Well, when a mommy's all alone, and the milkman visits when daddy isn't home...
Yeah, how do we breed?
I think somebody hasn't had
the talk yet
It's not like the French went all anti-women, Smee. It's that they banned covering the face in public space as it hinders effective communication and facial recognition for security reasons.
America is hyper-obsessed with security and we don't even do that. We have a police state going on and we can still manage to let women conceal their faces if they want to.
It was a thinly veiled excuse to oppress Muslim women. Under the misguided belief that restrictive laws would force liberation on them.
TheDwarfy, that's a bullshit excuse. It was Muslim-bashing all along. After all, they banned all veils in school earlier. So it's hardly about security.
And yet it does have practical uses, regardless of what you think the motive is. And it applies to the general public, not specifically to Muslims, though their head veil is obviously what was going to be effected most.
Still, it's a rather oppressive custom that separates Muslims from the French population. Given that the gain is improved relations and the cost is a bit of cloth held over your face, it's not like it's a terrible thing. What it boils down to is whether or not the veil is oppression, or taking the veil off is oppression- I, personally, think that the women involved benefit from not having to hide themselves permanently from the public, and thus separate themselves.
Of course, they didn't go about it in a sensitive fashion, but to put it bluntly it does the job.
I won't complain about frobidding burka-style Islam. Moderate Islam no problem, but if your religion require women to cover up head to toe do that elsewhere.
The unguided intention may be to 'liberate' these women but unfortunately it's not quite that simple. The fact of the matter that these women are freely choosing to wear that clothing of their own accord. Of course, if they're being coerced into it by other people it's another matter, but I don't think that's the case here. Changing things like this is done gently over time, not with a hamfisted shotgun blast to the knee caps.
Yes. It's a cultural thing, and they may choose to wear it- but it's because Allah tells them to hide themselves, IIRC. It separates women from men as it gives them separate rules, and then further generations of Muslim girls will also be forced into this custom from birth. It has a profound effect on the rest of their lives if they feel the need to hide away from men.