When did we become ok with the burka?

[Banana8080]

In my childhood (80s90s) I remember being sad some Muslim women were pressured not to show their full faces in public ie become invisible. These days much more focus on a women right to choose aka wear the full vail, even those who are possible under pressure.

When/why did this change happen?

If there was that law, stopping men from forcing women to wear it, it would have the same outcome as just banning it.....the men wouldn’t be allowed to force it would they, so the same result in a more direct workable way? But the trouble then is, some men might not allow the women to leave the house......

But there is a law which stops men forcing women to wear them. The coercive control laws have been in place since December 2015. They cover exactly that sort of behaviour. Yet even though we have those laws in place women still wear them. So they either don’t mind or aren’t being forced to wear it. Your assumption all the women that wear it are forced to doesn’t hold water.

“Yes. But the advice to strike your wife is just that - advice. Not an edict, not a law, not a requirement. No school of Islam says you must hit your wife if you are a Muslim”

Oh well that’s ok then

Geraldine, seriously why are you bothering to split hairs over this. Call it “advice”, call it what you like. Its a misogynistic and highly damaging message - simple as that. Faith should not override common sense and basic human decency and dignity.

No i certainly don’t assume all women are forced to wear it. There’s many that have come on threads like this that say they wear it through choice. But you said “it’s amazing people never call for laws to stop men forcing women to wear them” so obviously by that i assumed there wasn’t a law already in place. So because you say there IS a law in place but women still choose to wear it, would you not rather have a ban on wearing them then this wouldn’t happen?

It’s obviously not as simple as women being “forced” to wear anything by individual men or even their community. The point is they have internalised the significance of covering up on such an innate level that it has become their “faith”. It runs deep and is probably largely unconscious. Just as Western women conform to Western beauty ideals because they are imbued with this culture from day one. But whichever way you look at it, the need for women to cover up is twisted. I’m not saying every aspect of religion is twisted, but there are many parts that are and this is one of them.

Oh well that’s ok then confused

Did I ever say it was okay? No I didn’t.

Call it “advice”, call it what you like. Its a misogynistic and highly damaging message - simple as that. Faith should not override common sense and basic human decency and dignity.

It doesn’t. It’s illegal to hit your wife no matter what religion you are in this country. It’s not splitting hairs, you compared that to banning the burka and claimed that the law banning men from beating their wives was an example of a law limiting people from practicing their religion. But it’s not. There is a big difference between the law telling someone they cannot do something that is not a requirement of their religion and telling them they have to abandon what some believe is an essential part of their religion. Nobody is trying to say it’s not a mysoginistic religion, but using legislation to deny women free choice about what they wear is mysoginistic too. Denying women free choice is just as misogynistic.

I wonder why women would choose to wear it when over in countries like Saudi Arabia it is detested and those poor women are forced to by men, who treat women like dirt. It obviously isn’t a pleasant garment to wear. If i was a muslim woman living here i would want to stand in solidarity to those who are so oppressed. It certainly doesn’t help their cause to want to wear it through choice.

An article re polygamy

www.al-islam.org/introduction-rights-and-duties-women-islam-ayatullah-ibrahim-amini/islam-and-polygamy

I love this bit

In short, in every society there are a large number of unmarried women who need and desire to marry and if they do not, they may be driven to deviation and corruption. The number of single men who are willing to marry widows is not high enough to appease the requirements of every society, due to the fact that young men usually prefer to marry previously unmarried women, who are already more than enough to satisfy their numbers. On this account, what must widows who wish to remarry do? In this case, the society must either accede to sexual freedom, corruption, and unrestraint, such as has been accepted in the West or, as in Islam, must follow a polygamous system.

Geraldine - I’m not actually advocating a ban on the burka because that is not the kind of society we are (though I would personally prefer it if face covering disappeared altogether). What I am saying though is that we shouldn’t lose sight of common sense and our own morality in the name of religious tolerance - otherwise where do you draw the line? Wife beating as “advised?” Polygamy? Women with less inheritance rights? Women unable to divorce the husbands? Some women believe and would argue all this to be the way of god. They have internalised their restricted or lesser standing and role as faith, or the natural order of things. Fortunately, most of us have evolved past these “rights” in 2018, just as we once evolved past thinking witchcraft or slavery were the the natural course. Most people in the UK feel alienated by women who cover their faces and I don’t think that is something that should or will ever change, regardless of what the law does or does not permit.

I'm not ok with it.

Always polite to my neighbour who wears one would never dream of saying to "I hate your burka it freaks me out" so probably she thinks I'm ok with it! We only say good morning etc

Anyone seen this video of kazakhstan

m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1893356114077952&id=122264309574

That's a Muslim country by the way.

So will you wear headscarves in solidarity with those who are forced not to?

I'm not ok with it. It is just something we have to tolerate. Luckily where I live it is not something you see very often. Maybe once every 6 months so stands out a mile.

Multiculturalism has failed. Some people refuse to assimilate to the British culture and some are choosing to identify with an anti-British culture.

We need to draw a line under this and start to assert a British culture again.

And how would you suggest we do that @Walkingdeadfangirl ? Please enlighten us with what a British Culture is, as I'm struggling to understand that ....

AlphaBites well self evidently a face covering ban would be a good start. Just like many areas in Europe have done.

I wear a burka because I choose to no pressure from anyone. Just as much as anyone else who chooses to wear as much or as little as they want. I don't judge people and think they should cover up any more or any less. Just let people be. I was born and brought up in a Welsh village and have lived here all my life. No issues whatsoever. I am also fluent in Welsh and speak mainly Welsh.

You don't understand what British culture is? We're an old country with a rich history, but you dont understand that we have a culture? Is culture something that only Eastern countiries can have?

I have little tolerance for the few women who wear the burqa or niqab by choice, because they are facilitating the oppression of other women who are forced to wear it and don’t enjoy the luxury of choice. In the news today is the latest example of a perfectly lovely Muslim girl ( this time in the Netherlands) whose family murdered her for being too westernised. If they want to bring her up in the west, they need to respect western values and western clothes. People should also look at the important role played by Muslim women in the late 19th / early 20th centuries in fighting for women’s rights. Women like the Egyptian suffragette Huda Sha'arawi.

I have family who live under a theocracy where it’s mandatory. No choice from school age. Women have been murdered / maimed for daring to not wear it.

So choice is good - until you don’t have one. But as a (very) religious relative once said (to a snotty relative who was scathing of women - ie me - who didn’t wear it) ‘a scrap of material doesn’t make you a better person’.

How reassuring that there is an actual law which stops men forcing women to wear them.

An actual law!

That everybody takes notice of and obeys.

That's all right then.

This thread is seven years old, please start a new one.

Are you really?

But that is your failing, your lack of education maybe unless you were brought up outside Britain but otherwise...fancy coming on to boast of your ignorance.