France MPs' report backs Muslim face veil ban

[pampango]

Source: BBC

A French parliamentary committee has recommended a partial ban on women wearing Islamic face veils. The committee's near 200-page report has proposed a ban in hospitals, schools and on public transport.

Opinion polls suggest a majority of French people support a full ban. However, the parliamentary deputies have recommended that - for now - restrictions should be limited. The committee suggests a ban inside public buildings, with those who defy the ban denied whatever services are on offer there - for example state benefits.

The issue has divided France's political parties. The Socialist opposition has come out officially against a ban, saying it would be difficult to enforce. It says it is opposed to full veils in principle, but some members have expressed fears about any ruling that could stigmatise Muslim women.

Meanwhile, the head of Mr Sarkozy's right-wing UMP party has already presented a bill in parliament supporting a full ban on grounds of security.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8480161.stm

---

Always interesting how the socialist and conservative parties in Europe align themselves on an issue like this. The Socialist Party must have had some interesting internal discussions before taking an official position against the face veil ban.

[wake.up.america]

1. Silly - I could care less about the dress of someone else..

Does he hate me and why concerns me more.

[pnwmom]

5. If the person is a he and he makes his wife dress like that

then he probably is at least disgusted by slutty American women.

:shrug:

[No Elephants]

2. I never know how to feel about these threads. On the one hand,

rulings like this may help women. On the other hand, people need to stop telling women how to dress.

[Tailormyst]

32. Its outlawing a practice that oppresses women

Women who wouldn't complain, even if you asked them, due to the cultural backlash they would get in return. Women who hate wearing it, are not going to come out any say "yes I hate wearing this oppressive garment" because if they do they would suffer the consequences within their homes and communities. In some places it would be a death sentence.

[Chulanowa]

3. Oh look, a majority deciding the rights of a minority

Now where have I seen this before?

[dipsydoodle]

4. That's life

So maybe just deal with it.

[Chulanowa]

13. Wow. That's an interesting perspective

Can you imagine yourself saying that to anyone who isn't Muslim? I'm imagining seeing you say this on DU right after prop8 passed. Can you see yourself doing that?

[dipsydoodle]

15. You made a general statement : not a specific one.

In the specific instance of the OP the minority is c.12% of the population of France who it would appear may need to conform to the wishes of the general balance of the population of c.88%. France is neither categorised or regarded as being a Muslim country. It is the general expectation of a country's citizens that immigrants conform to their expectations and way of life such as occured in the UK with major levels of immigration from Jamaica etc in the '50s and from Uganda as a result of Amin's antics : both groups of people assimilated themselves with ease into UK society.

I don't accept your prop8 analogy and no I wouldn't have done so anyway.

[Chulanowa]

18. Of course you don't accept it; It's correct

Your argument is fallacious and is something I expect from Stormfront. One can assimilate while still maintaining both religion and cultural dress.

Call me when France bans sheitels and tallits.

[riderinthestorm]

24. France has banned all religious symbols including the sheitel and tallits

and the cross and headscarves in public schools - a move supported virtually universally by French citizens and immigrants alike.

This proposed ban is for face-covering veils, burqas and niqab which virtually shroud women.

Virtually all cultures have rules regarding clothing in the public place. An Aboriginal woman cannot go topless in Chicago no matter how much that is part of her religion or her cultural "dress". She's going to have to assimilate or go back to her Aboriginal tribal lands. That's not anything from "Stormfront". That's just American culture and the norms we have agreed upon in the US regarding clothing standards in public.

France has a strong, solid history of civic, public and cultural secularism spanning centuries. They've even banned the cross and clerical collar at times when the church has become too omnipresent.

[Chulanowa]

27. And I hold that France is wrong for doing so.

We're obviously not going to get anywhere here. Enjoy your day.

[Nihil]

29. Ha!

You said: "Call me when France bans sheitels and tallits."

The next reply called you (on your bigotry although they were politer than that).

Instead of an apology for being i) wrong & ii) a pillock in the way you were wrong,
you claimed
> We're obviously not going to get anywhere here

then stomped your little feet and went home crying because the rest of the world
doesn't agree with little ol' you ...!

:rofl:

[pnwmom]

6. Is that worse than the minority (men) deciding about the rights of the majority (women)?

As they do in many Muslim countries?

[Chulanowa]

12. And so that makes it okay to do the same to French women?

Kind of a double standard there, don't you think? It's bad when Muslim men make stupid fucking rules that restrict Muslim women, but it's okay when French (presumably Christian, certainly white) men make stupid fucking rules that restrict Muslim women?

[pnwmom]

16. Perhaps the French men are really making rules that prevent Muslim men

from requiring their wives to wear suffocating and identity-hiding clothing in public.

[Chulanowa]

17. That's not the case, though

This is not a law against coercive treatment of women. I'd be behind such a law. It's a law that is coercive treatment against women, which is why I'm against it

This is a law that does exactly what you're criticizing - it's a paternalistic law that strips the freedom of women to choose their own clothing. It may surprise you, but there are in fact Muslim women who choose to wear veils or what have you. A law that tells them they can't is identical to a law that tells them they must.

[pnwmom]

19. You don't know how many women wear those things only because they feel they must.

No one does.

But knowing how uncomfortable they are to wear and how much they hamper movement, my personal opinion is that most women don't feel they have a choice.

[Chulanowa]

20. No, I don't

And that's not the point. I know there are women who make the choice to wear these outfits for themselves. I don't need to know how many there are to know they exist.

As for your personal opinion... Do you also feel that women you see wearing tiny, high-heeled shoes, skintight pants, and "bust-enhancing" bras are all prostitutes? because nobody would wear a getup that uncomfortable unless someone - say, a pimp - were forcing them to, right? It's inconceivable that a woman would ever choose to dress herself that way, isn't it? We should make laws that prevent them from doing so, because they might have pimps making them do it!

...See how silly that sounds? The only difference is, the tight-pants-and-tiny-shoes outfit is something you probably perceive as "normal." It might even be a getup you wear, I don't know.

Bottom line, women (hell, people) should be free to dress as they want, and paternalistic laws like this are bad, regardless of who they target.

[pnwmom]

21. I'm fine with a law against tiny, high-heeled, foot-deforming shoes.

Go ahead.

[riderinthestorm]

25. So you are at the forefront of changing all US laws that tell women how to dress?

If I go outside without a shirt on, I'm going to be arrested and forcibly covered.

I'm absolutely certain that there is a certain (very small) percentage of women who want to go to work, to school, to the playground topless. But we have laws that outlaw that. And we've all agreed to abide by that or be arrested. Because it's part of our culture and our heritage and our American daily life. And if you are from a topless culture, if you come to the US, you are going to have to abide by our laws and cover up.

France's culture is strongly against religious garb (any garb actually) that obscures the face. The full face veil/burqa/niqab are not religiously required at all in Islam, even the headscarf is optional. These are cultural affectations only.

[Chulanowa]

26. I definitely support such changes, yes

And not for the crass reasons you might assume - I honestly think that telling another adult what to wear, backed up by the full force of the law, is asinine. Whether it's telling women they can't wear a veil, or telling them they can't wear long pants, or telling them that they must wear the veil, or in Utah, magic underwear, is fucking dumb.

Deforming women's abdomens with girdles used to be American culture, too. My advice? Get over it. Culture changes, and I didn't see any of your ancestors being polite enough to learn the cultures of mine before making themselves at home.

[JCMach1]

8. Happens all the time when the practices of the minority are out of step with society...

see my post below.

[JCMach1]

7. What if I were a nudist and firmly believed in my right to be nude

...Can the government legislate where I can be nude?

I think we know the answer to that... of course they can.

Does the government have the right to do it then?... SURE


But SHOULD they? That is another argument entirely.

[AlphaCentauri]

9. will the people who support burqas would support nudity? n/t

[JCMach1]

11. That's kinda the point...

Sorry stole the example from a French woman journalist who appears on the BBC regularly... but thought it was actually a pretty good analogy.

[pampango]

10. Here's a longer article from Global Post - "French identity debate: beyond burqas"

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/france/100126/muslim-women-dress-burqa?page=0,0

"In announcing the government-sponsored debate, (Immigration Minister) Besson said it was consistent with Sarkozy’s campaign promise to promote national identity. Nonetheless, some called it a political ploy to curry favor with voters ahead of regional elections this spring and with those who may be disappointed with Sarkozy’s flat performance midway through his presidential term. Others saw it as a strategy to deflect attention from domestic problems like the 450,000 people added to the unemployment rolls in 2009, or political scandals involving his son and his culture minister."

"On the opening day of the online debate, the writer Marie Ndiaye won France’s highest literary award, the Prix Goncourt, for her book titled, “Three Strong Women.” In the media blitz, much was made of her African ancestry even though she was born in France, raised solely by a French mother and only met her Senegalese father when she first traveled to Africa in her 20s. Incessant references to Ndiaye’s African background “make no sense” to the 42-year-old author now based in Berlin, who said in interviews that despite being raised 100 percent French, she found it ironic that she can seem foreign in her own country.

Her brother, Pap Ndiaye, a historian and sociologist at the School for Advanced Studies in Social Science, told the Christian Science Monitor: “For several years, immigrants and the children of immigrants have been targeted as threats to the French national identity. This may be a way to suggest they are not French or are not as French as they should be.”"

"While there was no shortage of definitions of what it was to be French, one post on the government’s website that was widely circulated online made an attempt to delineate what it was not: “Mosques and tam-tams, Ramadan and lucky charms, minarets and boubous, sharia and African witchcraft, Arabic or Wolof, harissa and cassava, the palm tree and the baobab are by no means contemptible; only they are not part of French civilization.”"

[davidpdx]

28. I'm frankly torn on this one

I like the article above more then the OP's version. Making a requirement of what is or isn't acceptable to be French is a problem. I think on the other hand, I agree that if women feel they have to wear it, it is oppressive. It's really a catch 22, your damned if you do and damned if you don't.

[Flaneur]

14. I don't support government-mandated dress codes.

I didn't in junior high school and I don't now.

[Democrat_in_Houston]

22. I would support a ban on public transporation

Furthermore, I think that no veils should be allowed to be worn by any government employee including teachers. Secular society shouldn't in any way support this kind of crap, and if no bans are in place -sooner or later someone is going to attempt to teach school with the face covered. YUCK, YUCK, YUCK. I'd remove my children so fast they wouldn't know what happened. No way are my daughters (and sons) going to have anyone dressed like that as potential role models.

Other than that - walking down the street, shopping, dining (HUH?) etc. - they can do whatever they want.

[meow2u3]

23. I can understand the face veil ban on grounds of stopping terrorism, but...

on the other hand, this can amount to curtailing people's right to practice their religion freely.

On the security/terrorism argument for the ban, some racist, right-wing domestic terrorist can dress in Muslim drag to commit his or her crimes against people he or she doesn't like. Even Islamic terrorists have been known to have either used, or posed as, female suicide bombers to advance their radical, criminal agenda. Osama bin Laden himself has allegedly made his escape by dressing in a burka, disguised as a woman, BTA, Bush allowed him to escape once the pipeline project was cleared of Taliban.


On the argument against the ban on face veils: It's a blatant ban on religious freedom. France is a (nominally) Catholic country, so what if the shoe were on the other foot? What if France were taken over by Muslims and laws were passed to ban rosaries? Think about what you're about to ban because if the minorities take over, you, the majority, will end up oppressed. The oppressed, once in power, can and will sometimes become the oppressor.

[riderinthestorm]

30. France has banned Catholic religious garb in the past when the church became too powerful

They have centuries of history to support their adamant stand that their culture is secular including banning Catholic religious garb in the 1790s.

These shrouds are not an Islamic religious requirement so this isn't about "religion", these are only an indication of their religious culture. They make women "invisible" and radically alter how these women are perceived and treated in a society that highly prizes equality.

[atmame77]

31. Here in the USA We ban clothing

Here in the USA We ban clothing that hides the face too. EX: The KKK may not hide their faces.
Muslims can't use religion because they have denied that the veils are mandated by Islam.