The French

It does apply objectively to other ethnicities, but subjectively in France, veiled women = North African Arabs.

This is mere quibbling. Veils are associated with brown-skinned foreign Muslim women. Point, finale. Thre is a desperate strain in French national culture which wishes everyone could be like the Portuguese, Polish, Spanish, German or Russian Jews, Italian, etc.. immigrants of years past and just be fuckin' grateful to become French. Black Africans and Arabs and Asians who have suffered under the boot of the French Empire and its notorious hypocrisy are sufficently wide-eyed not to worship French culture unquestioningly and sufficiently disabused of any naivete to recognize the racist strain in French culture.

(i don't agree with all of it. i don't think the state is enforcing a "tyranny" by doing this ffs.)

Excuse me for being an old fashioned liberal, but anything that doesn't stem from the individual woman's agency is nontheless an imposition; perhaps a welcome one but still an act of immensely patronizing "We know better than you do."

I went to school with a very clever Pakistani woman who felt very liberated by her veil since it was a very overt negation of her status as a sex-object. I didn't always agree with her take on things but I did have to concede to her her right to dress and think as she wished and the French mania for banning all Arab/Muslim traditional female clothing makes me very uneasy for those French (white) women who might wish to convert to Islam not to mention, say, women undergoing chemo, who think the veil might be good cover, not to mention mere provocatrices or nuns.

anything that doesn't stem from the individual woman's agency is nontheless an imposition

yes. i agree with this 100%.

(which is why i think this is a thornier question than a lot of yall are taking it for.) (i worked with a clever enough (why does it matter?) afghan woman who felt very liberated by not wearing a veil, since it was an overt symbol of patriarchy.)

(why does it matter?)

'Cause she wasn't an idiot. I rather treasure that in people.

I acknowledge the thorniness which is why I wish that demogogic politicians wouldn't turn this into an opportunity to score cheap points.

I don't see it as solely a question of individual liberty, because it effectively removes the possibility of any communication between the individual wearing the veil and everyone else. I think the State has a legitimate interest in not allowing such walls between its inhabitants.

We've done this back when Jack Straw wanted to burn down mosques but tbh if "removing a barrier to communication" is the best the State's got then it needs to be thinking up better pretend reasons for doing something.

it effectively removes the possibility of any communication between the individual wearing the veil and everyone else

er, except it doesn't

Women in niqabs can still communicate! My four year old son went up to one the other day and she was perfectly happy to talk to me & my son.

The public transport ban on covered ladies, though? I am surprised for various reasons that nobody's mentioned HOODIES or TERRISM.

back when Jack Straw wanted to burn down mosques

you might as well write for the Mail if your left knee is gonna jerk as badly as their right one

An important point is that most of the younger women in France wearing niqabs are a) French-born and b) doing it entirely of their own volition, to the point that sometimes their parents don't even want them doing it. So here it's less a patriarchal thing and more a way of marking themselves out as different and that's why the French establishment doesn't like it, because multiculturalism is not very républicain.

Already got a gig at the Mail under my real name Peter HCONTROVERSIAL MODERATOR EDIT

does france even have a court system?? wouldn't the pols pushing this policy worry that it would be found illegal or whatever?

It's my understanding that there are Muslim women from France to Turkey to India who are rebelliously wearing the veil as a kind of generational fuck-you to 'well-meaning' secularist liberals who wish to liberate them without even bothering to confer with them, first.

Tracer, my understadning is that is why they're only talking about State-run public spaces like public transport and govmt buildings.

the french! cant live with em, cant live without em. am i right?

dunno how Grace Jones got away with her act on the Eiffel Tower in A View To A Kill

MW i think in the US at least you'd still run into constitutional trouble

Probably but not at airports, etc... We don't allow women to wear a veil for ID photos, for example.

Well yes, and if someone asks for your ID at a store or while you're driving or anything, you have to remove any kind of facial covering so they can confirm that it is you. Regardless of whether the person asking is a man or a women! Has there been a legal case in which a US police officer has had to ask a veil-wearing woman to show her face?

as noted above the cases of women refusing to remove their veils for police officers are entirely imaginary afaik

Well I meant in the US specifically, and also I didn't imagine that a woman would refuse, more that she would have to comply but then possibly sue for damages (not sure how that would work -- can you sue for being forced to comply with the law?).

Not usually, Laurel. One does have the option of staying at home after all.

If only more foreign women who dress funny and make us uncomfortable just stayed home.

http://msnbcmedia2.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/070627/070627_thatcher_vmed_12p.widec.jpg

Perfectly willing to see the Baroness stay at home.

Btw, Laurel, you reminded me yesterday that I know a Lebanese woman in my neighborhood, the wife of a liquor store owner, who is very pious and always veiled and yet quite dashing in her own way and very personable.

lol at pious Muslims operating a liquor store. Clearly this is a new and blessed land of opportunity!

Islam and alcohol is a bit more complicated than the old total abstinence thing tho.

Read some Imams talking about the injunction being on drunkenness rather than booze per se for example.

see also monks selling booze. or not idk.

Thanks, NV. I don't know anything about that stuff, but in any case that's a pleasantly nuanced reading and more than any absolutist would be able to stand, so it's a plus either way.

xpost

Yeah I was gonna say, there is a maybe urban myth(?) that Trusthouse Forte hotels used to have cheap bars because the company was owned by Quakers who wd sell booze but not at a profit.

can you sue for being forced to comply with the law?

^ you can sue, but you would probably get bounced out of court so fast it would make your head spin. Plus they would probably make you pay court costs for a frivolous filing.

Read some Imams talking about the injunction being on drunkenness rather than booze per se for example.

The Koran actually refers to wine as being a divine gift (kinda like Franklin saying beer is proof that God loves us) but also warns against intoxication.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6053380.stm

kind of interesting

"symbols which could strengthen the country's outlawed Islamic opposition"

indeed

2006 though. I don't recall having seen headscarves when I was there in about 1997, but I doubt I was paying particular attention. I understand that there had been no strong tradition of that kind of thing in North Africa, but that it's now pretty common in places like Morocco. Treating it as purely a question of personal choice kind of ignores the fact that it's part of an agenda being pushed pretty hard, and which doesn't necessarily have much time for personal choice itself.

^^^surely just as bad as the taliban running around telling women to cover up? And exactly what I would fear if we had a ban here. And not even face covering veils, but headscarfs?

xps

^^^surely just as bad as the taliban running around telling women to cover up?

fucking hell. yeah sure, just as bad as the taliban "telling women to cover up". similarly, making girls go to school is a bit like banning them from going to school and physically attacking them for trying to.

it's part of an agenda being pushed pretty hard

so are Kit Kats

i.e. yes politics exists and it affects how people behave

xp haha - yeah, I think you know what I meant, obviously not AS BAD as the tabeban...um, what I meant was forcing people to sign something saying they were not going to wear scarfs again was pretty bloody petty minded. OK?

well it would appear that ben ali doesn't like scarves because they suggest affiliation with his political enemies - it's a pragmatic thing and perhaps less petty than it looks (though almost certainly a loser wrt his long-term goals)

not sure why history mayne doesn't like them..

xp And anyway how is telling people not wear a scarf comparable to making them go to school?

btw happy Chandeleur everyone! My children are eating crêpes in school today with their Muslim classmates, in celebration of the presentation of Christ at the temple.

lol

they should adopt the story of the magical intelligent groundhog