The burqa symbolizes the backwardness of that brand of islam. Whoever argues in favor of it supports putting women into mobile jails.
regardless of the truth of your statement, that does not give the right for a state to tell people how to dress beyond the realm of safety considerations.
Oh yes it does. Just ask the French (and by the way, the Turks (even though that is now being changed by the islamists behind Erdogan) and the Indonesians).
Its not about what backward Islam represents, rather its about the rights of those that actually want to wear the burqa. Being in favor of someone having the freedom to wear it is different from SUPPORTING their decision to wear it.
I laugh at leftists who actually think that someone who is not brainwashed or pressured WANTS to put herself into a mobile jail like that all the time, and try to make the argument that allowing the burqa to be worn in public is about defending the free will of these women.
French's culture does not usually involved wear veil in public, i don't understand why people are trying to change the culture of the country they move into. This is what i don't understand we seem to be giving freedom to Islam but at the same time if i want to wear short or drink in Islam's countries that is a no go? You have to respect your host country and try to blend in to their culture, that is what i think people should be doing.
Just because you have not run into any women that want to put themselves into the jail wear that does not mean they arn't out there. Even if they are brainwashed and pressured that doesn't mean they should not be allowed to make that choice. People tattoo their faces and choose to smoke, what influences them is another concern, but to stop them from actually making this choice is wrong, regardless of how you feel about it.
Bolded part is most ridiculous. No, because it is not only about the women, but also about what the burqa represents and its impact on other people. I could make the choice to walk around naked all day, and it would not be tolerated either in most places. So your whole little "but it's their free will" argument goes out the window for two reasons: 1) it is not their free will in most cases, 2) even if they think it is their free will, it is also about the impact on others.
I think the majority of our North American posters don't know realize how common it is to see a woman wearing a niqab/burqa in Western Europe. It's not like here in the US, where you'll occasionally see a woman walking down the street wearing one. I've been to the UK, France, Germany, etc. - and it's far more prevalent among Muslim women there than it is in the US, for whatever reason that may be. That's my take on why ATW is so vocal about the issue.
Nudity is a problem because of its threat to the social norm, and opens the door for sexual behaviour that would be considered adverse to society. Someone walking around in a cloth all over their body does not pose a problem as such. Point one is BS, please don't say crap out of your arse, instead provide me a study/link that would prove what you have stated. On point two, what impact on others? (I could understand situations where wearing the burqa would be adverse to society, but that would hold up in a few circumstances, majority of the time it won't apply, so I don't get what you are getting at)
Ban the burqa? A Canadian Muslim view In the November edition of IHN, we reported on the position taken by the Federation Nationale de la Libre Pensée on the wearing of religious clothing in private life. The article argued strongly that while it is the duty of the state to ban all signs of religious membership in state schools and public services, it should refrain from dictating specific attire in the private domain. Since then, the American Humanist Association has issued a statement criticising the banning of the burqa by Massachusetts College and defending the wearing of the burqa in public. We publish below a contrasting view from the Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC), a Toronto-based organisation that speaks on behalf of liberal and secular Muslims. The article is an extract of a letter sent by the MCC to the Canadian Ministers of Justice and Citizenship. The Burka and Niqab in Canada As Muslim Canadians, we take ownership of and pride in the Canadian values of liberal democracy, gender equality, and universal human rights and the separation of religion and state. We value the fact our citizenship is based on human created laws and not on inherited race, religion, or gender. As an organization, we feel one of the issues Muslim Canadians face today is the challenge of gender apartheid that is encouraged and practiced in parts of our community and is being promoted by vested overseas interests who have neither the interest of Canada or its Muslim citizens in mind. Over the last few years we have seen an increasing presence and a disturbing growth of Muslim women concealing their identities behind face masks that are at times called burkas and by others as the niqab or the face-concealing veil. This spread of the burka is linked to a number of unregulated after-hours private Islamic schools that have opened in Canada’s urban centres. At these schools, young women are being urged to drop out of the public school system, leave the workplace and wear a face mask to conceal their identity and become totally segregated from mainstream Canadian society, which is often described as immoral, unclean and labeled with the derogatory term "kufaar". We, as ordinary Muslim citizens of Canada, feel it is our obligation and responsibility to take the lead in opposing this harmful trend and ask for legislation or regulations that will discourage the growth of this practice. The dropping out of Muslim women from the workforce is leading to the further marginalization of the Muslim community in Canada. We ask you to set up a task force that would study the roots of this phenomenon, the risks this poses to broader Canadian society and the steps that need to be taken to ensure Canada does not end up in a situation like the one prevailing in the UK. In Britain, large parts of the Muslim community have become isolated from the rest of Britain and consider themselves hostile to all things British. Our objection to the burka or the niqab is based not just on our concern for the Muslim community, but also its impact now and later on the rest of Canada. Our opposition to the facemask is based on five separate, yet related, areas that affect all Canadians. They are: security, safety, health, gender equality and the misuse of religion for political ends. Security In July this year, an armed man dressed in a burka robbed the Scotiabank in Mississauga and made off with an undisclosed amount of cash. Had this been an isolated incident, one could have overlooked the fact that a so-called religious attire had been used instead of the typical facemask to hold up a bank. Such hold ups have been reported south of the border too where in one incident in North Carolina the bank robber in burka was caught on video with a gun pointed towards the teller. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania there were multiple robberies (three banks and one real estate office) in a sixteen-month period in 2007-08, including the murder of a police officer. The United Kingdom has seen a spate of crimes committed by burka-clad thieves. Jewelry stores – some owned by Muslims – have been targeted in the West Midlands, in Glasgow and in Oxfordshire. Two travel agencies were attacked in the adjoining towns of Dunstable and Luton while an armoured truck driver was assaulted in Birmingham. All were committed by burka clad thieves. Robbery is not the only motive; teenagers in London used niqab-style face coverings when stabbing a younger boy. In Holland, pickpockets have worn Islamic face masks. Finally, known terror suspects have escaped arrest by wearing burkas, including one suspect who got away from Heathrow Airport in London. The use of the burka or niqab as a disguise of choice for criminals is not unique to the West. In Jordan, one news report indicates that 50 people committed 170 crimes using the burka or niqab during the past two years, or roughly one incident every four days, a crime wave that has prompted some Jordanians to call for restricting or even banning the burka. Both Mulla Omar and Osama Bin Laden are said to have escaped arrest while hiding behind a burka, while the head of the Red Mosque uprising in Islamabad was apprehended while attempting escape draped in a burka. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Taliban have been relying on burqa-clad jihadis to commit suicide bombings. A Taliban commander, Haji Yakub, was killed in burka as he tried to escape a house in Ghazni Province while attacking U.S. forces. A Taliban operative, Mullah Khalid, attacked a police patrol in a crowded market in Farah Province, killing at least 12 people. About fifteen suicide bombers in burkas armed with suicide vests, Kalashnikovs, and grenade launchers drove to government buildings in Paktia Province and killed 12 persons. Pakistan has suffered two such attacks, one, operating from a rickshaw, killing 15 people. Safety In October 2007, a Calgary school bus was involved in a roadside accident in which one girl was killed. Although no news outlet was willing to report this, news clips of the driver showed she was wearing a very restrictive head covering that had almost certainly compromised her peripheral vision and could have been the reason she slammed into a truck parked on the shoulder on a clear day. Health New studies in England and Ireland have found that Muslim women who wear the burka or niqab (and their breast-fed children) tend to get rickets due to an insufficiency of vitamin D, through lack of exposure of their skin to sunlight. A study released by British National Health Service doctors said hijab and burka-wearing women were putting their health at risk because they do not get enough sunlight, an alarming number who wear the burka are suffering from bone deficiencies due to lack of vitamin D. Gender equality The MCC agrees that the state has no place in the bedrooms or wardrobes of the country. However, if the status of any woman in Canada is affected by what happens in the bedroom or wardrobe, be it spousal abuse or the forced wearing of attire meant to marginalize girls or women, then we feel the state must intervene. Society has a role to play to ensure the human rights of girls and women are not being compromised behind closed doors. The MCC has been one of the few Muslim organizations that have spoken out against gender apartheid that is practiced in parts of our community. We have spoken for gender equality and believe no man should be allowed to force his doctrine of male superiority and dominance over women, even if the victim consents to such degradation. The goal of gender equality stems from a history that for centuries society has tolerated and accepted injustice towards women. UNICEF defines gender equality as “levelling the playing field for girls and women by ensuring that all children have equal opportunity to develop their talents” while the United Nations Population Fund declared gender equality “first and foremost, a human right.” Gender equity is also one of the goals of the United Nations Millennium Project, with the goal to end world poverty by 2015; the project claims, “Every single Goal is directly related to women's rights, and societies where women are not afforded equal rights as men can never achieve development in a sustainable manner.” With the growth of the burka as a garment that conceals a woman’s identity, the likelihood of such a woman entering the workforce and becoming a contributing member to the economic well being of the family and society is seriously compromised. Despite the protection of the Charter*, the fact remains that women wearing burkas will have difficulty finding employment. From engineering to medicine, bank tellers to police constables, pilots to paramedics, the chances of women wearing burkas not finding themselves in these positions are high. Increasingly, these women will become financially and economically dependent on their husbands, fathers, brothers, or sons, or on the state for subsistence. We do not need to look far to see the adverse effects of women’s role as male dependents. In 2008, a United Nations-sponsored report warned the nations of the Arab World, that it was the disempowerment of women that was proving to be a critical factor crippling these nations' ability to join the first rank of global leaders in commerce, learning and culture. Misuse of religion for political ends We believe that the facemask worn by some Muslim women [is about] political symbolism that reflects the contempt of radical Islamist groups for Western civilisation. Today, the only forces that demand Muslim women to cover their faces are: the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Arab World [and Europe], Al-Qaeda, and the Saudi religious establishment. All four groups see women as a source of sin and objects of sexuality, and Canada and the freedom of women in Canada and the West as manifestations of evil sexual depravity. Yet it is worth noting that leading clerics and scholars from both the Shia and Sunni communities have stated quite explicitly that the burka or niqab are not an Islamic requirement, but a cultural and tribal custom. The MCC believes therefore that the wearing of a facemask is not a religious issue and the argument that it has the protection of the Charter, as ‘freedom of religion’, does not withstand scrutiny. A political symbol does not have the status of religious belief, especially if its meaning is rejection of and contempt for western civilization, and for the women who exercise their hard fought right to not be judged as mere sexual objects and the source of sin. Pressure on young girls to conform to the belief that they are sources of sin was demonstrated in Montreal in 2006 when the head of a mosque told young girls that if they did not cover themselves, they risked getting raped and might end up as unwed mothers. He went on to say that on the Day of Judgment, God would punish these girls for getting raped because they enticed the rapist by not covering themselves. As a nation, a country and a society, [Canada has] travelled over 200 years to ensure that women are not considered second-class citizens or the possessions of men. We can ill afford to let culture or tribal custom compromise the equality of women. * According to Section Twenty-eight of the Canadian Charter, “… the rights and freedoms referred to in [this Charter] are guaranteed equally to male and female persons.” http://www.iheu.org/ban-burqa-canadian-muslim-view
But technically, isn't the historical reason for the niqab because without it, there would allegedly be a "threat to the social norm, and [it] opens the door for sexual behavior that would be considered adverse to society." When I say historical reason, I'm referring to early-Islamic Arab society, when the niqab was also prevalent.
So you are cool with people walking around naked but don't think people should be able to wear a cloth over their body.....you are a funny guy.
The likelihood that a naked person hides a bomb I cannot see on their body (unless they have had a huge serving of burritos) is significantly lower than that a person with a burqa does it. Now go and read the article I posted in my previous post - very thoughtful statement by a Canadian Muslim organization.
LOL. How often have you heard about a bombing with someone wearing a niqab (without considering problem areas like Iraq/Afhgan/Pakistan/Israel)? As far as I remember the London Subway bombers were wearing backpacks, lets ban those as well...only for Mauslims of course.
Why do you have the word Muslim bolded? Do you even know anything about the Muslim Canadian Congress? Its not as though I don't believe their statements, they make some valid claims, but they surely does not represent the views of the majority of Mauslims.
