“You can’t live in a world in which half the human race walks around in a bag. It’s not okay.” So says Salman Rushdie, and so say I, and I continue to think, despite opposition from arguably the most enlightened members of modern Western societies, that the full face and body covering of women should be banned. And we should do this, not because people don’t have a right to dress as they wish, but because the rationale for dressing women like this is, as Rusdie says, a completely bizarre idea of sexuality and the place of women in society. Dressing women in bags is an open invitation for men who think that this is decent and proper and demanded by their religion, to treat women who are not dressed in this fashion as less than human. Of course, it is already to treat the women so dressed as less than human: that goes without saying. But it has serious implications for those believe it is their right to dress as they wish.
The following is an exploration of the limits of religious freedom in a free society. I think we are much too cautious in our approach to the question of religious freedom, and that it is worthwhile to explore this caution in more detail. I undertake this with some trepidation. The idea that religious freedom is a human right is so deeply embedded in the liberal conception of human rights that any qualification of this right is generally thought to threaten the very concept of what it means to have rights. However, it is my view that religion is a deepest threat to human rights today, and that this question needs to be more forthrightly explored.
There was a case a few years ago in Australia where bands of Muslim youths went around gang raping white girls, and an Australian imam at the time suggested that Australian girls, who dressed in revealing clothes, could aptly be compared to meat displayed openly in a butcher shop, instead of being discretely wrapped or placed in a cabinet. Inevitably, he suggested, just as meat displayed openly would attract flies, so women dressed “immodestly” would inevitably attract the sexual attention of men, and they have only themselves to blame if they inflame men’s passions to such a degree that they are treated as sex objects.
While these facts do not lead most liberals to suggest that perhaps, in this case, it would be better to ban the burqa altogether, it convinces me that Salman Rushdie is right, and that full body covering should be banned in any jurisdiction where the defence of human rights is a primary legal principle. First of all, it is a danger to the women who have little choice but to dress in this way, where community pressure is almost irresistible. It has been suggested that, if the burqa were to be banned, this would mean that some Muslim women would not be permitted to leave their houses. However, this is surely not an argument in favour of not imposing a ban, but an indication of just how repressive Muslim society can be. Along with a ban should go a regulation to the effect that any man refusing permission for his wife to be seen in public would be grounds for an action for marital abuse, as well as the basis for an action for the termination of marriage on the grounds of such abuse. But, second, it is a danger to women who do not dress in this way. If the reason for dressing women in this way is based on a completely bizarre idea of sexuality — an idea which was also, at one time, normatively Christian — and that the people you have to punish for arousing men’s lust are the women, then women who are not dressed in this way are placed at risk.
- To Bag or not to Bag — that is the question
This, certainly, was the view of at least one woman who lived in student housing at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, in an area which was quickly becoming a Muslim enclave. She felt distinctly unsafe, unable to sit in the back yard in the sun, or to do other things which it should have been her right to do without let or hindrance, because all the other women in the street were shrouded in black bags (to use Rushdie’s term), and sequestered in their houses behind closed blinds, while the men dressed in light Western clothing as befitted hot and humid Southern Ontario summers, and were free to associate with whom they wished. This left the non-Muslim woman feeling not only very exposed, but also devalued, vulnerable and alone. There were only two or three non-Muslim women on the street, and one of them was approached by a Muslim child who told her that her father was going to slit her throat with a big knife. The repression of Muslim women was also the repression of other women who did not share either Muslim beliefs or Islamic prejudices about women and sexuality.
The issue surrounding this question of whether or not to ban the bagging of women impressed itself powerfully on my mind by a particularly disturbing case in Britain, where nine men, eight Pakistani in origin, one Afghani, were convicted of running a sexual grooming network, in which vulnerable teenage girls in care were groomed and then sexually exploited. Everyone is careful, of course, to downplay the role that religion played in all this, possibly with some justice. Nick Griffen, leader and spokesman for the British National Party, claimed that
You only have to read the Koran or look at the Hadith – the expressions of what the Prophet did in his life– to see where Muslim paedophilia comes from. Because it’s religiously justified so long as it’s other people’s children and not their own.
That, of course, is the kind of shrill hyperbole that one comes to expect from the BNP, and, as Paul Vallely says, it is poisonous rhetoric; but it should not escape our attention that, while most of the girls involved were white, some of them were Bangladeshi in origin, and that, while most sex offenders in the greater Manchester area are white,
In 18 child sexual exploitation trials since 1997 – in Derby, Leeds, Blackpool, Blackburn, Rotherham, Sheffield, Rochdale, Oldham and Birmingham – relating to the on-street grooming of girls aged 11 to 16 by two or more men, most of those convicted were of Pakistani heritage.
These facts are certainly suggestive, and at The Times, David Aaronovitch says bluntly: “Let’s be honest. There’s a clear link with Islam.” (The article is behind a paywall.)
Aaronovitch was responding to the Deputy Children’s Commissioner, Sue Berelowitz, who said in a radio broadcast:
It’s not a problem confined to one community. It is absolutely happening across all ethnic and religious groups.
And then, says Aaronovitch, she said that people were looking for a pattern, so they found it, and then, he says,
Ms Berelowitz … blew a little more fog over the subject by invoking 14-year-old boys who abuse 11-year-old girls, and then disappeared into her own mist.
However, he then asks what Berelowitz knows that “Mohammed Shafiq, director of the Ramadhan Foundation” does not. For Mr. Shafiq told Aaronovitch seven years ago that there was a problem within the Muslim community, pointing out that
of 68 recent convictions involving street grooming 59 were of British Pakistani men, Mr Shafiq concluded with characteristic straightforwardness that the community clearly had a problem. In his view, a minority of Pakistani men had got it into their heads that white girls were fair game.
Aaronovitch points to other Muslim leaders who attribute the problem to imported cultural baggage. The men involved, according to “Nazir Afzal, Chief Crown Prosecutor for northwest England and the man leading the prosecution in this case,” who said that the men involved
think that women are some lesser being. The availability of vulnerable young white girls is what has drawn the men to them.
To quote the Australian imam once again: they are like uncovered meat in the marketplace; they will attract flies. This assessment of women permeates Islam. The idea that freedom of religion should give a license to men (or, indeed, women) the right to conceive of women as they choose, and act on that conception, is a mockery of freedom.
When you put this together with the way that women are treated in so much of the Muslim world, where women are imprisoned for adultery or impurity when they have been raped, where beautiful women are scarred with acid simply because of their beauty, where, as Robert Fisk reports, “guest” workers (both men and women) are treated virtually as slaves or indentured workers, and executed without even a semblance of justice when accused by their “employers” of a crime, it is clear that Islam has a problem with women, as well as with racism. Allowing this to be swept under the carpet because of some misunderstanding of what constitutes cultural sensitivity is not only stupid; it is storing up social debts — problematic situations of Muslims in democratic polities — that will have to be cashed in sooner or later, and may well have become unsolvable if we do not address them now. In my view a beginning could be made by shaping policies that would make it difficult, if not impossible, for Islam to keep women in subjection, by indicating, in law, aspects of Islam that are incompatible with respect for human rights. I think we should do this with respect to other religions as well, where women are forced to play a secondary role if they are to have membership in, and participate in the activities of, their religion.
David Aaronovitch ends his article by suggesting that feminism has not yet gone far enough. There is so much more left to do. As Ophelia Benson points out again and again over at Butterflies and Wheels, and as Aaronovitch points out in his article, there is much to do:
Still, in our society, women are subjected to abuse as bitches and “ho”s, ridiculed for their appearance and somehow incapable of being bishops. Feminism has gone too far? It’s gone nowhere near far enough. Feminism has gone mad? It ought to be as mad as hell.
It should be impossible, in a free society, for a religion to refuse leadership positions to women. It should be impossible, in a free society, for women to be repressed in the name of religion. This is not a matter of religious freedom. The purpose behind religious repression of women is the control of women and their sexuality. And religions will use any means available to them in order to prosecute this purpose. They will try to define foetuses as full human persons with the same rights that pertain to adult human beings, even if this means controlling and ruling over what pregnant women may and may not do, even to the extent of criminalising them for living their lives in the way that they choose. Canada has no abortion law, and that is the way that it should be. This is a matter for individual women to decide. The state has no place in the bodies of women. Religions propose completely asinine arguments that restrict leadership to men. The familiar one, made famous by the fatuous Ann Widdecombe, that priests must be men because Jesus was a man, is so palpably vapid, and goes so directly against Paul’s claim that in Christ there is neither man nor woman, slave or free, but all are one in Christ Jesus — a promise of equality that has seldom been made good — despite the fact that these words are held by Christians to be inspired by God. Widdecombe converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism on precisely this issue. As she said in an interview with the New Statesman:
The issue over women priests was not only that I think it’s theologically impossible to ordain women, it was the nature of the debate that was the damaging thing, because instead of the debate being “Is this theologically possible?” the debate was “If we don’t do this we won’t be acceptable to the outside world”. To me, that was an abdication of the Church’s role, which is to lead, not to follow.
But my point would be precisely that being a leader in the repression of women is not only not a good thing to be; it should be impossible, in a free society, for a religion to advocate a conception of women in which their sex alone makes them ineligible for leadership. So long as this continues, women will continue to be treated with contempt, and their lives will be cabined and confined. The notion that it is “theologically impossible” to ordain women as priests is one that should not be given free rein in a free society, because it has such serious implications for the freedom of women. Why should such beliefs be tolerated in a free society? In On Liberty John Stuart Mill suggested that people should have the maximum amount of freedom that is consistent with the greatest freedom for all. It is impossible to claim that religious beliefs about women’s place does not restrict women’s freedom, or that allowing people to adhere to such beliefs has no deleterious social consequences for women. That being the case, there should be no reason why religious freedom should include the right to hold and practice beliefs which are detrimental to women’s freedom.
What else is new? Misogyny and sexism have thrived under the protective guise of cultural relativism. Once humans learned to get over their ethnic/cultural fetishes, perhaps this issue will be properly addressed.
A few disparate things to comment on…
1. First, Eric, if you know any sources on which to get more information on that woman’s situation at the University of Waterloo, I’d love to read more.
2. priests must be men because Jesus was a man
Jesus also had brown hair – so we can’t have any blonde priests!
3. On banning the burqa: I’ve been against this idea in the past. Recent consideration of the way democracies operate has given me cause to rethink this. We do restrict freedoms when it is necessary for a greater good. Two examples that I often bring up in arguments with (usually) conservatives are the Civil Rights act of 1964, which stipulated that private business owners could not discriminate in who they served based on race, and the recent battle over contraceptive coverage in the US, in which we’ve adhered to the principle that private institutions cannot run themselves any way they like, and offer any kind of insurance coverage they like. Put simply, we limit the liberty of private business owners and institutions to effect a greater good. We also limit speech in instances where safety is an issue. Banning a particular type of clothing where human rights are an issue is therefore not without precedent. While I’m not yet convinced it would be an overall benefit to society, I’m open to letting evidence of that convince me.
4.
I don’t like using the word “blame” in these discussions. The only reason this imam’s reasoning is false is because, while what he says may be true of certain people at certain times, it is not true for society at large, and it need not be true. If it were true – if humans were the kind of species where our males were incensed by the female form, always and without exception – then taking precautions such as putting women in bags might be necessary. But humans are not like this, as a whole, despite the fact that *some* of us are. So there is no reason to accept this as if it were inevitable.
I must admit, even though I know it’s the right and moral thing to ban the bag, I also recognize the paradox of imposing my own will on others who wish to express their freedom in the most irrational and stupid ways.
One of my real pet hates are tattoos. Imagine a man completely covered in tattoos, not because he’s free but because its part of his culture and tradition. Well, I hate the idea but I then think, this is a free society, people are free to cover themselves with ink.
Now imagine, a woman covers herself in tattoos, encouraged by her peers. To me, it’s aesthetically displeasing, as much as a bag, and she may not be doing it because she’s free, but enslaved among her community and lifestyle beliefs. Do I have a write to impose my will on her, paternalistically, and take away her ability to cover her body with awful disfiguring ink?
I discover that I don’t have any such right. But neither does the state. Even if the state represents the will of the people, it only governs in a sense of protecting people in a negative sense, not a positive sense.
So that’s basically my dilemma. I can’t impose my will by force, but I can by reason. And that to me is how the debate must be one. Rather than banning the bag, I must try to reason the person out of the bag, or at least allow the person to reason themselves out of the bag.
Sorry for the poor spelling. “debate must be won.” not “debate must be one.”
Very well expressed. At first reading, I find myself agreeing: yes, we must ban the bag. However, upon reflection, I do not think that would solve the problem we have. Women have been ‘less’ for so long that most women do not register in their own minds that there is anything amiss with their station in society. I was raised in the 50′s by a very intelligent mother who had great problem solving and reasoning skills, who saw the status of women in that society (in W. Europe and in the USA) as a plot by the patriarchy to maintain control. Yet I was inculcated very carefully in how to be a ‘good girl’, how to ‘act like a lady’, not to be ‘pushy’, and so on ad nauseum. She did it without realizing how deeply she had drunk of the kool-aid. I think the way forward is long, and we are bound to meet with resistance from the entrenched power wielders: educating children in how to observe, how to find and question their assumptions, and how to reason is the only way out of this. Laws can protect us from the most egregious violence, but rarely effect change in a basic belief structure.
I raised my children as rational agents: if one of them decides to adopt the bag habit, I would have to assume it was done after some serious thought, and not because a religion or neighbor told her that ‘this is the way it is done’, in which case I might disagree with her taste in garments, but would not see her as oppressed. I hold out the hope that our various societies will gradually evolve past the need for one sex to be dominant. It all points to: better education (teach them to think!) and less religion (preferably none at all). Humans, as a species, seem to be moving in this direction, if at a glacial pace.
Thank you for the post. I agree with everything that you have written. I have been following the grooming/ child rape cases in England for sometime now. What I would like to ask those who claim that the background of the perpetrators is of no consequence is the following question: As a theoretical exercise, what form of statistical evidence would convince them that there is a problem within the Pakistani community.
More information on the Imam that Eric refers to in his post can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taj_El-Din_Hilaly
Egbert, et. al., Alonzo Fyfe has a great series on the defense of secular society. Scroll down the right menu bar and open April. The first of sixteen segments is here.
He concludes that the intrusion of religious ideas into policy in secular society is illegitimate, just as the introduction of religious evidence into a court of law is illigitimate. “I spoke with god and god told me the defendent is guilty”, is not admissible. God is unavailable for cross examination.
Fyfe offers three reasons in his summary:
Finally, he observes:
For all these reasons, post-modernist cultural relativism is bankrupt. We can, indeed, declare that certain cultural and religiously motivated policies are illigitimate. And the burqa is one of them. The burqa is just a sub-element of the religious control and devaluation of women. And the intrusion of religiously motivated policy on a secular society is not permissible. If you want to adopt a law that causes harm, you must present rational evidence and arguments to justify it.
I find veiling to be one of the nastier manifestations of Islamic tradition. I do not want to give special privilege to anyone who would mandate wearing a bag. However, I do not think a legal ban is a legitimate option.
The problem with the burqa is its symbolism. Removing a symbol does not destroy the belief it represents. You cannot stop anti-Semitism or racism by punishing all those who would shave their heads. Likewise, you are doing nothing when preventing women from covering themselves for different reasons. A woman who wants to go around in a bee keeper outfit would be fairly strange, but such an outfit has no symbolism. If the weather is cold we do not mind if people wear ski masks. You cannot effectively combat a disease by attacking a symptom.
More than the shortcomings of legislating symbols, though, a ban would mostly serve to punish the victims. How else can we enforce such a ban other than punishing the women who are wearing the offending garbs? Are we really going to save oppressed Muslim women by putting them in jail? We will stop people from being discriminated against by stiffly fining them? Are we going to change people’s minds by legislating the symbols of their thought crimes? There is no effective way to enforce such a ban. Everyone except the woman in question would be privy to how she could dress herself. I would not want someone mandating my nudity in order to promote dismantling sexual taboos, a third party enforcement of what is most important is unacceptable.
We need a consciousness shift to combat sexism, and this is not the kind of thing you can hammer into people by the enforcement of law. We can and do punish the horrible consequences of the bad thinking, but we must not be tempted into trying to preemptively punish the thinking itself. Continue punishing the practices that have no ambiguity. Convict the rapes, threats, and beatings. Do not convict the words, books, or clothing. The uniform is not what truly enables the bad behavior.
If the veil is indeed a personal choice, and I fail to see how one could definitively asses it is not if the person is taken at their word, it does not infringe on the rights of anyone else and as such should not be infringed upon with such a broad stroke as a complete ban.
Being curious about the “street grooming” issue, I encountered this discussion, which concedes that religion is partly to blame:
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/722/on_street_grooming
The alarming rise of the far right in the West is probably something we ought to keep our eye on, as much as the evils of religion.
John K:
If it were true that the rights of others were not infringed upon, then I might agree with you. But I know from the one case that I mention, that the person involved did feel that her rights were very seriously limited by the existence of bagged and cloistered women in her community. She felt that she had to close her own blinds, so as not to be an invitation to the men in the community, that she did not feel free to sit in her back yard to soak up the rays, and so endlessly on. It does infringe upon the rights of others, and those who think it doesn’t are seriously wrong, as the young women in Australia found out to their cost. Repressing any women is a danger to all women, and it should not be supposed that the freedom of religious belief gives people the liberty to practice their religion as they please.
I add that I agree with Dave Fischer’s assessment of the role of religion in society. (Thank you Dave.) His last paragraph rings very true to me. I know that I seem to be a bit of a firebrand about this, but I think (Egbert) that one of the reasons for the advance of far right causes — and I’m not altogether convinced that they are advancing all that much — is the kind of careless multiculturalism that seems unable to recognise, as a harm, what is being done in the name of religion. I condemn the repression of women in Saudi Arabia. I do not think that people should be able to come to Canada and impose the same kind of repressive regime on women they consider their own. It makes a nonsense of what democracy stands for, and makes for islands of repression in our midst. This is unacceptable in a democratic society. As Aaronovitch says in his article, women should be as mad as hell, and they should be demanding that their rights, as citizens and persons of worth, is generally recognised and respected by society.
Dave Fischer,
Thanks for that link, and I did read the first article.
However, I am really talking about a liberal democracy with a secular state, which I think is the default position. A secular society is, I think, something different, and it might be that people confuse a secular state with a secular society.
The way I understand a secular state is the principle of separation of church and state. That is, separation of religion from state institutions, but not a separation from society. Separating religion from society is something entirely different.
However, I have thought about this, and I’m of the opinion that no, a secular society is oppressive and tyrannical against the religious, and goes against the idea of a free (or liberal) society, which is the kind of society that provides the right environment for progress.
And multiculturalism, is in my opinion, born from a misunderstanding of a liberal society. A liberal society is not one made up of other cultures, but a single universal culture of itself, although not a culture that uses force to impose itself on others, but reason.
It might be that democracy and liberalism is doomed, I don’t know, even when it is the right way for humans to organize themselves. If it is doomed, then I don’t see any hope at all in humanity, and I would have to retreat into Nietzschean view on life, where might rules rather than reason.
I am really uncomfortable when the burqa and niqab are defended as the free choice of women.
I remember talking with a really liberal friend of mine, around the time of the French bans and though conflicted I was wondering if it might be a case where it was possibly a good thing. I brought up the case of an Italian man who said he would refuse to allow his wife outside the house without her burqa. My friend’s reply was that those who banned the burqa we would be the cause of the woman’ imprisonment.
I just couldn’t agree. It was colluding with the idea of the wife being her husband’s chattel. That somehow we would infringe upon his ‘right’ to exercise this power over his wife leaving him with the only option of imprisoning her at home, a crime in itself.
I also felt it illustrated the fact that the burqa itself is a acts as a mobile prison.
While ideally I think we should win people over to secularism on the strength of the arguments and the evidence of its melioration of religious strife in societies, for this to work you have to ensure that communities can’t just deny individuals their rights to mix, and interact freely because they ‘belong’ to that community. How can a person be free if they don’t have a right of free association.
This seems to be the main function of the burqa. I think it serves to deny the women full access to society.
It is like a cordon sanitaire that isolates women from the surrounding society so they won’t be infected by the surrounding culture. Namely, by our culture’s ideas of women being individuals with full rights to self-determination.
If a woman has no ability to get to know all her options then how can she be said to be exercising her agency.
I’m not under any illusion that our own culture is unproblematic. We have a long way to go in tackling our own mysogyny, homophobia, etc. I just think that this won’t happen while letting certain communities among us get a pass.
As previously noted, it can be argued that there is a real negative effect on society in the way it emboldens the men of the culture to menace and act threateningly to women who don’t efface themselves in public. This behaviour is not happening in a vacuum.
I don’t feel comfortable with doing everything we can legally to protect the women outside these communities while abrogating all responsibility to the women within them.
I wonder what Egbert has in mind when he says “a secular society is oppressive and tyrannical against the religious…”. What society is he thinking of?
If anything, I think we haven’t gone far enough in creating truly egalitarian secular societies.
I think the best we can hope for is a secular state. A secular society is in fact a society where religion is neutral and even protected. It’s not about forcing religion out of public life. People need to remember that anyone can be a secularist, both religious and non-religious.
Secularism is a strong position in the state, but a weak position in society. If we are to live in a democracy based on liberty and equality, then I’m afraid that is the price we have to pay. And when we start imposing ourselves on the religious, then we’re going to end up damaging the very thing that protects us.
But we do have reason, and that is how we must win against religion, otherwise we end up in the ethics of might makes right.
And Islam is all about might makes right. For example, the following awfulness:
http://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2012/05/kuwait-approves-death-penalty-for-blasphemy
@ Egbert, you are going to have to be more precise. When you say: “And when we start imposing ourselves on the religious, then we’re going to end up damaging the very thing that protects us.”, you don’t give any example of an imposition nor do you show what the damage would be.
You are just throwing it out there, like an oracle, without backing it up. It is no different to those saying gay marriage will cause the downfall of Western civilization.
How do you know? What is your evidence for this statement?
You also seem to be making out that society’s impositions on the religious are somehow greater than the impositions on the rest of us, cause for greater concern.
In the interest of the public good society limits all our freedoms. Why privilege the religious above the rest. A truly secular society would by definition not privilege or punish some group on the basis of their religion.
Folowing the same rules as the rest of us does not unfairly single the religious out.
If we do not agree with limits upon our freedom then we need to give rational secular reasons for why it is unjustified. Which is exactly what gay people are doing as regards equal marriage.
If you frame this as ‘us’ imposing our will on them, the religious, it seems unfair.
If someone were to deny their daughters an education because in their culture they believe girls should be wives and mothers we would discount that and force them to educate their children, as society mandates all our children get it.
I always hear claims of intolerance against them from religious people, but it always seems to be them being blocked from impinging upon others. People not tolerating their intolerance.
If you have a concrete example of an unfair imposition you feel is unjustifiably partial I’d like to hear it.
Apashiol,
If you want an example, then take a look at the history of the Soviet Union, where religion was oppressed, under one of the most oppressive and evil states to have ever existed.
Please don’t misinterpret my position. I am for complete equality, and liberty, including gay marriage and all the other things that are campaigned for. What I am not for is the right for people to impose their beliefs on others, including us (atheists) imposing our anti-religious views onto the religious. I am not for force, no matter how good and moral, but rather for reason.
You claim it is unfair. Well, because the religious use deception, force, oppression and coercion, it doesn’t mean we can use the same means in order to make it fair.
Now, when it comes to children, I do think things are different. They ought to come under the protection of the state, if they are being abused in any way. Education ought to be understood as a right, and denying an equal education would be denying a right.
I am convinced that right makes right, and not might makes right. However, if such a liberal democracy were to fail, then it is a matter of survival, and ethics goes out of the window.
@ Egbert, I am talking about secular states and you give the example of a totalitarian communist one.
I also object to you conflating secularism with atheism. They are two separate things.
Atheism is the lack of belief in gods. Secularism is a political ideology where the state remains neutral towards religions and beliefs. It neither promotes nor descriminates against them.
That doesn’t mean a secular society is one lacking a system of ethics. Secular societies are organised around systems of laws. It is just that those laws are not grounded in any sect or religions belief system.
There may also be times when a secular state bans certain expressions of religion. Animal sacrifices might be an example, forcing compliance with already existing anti-cruelty laws.
It is also important that the laws be the same for all.
You are the only one talking about atheists imposing anti-religious beliefs on the religious.
I am wondering about where we draw the line as regards burqas and niqabs and whether classing them as freely chosen clothing isn’t just a way to not tackle what might be better understood as a cultural practice that is oppressive.
If we had a Chinese community that still practiced footbinding we would be faced with a similar dilemma.
If a religious man beats his wife, it should not matter that his religion give him licence to do so. He commits a crime according to secular law and should be punished accordingly.
If anything I see more cases of religions and the religious getting off lightly for their crimes, and not the other way round.
Stop with the strawmen and equivocation. If the conversation is about secularism don’t twist it to make out the proposal is for some kind of atheistic tyranny.
Thesis: Societies which require the burqa differ from most other societies only in degree, not in kind. Most societies agree that nudity is not generally acceptable and also agree more or less what nudity is. It is also sex-neutral, except that a visible beard is not considered nudity but visible female breasts are (both are secondary sexual characteristics). While most people might claim they reject public (or even private) nudity on other grounds, the real source of this taboo is religion, just like in the case of the burqa. It’s just a degree of difference, not of kind. Any arguments as to why public nudity is inappropriate are essentially the same as arguments in favour of the burqa, head scarves etc.
In no country does the freedom exist for individuals to determine completely where, when and what they want to wear (or not). In all countries, the majority determines what is appropriate for everyone. If one can live with the fact that the majority doesn’t want public nudity, then one should be able to live with the fact if the majority wants to ban the burqa. In both cases it’s the same reason: it is what the majority wants. Anti-discrimination laws specify that no-one should be disadvantaged because of race, religion, culture, ethnic origin etc. By the same token, no-one should be able to claim exemptions from the rules of society on these grounds. There are two logical arrangements: complete freedom of dress, including allowing public nudity, or majority rules, including banning the burqa. Thus, there should be no problem banning the burqa based on majority vote as long as majority vote rules in similar questions (appropriate dress). On the other hand, if one thinks that individual freedom prohibits a ban on the burqa, then it should also prohibit a ban on public nudity. If one campaigns for freedom, it should be freedom for everyone. A campaign for the right to wear the burqa based on freedom is probably cast that way not because the people pushing it believe in freedom, but because they see this having a greater chance of success than trying to claim an exemption from the rules of society. (Of course, many people who favour the right to wear the burqa, and all people who think that the burqa should be mandatory, disapprove of public nudity, making it clear that their real issue is not freedom.)
@ Eric
You make a good counter argument, although I suspect that even if we were to remove all the shrouded women from such a neighborhood the woman in your example would not be all that much better off. I am in favor of punishing the actual threats, intimidation, and act of violence. I am on board with the goal; I just take pause at the method.
Clearly there are those garbed against their will, I just see no reasonable way to pick them out from those who are actually willing. It is an irritating but important distinction.
I have to agree with Apashiol in regard to the intrusion of religion into secular society. But perhaps we should back up and deal with the secular state and the secular society issue. The “hard” defense of secularism I referred to says that the secular state cannot make a law harming people based on a religious claim. The laws of the secular state determine what is allowed in a secular society. None of this means that the religious are not allowed to participate, or are shunted aside in any manner. Just that they cannot advance a religious claim as the basis for a law. Secular states and secular societies can exist within a totalitarian regime or a republic or a democracy.
Now, with regard to banning the bag. The secular rational for the ban is that the burqa is a symbol of oppression and the devaluing of women, which is harm in the sight of a secular state. Counterbalancing that is the harm done to a woman who freely wished to wear the burqa. This is a claim made by the supporters of the burqa, and as such, it is incumbant upon them to produce evidence for this position. Given the intensity of Islam on the issue of controlling women and the physical and psychological punishment inflicted on women who don’t accept their role, it may be impossible to adduce any evidence for that claim by the supporters.
I would argue that the imposition of the burqa on Islamic women living in a secular state by Islamic men is the same as making a law in the secular state imposing the burqa on a class of people. That argument applies to the whole concept of Sharia law in a secular state. There is one set of laws for all in a secular state.
In the absence of rational evidence and argument for such, it is impermissible in a secular state.
I am reminded of the article in today’s paper about the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and their “investigation” of the Girl Scouts. The “issues” include a partnership with Planned Parenthood, sexuality, birth control and abortion (denied repeatedly over the years).
This is not an issue of religious “freedom” for the Catholic Bishops, it is about intimidation and bullying in the attempt to impose their religious stamp on the Girl Scouts. As such, it is impermissible in a secular society.
Will this tension ever abate? I doubt it, and the pendulum will swing back and forth concerning the intensity of the religious to control society, and the strength of the secularists to resist.
@Dave Fischer,
This is one of the reasons I find those who argue for not interfering with the burqa on the grounds of tradition so unconvincing. It is basically an appeal to tradition. ‘This is what we’ve always done’, has nothing to say about whether it is consistent with our ethical standards.
That was a clumsily worded sentence; rather than basically I meant something like ‘It is just an appeal to tradition which isn’t an argument.
“one of the non-Muslim women was approached by a Muslim child who told her that her father was going to slit her throat with a big knife.”
This would be a opportunity to educate the Muslim child by telling the child that if her father were to utter that threat in public or be so unwise as to carry out his threat, the Canadian police would put her father in jail.
Being very clear about what Canadian society will accept/tolerate and examples from the actions of Canadian women faced with advice on how to dress, for example the SlutWalk, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SlutWalk) may educate and empower all young woman who feel exposed, devalued, and vulnerable