Well done Belgium. Veil banned

[Nuttybear]

I fully support this. Really wish the liberals would put aside there protection of these men and free the women here. I vote for bring the same law here. I despise the veil and all it stands for. I saw a woman trip and fall because she could not see the kerb!!! Her husband/uncle/dad then had to guide her over the next kerb. I saw them again in the supermarket I so wanted to throw eggs at him but it would only make her plight worse. I know a minority want to wear the veil. Well, there are countries that support that decision. I know it might make matter worse for some but there must be a stand to free these women of this 13th century habit. Wearing of the veil is not in the Koran. All for modest dress, if you so wish but, unable to look around your world freely is wrong.

there was a lovely documentary a year or so back where an iranian-british woman went back home to stay with her family for a holiday, and took the cameras. she was, y'know, the classic tv presenter kind of person, warm, funny, relaxed, clever, that kind of vibe. not oppressed, and didn't wear the veil in the UK as a matter of course.

back in her extended family place in Iran, it was a really different feel to here. the men opened the front door to welcome her, and then both genders went back into their parts of the house. the women had a great time, very MN-ish in their humour, and cooked and looked after the kids etc, the men were unseen apart from at meals.

this is how they live, apparently, really strong but separate communities, yakking away about whatever women yak about the world over. when they went out they put on a burkha, but it was with much the same feel as putting on their coat. two women would travel together, and she did say she felt weird without a male escort in some bits of the city, but mind you this was because they were going to buy drugs to get off their heads at a party later on...

and the party, lol. all women, done up to the NINES, as much bling as you could shake a stick at, and they danced and yakked and got the absolute equivalent of pished on this stuff that they were smoking. it looked a lot of fun.

so... not something i'm used to, this separate gender thing, but i can see the appeal tbh. what we have to remember is that the veil is a means to an end for people, and that our grannies wouldnt have dreamt of going out with their hair uncovered.

different strokes, innit? did anyone else see this doco?

ISNT....great post.

"WTF? Women who stay at home with their children are oppressed?"

Some of them most certainly are, some of them are married to men who believe that a woman's place is in the home doing the housework.

I'm not proposing that stay at home mums should be banned.

But if you're going to run around taking away people's freedoms because some people who use that freedom are being repressed and forced into it then the logical thing to do would be to tackle the bigger problem first, which has got to be "a woman's place is in the home" rather than veils.

Hands up someone who knows a woman who is with someone who believes that she should run the home.

Hands up someone who knows a woman who is forced to wear the veil.

Exactly.

Am very upset over this it is very wrong imho what Belgium have decided are they going to imprison a lady young or old who still chooses to wear it? or give her a telling off & a fine? or FORCE her to remove it there & then?? how awful those poor women
Posie maybe that little girl thought she looked lovely & thinks her mum looks pretty in her scarf so thats why she wanted to wear it?? Same as when i was little & my mum wore pretty coloured nail polish & i wanted to copy her & do it too...
I dont cover my face but know an older lady in her 70 shes Irish converted to islam as a young student had a hard time back then for choosing to wear a head scarf but did for her personal relationship with god. About 20yrs ago she decided to wear a face veil when out & about, i know she would fell so vialated (sp?) ykwim but she has a RIGHT to wear whatever she bloody well wants to & how dare anyone tell her or any other woman they dont even know they are oppressed!!! hav a chat with them maybe???
How many million was spent to carry out that vote yesterday? does no one agree if even half that money was used to help & educate women who desperatly need it in countries like Afganistan, Pakistan, too many sub saharian African countries to even begin to list, Cambodia, Vietnam, I could keep listing places all day where women badly need our help but instead Belgium wasted millions to outlaw as Riven said 30 or so women from covering their face! is that right???

Does it say in the Koran that women have to wear veils, burqas etc?

I was under the impression that women were "instructed" to dress modestly but that facial covering wasn't specifically mentioned.

Personally I loather veils or burqas especially when they are worn by women who appear to be married to men in Western clothes who enjoy all the western values but still seek to oppress the women.

It's a form of control and I would be delighted if they were banned because it would take away some of the patriarchal control from Islamic men.

Not sure really where i stand on this...agree that everyone should be free to wear what they want, but i hate to think of any woman that may have been forced by family or husband to cover up.

A genuine question though, do women who wear a burqa have to take it off when going through airport security?

I must admit that if I see someone veiled I assume that they don't want to interact with me. Because if you can't see someone's facial expression you don't know if they want to be left alone or if they are feeling lonely and would welcome a few words.

In Western cultures part of the way we communicate is by a few passing words in the street. If we can't see people's faces and identify them we can't do that and that just makes the world a lonelier place.

Not sure I think I'd ban the veils but I'd certainly lobby the veil-wearing community hard to give up this habit.

Just, on a slightly different tack, as I'd want to remind anyone with a dark skin who wears full-length dark clothes and lives in Britain that they won't be getting enough vitamin D from our weak northern sun. Rickets is on the rise among ethnic communities in Britain. And lack of Vit. D is associated with various cancers and possibly ms and Parkinsons. Health lecture over.

I am going to have to put myself in the undecideds queue.
I have an emotional reaction to being unable to see peoples faces . I sometimes wonder if it is all the years spent trying to get DS2 to look me in the face

As for the thing about 'if I move to another country ...when in rome.. etc.

If I moved to a country with social or religious rules/laws then I would expect to adapt and abide by them.
But I suspect if I was born in the UK and grew up delighting in the freedome of expression which has always been a hallmark of this country, encompassing everything from the goths, to the 'tits out, bums out, girls night out' brigade, through tweed jackets and hats and Jack wills and punks , I would hope that the country of my birth would afford me the same acceptance.

I think if the banning of the burka is a security and an anti-social/exclusion issue then we should get shot of the hoodie too. But i can't see that happening.

I don't know what the answer is . But TBH I am a bit worried by anyone who thinks the answer is easy. It suggests a certain 'my rights are more important than yours' attitude

ISNT, re the not knowing if it's your pal or not. perhaps it's just that the women i know are a bit skint, but for the most part they wear the same veils, and certailny the same coats etc. so you do recognise them, just with different markers. plus, i've found that they will come up and nudge me surreptitiously if i've not spotted their new headscarf, which always gets a laugh when i jump out of my skin.

re jobs, though, that must be tricky. although i was speaking to a veiled woman doing an economics phd the other day so i suppose she must think she'll get a job eventually.

dp are you actually talking to Riven like that? She is a highly intelligent woman, your tone is incredibly offensive.

As to 'sticking two fingers up to western culture' the one Muslim lady that I know sometimes wears veil and headscarf, sometimes headscarf and sometimes no head covering at all, her choice, and she has an iPhone. If that isn't embracing western culture I don't know what is (Tongue in cheek face)

it's her troll side coming out, bratnav. and yes, i agree, incredibly antagonistic and rude.

"It's a form of control and I would be delighted if they were banned because it would take away some of the patriarchal control from Islamic men."

So basically you're happy that a freedom that you don't understand or partake in can be taken away for very little actual benefit.

Those women will still be married to men who insist that they stay at home and probably are denied higher education.

Where as banning stay at home mums and making higher education compulsory for all women would have a huge impact.

But that would mean giving up a freedoms that many people here do enjoy and do value.

So that's never going to get any support no matter how many more people would benefit.

It's easy to be flippant with other peoples freedoms claiming that it's for their own good.

"i support religious expression but not extremism"

So do I, I absolutely agree with this, my beef was this comment,

"And asking a deluded and oppressed woman whether she is so is rather pointless, I think it is a form of extremism. Same as asking a whore if she is a victim of a misogynist society."

I found it completely offensive.

"Actually Muslim women who wear veils serve the anti Islamic movement well" Tht's because of other people's prejudice. Should we ban white men with skinheads because of various right wing movements?

"I wonder whether Saudi women see themselves as oppressed, or whether they are happy the way they are because they've never known any different." I really don't think saudi women see themselves as oppressed. Actually they wear pretty much what you wear. They have massive malls with Next French Connection etc. They just wear a large coat type thing for when they are in public. My husband's family is from Sudan and you would be amazed at the amount of time and money they spend on make up and hair and brightly coloured clothing. I was amazed . They called me "the plain one" lol.

"I cannot think of a practical reason to wear a veil."

What are the practical reasons to wear skin tight jeans or boob tubes, or figure hugging dresses?

"The only time i have real problems with women veiling in every day life, is when they insist on being veiled for their driving licence photo, or refuse to uncover in the bank..etc." I actually agree with this point.

aitch yes on the other thread we agreed that with people you knew well we would be able to identify them by other clues like gait, style of dress, and importantly their children!

My question was more like - I have a chat with the women on the tills in the supermarket, I nod and say hello to people I have "seen around", I will stop and have a chat with people who I recognise from school but i haven't seen in 30 years - all of that sort of stuff would go. I imagine that if you are fully veiled in a society where lots of women are fully veiled, those casual interactions just don't happen.

I know that the girls I was at university with who were fully veiled didn't really mix - I always smiled and said hello but I never knew which was which IYSWIM and it's hard to tell if your attention is welcome, so in the end they never really became friendly with anyone apart from each other. But maybe that is why they were wearing them in teh first place?

How can it possibly be a freedom?

It is forcing women to cover their faces, it does little to help integration into British culture, it is divisive and to some people it appears to be threatening rather in the same way as wearing a motorcycle helmet.

If men are forcing women to stay in the house because of their religion perhaps it's the religion as a whole we should be banning.

If a woman came onto mn and said my dh won't let me go out because I am unable to wear a veil now 90% of us would scream from the rafters that he is a controlling twat and needs ditching.

maybe... it's hard to know. students are weird. plus, personalities are different. perhaps shy women like it because it keeps them shy? my one particularly outgoing friend is not hampered in any way, i think, but the other definitely waits for me to say hello. but both were like that before anyway.

i think 'we' exclude 'them' as well, without even realising. the mums at the nursery had a christmas night out down at a local pub, and of course it only occurred to me when i got there that none of the strict muslim mums could have ever thought to come along. der. i asked my pal and she said she wouldn't even be happy going to a restaurant with a licence, so it'll have to be a coffee and then later pub next time for fairness. (because we still have to go to the pub, obv. )

"If men are forcing women to stay in the house because of their religion perhaps it's the religion as a whole we should be banning"

Not all abusive controlling men have a religion Alouise

bratnav;

I chat alot with Riven actually, I think we get on quite well (most of the time)....we're always looking at things from completely different perspectives, but nothing wrong with that.

yes, let's ban abusive and controlling men. i'd be right up for that.

The only person who gets a say in what a woman wears should be the woman wearing the clothes. It's unnacceptable for the Afghan government to tell women they must cover up; and it's unnacceptable for the Belgian government to tell them they mustn't.

The way to liberate women is not to have someone in charge telling them (us) how we should dress. Instead we should be concentrating on winning the freedom to make our own decisions - wherever we happen to live and whatever religion we happen to follow.

Just my two pence.

It's Belgium's money to waste though PBM. I don't expect it was millions to carry out the vote, as it was just normal Parliamentary business.

I expect (given that it is Belgium and they make one pay for everything), it will be a fine. It will be interesting to see how it is enforced though in some communes.

The problem with Aid money is that it doesn't always get where it is meant to go. There is a lot of money being spent in Afghanistan at the moment; but it will take a while before you get a generation of Afghan girls who are educated and unashamed of it.

cagedbird I didn't say they were!

But if this is a denial of human rights, so therefore are the laws in countries that say women must be covered, ask permission before going out etc on pain of death.

So if those countries flout human rights, is it ok for Belgium?

Or could Belgium say "if they have a law about dress, so can we?"

Sorry then alouise I thought that was what you were getting at. Their religion causes them to oppress woment etc.