a hijab. This will assure the purity of your hearts as well as theirs" (33:53). This restriction makes perfect sense when one recalls that Muhammad's house was also the community's mosque: the center of religious and social life in the Ummah. People were constantly coming in and out of this compound at all hours of the day. When delegations from other tribes came to speak with Muhammad, they would set up their tents for days at a time inside the open courtyard, just a few feet away from the apartments in which Muhammad's wives slept. And new emigrants who arrived in Yathrib would often stay within the mosque's walls until they could find suitable homes. When Muhammad was little more than a tribal Shaykh, this constant commotion could be tolerated. But by 627 C.E., when he had become the supremely powerful leader of an increasingly expanding community, some kind of segregation had to be enforced to maintain the inviolability of his wives. Thus, the tradition, borrowed from the upper classes of Iranian and Syrian women, of veiling and secluding the most important women in society from the peering eyes of everyone else. That the veil applied solely to Muhammad's wives is further demonstrated by the fact that the term for donning the veil, darabat al-hijab, was used synonymously and interchangeably with "becoming Muhammad's wife". For this reason, during the Prophet's lifetime, no other women in the Ummah observed hijab. Of course, modesty was enjoined on all believers, and women in particular were instructed to "draw their clothes around them a little to be recognized as believers and so that no harm will come to them" (33:60). More specifically, women should "guard their private parts... and drape a cover (khamr) over their breasts" when in the presence of strange men (24:31-32). But, as Leila Ahmed observes, nowhere in the whole of the Quran is the term hijab applied to any woman other than the wives of Muhammad. It is difficult to say with certainty when the veil was adopted by the rest of the Ummah, though it was most likely long after Muhammad's death. Muslim women probably began wearing the veil as a way to emulate the Prophet's wives, who were revered as "the Mothers of the Ummah". But the veil was neither compulsory, nor for that matter, widely adopted until generations after Muhammad's death, when a large body of male scriptural and legal scholars began using their religious and political authority to regain the dominance they had lost in society as a result of the Prophet's egalitarian reforms. " If a society extends unlimited tolerance it is likely to be destroyed, and tolerance therefore gets destroyed along with it. So a tolerant society must be prepared, in some circumstances, to suppress the enemies of tolerance. Or so the argument goes in Karl Popper's 'The Open Society and its Enemies'. But are burqa/niqab wearing women the enemies of tolerance because of the salafist, anti-democratic form of Islam that at least some of them voluntarily subscribe to and perpetuate? Personally, I think they are. But I'm still not comfortable with what France has done and can't think of a way around this, except perhaps to work towards a society in which the voices of academically respectable authors like Aslan are the most heard.
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PMM 3155 posts |
Apr 25, 2011, 01:20
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That was really interesting. thank you.
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MrsSevenrealm 204 posts |
Apr 25, 2011, 11:13
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Seconded.
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