It's my religion to wear identity concealing clothing especially in banks. That they keep getting robbed when I'm present is simply God's will.

i'm pretty sure there's a solution to that problem that doesn't involve violations of civil liberties

She's actually wearing the medical mask so she doesn't catch gay. Muslims are just so paranoid these days.

please, tell us more

Some Muslim women do not agree with a burka and they refuse to wear it. Other Muslim women have never even considered the choice of not wearing one. Most of the time when a woman wears a burka, she wears it out of fear or pressure by Muslim leaders (who are all male) that Allah will punish them severely if they do not wear one.

In some places in the middle east, women are required to wear a head covering in some public places even if they are not Islam. For example, Rachel Maddow had to wear a head covering in downtown Kabul on TRMS about a month ago. Some mosques force women to wear them before entering, also.

The men in fundamentalist Islam can talk, hold power, express their opinions, hit women, and in extreme cases can have multiple wives. The women hold no power over their own lives and when given the chance to take off the head covering they fall back on the excuse that "I'm not afraid of what men will do, I am afraid of what Allah will do" (and I know this from talking to many women who have been forced to wear head coverings or who are Islam, or who were formerly Islam.

I personally don't view the burka as a symbol of religious freedom and expression. I view it as subservience and sexism. This is exactly how I feel about any religion that forces women to not hold power (Mormons) or wear head coverings (Pentacosts) or tries to create a great inequality between men and women.

There's a fine line between human rights violations and freedom of expression and religion.

"These things creep me out and/or I disagree with them" is NOT a valid reason for banning something, even if your reasons for disliking it are totally valid points.

Wander...

Huh?

If the points are completely valid, then should you not do something so that society doesn't have to deal with it? By your logic, all of the logical and rational reasons that women can not be ownership or property of a man should be ignored because a man still has a right to own a woman or many women.

My points for not liking it are based on the fact that the burka is a symbol not of 'religious expression' but the ownership of women by men as part of the religion.

But I guess women as property is perfectly okay since it's religious expression and all.

Thank you for your simplistic reactionary lecture on women in Islam.

My points for not liking it are based on the fact that not allowing women to go shirtless and braless is a symbol not of 'religious expression' but the ownership of women by men as part of the religion.

baleen,

Why don't you go and talk to women who were oppressed by Islam and then went away from the religion (and subsequently their families, their social status - if any at all - etc.) and were blacklisted because they spoke out? Or worse, stoned, or raped, or executed?

Oh yeah, you can't talk to the dead. But, I have talked to women who have converted away from Islam and you'd be surprised by the thoughts that are hidden away and repressed due to abject fear and sexism.

It's kind of strange how the people in the west often criticize Mormonism or even Scientology for doing less, yet when people 10,000 or more km away do even worse in the name of religion we think nothing of it. True, stoning, torture, murder in the name of the church, etc. has happened in Christianity, but not sanctioned by the church for a very long time. Yet, there are sects of Islam which are perfectly fine with rape or torture or stoning if a man or Imam does it in the name of Allah.

I'm not advocating unfair treatment of people who are from the middle east. What I'm advocating is a bias against the behavior of sexist and irrational culture for what it is when it concerns the oppression of other people.

I suppose human rights violations are less important than 'freedom of religious expression'.

If they want to wear a burka or fancy hat or a fez or whatever, sure, that's your choice. But, when you talk to 99% of these women, it is not their choice. Society, men, and religious leaders made that choice for them and they are too afraid and fearful to go otherwise.

Also, baleen,

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100047659/the-burk a-ban-damian-green-is-wrong/

This op-ed pretty much sums up my opinion.

Since you are a woman, let's suppose you lived in Iran. You would be forced to marry someone at 14. You would be forced to accept him as a husband. It doesn't matter if he rapes you or abuses you. You become property of the husband.

Not only that, but the largest supporter of this ban, at least in Britain, are MUSLIM WOMEN.

That ought to tell you something.

I don't think anyone is doubting the overwhelmingly obvious fact that patriarchal religions are harmful to women (and men too, for that matter) and that traditional Muslim cultures are the most blatantly obvious perpetrators of this harm to our Western eyes.

This whole clip was about the controversy of banning a piece of tailored cloth worn around the face because it makes certain white people uncomfortable. I find women breastfeeding babies in public with their gross baby milk pumps to be really creepy and gross but it's part of a popular movement to allow women to squirt their milk around in public and has something to do with the sanctity of womanhood and motherhood as well, and I'm not going to support a law that bans it, because it's not my right to do that. That would violate a far more important aspect of my belief system which is the belief in liberal democracy as the most noble and sacred of cultural values.

Many women choose to cover their faces and their bodies in certain ways because it keeps them from being objectified and it gives them a sense of privacy. It also binds them closer to their cultural M.O., which is not "how free can you be" (say, expressing the valor of the bench-side breast pump) but about what their family thinks of them, how far they are allowed to excel in their family unit, and what their role in their culture is. It's a very different way of existing in the world, and it has less to do with "religious expression" and more to do with personal decision, and it is about as wrong or right as feeling that your tits are magical and that I have to look at them with a baby suckling your gross rancid lactate all the time.

"But, when you talk to 99% of these women, it is not their choice."
While statistics are sometimes helpful in cementing an argument I somehow doubt that this statistic is real.

You can support Muslim women while not resorting to literally medieval clothing bans. You can foster an open and nurturing environment for Muslim women to move into different ways of being without giving in to a primitive fear and misunderstanding of a different culture than your own. You can be guilty of neocolonialism even if you support the acceptability of veils and burqas on a grander belief that self-expression through clothing itself should not be banned, or if you ban veils on the principle that they are a symbol of rightwing patriarchy.

Therefore it is necessary to allow these people to move from the veil if they feel the need to and to support and defend those women from the atrocities that you describe if they choose to do so.

"Not only that, but the largest supporter of this ban, at least in Britain, are MUSLIM WOMEN. "

Assuming this is true, who cares?

Harriet Tubman thinks that a law banning burqas will do something, ANYTHING, to reduce the subjugation of islamic women by their husbands in france. that is sad. this law isn't about helping out the poor defenseless women. it's about bigotry against a religious minority. If you can't see that, I don't know how to help you.

haha harriet called you a WOMAN baleen, how ashamed are you of yourself now? You little bitch woman!!! hahaha!!!!!!

If you don't want to wear one, you shouldn't have to. If you do want to wear one, you should be allowed to. Why is this hard? It doesn't matter what you wear on your head, people shouldn't beat each other. Sunglasses in America aren't a symbol for woman beating no matter how many black eyes they cover for a reason, because it would be stupid.

You know what really helps out women who have been persecuted all of their lives? Continuing to persecute them.

Don't bother dude. It's fucking hip to hate white people, and of course this is just another example of the MAN KEEPING BROWN PEOPLE DOWN!

POE's custom racial tolerance brigade will teach you that the Islamic woman's plight is secondary to a chance to bash some white guys trying to keep a little cultural identity of their own before it's eaten up by waves of shitty foreigners.

With your help, the pasty white nerds of the POECRTB will put an end to this shitty racism that has held us back as one world's people!

YOU PEOPLE

hahaha awesome

I don't know if you all noticed but people tend to get huffy about their religion. Telling someone they can't wear a headscarf isn't going to cause Islamic women to realize they're being subjugated by men. You know what works a lot better than bossing someone around? Showing them a better way. Let them have the religious freedoms denied to them in their home countries. Let them build a mosque near Ground Zero even if you can't build a church in Mecca. I don't know if you've noticed but their kids are drinking Coca-Cola, eating McDonalds and listening to Western music. Honestly, do you think ANYONE is going to win a culture war with the United States?

I think Burqas are hot.

Thankfully modern Islam is moving away from it and away from sexism - but it's still grossly full of inequality between the sexes. A lot of Christian religions are like that as well - including the Catholic church.

Not the Catholics!

I understand your point, but it's not like a couple of muslims just got off the boat and want society to change for them overnight.
For good or ill, France, over several decades, nationalized thousands and thousands of African and Middle Eastern Muslim immigrants, who are now French citizens and who have a right to vote and express their culture.
So, what does "your values are not French" really mean at this point?
And I'm not saying this as snarky comeback to your comment. I honestly don't have a quick and easy answer for something like that.
We are living in a day age where people move "en masse" at unprecedented rates, and these kinds of issues are becoming problematic precisely because of the speed with which they occur.
All of a sudden you have thousands of citizens claiming for rights that don't seem in line with the country's traditions. Yet, these are your own citizens...

Could it be that for some women IT IS a personal choice that reflects a genuine religious devotion, while for many others it isn't?

I think the problem lies precisely there. Despite the fact that I have no doubt that thousands of muslim women are oppressed and coherced (either consciously or not) into complying with certain behaviours, others have genuine faith (regardless of whether you or I may think it's retarded) and want the freedom to wear garments that comply with their religious beliefs.

How do you distinguish between the former and the latter?

The ladies of Cobra bare all!! (this week only, .99 prime rib buffet from 11:00 to 3:00 !!)

Let's stop the subjugation of women!

...but how?

I know, we'll tell them what to wear!

Technically speaking, not that I agree with this law or anything, I think that from the French perspective they are doing just that. If you force a girl to not be bound by the traditions of her family it won't be ingrained from an early age on. They don't want girls to be raised with this belief that you have to cover up because they view this as separatist. It's about interpretation. If you force them to not wear burqas, it means that they will not be forced to wear them by their families. It gives women who don't want to wear it the excuse.

I'm playing Devil's Advocate here, trying to get behind some reasoning that might be going on over there. I think that a lot of Muslim families are not going to go down the fundy road and beat their daughters if they show their faces in public but the reality is some of them are that way. So, in a way, I can see why France would pass this law, even if it is misguided, because in their view they are preventing girls from being held back. I would imagine it's also really hard to interview someone for a job if they wear one of those.

It's a slippery slope to force one culture to adapt to the norms of another. It will be interesting to see how their community reacts to this.

paparatti, that's your take on this horrendously complex situation?

You have to be shitting me.

hypocritical