Quote: sootyj @ May 1 2010, 9:37 PM BSTHurrah and about bloody time. The idea wearing that ridiculous outfit is not a result of massive communal bullying and encouraging women to see them selves as inferior.
The law is there in part at least to protect people from their own stupidity or innability to make good choices. Banning the burka is right up their with making meths undrinkable or banning child porn as an example of a government saying firmly "you do not have the sense to make sensible decisions we will make them for you."
This shouldn't happen often, but some times it is neccasary.
No offence but that is bollocks. Making meths undrinkable is about alcohol being far too useful to society as a solvent to stop its use but not allowing people to enjoy the effects of drinking it without paying tax. Banning child porn is about protecting the children, not about protecting paedophiles from themselves. Government should not protect you from yourself, it should only protect others from you, which includes protecting the minority from the majority where necessary.
Yes the burkha arises from oppression of females but I also know a couple of Muslim women who would still rather wear the headscarf, long sleeves & skirts etc. as a modesty thing which stops blokes leering at them the whole time. They actually see the Western media pressure on women to wear mini skirts etc. as oppression of women by men as well - an attitude you can't really deny also exists in non-muslims if you noticed all the fuss about size zero models and anorexic 7 year olds.
Banning the veil isn't going to stop the attitudes - just hide them from public view. All it will do is make you feel less uncomfortable by not having it in sight.
The security argument is bollocks as well. I don't really see how a ban on the burkha would have stopped the 9/11 lot. Why shouldn't people be able to hide their faces if they want? What else do you want to ban? Sunglasses, beards and makeup? Hats and scarves as well? Fake tan and wedding veils?
If you're that worried about stopping anyone having any privacy then just put a chip in everyone or a barcode on their forehead. Why not go the whole way and install cameras in every room in their houses just so you can make sure nobody gets any privacy and can't possibly ever get up to anything that you don't personally approve of?
Oh, and if you can't manage to communicate with someone just because you can't see every single little facial expression then there's probably something wrong with you. I work for a pharmaceutical company and, in the clean roooms, there are people who I pretty much only ever deal with when they are wearing a shapeless green suit, head cover, face-mask and safety glasses so that all you can actually see of each other are vague body shape and eyes behind the glasses - arguably less than you see of some people wearing veils - and yet we still manage to recognise each other and have perfectly normal conversations. How many of you complaining about not being able to see facial expressions would actually talk to any muslim women if they weren't wearing the veil? There's plenty about who don't wear it, so how many do you know?
Or we could all just grow up and worry about the attitudes that lead to these things instead of trying to ban the irrelevant symptoms and delude ourselves that it has done anything to stop the problem.
