Nice way to dismiss my first hand experience. How many women do you personally know that are "forced" to wear a veil?
And the best way to integrate the five million Muslims in France is to ban 1900 women from covering their faces?
It also comes as no surprise that you would say that Muslim women who say they want to wear the veil/burkha are brainwashed.
ATW, I would still like to hear why the reason France hasn't banned prostitution doesn't apply here. Keep in mind, they want to ban prostitution but decided that it would be a violation of freedom and Sarkozy is also trying to wipe away the rule banning solicitation of clients. Also, explain to me how a woman in France is forced into doing this (or even get into such a marriage) considering her options as per the robust rules protecting her rights in France.
Just took a senior level sociology class at UHCL, my professor lived in Turkey and all over the middle east. One of the big things we learned was that some of the people who wore the more conservative clothing found that it allowed them to move about MORE freely and be in the public sector more. Be ironic if by being all progressive and banning face covering France is basically imprisoning women with conservative Muslim families within their homes.
But you do realize that it is not FRANCE imprisoning those women, but their oppressive Muslim husbands, right?
OK, I'll play along... Assuming they are forced to wear the headgear: What happens to these women at home when they are not permitted to wear the veils?
Or fathers, or neighborhoods, or their own desire to appear modest and respectable (according to their standards). I don't think Pentecostal women should be mandated to cut their hair short and wear miniskirts because of some arbitrary decision somebody else makes about what is modern and therefore good. Anyone who reads this forum knows you have huge problems with Islam....Certainly you have a right to an opinion as long as you aren't actively discriminating against Muslims, but I don't see how a government outlawing a mode of dress is a good thing, especially if it ends up having the opposite effect on the lives of women that Westerners would hope for.
Again, the immediate cause of that effect on their lives is the immediate environment of the woman - not any law.
Quotes by Thomas Jefferson, for all those that dont have a problem with this law. Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg
