The French

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

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

― Ned Trifle (Notinmyname), Tuesday, February 2, 2010 1:46 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

for me, they aren't.

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

haven't said that. i've said that calling the move racist or "islamophobic" is wrong, given that in a number of "muslim states" there are either similar laws, or similar attitudes, in play.

I don't know how that counts as secular, but I do wish I was eating crêpes right now

we are going to slam some crêpes tonight. plus cider. It's the tradition here!

re. secularity: I think it's b/c pretty much no one professes Christianity here, at least not in a "metaphysical" way, that they can sing religious songs in school and it's not supposed to be threatening to anyone. But of course haha yeah right.

Just because they ban or frown on scarves in some Muslim countries doesn't mean that it's not racist/islamophobic when they do it in France. The motivations in the two cases are very different.

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

― Ned Trifle (Notinmyname), Tuesday, February 2, 2010 1:46 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

for me, they aren't.

Well, now I'm just confused because that's exactly what it appears you were saying.

i've said that calling the move racist or "islamophobic" is wrong, given that in a number of "muslim states" there are either similar laws...

I think it could still be those things though, as well?

Anyone opening this thread and hoping for a discussion on camembert is going to be v. disappointed.

Oops xp - what zelda said, then.

Headscarfs, burqas, chadors - Have Your Say

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

― Ned Trifle (Notinmyname), Tuesday, February 2, 2010 1:46 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

for me, they aren't.

Well, now I'm just confused because that's exactly what it appears you were saying.

for some people -- like the taliban, in this instance -- who are pro-covering and anti-school, they are comparable.

but i don't think i was comparing them, though i would say that in the terms of the debate conducted upthread, making children go to school is "tyranny", isn't it? i was saying that comparing the french anti-scarf law with the taliban's pro-burqua law was a bad case of relativism.

I was comparing the Tunisian anti-scarf ban with the taleban's reaction to women not wearing burqas - but yeah, bit over the top I admit.

My understanding is that there's a certain 'rebellious' fashion for ostentatious Muslim modesty that's partly propelled by the pushy secularist injunctions against headscarves etc... I'm not particularly a fan but hten, I'm not a fan of people self-righteously telling other people what to wear. That doesn't make me blind or indifferent to the possibility that people may be socially or familialy coerced it's just that too broad and pat a response legally seems too facile and too categorical. It reminds me of what I think when I see, say, Sarah Palin on the cover of amagazine repping 'for life': 'Great. Good for you. Now why to you want to take the choice away from women instead of trying to persuade them?'

Allez les Bleus imo