Dear France
Thank you for trying to forbid the burka. I hope my country will also forbid it. We need to protect (but not overprotect) the women of Muslim cultures, cultures who are massively migrating to Western Europe at this moment, against the oppressive anti-woman and religious nature of the burka.
I don’t believe, at all, that the burka is an expression of free speech. I believe it’s an instrument to oppress woman, and that this is its only purpose. There is no place for that in Western European culture. None. And we must be assertive about it.
I’d also like to ask Muslim countries to stay out of the debate: we decide about Western European values, you don’t. Equality between men and woman is a Western European value. If you don’t like that, sorry, it’s not negotiable.
January 26th, 2010 at 3:11 am
Amen!
Let’s also ban anything else that prevents equality between men and women, like skirts, dresses, heels, purses, and bras. None of those are expressions of free speech, they are simply there to remind us that men and women are different and wear different things.
We shouldn’t be happy until everyone (men and women) wears the same, colorless uniform.
January 26th, 2010 at 3:18 am
How many European soldiers are currently in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. forcing their culture upon Muslims?
January 26th, 2010 at 3:22 am
jpobst: the things you enumerate are not presently tools for subjugation, which the burka clearly is, as evidenced by the reaction of Muslim men in Islamic countries when women (even western women) do not wear them.
When we get to the point where the burka is nothing more than a fashion statement, and not symbols of Islamic oppression of women, I won’t be so opposed to them.
However, I don’t think I’m comfortable with any government-sanctioned ban. I prefer instead to deal with this problem at a cultural level (by criticizing those who wear them and speaking out against their vile symbolism) rather than at a legislative one.
January 26th, 2010 at 3:37 am
I love how you always express your opinion, even on such affairs!
way to go.
January 26th, 2010 at 3:41 am
@jpobst:
First, it’s usual that mostly critics respond.
Second, was it to be expected that since I posted this around the time that the population in the U.S. is awake that a comparison with skirts, dresses, heels, purses and bras was going to be made.
As usual in the U.S. must every single thing be compared, to the extreme, with every other single thing about so-called “U.S. Freedom” (whatever the fuck that means, and I guarantee you that it doesn’t mean much to us). And must, at all times, be the valuation of the actual substance being talked about be completely neglected in favor of raw populism.
The cultural substance isn’t at all, and this isn’t due to my bad usage of the English language, about skirts, dresses, heels, purses and bras. The substance is clearly about the equality of man and woman.
And this clearly is Western European culture. No matter whatever form of freedom you can come up with.
Apparently is it more easy to divert any form of discussion to nonsense comparisons and apparently must these *at all times* be used to create a false discussion. And apparently is that how the new world must look like (according to those false “freedom” prophets).
Well, NO. Culture *is* important. And it can’t be overwritten with just “freedom slogans”. Freedom isn’t sufficient. Whether you like it, or not.
January 26th, 2010 at 3:56 am
@Tack: I agree that if, and only if, the burka would be nothing but a fashion statement, that I wouldn’t object to it, at all.
I’m realistic enough, however, to realize that we can no longer neglect the fact that many Muslim woman coming to Western Europe are being, at the moment of you and me speaking to each other, being oppressed not to live the Western European life that they are allowed to live within our culture.
The’re arriving in massive amounts. We should not be cowards and we must give them cultural guidance. If we fail to do this, we fail to copy our successful culture.
If we are blind to our cultural successes, then we are just being dishonest to ourselves. Western European culture is a success. Has always been a success. Has had its inhumane periods, yes. And that knowledge, that self-criticism, that failure, is an important part of that success.
No we aren’t innocent. But we ‘know’.
January 26th, 2010 at 4:04 am
@mike: You’re welcome. Thanks for your support. My opinion is that above all other values, is that the most important is that people are free to, can and also, most importantly, ‘will’, express their opinion. Even when they don’t believe it’ll make *any* difference at all. As long as their opinion is supported by intellectual thought.
And if there’s *any* meme that I’d like to spread, more importantly than any of my own actual memes, it’s *that* meme.
January 26th, 2010 at 4:11 am
I wonder: If a poor, subjugated woman is captured on the street engaging in the hideous crime of wearing a burka, how will throwing her in front of a judge who then sentences her to a fine or even to a prison sentence protect her?
January 26th, 2010 at 4:18 am
Dear Mr Van Hoof, when forcing your morality down the throats of others in order to liberate them, please ask them what they want.
Afterall isn’t how women dress a women’s right issue? How does it liberate them when men force them to not wear what they want to wear?
You want to prevent Muslim women from dressing how they so choose. That is not liberation by any shot.
January 26th, 2010 at 4:22 am
I believe it’s an instrument to oppress woman, and that this is its only purpose.
Well, you can believe what you like, of course, but I’m not clear why a belief you seem to have pulled out of your arse is supposed to be a justification for the use of the coercive force of law. How many burka-wearing women have you talked to about whether or not they find the burka oppressive? How many studies of women’s participation in Islamic revival movements have you read, to discover whether this participation is coerced or freely chosen? In other words, what research have you done to come to the conclusion that the burka is always an instrument of oppression? Without that, your post appears to be more prejudice than argument.
January 26th, 2010 at 4:25 am
Just to add, I am not a “Muslim country”, so I do not feel the need to follow your “jee, if you disagree, go somewhere else” last paragraph.
I would like to ask you, have you actually talked to women who wear whatever you want banned? Have they asked you to fight for their rights, or do they consider you a douchebag of the highest order?
Rule number one of liberation: Make sure the people want what you are offering.
If you look at the figures in france, the higher percentage of women wearing the veil are converts - women who choose accept Islam as their faith and also CHOSE to veil themselves. This is a higher percentage than in immigrant communities, who are less likely to veil themselves.
I could go on and invoke godwins law and talk about fascism, but I doubt many are still reading.
January 26th, 2010 at 4:32 am
@Mark: Her husband wont have the financial possibility to subject her to his requirement to wear the burka. Unless he wants to pay + 700 euros per day for his wife’s burka, and then still: Even wealthy Western Europeans wont like paying + 700 euros per day for just that. (in fact, Western European values are that husbands have nothing whatsoever to say about their wives, only the woman themselves do have).
@yoyou: I can ask the same question to you. Can you give examples and studies that illustrate that woman want to wear burkas? And when you can give actual statistical numbers that are measured in a scientific meaningful way, they I do accept your challenge to compare the results scientifically with my claims. Yes, let’s do that. Really. I’ll await your numbers.
Or are you saying that you don’t have any numbers?
January 26th, 2010 at 4:36 am
and a third, more cool reply (I should breathe more often and not let the irritation show) - there are many women in france who choose to wear the veil.
When they are banned from public places, do you think they will remove the veil or do you think they will further withdraw from participating in society?
Will this move be oppressing women or would it be liberating them?
January 26th, 2010 at 4:44 am
As much as I dislike and disagree with the burka! The tone of this blog makes it seem like its a standard muslim thing, as well as something bad. Now did u take in consideration ppl who do it out of belief. I was born and raised in egypt (a muslim country), so i do have a view on that… its just some sub-islamic cult that really thinks its part of the religion (which it is not). If a woman wants to wear it fine, if it was forced upon her then this is not fine. Banning it is crossing beliefs.
January 26th, 2010 at 4:49 am
@You which woman are you talking about? Because you ask me, and us, to show you the ‘woman’ that we are talking about. But let’s play American poker, shall we? YOU show your cards! What exact Frence woman are YOU talking about? YOU show us the exact people YOU are referring to. And THEN we’ll evaluate what YOU have to say.
How’s that for a fair proposal? I bet you don’t have anything.
January 26th, 2010 at 4:53 am
@pvanhoof: I think you’re missing yoyou’s real point. So far the arguments you’ve written for a new law to enforce a fashion policing have been based on broad assumptions, not actual facts.
Without actual data (such as a hypothetical study saying something like ‘82% of burka-wearing women are forced to against their will’), it will just look to many of your readers as if your support of this this law based on personal biases and stereotypes.
Surely you agree the burden of finding convincing proof on this issue should be placed on the side who wants to impose new restrictions on its populations?
January 26th, 2010 at 4:59 am
Since you are arguing a position, you should be the one to back up.
and the question is simple… would this make the women who choose to veil themselves lose the veil, or would they avoid the places where the veil was banned? Do you even see these women as human?
If you click my username, it leads to a UK site where there are many women who choose to wear the veil or cover their hair atleast and my views are based on their comments along with other surveys carried out elsewhere.
Since you only want one woman who supports wearing it, here is an article by on in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jan/25/burqa-ban-veil-sarkozy-ukip
January 26th, 2010 at 5:07 am
@ L - that would require the use of logic.
If you click my name, it will take you to a site where many women will attest to wearing either a headscarf or veil, and they will also attest that they have not been forced so - some will even mention how their families did not approve of them using the face veil, but they wanted to wear it!
I also do not think it is a requirement and can understand why people find it hard to be as warm straight away with someone who covers their face, but I think its their right to wear what they want. Women’s liberation (from men) includes giving them the right to choose something you do not want them to.
January 26th, 2010 at 5:09 am
@seif Lofty: I like it when you say “If it was forced upon her then this is not fine”.
In Western Europe we want to allow our government to enforce certain philosophics.
Because, as foolish as we W. European idiots sometimes are, we nonetheless want our governments to enforce to make it impossible that any individual has the power to enforce anything upon any other individual. Indiscriminate of gender.
Given that gender is a form of equality, we want our government to enforce that no person can enforce anything, anything whatsoever, upon his partner.
We hold this as self evident. We actually do. However naive. We hold “wanting” as higher as the self inflicted philosophy that we bear.
And this is what isn’t negotiable. Because this is what we want.
Even if we can’t achieve it. Then still, you’d have to fight it, or join it. Because again, this is what we want.
We don’t care how difficult it’ll be. We *will* reach it. That’s Western European philosophy.
January 26th, 2010 at 5:15 am
@pvanhoof - if you do not want to weaqr a veil, you do not have to.
There is nothing to negotiate - there is no middle ground - you are wanting to force your ideology upon others, force them to dress how you wish them to, as if their own exiostence was subhuman and their opinions and thoughts unimportant.
Its like the Spanish inquisition where any remaining Muslim households would disguise their houses by hanging pork in them, or well, I can add a more recent European phenomenon where people were forced to wear a specific dress code, but I am sure you would not appreciate being called a nazi and I would invoke Godwins law, so lets stick to the Spanish inquisition.
January 26th, 2010 at 5:26 am
@Seif: “..makes it seem like its a standard muslim thing”
“as well as something bad.” - it surely is, isn’t it?
And then you say, people (women) do it because of their religion; afterwards, you say it’s not islamic, so wtf is your point?
Is it a religious thing? (Which still would oppose the WE culture), or isn’t it, in which case it is just an indicator of the muslim men power.
@You: Yeah, if Philip doesn’t want to wear one, it’s fine, but I assume many people are forced to. So your argument is bogus.
January 26th, 2010 at 5:34 am
@You: We W. Europeans aren’t as ‘interested’ in specific references to either Spanish history or German history as you might think we are (we actually *are* interested, but in a intellectual and historical / educational different way).
January 26th, 2010 at 5:35 am
As long as they don’t ban schoolgirl uniforms in Japan, we’ll all be ok.
Because obviously, the way to give people more rights, is to remove their ability to choose by making it illegal for them to choose the way you don’t like.
On a side note, it’s amazing how sentient captcha can be sometimes… the words it’s asking me to enter right now” “probably Jordanian”
January 26th, 2010 at 5:39 am
@pvanhoof: I don’t think anybody in here is suggesting that it should be OK for women to be forced to wear burkas against their will. But I do think a lot of us are saying that saying that banning all burkas seems a bit extreme.
I feel like you may be projecting your own symbolism on the burka. When you get down to it, it’s a piece of cloth. Would you be so nice as to explain in more detail how it is a “tool to oppress women?”
January 26th, 2010 at 5:47 am
@L oppress like in “woman, you have no right to be seen”? or oppress like in “i’m a man and an individual, but you are a woman and a faceless ghost”?
January 26th, 2010 at 5:53 am
Phillip,
You never cease to express your opinion truthfully even when you know it will be controversial. This has nothing to do with muslims vs non-muslims like some will lead you to believe. It is about oppressive towards women middle-eastern vs modern western civilizations. Speaking out for what you believe is the only way for those who aren’t given a voice to be heard.
January 26th, 2010 at 6:11 am
@L: In Western Europe we do sometimes look at the intellectual facts of cultural evolution. At least sometimes we try, and more than often we indeed miserably fail.
At least we usually known when we failed.
Western Europeans think this is at least as important as the people in the U.S. apparently, at this moment, believe either capitalism or more recently fanatic right-wing Christianity is.
In fact, we Western Europeans think this is far far more important than any of that mostly nonsense.
It might interest you that we don’t always try to sell this ‘thing’ as “important about our culture”: that’s because we don’t even want any other part of the f. world to interfere. That’s how important it is, at least to to some of us.
We indeed have several thousands of years of cultures meddling. Bloodily fighting each other. We’ve had multiple empires in Europe, not just one.
The cultural evolution of Muslims massively immigrating to Western Europe is effectively succeeding in changing Western European culture. At large.
Which is fine. Western European culture actually *is* intellectually ready.
But not if they for example force their woman to dress themselves in burkas. This is not Western European culture, at all.
We reject that this is acceptable in our culture.
Please let us.
January 26th, 2010 at 6:13 am
@Jeffrey Schroeder: Yes, thanks. And I (really) hope that you and me can forever express our opinions. No matter the differences.
January 26th, 2010 at 6:20 am
I’ve never seen anyone wearing the burka in 25 years living in France.
January 26th, 2010 at 6:46 am
@pvanhoof: I don’t think you’re understanding the questions I’m trying to ask. Perhaps I’m not being clear. Sorry.
I do feel your replies are pointlessly combative, broad, and insulting, and are not really addressing the questions I’m trying to bring up. I wish you’d stick to the topic at hand.
Just to be clear:
(1) Everyone in here seems to be westerners who don’t think it should be legal for anyone to force anyone else to wear burkas in their country. You can stop reiterating that you believe this point. We’re all in agreement with you :)
(2) Obviously your country can and will govern itself as its people see fit. Nobody is stopping us from doing so. “Please let us” suggests that we are trying to prevent you from doing so. Nobody here has said anything to the contrary. Nobody is interfering. But making controversial remarks on an internationally accessible public blog syndicated on a public forum, and inviting comments, it’s pretty silly to act like we’re butting our noses in where they aren’t welcome ;)
(3) Unless you were personally involved in thousands of years worth of feudal wars, there’s no need to be condescending: we’re both studying history. You clearly understand more than me about western european culture, since that’s where you’re from. Growing up in the US, though, I bet you I have a stronger historical perspective on mass immigration than you.
Anyhow I think I’m done with this debate. You have fun now.
January 26th, 2010 at 7:06 am
pvanhoof:
1) All Western Europeans do not believe one thing. Stop misrepresenting an entire (part of a) continent.
2) Your hatred is apparent. You hate the U.S., and you clearly are indignant about the recent influx of Muslims into your country. However, this hatred is not helping your cause (in fact, it IS your cause).
3) dobey hit the nail on the head. the way to promote women’s rights is not to deny their right to choose what clothes to wear. why not just outlaw the act of forcing a woman to wear a certain type of clothing? That would be more measured and logical rather than enacting a clearly overreaching law such as the one you propose and defend.
4) You should be interested in specific historical european examples because those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
January 26th, 2010 at 8:07 am
I think it’s nice that you’re racist.
January 26th, 2010 at 8:29 am
@yoink:
about your point 2… He’s Flemish… they hate everyone and everything but themselves and they always think that the whole world is against them. I live in the same country as him, and we, French speakers, suffer from those guys every single day…
January 26th, 2010 at 8:33 am
Oh, and regarding history, you can’t ask them to learn the history of another country while they do not even know their own. History they learn at school is completely altered and oriented towards some kind of propaganda and Flemish identity… It does not reflect the reality. What do you think one can learn from those books… ?
January 26th, 2010 at 8:41 am
Hello Philip,
i totally agree with you.
Being liberal does not mean, that i would allow everything in my country (Germany). Here, one would agree with suppression of gender and that is NOT ACCEPTABLE!
January 26th, 2010 at 8:47 am
“When strangers meet, great allowances should be made for differences of custom and training.” — The Lady Jessica, Wisdom of Arrakis
January 26th, 2010 at 9:28 am
There was a talk show in Indian television if burka really helps muslim woman or not. Some muslim fundamentalists threatened the TV station and so they never aired that episode.
A burka is a dress that is specifically designed to suppress woman and in my opinion does not differ much from the chastity-belts enforced by warrior-men of olden days (on their mistresses).
I am glad that you came up openly against this atleast for your country.
January 26th, 2010 at 9:52 am
report this bug to god…
January 26th, 2010 at 10:12 am
> We need to protect (but not overprotect) the women of Muslim cultures, cultures
The technical term for this is *paternalism*. I guess you missed the rise of feminism.
> There is no place for that in Western European culture. None. And we must be assertive about it.
Ok. So you define on your own what Western Europen culture means … and you are assertive about it. You should read again that phrase and think about “Western” European “culture”, its influences (not so Western), its never-ending-evolution and absorptions of new cultures. A culture like in your definition is a dead culture.
> we decide about Western European values, you don’t.
You *decide* about values? How rational. And values are not negotiable? Tell me, e.g., how do they change over time?
I dislike religious extremist as the next (atheist) guy, but the other side of the coin seems have the same conservative anti-scientific concepts of culture and values.
January 26th, 2010 at 10:16 am
Only 25O women wear the burka in France, it’s only an electoral scoop and the ‘Parlement’ refuse to forbid the burka (to protect the freedom).
You’re misinformed.
January 26th, 2010 at 10:18 am
A little addition. There is an other country that went with the Fashion Police route. It’s called Iran.
January 26th, 2010 at 11:03 am
ضب مصري .ا خرص
خل في حالك
you van if you dont know what is islam ?
then shut your mouth
hyprecit
January 26th, 2010 at 11:06 am
I just switched browsers. Thanks for reminding me to ignore you on the planet.
January 26th, 2010 at 11:08 am
I will point out that the problem of “burka” in France first made the headlines in June with the request of inquiry commission by the parliament, but the subject was dropped a few weeks later when a study showed that they are less than 500 women wearing burka in France. The subject reappeared as a priority about two months ago, I do not think the number of wearer of the burka has increase significatively, but in the meantime the economical situation has become worse, so firstly, I had prefer my government to use all its energy to fix that problem, secondly I think they use the burka as an excuse to hide their inefficiency at solving a problem that affect millions of people. Especially using a subject where only a minority will disagree or care, while a majority will either agree or not care.
January 26th, 2010 at 11:08 am
@Cypher: You, my friend, are insane. There’s just no other word for it.
I’m pretty sure many intelligent Walloons are a.t.m. shaking their heads in pure and raw disbelieve at the amazing stupidity that you just displayed when you compared this subject (burkas) with something that has absolutely not a single thing, not one single thing, to do with what you are rambling about (any Wallonia vs. Flanders issue in existence, because not one single one of them has anything to do with this).
You don’t even realize this, do you? II hope you someday realize this, but I fear you wont. I will keep your comment here for the rest of your life, in the hopes that someday you will come back and feel ashamed about it.
It’s really amazing how extreme far you can go in nonsense.
You also know that “het debat over het hoofddoekverbod” is among the few things that Walloon and Flemish politicians do agree about, do you? Just to point this out to you. Even Ecolo, which is a quite left-wing Walloon party, is in agreement with this.
January 26th, 2010 at 11:14 am
I really think that the “western Europe” way of life should be to just let people follow their cult, whatever it may be, as long as they don’t force it on other people. Here, in France, we already have laws that protect women against abusive husbands. If a woman feels forced by her husband to do anything, she can just divorce and live the way she chooses…
I really think that the root of the problem is not the fact that women are “forced” to wear a “burqa”. The real problem is that YOU are forced to see them in the streets. And, as tolerant as you claim to be, you can’t bear seeing a strange tradition “invade” your life. So you try to justify your aversion against this way of life by pretending to defend the women’s freedom.
But, again, women are already free to do whatever they want in France. The law guarantees it. Now, if they choose to live their slaves, it’s their choice. And you don’t a burqa to be a slave…
January 26th, 2010 at 11:20 am
Sorry, here is the end of my message, but corrected:
“Now, if they choose to live their LIFE AS slaves, it’s their choice. And you don’t NEED a burqa to be a slave… “
January 26th, 2010 at 11:26 am
@Sankar: Thanks for your opinion, coming from a Muslim country your opinion on this matter is invaluable indeed.
@Andy Wingo: Oh, nice hearing from you after so many years. Bye now (ps. I don’t give a shit about you guys ignoring me, why do you bother telling me? You already know this)
@Gabe: In trading, sure, burkas having to be part of our culture, no. It’s not about trading.
@L: I define the topic on my own blog, you don’t. If you don’t like that, then why are you here?
@Ian: So somebody is a racist because he has an opinion on the burka? Yes, I know you are an extremist, no need to make that point clear.
@yoink: 4) Aha, so you’re invoking Godwin’s law? Okay, that means that you’re ignored now.
January 26th, 2010 at 11:31 am
@Sessègnon: In fact have European courts ruled in the recent past (and I think in particular in France too) that being willingly a slave (to somebody else) is illegal for both the (willing) slave and the slave owner.
It’s for example illegal for a dwarf to sell its services to groups that exercise the sport of dwarf throwing. Precisely because it’s inhumane. This was a court ruling about a dwarf who claimed that, being a freelancer dwarf, this was his source of income. But because of the inhumane nature was he forbidden to continue selling that service.
I can look this up for you. I think it was specifically in France that this happened, if I recall that correctly.
January 26th, 2010 at 11:40 am
> You *decide* about values? How rational. And values are not negotiable?
There are values that are not negotiable: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
Burka is an instrument of oppression which conflicts directly with those values. Think for a moment:
1. Can a woman choose to forego a burka without backlash from her community?
2. Can a minor choose whether to wear a burka or not?
I don’t know if a complete ban on burkas is the correct response, but a banning *minors* from wearing burkas is potentially a good solution to the issue. If a woman turning 18 decides that a burka is in line with her personal values, so be it.
January 26th, 2010 at 11:45 am
@pvanhoof: I know that of course, and I also know that France has a law to prevent veil in public places, but that doesn’t mean I agree with those laws. What I say is that we SHOULD’NT have those laws because freedom is already protected by other laws. And I can’t see any reason why a dwarf couldn’t be used in dwarf throwing if such is his choice… After all, one could say that sado-masochism is inhumane and degrading, but it is not illegal in the same country where dwarf-throwing or wearing a veil are forbidden.
January 26th, 2010 at 11:46 am
Here in France, this is pre-election time, the right wing politician being assertive and explicitly disrupting the institutional thinking process about the burqa whenever he meets a camera, is making a tactic to weaken the rightest wing parties. This is a smoke screen.
Do not fool yourself either with this ‘we’ the westerns and ‘you’ the muslims, this is your own personal opinion that you share with a fraction of western europe. I, and another fraction of westerners, easterners from various religions would consider this post as naive, and filled with manufactured fear.
A significant number of french women wearing the burqa were christian or non believer, they converted to reject what they see part of the western european culture : cult of money, spiritual vacuousness, foreign imperialism, lack of decency. Consider also the number of women wearing burqa in France: between 3 and 4 hundreds for a population of 60 million french and 3.6 millions muslims. This is insignificant.
For instance, give women in the western media less of a sexual object status, you will less get rejection reactions, don’t you think? The issue is not only in the muslim countries, this is also a product of our own culture.
January 26th, 2010 at 11:55 am
@Mark: you have a point regarding that fact for parents to force minors to wear a burqa. But the problem with a law against burqa is that it is specifically targetted against a muslim tradition, and only that. What if some parents want their son to wear girl clothes, or vice-versa ? Isn’t it something worth making illegal too ? What about parents preventing their children from listening to a certain form of music, or parents preventing their children from eating meat ? Or parents letting their children watch stupid programs on TV ?
What I mean is that parents have to exercize their authority on children to teach them values that are important from their point of view. And it’s very difficult to prevent those parents from teaching bad values to their children, because it is almost impossible to define what values are “good” or “bad”. At the end of the day, it’s the parents that decide, and then the children when they grow major.
January 26th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
@Sessègnon: The problem is that parents have nothing to say about this. And even if they do, then more than often they still choose to impose the burka on their daughter, just to be sure.
The culture of the burka is that you as a woman are expelled from your society unless you wear it. And don’t deny this, as it only makes you look dishonest.
We do have a philosophy and a culture here in Western Europe, no matter what the freedom hippies think. If you want to integrate Muslim culture into Western Europe, you need to do it gradually and slowly.
Not by letting woman wear burkas. As that is nothing but a stupid statement against our Western European culture. A statement that we must reject.
January 26th, 2010 at 12:19 pm
ps. The discussion-thread might have been reflowed, that’s because I de-spammed all the non-spam. It were more false positives than usual.
January 26th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
@pvanhoof: “The culture of the burka is that you as a woman are expelled from your society unless you wear it” -> That’s the whole point: it’s their choice to decide in which society they want to live: whether they want to integrate in a modern moderate society where women actually have rights (and in this case they remove their veil, leave their husband and go on with their life), or they choose to remain in an islamic society within a European country by wearing the burqa. And if they choose to remain in this islamic society, I fail to see where YOUR opinion matters to them… As long as the country where they live gives them the freedom to live a “normal” life whenever they want, why should this “normal” life (by your standards) be force upon them ?
January 26th, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Who says online women can wear burkas? Of course, you can never be sure, but at 26C3, I encountered what I believe what a man wearing a burka. He had a sign with him too: “you are under video surveillance, I’m not”.
Be careful what you wish for.
As far as I’m concerned, people can roam the streets stark naked, covered in paint, or … wearing a burka. Trying to implement a clothing police inevitably leads to further oppression of everyone, not only the people targetted by the clothing police.
January 26th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
@Philip Paeps: To be honest I wouldn’t be against a totally free society like that. But only after humans have evolved into being actually enlightened intelligent. Instead of just being a species that claims to be intelligent. So meanwhile we are doomed to have cultures and cultural values. It’s the same as what I said before:
“If you want to integrate <any form of culture> into Western Europe, you need to do it gradually and slowly.”
January 26th, 2010 at 12:54 pm
jd gives another view on the subject, which I think is pretty important (smoke screen tactics? Definitely plausible). Still, given that (a) I do not live in this country and (b) I find this an interesting discussion, I’ll assume for a moment that the concern on burqas is based on real cultural/religious concerns.
@Sessègnon: Burqas are not a muslim tradition as many (most) muslim populations do *not* wear burqas, within France or without. Saying that this is targeting a muslim tradition is not accurate.
There is a thin, but important dividing line between burqas, which target only women, and music/TV/foods, which do not carry gender-specific connotations. From your examples, only the “son wearing girls clothes” is the most similar to “girl wearing burqa”, but only superficially: burqas are (attempted to be) justified on religious and cultural values. The “son wearing girls clothes” has no such basis (I am aware of a single such instance in my country, stemming from a mother’s psychological issues. There are laws and due process to protect children from this.)
Parents certainly should and do exercise their authority on children. This is an important part of growing up. However, modern societies also have layers of protection against abuse of this authority, with school being one of the most important. I distinctly recall being taught about human rights and gender equality at school and I was lucky to be brought up in a family which strongly supported those notions.
Other people may not be so lucky. Both Christianity and Islam teach that women are inferior to men (let’s not argue this, here) and many parents pass similar notions to their children - which is ok, actually (in a “it can’t be helped” kind of way.) However, should parents be allowed to *enforce* those beliefs physically, by making their daughters wear burqas in public?
Maybe it’s my upbringing, but I cannot help but think of this as a form of physical and mental oppression. Minors cannot escape from this even if they wanetd (they cannot cut familial ties at such an age - they are practically enslaved to their parents’ will). Even worse, they will grow up thinking that this kind of oppression is alright.
Once again, I don’t have a problem with a woman opting to wear a burqa in public per se. My problem is with *conditioning* a girl from a young age that she *must* wear a burqa to be accepted to society.
(Full disclaimer: I know I may be burned at the stake for this, but I support avoidance of any religious imprinting on minors. Children should be taught about the different religions, but they should *not* be part of any religion before they become adults.)
January 26th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
@pvanhoof: This was to show your hypocrisy. You pretend that you want to protect the european values and the freedom of women while you forbid europeans, belgians, to speak their own language in their own country. Freedom anyone? Is that your vision of the european values! Words, just words, that all you can do. Look at yourself before teaching others leassons. You’re not different from those you criticize.
January 26th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
I’m sorry to hear that. Also when I agree that we should fight any kinds of opression, if the burka is considered a religious symbol, at least all of known religious symbols (for example crosses) should be forbidden.
Anyway, forbidding something is not, and can never be, a good way to obtain any kind of freedom, as you cannot limit freedom in one way to obtain it another way (there can be always some exceptions, of course, wouldn’t like any GPL debate)
January 26th, 2010 at 1:16 pm
ouch. i tought people in FOSS were smarter, apparently i was wrong.
i’m french and i’m not muslim. burqa is an unexisting problem in france (few women wear it and i don’t think that it will become fashion…).
it’s only politicians doing politics promoting racism and fear of stranger.
January 26th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
@pvanhoof : Just for the record, I am not from a muslim country. I am from India - a secular country and I personally dont associate myself with any religion strongly.
Off topic: though I call india as secularist, the politicians and media here in India, will never raise a word against muslims fearing communal-sensationalism by pro-muslim groups. Though aspects of other religions (like hinduism, christianity etc.) are (relatively) open for questions, comments etc. Islam enjoys a blind privelege that muslims of India still can legally have - polygamy, Talaq-divorce (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talaq_(conflict) ) while this is banned for rest of the religions.
I truly believe that you people (westerners) have a much better system in protecting women rights and people who oppose such moves should be ashamed of themselves. A sample of woman-suppression here - http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread537954/pg1 (new news)
Eastern world needs to improve a lot in woman freedom (irrespective of religions).
January 26th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
@John G. they believe it is religious then let it be… that is what i meant
January 26th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
@Cypher: last time I checked you were free to speak whatever language you wanted in our country. Last time I checked there were far more villages with language facilities for French than for both German and Dutch added together.
But still you piss about that we don’t allow you to speak French. Utter nonsense, of course. It even borders stupidity to make that claim.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the subject. It was fun to watch you making a fool of yourself. But enough is enough.
January 26th, 2010 at 2:12 pm
@Mark, I totally agree with your post
January 26th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Forbiding things always has consequences, unintended ones… The canonical example in conversations being the prohibition of alcool in the US.
Nobody knows exactly what will happen, but in the short term, it’s expected that those women will just be made to STAY HOME AT ALL TIMES by their oppressive husbands & families. It’ll have exactly the wrong effect, which is less mixing up with the rest of society.
At best this policy only adresses a sign of oppression, not the actual oppression.
There’s also the fact that those people are still not accepted as full french citizens/members of society (I’m french, dunnow about belgium) after decades of being here; I believe the burqa thing and the accept put on religion is a reaction to that, and that any additional wall the state creates will make things worse. It’s being blown out of proportions, a bit like the swiss minaret thing, where they banned minarets like it was some kind of cultural threat, when there are in fact 4 minarets in the *whole country*.
Also, just look at the context: this comes from a right-wing, conservative government which pretty clearly represents an “old france” that doesn’t really care about people they still see as immigrants, and wants to please the hard-right voters. Historically, and socially (in terms of “political roles”) that is not the faction that cares about or brings most of the progressive stuff (like women rights).
About your own opinion, although I do respect it, and in fact share it in a way, I think you’re pretty clearly mixing things up by talking on one side about women/men equality, and thus fighting oppression, and on the other side about maintaining our successful culture.
Those are really two different things.
I believe you’re “scared” in a way, because things are changing, which again is fine and not wrong *at all*, as it’s the case of everybody on this planet (and people have to admit that 90% of people react much more violently to the kind of changes we’re talking about), but well… if you admit you’re scared, I believe you’ll see your own reactions in a different light.
My own opinion is I don’t like the burqa, and I’m also afraid about how we’ll manage to keep the good parts of our culture alive… but do I want to see women arrested in the street for wearing a burqa ? NO. I will feel deeply ashamed when that happens, and I suspect you will too. You will not be like “AHA good thing that this woman is being arrested FOR HER OWN GOOD”. I don’t think.
January 26th, 2010 at 3:13 pm
@Stefan P: I of course agree that arresting people and putting them in jail isn’t what should be done. Perhaps send them to adult school to give them a day of training about our culture? In Belgium we do something similar for kids who for example forget to turn on the light on their bicycle. If a police offers sees that, they inform the child’s school that they need to give the kid a detention on Wednesday afternoon to follow a few hours of training about safety in traffic. It’s not just a warning to the parents, and usually there’s no fine. But this works way better. Those kids immediately understand that they must respect traffic laws and they wont quickly forget the detention. When I was young they did this until the age of 16, I think.
In any case, cultural integration is definitely something that those woman (and their husbands) need to get. You simply can’t function in Western European society if you for example don’t speak the language (which is a big problem with many Belgian immigrants), or if you are still forcing your wife to wear a burka. There are too many tragedies within the ghettos and the unemployment rate among unintegrated immigrants is too high. Mostly because of their status of being unintegrated (and often they don’t want to, because they believe their religion forbids them. They believe this, so it doesn’t even matter whether or not it’s nonsense that their religion does forbid anything like that).
Tell me, how is a woman wearing a burka going to get employment in Western Europe? She can’t. No she can’t. It’s not realistically doable. So this burka is simply a way to get the wife to stay inside. She wont be accepted in society, and that is precisely what the burka is used for by those husbands. To keep her private to them, to lock her up. All those freedom hippies who claim that by forbidding the burka you do something worse than what those husbands who enforce it upon their wifes do, really need to put things in perspective.
ps. This is of course not about immigrants who do integrate. They are doing just fine, and are often very nice people.
January 26th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
As a muslim woman, wearing a burka, living in a west-european country and loving my gnome desktop (so I think by your standards I’m allowed to respond), I like wearing my concealing clothes. Though I get strange looks now and then, it makes me feel safe outside.
I would not wear them though if it’s not allowed by law, but I hope it won’t come that far.
Yours… Joce.
January 26th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
@J_Umm: You don’t get safety by concealing yourself. You get safety by law enforcement. In Western European society it’s not normal that you conceal yourself while in public. Although that doesn’t make it right to look that way, it might explain some of those strange looks.
Yours .. Philip
January 26th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
pvanhoof, I think this paragraph is probably your best argument:
“In any case, cultural integration is definitely something that those woman (and their husbands) need to get. You simply can’t function in Western European society if you for example don’t speak the language (which is a big problem with many Belgian immigrants), or if you are still forcing your wife to wear a burka. There are too many tragedies within the ghettos and the unemployment rate among unintegrated immigrants is too high. Mostly because of their status of being unintegrated (and often they don’t want to, because they believe their religion forbids them. They believe this, so it doesn’t even matter whether or not it’s nonsense that their religion does forbid anything like that).”
Because it’s a pragmatist’s case for the ban. I argued against it last time you wrote about it, mostly because I don’t think directly enforcement of integration can work. Anyway I won’t rehash those arguments. I think the bright side of this is we can all watch how it goes in France. If it turns out they can enforce integration without nasty consequences, well, we’re all better off knowing that. And if it doesn’t work, that’s good to know too.
One thing I do wonder about is, if this is such a problem in France, why are they letting so many muslim immigrants in in the first place? If a large amount of these immigrants are a problem, wouldn’t it make more sense to make them leave? Alternatively, if only a small minority are a problem, what’s the big deal?
January 26th, 2010 at 6:11 pm
Its not a big problem is france - there are suggestions of approximately 250 people wearing the veil in the whole country.
The bigger issue is that their economy is down the pan and Sarkozy’s popularity has nose dived, so he needs popular band waggons to jump on to maintain his power.
Id the veil is banned, if there are women who are forced to wear it, will their lives get better or worse? now they will no longer be allowed to go out in public at all.
(note the “if there are women who are forced bit”. I am from the UK and such a thing is extremely (impossibly) unlikely atleast where I live)
and for women who are not forced to wear it, some like J_Umm will be forced to have their freedoms removed. Others however may choose to cut themselves off from places where they are forced to remove it.
In short, forcing a ban will make life far more oppressive for the same people who it is supposed to help.
(I do not expect there to be too much of a protest against it - the women will just melt away as subhuman creatures they are being treated as)
The only winners will be the politicians who gain new popularity from it all.
January 26th, 2010 at 6:31 pm
@Ian: That’s actually a good point you make! We an let France experiment with it, and the rest of W. Europe can pick it up if it works, or not if it doesn’t. Awesome. Thanks France! Belgium did something similar with its marijuana laws vs. The Netherlands’ laws about it. Those legalization laws are being turned back both in Belgium and The Netherlands, because those didn’t work either and actually did increase the amount of drug addicts quite a lot, and caused a lot of serious problems in neighborhoods where coffee shops are located. But the freedom hippies of the nineties were also sure that marijuana wouldn’t cause any problems. It did.
As for why Western European countries let in a lot of immigrants …
Actually they don’t “allow” them. They just come, and then after several years of procedures later they can claim that they have been too long in our country to go back.
In theory the more an immigrant integrates the more likely he’ll eventually be allowed to stay. Fair enough? In practice many try for years to find claims that they are now suddenly fully integrated. And there’s of course an army of lawyers who enjoy getting paid by these people to try to get them papers.
And for the last few decades the immigration politics of most Western European countries have indeed been quite stupid.
The result: Ghetto formation in cities. Unemployment among the unintegrated. Poverty. Etc. It’s fantastic. The great show of multicultural bullshit! You have to visit the circus once in your life.
January 26th, 2010 at 6:36 pm
There are some men who abuse children.
We need a law that keeps men and children separate so that can not happen.
This will clearly contribute to freedom.
January 26th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
@You: I see J_Umm’s story positively. Since she told us that she’ll take of her concealing clothes when the burka gets banned, she’ll more easy integrate with society. That’s a high gain for the low price of giving up a false feeling of safety. You make that something negative. Surely now J_Umm thinks that it’ll be negative. But let’s ask her in a few years? I bet she’ll wonder why she didn’t take it of earlier.
January 26th, 2010 at 6:46 pm
@Bob, there are laws for child abuse prevention. What is your point? By making a caricature comparison you don’t illustrate anything.
January 26th, 2010 at 7:01 pm
@pvanhoof
The burka is already forbidden in Belgium; It is forbidden to mask your face for reason other than safety or health. There is an exception for the day of carnival. The fine is 50 euros.
A friend who’s in the police told me that this law is seldom inforced because it causes uproar in the integrist muslim community and that makes their job harder.
I think they should forbid the veil for minors too. I see too many young arab girls being harassed in the metro for not wearing it.
January 26th, 2010 at 7:02 pm
If our women have to wear a burka or traditional dress in muslim countries, is it not fair to require the same cultural sensitivity of muslim men and women in our countries?
January 26th, 2010 at 7:06 pm
@fvdsn: Oh, I actually didn’t know that. Actually, if the law says ‘masking your face’ then in theory is wearing a scarf forbidden in Belgium? I’m guessing there’s some level of freedom to interpret the law for a judge or police officer? :)
@euxneks: I don’t think there are many Muslim countries that actually require this. In some it’s probably not a bad idea, when visiting (to avoid troubles). I don’t want to make crosslaws, though. We can define our own morality and law system in Western Europe disconnected from whatever some other country does or doesn’t do.
January 26th, 2010 at 7:08 pm
While I would agree that burkas are often to be pushed on some muslim women by the norms of the societies they come from, a simple ban doesn’t help the cause and actually contradicts the principal that people should be free to live as they please.
So if they want to wear a burka that should be up to them. The only thing society need be worried about is that people are FREE TO CHOOSE and have made an EDUCATED and informed choice in view of a range of alternatives. No one ever made it OBLIGATORY that women have their own jobs, or be single, or wear trousers. Instead it became permitted, and women sought their own liberation and explored new ways to live.
To replace the command “Wear the Burka” with the command “Do Not Wear the Burka” is NOT furthering women’s independence. It only treats a symptom of women’s oppression rather than the underlying attitudes.
The message to send to women is “Its totally cool with everyone if you don’t” and to men “Don’t harass women just because they’re not enveloped head to toe”. (Which goes for all men, I’ve had many female friends complain of being hit on by creepy guys just because they’re showing a bit of cleavage. Show some respect guys!)
January 26th, 2010 at 7:53 pm
I am against a _new_ law that forbids the burka and the niqab. Why? Simplicity. Keep the number of laws as low as possible, and make efficient use of existing laws. You may say that there is no law that forbids the burka or niqab, but there is. Really! You may know it as the “carnival regulations” that most towns in Belgium have in their police regulations. In short, it says that you are not allowed to walk around in public with a mask or other things that make your face unrecognizable, except when it’s a carnival. For those of you who live in the USA or other countries where Hallowe’en is popular, it would be a “hallowe’en regulation”: you’re not allowed to walk around in a burka or niqab, except on that one night per year that you qo around for “trick or treat”.
By the way, your captcha is very hard to read. I had to reload a couple of times.
January 26th, 2010 at 9:10 pm
Stop talking in the name of the Western culture. It’s insulting. Really.
January 26th, 2010 at 10:23 pm
« If it turns out they can enforce integration without nasty consequences, well, we’re all better off knowing that. And if it doesn’t work, that’s good to know too. »
What we will be watching on the integration level is simple : nothing. Very few muslim women in France and in Belgium wear Burkas. They only wear veils. This law is stupid, it serves the only purpose of hurting the muslim sensibility. Even if they don’t wear Burkas, they still can identify themselves to it. And they will interpret it like an attempt to their community. Instead of favouring the integration, it will reinforce their community sensitivity. And for no results since women only wear veils (if they want to : it is very common to see groups of muslim women with some of them wearing a veil and some not at all, which is a sign that mentalities evolve with time).
January 26th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
Thank God for people like Philip Van Hoof who are prepared to make a stand on issues affecting other people. Unfortunately the open source software community is not very vocal about such issues (although all too ready to attack our leaders). Philip also has a reputation on gender issues, with such as the code of conduct, and so his opinion should be listened to with greater care than most.
As for all the whingers, the more we do for them, the less they seem to notice that we are doing it.
January 26th, 2010 at 11:32 pm
The Argument of what the burka symbolizes in western eyes must be taken into consideration as much as what a certain erotic dress symbolizes in the eyes of many Islamic countries.
There is no country in the world with proper government that allows everything a person would want to do whether it has religious meaning or not, freedom must be clearly understood as it relates to law, otherwise it is just fiction, it is not something you talk about carelessly, this is true for Eastern as well as Western cultures, that is why it comes down to conforming to ones newly adopted country, it is as simple as that, further discussions should be entertained to find out if an imposed or proposed law makes sense within the framework of the culture that imposes or wants to impose a law, the local culture can not be ignored, if the law makes no sense considerations should be made to change it or not impose it, unfortunately in most Islamic countries imposed laws can not be challenged at all, while they can be discussed at length in most western democracies, the latter is what implies the kind of freedom some speak of. Not freedom to do anything.
Within the framework of a western culture, banning the burka from being worn in public is not seen as a bad law it is seen as liberating, lest some Islamic husband wants to impose it on a Muslim wife. Within a western culture this is more important than a person wanting to wear it for religious symbolism or otherwise. Conform or leave is the guiding principle here.
Much the same for a western woman that settles in Saudi Arabia, women can not wear mini skirts in public there, including many other countries with Islamic cultures. If she wants to wear mini skirts so badly for whatever reason then she will have to leave.
January 27th, 2010 at 1:31 am
@Joseph: You’re welcome
@tuxy: I agree 100% with your post
@Amedee: Right, fvdsn mentioned this too already. Regretfully police officers rarely enforce this rule because they are afraid of the reaction (it makes their police work more difficult). So yes, make this law more effective by telling police officers to enforce it.
@Yop: Look at tuxy’s reaction for my reaction on yours
@Jon: I’m not in favor of soft enforcement anymore. We tried this, and we are seeing that without law enforcement many immigrants refuse to integrate. Leading to already mentioned ghetto formation, unemployment among the unintegrated, poverty, etc. It’s also a simple matter of respect for the culture of your host’s country.
January 27th, 2010 at 2:33 am
Hi Philip,
I’m in broad agreement — I agree that the burka is a tool for subjugation. But, there are many ways that women can choose to subjugate themselves, and we don’t pass laws against all of them. For example, it’s thought by many that pornography (created by a woman through un-coerced choice, using her own body) objectifies women everywhere, creating a society that treats women with less respect as a result. Should we ban the creation of pornography, too?
It’s hard to say whether burka-wearing or pornography-creation fall into “freedom of speech” or merely “harmful to society”; for that reason, I’d rather see both of them criticized in the public discourse rather than the law.
January 27th, 2010 at 2:52 am
I’m still baffled how banning the burka would be executed in detail.
Let’s say a woman wears a burka in the street and gets “caught”. She gets a fine. That does nothing to protect her.
But wait, you say, her husband has to pay the fine, because obviously she’s married and obviously she has no job, so he’s her only source of income. That’s quite a few assumptions - what if she’s not married? What if she does have a job?
Ok, but let’s play along and say she is indeed married and does indeed not have a job, so her husband will have to pay up. What if he doesn’t? Does she go to jail?
Or does the law specifically say that it’s her husband who’s punished and not her? In that case, if you’re a woman and you want to get back at your husband for whatever he’s done, just wear a burka in public and be sure to get caught!
This whole business seems to me akin to trying to protect soldiers by making it punishable by death to get shot by the enemy.
January 27th, 2010 at 3:22 am
@Chris: That’s a fair point. I’m still concerned when the law doesn’t enforce that people need to integrate with the culture that they are immigrating into.
Some of the immigrants are refusing to integrate. Those even usually spewing hateful nonsense at the very culture that is paying for their social security. They call our woman whores and other insults on the street and in public transportation. They force Arab girls even worse concealment rules than many Islamic countries like Iran have. Because in W.E., it’s a political statement against W.E.’s culture to show that your daughters conceal themselves. Seif is right about it that, at least here, it has few things to do with their religion.
If they hate our culture so much, then why do they come here? And why isn’t that a fair question to ask? There’s nothing racist about it if you think about it. I really don’t care about the nonsense of racists. I do care about W.E.’s cultural values, though.
As I mentioned before, I’m not afraid of the burka per sé, I’m afraid that too many female immigrants (are forced to) refuse to integrate to become isolated in Islam-ghettos in our cities (they do exist, don’t deny it), turn the situation into a big quagmire of violence in the streets, unemployment, poverty, etc. These are statistically documented facts, and it’s not funny anymore. We do keep government statistics about this, and they are made fairly. And other independent organizations have come to the same conclusions in their statistics.
Unintegrated immigrants are very heavily represented in the unemployment statistics. There are already anti discrimination laws. The problem is that employers are simply not going to employ somebody who doesn’t even speak the language and/or who wears burkas at work. It has nothing to do with competence, as the vast majority of Muslims with a proper education are also the ones that are very integrated into our culture. And they, do get employment.
If the immigrants who refuse to integrate don’t want to see that, fine. But then don’t expect cheers from the native population. Expect that we’ll vote for politicians who’ll pass laws that’ll force them to integrate. That’s definitely not racist. In fact is it being helpful for them. Because their current view on how to mix Western European with Islamic culture is clearly failing miserably.
And I fear that indeed the multiculture bullshit is over here. We’ve tried that in the nineties and at the beginning of the millennium. Sorry, it didn’t work. The results aren’t lying.
January 27th, 2010 at 3:28 am
@Mark Probst: I already replied before the proposal to send the both (wife and husband) them to adult school for a day to give them a training about our W.E. culture. Stop the dramatics of how you are going to punish people. It’s not about the punishment, it’s about making clear what society accepts and what it doesn’t accept.
Society in Western Europe wants immigrants to integrate with W.E.’s cultural values. That’s a fair thing to ask. They get a lot for it back. Really.
January 27th, 2010 at 4:22 am
The following link may help you start on a positive note on Islam and its relevance to you society/culture/region/history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_contributions_to_Medieval_Europe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages#Science_and_technology
Not that I would recommend Wikipedia links as the most referencing material on Islam but there are parts of history that are too big to omit/hide from the mass.
If you are curious cat, that should get you started to approach the religion (not the culture) with more respect and getting to know it.
Its a whole world of “light” that waits for anyone there. But, listen to this, it will get interesting, it will come at the cost of,
“Secularism” - As you will testify that Allah is the only god and every thing else (other Gods, no religion etc) is like living under dark. It is your duty to remove darkness and establish the light. He he he .. what you call “Fundamentalism”
“Democracy” - only Allah is the sovereign, we merely implement / obey to commands / directives. He he he .. what you call “Shariah Law”
“Borders” - Islam creates pan border nation (in fact no concept of border apart from administrative divisions) under one “Khalifah” who is (not the rule maker) overseer of rules of Allah. Again, you must have heard about the utopian pan global Islamic kingdom termed as “Khilafah”.
“Paper money” - Islam prohibits paper money or substitute of gold and silver. This is where it goes into the modern finance system. To vast topic to cover.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkFb26u9g8
will show you tip of the ice berg.
“Capitalism” - the philosophy of Islam is total opposite to it. A simple sentece cannot explain it. Somewhat related to it is the Islamic Khilafah is responsible for ensuring sufficient food, housing, clothing, meidcation, education for every living person. You can think of extreme socialism with the provision for you to do tarde and make as much as wealth as you can make. The prophet Muhammad (thru his wealthy businessman wife) and lots of his compinions were richest person of that time. But the philosophy with guide to live simple life and putting wealth in others help.
“Income Tax” - What is that? You get taxed on your saving (Zakah) not your earning.
Its endless list but I don’t what to shock you more for the day.
In case you need more interesting supplies like that, write to me:
nuxser AT gmail DOT com
- Assalamualaikum
Thats “Peace be upon you” if POLITICALLY translated to omit Allah from that sentece. :)
January 27th, 2010 at 4:54 am
(ps. I removed some of the discussion between myself and Soyuz, as it was not helpful for the discussion. It were mostly rants to each other. You’re not missing anything. Soyuz, if you feel something should be mentioned please repeat it in a comment. But this time in understandable language)
@Soyuz: I don’t know what your point is. That because my government is secular that it should have nothing to say about what religious people in my country do?
Perhaps it’s news for you, but Western European culture is that the politicians and judges define the law. Not the religious people.
It just works that way in Western Europe. If you don’t like that, don’t come to Western Europe. And no, we wont change that. Period.
Also note that nobody here is saying that Islam’s philosophy isn’t relevant to my society, culture, region or history. All cultures and philosophies influence each other. I don’t think anybody disputes that.
January 27th, 2010 at 6:48 am
@pvanhoof:
Finally, what you are saying - “It just works that way in Western Europe. If you don’t like that, don’t come to Western Europe. And no, we wont change that. Period.”
And with that PERIOD, you now will get me to shut up. I was trying to get that out of you. So now please don’t add those nice pre sentences like “We need to protect (but not overprotect) the women of Muslim cultures”. Because, the wearing of veil have religious significance for them where “Western European culture is that the politicians and judges define the law. Not the religious people.”
My point being: It is you land, your rule and so get to decide. But that doesn’t make it you are doing the “right” thing for them. So don’t even think that you can ever understand that is “good” or even “bad” for them. Just say like you said now:
It just works that way in Western Europe. If you don’t like that, don’t come to Western Europe. And no, we wont change that. Period.
without any veil of moderation, Justice, equality, nondiscrimination etc.
January 27th, 2010 at 10:04 am
Philip, you are such a manful role model - I want to have your Aryan babies! Do not worry about the physical impediment, because I am sure that AI would be just as satisfying.
January 27th, 2010 at 10:53 am
@Lisat: … is your post going somewhere? (let’s stick to the subject)
January 27th, 2010 at 10:59 am
@soyuz: Sorry if that’s no justification for you. For Western Europeans it certainly is justification that the laws are defined by elected people, and not by a group of people that want to believe that a God asks them to do it.
This has nothing to do with discrimination, but everything to do with the democratic process and political traditions that exist in Western Europe. It used to be that religion had more of a stake in Western European politics. But not anymore. And in most (I even think all) Western European countries the population want the Church to stay out of politics and lawmaking.
January 27th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
@Vanhoof
Yeah, tuxy’s reaction. So what ? He’s saying : the “western freedom” is only the freedom of speech in the public space, the majority can decide whatever it wants. Again, this is YOUR interpretation of freedom, not an universally shared point of view. But the notion is much larger, complex, and _equivocal_. For one thing, the whole liberal philosophy is about freedom from governments’ actions. The right to wear whatever we want on our faces and not be bothered by policemen. For others, freedom can be about equality of treatment. Equality of treatment is what the law is about, for that matter. But everyone know that people wearing a scarf won’t be bothered by policemen, only burka-wearing women will.
The bottom line is that this burka law involves complex notions and complex judgements that CAN’T be reduced to an holistic, ontological view of western culture or western freedom.
When I see you writing “For Western Europeans it certainly is justification that the laws are defined by elected people”, I almost fell out of my chair. It’s one thing that you defend this opinion, it’s another to project it to an entire western european people. Dammit, liberalism has been scared for ages of democracy and the will of the majority ! Why do you think it built representative democracy, neglected referendums, and framed constitutionnal rights and courts and so on ? To protect minorities and individuals from the majority’s will ! What is happening in France show that sometimes it is not enough. You can disagree with this view, but not suppress it by illegitimately projecting your views on everyone. The simple fact that these questions prompt so many reactions prove that you are wrong of saying that the entire western thought is with you.
Another thing Tuxy has said is considerations on what we are allowed to do in islamic countries. Well I don’t care about freedom in islamic countries (well in fact I care about it but you know what I mean), I care about freedom in our countries.
And when he says “Conform or leave is the guiding principle here”. Yeah but no, they won’t be leaving. Again, it is worth reminding that the burka law won’t do much harm. Let’s rather imagine a muslim veil law. What would happen in this case is not a mass exode. What would happen is angry reactions from angry people who have been denied cultural rights. It would only mean confrontation. Community sense would be exacerbated. This is exactly the same scheme that would happen on the socio-economic level if a governement decided a measure that is badly hurting the sensitivity of a whole professionnal sector. They would organize and they would fight it.
Oh, and if you are thinking about throwing them out of our countries in case they protest, you are dreaming. Most of them have the same nationality than us. Wake up, this is the XXI century, Europe is partly muslim and that won’t change until the secularization of muslim people. Of course, fighting their religion instead of respecting them for who they are and leaving them live their lifes is a serious threat to that process of secularization.
One last thing. You talk a lot about integration but you are wrong to use that word. What you mean is ASSIMILATION. That’s totally different and almost fascistic (I don’t care about the goldwin point, we are talking about matters that are directly related to debates that occured between the two wars). When I see muslim girls at the university that wear a veil and that would back off if I tried to kiss her on the cheek as an hello gesture, like I would do with any other girls, that does not mean that these girls are not integrated. It _only_ means they are not assimilated. In other words, they are DIFFERENT. We have to respect them for that. And no, wearing veils and backing off a kiss is not a mark of disrespect against us, even if it is very easy to rhetorically turn the notions upside/down.
January 27th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
Perhaps I was too subtle in questioning your fascist fan-boys assertion that you have done anything for “gender issues”. Either way, wearing the burka is a choice made by the woman who wears it, or by those who influence her. There are many reasons to wish the outcome of that decision was to reject the burka. Attempting to ban the burka is absurd and not merely an ineffective response to that decision, but a positively harmful act towards women who wear burkas.
Perhaps you could turn your considerable intellect to understanding why people make the choice to wear the burka, and how the environment influencing that decision could be altered to make a choice not to wear the burka.
The attitudes you express above are more likely to encourage than discourage the attitudes of those who believe the burka is an important or necessary expression of identity.
January 27th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
I haven’t had the ability to read up on all comments, but if the discussion i still relevant… Aside from the fact that a Burka is not (or not yet) socially accepted by some people in western culture, why am I not free to choose my clothes? I can understand that people would like to see a face (even if you don’t speak/have contact with that person?), but it feels like I’m not free to not show parts of my body if I don’t want to.
Joce…
January 27th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
@J_Umm: showing your face is indeed the cultural norm in Western Europe. You can obviously hide everything else. But showing your face is a matter of mutual respect.
So this means, and frankly this is the case in our culture, that you show a form of disrespect to other people if you refuse not to conceal your face. A disrespect similar to walking around almost naked in deeply Islamic countries. I’m sure you can see that that wouldn’t work over there too, right?
And it’s indeed true that we prefer that people who don’t want to stop concealing their face wouldn’t come to Western Europe. It simply isn’t part of our culture, and it actually is shocking for a lot of Western Europeans in many ways.
@Lisat and @yop: I’m not planning to get called a fascist by a bunch of extreme left wing hippies. Do you guys have anything useful to say other than the rants you just dumped here? If it has anything to do with fascism or calling me a fascist then I’m sorry but please fuck off. I have no interest discussing with followers of Godwin’s law. You’re just not worth my time indeed. I already said this before high above in the discussion too. Last time I allow this, next time I’ll remove the rants and then you’ll just be wasting your time typing it all down.
In fact are you wasting your time already. I skim your posts and if I see words like “fascist” or “nazi” than rest assured that I’m not even taking the time to read more than five more words of your text. It’s just not worth it. Every sensible person knows that.
You can always start your own blog and go ahead with ranting over there. Starting a blog yourself is easy nowadays. There are a lot of places that offer you a blog for free. Go there. Maybe you should start a hippie ranters club too? See how that works out for you.
January 27th, 2010 at 4:44 pm
Ok, so we’ll have a law that says if a woman wears a burka in public she has to attend a one-day educational seminar on western culture, and if she’s married her husband has to go, too. (Let’s leave aside the debate on what such a seminar could accomplish.)
That sets a very strange precedent because it’s making the husband responsible by law for how his wife dresses, which, I thought, was the thing you were trying to fight against in the first place.
In the words of Richard Dawkins: “I don’t dress women - they dress themselves.”
Or in other words yet: All you’re doing with a law like that is limiting what men can make their women wear. How about instead working on helping women get out of such dependencies?
January 27th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
@Mark: Working on helping women get out of such dependencies is the purpose of making her (and her husband) attend an educational seminar on Western European culture. By truncating the debate not to include debating that purpose you of course block me from answering your very question.
I’m not saying it’ll always help, I’m saying it’s the best I can come up with that will most likely help. As mentioned before ain’t fining and throwing people in jail going to helpful. Especially not when the target of such punishments are the women affected by this.
ps. Although I nearly always follow Richard Dawkins in his scientific work, and even also, at least partly, in his work on memetics, I don’t necessarily (have to) share his views on other philosophic questions. Questions like “what to do with the memes that we so far acquired being the species that we are, within mankind’s many cultures”. Realizing that this is how we humans work doesn’t mean that we lack a morality (which is by the way something Richard Dawkins very much agrees with, and he illustrates in his books that we’re not the only species with a sense of morality - although there are other authors that go more into this subject, which I’d recommend over Richard Dawkins’ work here -), a defined culture OR that we must follow Richard Dawkins in every single philosophy that he has (which I’m sure he’ll also agree with, he’s quite a sensible guy, you know). We are idea-machines that receive, copy, adapt and redistribute ideas. That’s the very thing that he’s trying to say. Culture is a consequence of being groups of such idea-machines. Not concealing your face is such an idea that happens to be the norm for most Western Europeans.
January 27th, 2010 at 5:21 pm
So we do agree that our purpose is to get women out of dependencies.
You seem to think that banning burkas is a good way to do that. I disagree strongly. All you’re likely to achieve with that is to hide a few symptoms.
I furthermore think that a law making a husband responsible for his wife’s actions (which you are if you’re making him attend a seminar as a consequence his wife’s wearing a burka) is actually counterproductive to that purpose, because you’re almost defining the woman by law as the subject or at least under the care of her husband, like a child up to a certain age is under the care of their parents, and hence the parents must anwer for the child’s actions.
Also, I disagree that “not conceiling your face” is a meme of western culture, just like not “wearing a clown’s nose” is not a meme. On the contrary, “conceiling your face” is a meme in Islamic culture, like “wearing a clown’s nose” is a meme in clown culture, if there is such a thing.
A meme which I do think is part of western culture, although it seems to be fading rather quickly, is “having the freedom not to adhere to the norm (as long as you don’t harm others)”.
January 27th, 2010 at 6:10 pm
I removed a post by yop.
Yop, please be informed that you are no longer welcome here. And if necessary I will take steps to make my webserver ignore your IP address. I also don’t feel like discussing your ban with you. Just leave (if your IP is dynamic I have no problems with, at least temporarily, blocking your entire ISP. I’m really not going to allow you to write any new comment here. Enough is enough).
@Mark, in reply to { A meme which I do think is part of western culture, although it seems to be fading rather quickly, is “having the freedom not to adhere to the norm (as long as you don’t harm others)” }. That stands, yes. Note that in law it’s not uncommon that two philosophies conflict. That’s precisely why we have judges and why we can’t program a computer to be a judge. The fewer such conflicts, the better, probably, of course. There can be multiple truths (it’s not uncommon).
The law has to interfere when people are either isolating themselves or being forced to isolate themselves (by for example their father, husband or boyfriend) from society. You say so yourself that, and I’ll quote you, making <a husband> (replace freely) responsible is counterproductive [for that purpose], because you’re almost defining the woman by law as the subject or at least under the care of <her husband>.
Meaning that the only thing law can productively do, is place a global ban on concealing your face in public places. Note that in France the law being proposed doesn’t forbid you to conceal your face on the street (at least not as far as I know), nor at home. In Belgium is masking your face already forbidden in the street, but police officers rarely enforce that law “because it makes their work, with Islamic cultures, more difficult”. I interpret that last as “Islamic men are intimidating our police officers not to enforce the law in our own country”. And indeed, you do see stone throwing at police officers in for example Anderlecht, near Brussels. So my interpretation is probably fairly accurate.
ps. When you come to FOSDEM, don’t visit Anderlecht. Some of its neighborhoods are sickened by ghetto formation by the very same cultures that we are discussing here. If you don’t know your way, you’ll probably get beaten up and you’ll end up in a hospital, because you are in the wrong street (luckily we have very good hospitals ready for you, though). This isn’t unique to this particular culture. But it is fairly unique to neighborhoods that have a lot of immigration without integration. It’s precisely this kind of anti-integration sentiment that we want to shield these people away from.
Sadly there are still ultra extreme left wingers that constantly go la la la and are willingly blind for the simple facts on the street. And this isn’t a right-wing point of view anymore and it most definitely isn’t racism. This is widely known in the entire political spectrum, widely studied and very well visible in the statistics. Done by different organizations. Both right-wing biased but also unbiased studies. Either way, undeniable (and you can go experience it yourself too). Nor is Anderlecht the only place, nor is it a unique situation in Western Europe.
And that is why we no longer believe the left-wingers with their multicultural bullshit promises. They didn’t succeed. They had their chance. They failed totally.
ps. We could discuss whether the behavior of street-youth is correlated to anti-integration sentiment or not. But I fear that even that the statistics are undeniably showing. This does not have anything to do with the culture itself (there are plenty of good places in Islam countries, where there is plenty of order on the streets). It has to do with the quagmire you create by isolating a group in a ghetto that hates the surrounding culture (of course for no good reason, but not much people are that philosophic about it, regretfully, in either cultures). It’s not possible to extinguish the native culture from within (and the very idea of that is sickening), so fighting it as a Muslim is nothing but stupidity that wont get you anywhere.
January 27th, 2010 at 8:46 pm
@pvanhoof
The Dune quote works both ways. If immigrants have customs that offend the culture they’ve chosen to live with, those immigrants ought to show at least as much respect for their hosts as their hosts have shown them.
To put it another way: if someone asked to stay with me in MY house, and then proceeded to hang around in an offensive, racist T-shirt, I would ask them to remove it. If they didn’t, I would kick them out, since they obviously didn’t value my goodwill.
The burka is offensive to many people who see women as their equals. If that’s the overall sentiment of a nation, that’s perfectly fine, and the nation is free to make their own rules.
France, in particular, has given these people a chance to integrate. If the chance is turned down, France has the right to compel integration in the more extreme cases. It’s not like these people can’t leave if they decide burka-wearing is more important than excellent French social services, medical care, wine, cheese, and the all-important European passport.
You’d think the decision would be a no-brainer.
And now, I suppose I’m a racist, facist Nazi bigot with a tiny penis and no understanding of anything.
At least I’m in good company.
January 27th, 2010 at 9:18 pm
Philip, I never called you a fascist (although I think that your attitudes to muslims expressed here are loathsome). I referred to your fanboy above who quoted Dr Mengele in praising you, praise that you acknowledged.
January 27th, 2010 at 10:26 pm
You keep referring to this ban as a way of integrating isolated immigrant communities in the context of ghetto formation, unemployment, poverty, etc.
How exactly will this ban address those problems when the estimated number of burqa-wearing women in France is so low? Are these 500 families single-handedly bringing down the rest of the immigrant community?
This ban will solve nothing at all. Time would be much better spent trying to come up with a real solution.
January 28th, 2010 at 12:35 am
@Locke:
The ban is a purely symbolic gesture. The French government is sending a message to all immigrant populations with traditions that offend the mainstream, not just burka-wearers.
“If you want to continue living in France, it’s time to adapt your traditions to be less offensive to your neighbours.”
A host has the right to set ground rules and expect guests to behave.
January 28th, 2010 at 12:37 am
@Locke: Also, kudos on seeing my Dune reference and raising me an Ender’s Game. Next time I’m posting as Demosthenes.
January 28th, 2010 at 11:47 am
@pvanhoof: Thank you for your point of view and this brief discussion. We might not agree on all points, but dialogue is the basis of understanding each other.
I sincerely hope more people with all their cultural heritage will try to come to common grounds, and accept we have to live together in the most accepted way most people will feel comfortable with. In the end we all live on thesame small planet -there’s no point in denying that.
January 28th, 2010 at 12:55 pm
@J_Umm: That is a very wise thing to say, indeed. And I’m certainly not denying that. Nor am I denying Islam as a culture to thrive in Western Europe. But, certain cultural values are created in and by Western Europeans that aren’t negotiable.
Equality between men and woman is among of those (together with a bunch of freedoms and respects, for example on sexuality, and this is still evolving). We believe that the burka isn’t an instrument that helps with this evolution in our culture, at all.
Equality doesn’t mean ‘equal beings’. Woman and men aren’t ‘equal beings’ (neither psychologically nor biologically). Nobody is claiming they are. Just like Islamic culture and Western European culture aren’t ‘equal cultures’ either. When we discuss equality it means that Western Europeans need to respect Islamic culture (up to a certain point), and Islamic culture needs to respect Western European culture (up to a certain point).
That’s how people live together on the same small planet. There’s no point in denying that.
That is how I interpret for example Gabe’s latest comments.
ps. And if you want to dive into the brutal wars that Western culture has in recent years indeed caused in many Arab countries: rest assured that I hate those and that those wars make me as physically sick as they probably make you sick. We’ve had our share of wars in Western Europe, and we don’t want any wars anymore. But if we want to solve this thing, a key part will be integrating Islamic culture into Western European culture. And that’s not an easy task with extremists at both sides of the fence (created and inspired by the war-situations). What we certainly don’t want here is another unsolvable Israel-Palestine situation.
January 29th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Removed an idiot post by Jarral. Jarral, you are hereby banned too (about your plans, go ahead. Whatever makes you happy).