Current Events

Blending In

The Mormon polygamists have not blended in and they are going to jail.

Amish, Sikhs, orthodox Jews or most Muslims for that matter are living by the societal rules and are only covering their hairs. Sikhs cannot carry their knives in their turbans.

David Koresh also tried to circumvent the laws and we saw what happened at Waco.

If you do not want to show your face

STAY HOME!

She could have simply pulled the Burka and show her face, pay the fine and walk away. In Saudi Arabia and Iran if a women is without Hijab, she would be subject to lashes to her bare skin.

One has freedom but also should respect the common sense. You can not cover your face walking just as you can not tint your car windows too dark. Its matter of public safety.

Fatima Mernissi

The Veil and the Male Elite

Mernissi, an internationally known Moroccan sociologist, endeavors to
show that discrimination against women, so common in the Muslim world
today, is not a fundamental tenet of Islam as many contemporary male
Muslims would like us to believe. Her basic premise is that Islam is
inherently egalitarian and, using extensive documentation from the
Koran, the Hadith, and other Islamic historical commentary, Mernissi
successfully proves her hypothesis. While doing so, she teaches the
reader a great deal about Mohammed (the man as well as the prophet), his
wives, his companions, and early Islamic society. Like Mernissi's other
books ( Beyond the Veil , Indiana Univ. Pr., 1987; Doing Daily Battle ,
Rutgers Univ. Pr., 1989; Women in Emergent Morocco , Flame Internat.,
1982), this fascinating, well-written, and well-documented work is an
excellent addition to scholarship on Muslim women. Recommended for
academic libraries and others with women's studies or Middle East
collections.

It must be banned

The whole thing about Hejab and Burqa bring down the whole society. It should be banned for good. 

.......

meh who cares  

FREE IRAN

I remember watching a TV program

....... while the anti burka law was still being discussed. Interviews with both women and their husbands defending burka.

The journalist asked the guy what would he do if law came info force and his wife had to take the veil off. "We'd move to Saudi Arabia", he said. Very troubling, put me definitely off wishing to defend anybody's right to hide themselves behind a black veil.

Besides.  Despite calling the municipal policemen (and they are not normally agressive) "dogs",  I'm sure she'd pay much less than I would if dared say the same thing.

...........

The video is hard to watch, but I agree with Reality-Bites that it is more a security issue.

I doubt that the lady can get on an airplane like that!

Shoe on the other Foot!

Let’s say we are back in Iran of the 70’s JJ and the late Shah decides for whatever reason to bring a few million people from Congo to Iran and settle them in Abadan. And every morning as you get out of your house to go to school, you see men and women in Congolese outfit speaking a foreign tongue and look threatening. What would you do? You walk on the opposite side of the street or you go and tell them that if you want to live in Abadan, you need to make some adjustments.

French are trying to accommodate these folks, but many of them are hell bent on imposing their own way of life on the French. And a great culture is being ruined by the political correctness.

Back in 2006, I was walking with a few of my French friends in downtown Lyon to go to a restaurant and a bunch of North African guys were roaming the plaza as if it was theirs. My friends whispered quietly to me, “Let’s move to the other side.”

It is that bad.

security threat

Security threat is the reason which makes French parlement ruled this law.

The law doesn't mention anything about Islam or any religion. You cannot hide your face . You can do it only during carnaval period.

When a woman goes searching a child to school . How do you recognize if she is her mother or even if it is a lady. What about passport control in airport ?!

Try to put a hide your face and enter to a US bank ! I think you would have requierd to show your face.

JJ

Even free societies need to have to some restrictions and boundaries. People can't just do whatever they choose regardless of consequences, otherwise chaos, lawlessness and anarchy follows.

Facial recognition, expressions and emotions are not only fundamental aspects of human to human interaction and communication, but also critical to questions of identity, security and indeed conducting business and services. 

Would you, for example, be happy to be treated by a Burka wearing dentist? Would you be happy for children to be taught at school by burka wearing teachers? Would you be happy to conduct business with a burka wearing person, never being sure if it is the same person or even the person they claim to be? Maybe you would, but I wouldn't. Nor should I have to.

This "free society" argument supposedly justifying some people (through distortion of religious dogma) hiding themselves away from the world and expect others to have to deal with them on a day to day basis, is totally facile.

"Men never do evil so

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction" - Blaise Pascal

Join the Civilized World or

Join the Civilized World or get the F@$k out! For so long the FREE WORLD have let these Islamic Fanatics Exercise their Freedom of Rights... And they have given nothing in return but to see them taking over and their demands to change the FREE WORLD according to their own fanatic and backwarded values and life styles... Well, NO MORE!!! OK! Deal with it...

PS. Until the day I see Fascist Islamic countries let their own women or any foreign women to exercise their FREEDOM to NOT wear any cover, I support the equal treatment (To Unveil...) on the other side vs the Fanatic Islamic people who want to impose their shameful ignorant retardness to the rest of the FREE world! 

Long Live Freedom & Civilized World and People. (Vive La France)

Yours Truly,

An Iranian and a former Muslim. 

Afshin : you don't like French

Afshin,

The only thing I undrestand from your comment is that you don't like French.

There is nothing factual and reasonable behind what you wrote. There is only hate. Don't forget hate is the fuel of Fascism.

orang

Islam does not require covering your face

Because this video is shaky, I can not find out if this woman's face is covered or not. But usually Burka means something that covers your face and if this is the case, since Islam does not require covering your face, these women have no religious ground to stand on. Now if police removed an object like rosari which covers the hair, then you would have a point. But just because burqua is something "tahmeeli" by the culture of "mardsalaree" in these Muslim countries, is France supposed to forgo its security needs and meanwhile put an stamp on something that helps keep women backwards?

Respectfully remove your burka -- or else?

Respectfully don't be a Muslim or else...Respectfully don't be a Jew or else...
Respectfully don't be a homosexual or else...

I'm sure French police are much more respectful that those in Iran. But that's not the point.

The point is that in a free society, you are free to dress as you please, within reason. Banning women from wearing the burka is NOT within reason. There are only a few hundred women who wear the burka in all of France. THAT is not a security threat. That is an over-reaction. That is intolerance. That is wrong.

Fascism? I think not

The burka ban is as much a security/identity issue as it is a religious and cultural one.

Only a few days a man dressed in a burka committed a robbery. He is still walking free because no one can recognise or identify.

See here: //www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2008641/Hunt-burka-raider-Man-dressed-Muslim-woman-caught-CCTV-robbing-travel-agencies.html

Being dressed in a burka makes committing robbery (among other things) far easier, than having other kinds of disguise, because robbers can walk the streets after the criminal act without being challenged, as people will assume the burka wearer is simply a Muslim woman.

To liken the burka ban to what is happening in Iran with hejab enforcement, and calling it fascism is ridiculous, to say the least.

Blending in?

Farmarz, if I or anyone does not want to blend in, that's their choice. that's what freedom is. have the amish christians blended in? have orthodox jews blended in? have sikhs blended in and put aside their "strange" culture?

At a time when we want to see democracy in Iran and the rest of the middle east, at time when Iranians and Muslims in many countries look to open societies in the west for inspiration, banning people for wearing what they please and dragging women to police station in the exact same forceful fashion as in Iran, does not set a good example.

These sorts of bans on people's outward appearance give democracy a bad name.

France is not Iran

JJ jan,

France is not Iran. French police is usually respectful and polite when they speak to people and as far as people are respectful toward them.

Since there is a law forbidding Burka in France. They should give a ticket of 500€ to each one wearing Burka. For giving a ticket, they ask always ID card. I guess she denied giving her ID. There are several activists who try to contest this law by provocation.

Ghorbanat

Orang 

Fascism at its best...

I think the only thing more ridiculous than wearing a burqa is this ban.  This will only alienate and further marginalize the muslim population of France.  But I suppose this behavior comes naturally to the French.  They folded to the Nazis in less than 3 weeks, and they were all so eager in outdoing their fascist masters.  This is fascism at its best. 

Le Camp Ashraf!

JJ,

I would not compare this to Iran at all.

Last time I was in France, I took the bus to go from here to there. The bus stopped in front of a high school and a bunch of French boys and girls got on the bus and they started talking and laughing like normal teenagers. Then I noticed a girl in a scarf standing all by herself and staring at a remote spot and trying to avoid eye contact with the others in the bus. It was such a sad scene; looking at a girl going through her teen years with no friends and feeling like an outsider.

We all have come to a new country and a new culture and have learned to make adjustments. Many of these people completely refuse to blend in and be a part of their new home and their new culture. French are also partly to blame, but when you see a North African man in a train station with his wife walking ten steps behind him like cattle without a leash, you know that we are not talking about freedom of choice here. This is religious brain-washing like Camp Ashraf.

I believe that the French need to take their country and culture back and be the land of Descartes and Montesquieu and many others again. Otherwise, you will have another extremist shooting like we had in Norway.

Iran or France?

this is eerily similar to what is happening in Iran. women are not a national security threat for what they wear, neither in Iran, nor the rest of the world. this is plain wrong. absolutely shameful, especially for a democracy.