Frenchies want to ban Muslim headscarves!

Politics and religion
21

It is a big part of the social pressure involved in the spread of Islamism. And it’s recognized as a growing concern across the Middle East, particularly by women. Oh, and the slippery slope can be clearly seen in Afghanistan. First it was the veil. Then hijab. Then no education for women. Then black paint over windows in houses with female occupants.

If nothing else, don’t you dissenters see how this sort of clothing dehumanizes women? I’ll bet that your wives and girlfriends do. Here’s a test. Bring home a big sheet tonight and tell her that she has to cover up with it whenever she’s outside the house. Otherwise, you will lose all respect for her, since she obviously doesn’t have any for herself. Then, enjoy bachelor-hood again!

22

So people are turning to fundamentalist Islam, and rather than address why (or pull an Ataturk and shoot all the fundamentalists), you want to ban a symptom of it?

I’m sorry, its the same idea as “people are dropping too much E… BAN GLOWSTICKS!”

For a whole lot of reasons, one of which is the obvious threat to women’s rights.

Yet, in the name of women’s rights, you’re banning women from the right to wear what they want on their head, because various pieces of head garb are symptoms of a larger problems.

Hey, I, and everyone here is going to agree with you that opressing women is bad. I think we’re going to argue whether or not banning headscarves is going to actually do anything to solve this.

23

You mean the same draconian Malaysia that often refuses to acknowledge the existence of Islamist terror groups in its backyards? And tends to blame “Christian” countries for the problem in the first place? Yes, the nation is a vertiable pillar of modernity. And I know that Turkey isn’t exactly Rhode Island, but come on, it’s a lot closer to the West in almost every way than Malaysia.
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And Turkey’s just great unless you happen to be a Kurd. (I know Malaysia isn’t that great; I really meant that it’s also relatively advanced compared to other Islamic states)

Anyways, I found a good article on why Turkey is the only Islamic democracy here: Why Turkey Is the only Muslim Democracy :: Middle East Quarterly Oddly enough, banning headscarves isn’t mentioned :) The closest thing in the essay is the repeal of Sharia as a basis for government.

However, this is this interesting link on how Turkey treats religious Muslims: Campaign against the ban on Hijab (Islamic dress) in Turkey. Not exactly a model for a modern democracy (which France does claim to be).

Gav

24

One more thing. Have you not noticed how most Islamists feel that the West is immoral and obscene because of the way in which we allow women to live freely and wear whatever clothing they prefer? Even the average Arab guy in an Arab nation considers Western women, even those dressed modestly in pants and shirts, to be “whores.”

This is a central tenet of modern Islamist thought. How many principal Islamist leaders of the past century were converted after exposure to the West, via school in Europe or America? And a major part of their shock was exposure to women in the workplace, women on the street, women driving cars, women wearing skirts, and so forth. Not to mention that every nation that has embraced Islamism has restricted the lives of women. Look at Afghanistan. Look at Sudan, where female adulterers can be convicted to stoning. Stoning!

Also, this sort of dress and treatment of women isn’t even really part of Islam. It’s a corruption largely of the past few hundred years. So why reward the ignorant who wish to twist the religion to its own ends? There are many, many reasons why what France is doing should be supported. And very few reasons to condemn it.

25

What Islam really needs is a new prohet to tell everyone that all the trappings of Islam just let people hide their own failings of faith behind a false front, and that everyone should just love one another. :wink:

26

Man, you guys better talk nice about the “religion of love” before they go terrorist on your infidel ass!

27

Good point, Brett… forcing Muslims to become accustomed to such behaviour among their own women might help stop the West from appearing quite so immoral.

Personally, I was in favor it because it forces a bunch of medievalists living in a modern country to wake up and notice that it’s not 1200 AD anymore.

28

Why isn’t it? We’re seeing a wave of Islamism like never before. It’s almost certainly more of a threat to liberal, democratic countries and like ideals now than it was in 1923. So why dismiss moves such as that being made by France as racist or unnecessary? And the evidence is pretty strong that Ataturk’s modernizing policies had a huge effect on the relative success of Turkey. I mean, just look east past the Golden Horn and see what could have been Turkey’s fate. There are some good reasons why Turkey didn’t wind up like Syria or Iraq.[/quote]

Someone’s been reading too much Christopher Hitchens.

29

Not to start another argument… but the real enemy over the next century will be … China!

30

Maybe somebody has, but it sure isn’t me. I can’t read the hypocritical blowhard’s book reviews in the Atlantic without developing some sort of intestinal illness. Fact of the matter is, I don’t read or listen to pundits at all. No offense, but that seems to be more of an American thing, as you guys apparently have two such personalities for every issue, from the trade deficit to Saddam’s personal hygiene. I read direct news sources, I read history, I travel, I make up my own mind.

31

Dunno, you just sound like 'em.

32

That’s a silly statement. There’s no such thing as a pure “symptom” of a belief because there’s no unidirectional quasi-mechanical relationship between beliefs and their public expression. Except in the most hardcore philosophical minds, public expression is required to maintain a belief system. Take that away, and most believers will eventually reshape their spiritual needs in a way whose public expression is permitted.

The eloquent Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empires, Chapter XVIII:

The Pagans were indulged [under Theodosius] in the most licentious freedom of speech and writing; the historical and philosophic remains of Eunapius, Zosimus, and the fanatic teachers of the school of Plato, betray the most furious animosity, and contain the sharpest invectives, against the sentiments and conduct of their victorious adversaries. […] But the Imperial laws which prohibited the sacrifices and ceremonies of Paganism were rigidly executed; and every hour contributed to destroy the influence of a religion which was supported by custom rather than by argument. The devotion of the poet or the philosopher may be secretly nourished by prayer, meditation, and study; but the exercise of public worship appears to be the only solid foundation of the religious sentiments of the people, which derive their force from imitation and habit. The interruption of that public exercise may consummate, in the period of a few years, the important work of a national revolution. The memory of theological opinions cannot long be preserved without the artificial helps of priests, of temples, and of books. The ignorant vulgar, whose minds are still agitated by the blind hopes and terrors of superstition, will be soon persuaded by their superiors to direct their vows to the reigning deities of the age; and will insensibly imbibe an ardent zeal for the support and propagation of the new doctrine, which spiritual hunger at first compelled them to accept. The generation that arose in the world after the promulgation of the Imperial laws was attracted within the pale of the Catholic church: and so rapid, yet so gentle, was the fall of Paganism, that only twenty-eight years after the death of Theodosius the faint and minute vestiges were no longer visible to the eye of the legislator.

Similarly, the Muslim invaders prohibited the Christians in their new dominions from proselytizing or building new churches. Result: the previously dominant Christians were eventually reduced to small minorities. Most people simply don’t want to stick with a religion that is publically discriminated against. If anything, I’d say this is more effective than trying to hunt down religious leaders – creating martyrs is a notoriously ineffective way to shatter religious beliefs!

About the other point that the state should never interfere with religion: I’d argue that this is a naive and suicidal viewpoint when facing a religion that intends to destroy the legal and cultural system that grants it tolerance.

33

Says the guy from the country that banned Scientology. :D

34

Umm, no, we didn’t. It’s not recognized as a religion last I checked, and Scientologists were hounded down by the usual mob of journalists and activists, but Scientology is certainly not banned here.

35

The Church and the State are separated since 1905 in France, except in Aslacia which is still ruled by German standards. I believe you still have to declare your religion in Germany ?

36

Ladies and gentlemen, this is why Judaism has disappeared and why Christianity never spread or took hold 2000 years ago. Discrimination did both in centuries ago.

About the other point that the state should never interfere with religion: I’d argue that this is a naive and suicidal viewpoint when facing a religion that intends to destroy the legal and cultural system that grants it tolerance.

This is such a wrong-headed statement. The vast majority of Islamic people aren’t militant, aren’t trying to destroy anything. We might think the headdress is wrongheaded or discriminated against but laws like this don’t belong in a “free” society.

37

Yes, because the fees for the big churches are still collected by the state, along with taxes. That’s something I’d like to see abolished, by the way.

Judaism is a special case, they’re probably the most tenacious believers the world has ever seen. Christianity prospered on the tide of a widespread movement away from traditional Roman religion, including the cult of Mithras, neo-Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Without that support you bet that the Romans could have stamped it out.

The vast majority of Islamic people aren’t militant, aren’t trying to destroy anything.

I used the word “religion” because I didn’t want to type out “or extremist sects within a religion” but you may substitute that if you wish.

Which brings me to the second point: Are these copious non-militant types the ones who insist that women should always wear headscarves in public, even in schools? Why?

As Brett said, there’s a strong correlation between the amount of cloth heaped on females and the general level of violence and backwardness in the Muslim world. And this “traditional” dress is definitely an indication of religious devotion – the people who support that dress code say so themselves.

Are you claiming that religious violence is completely unrelated to the intensity of religious devotion? Sorry, I don’t think so. Obviously there’s no direct causality but I bet you won’t find many willing martyrs among a group whose view on religion is relaxed enough to allow women to go bareheaded. (And that willingness can be forced, thanks to the feedback loop between beliefs and their public expression.)

We might think the headdress is wrongheaded or discriminated against [should probably read “discriminatory”]

The argument for the ban says that wearing this headdress is a public statement of solidarity with the extremists. Kind of like wearing a swastika sign on your arm. Sure, the act is harmless – it’s the statement that the state doesn’t want to see in its schools. Would you allow NSDAP/AO propagandists on the schoolyard? If not, why not?

By the way, we’re only talking about schools here. It’s not as if headscarves were being banned everywhere in France…

38

There’s also a strong correlation between sand and levels of economic development - guess they’d better get rid of that too.

39

Actually, Judaism is not a special case… it’s a completely typical one. History demonstrates pretty clearly that when you attempt to oppress an ideology head-on, you almost always end up entrenching it and strengthening it. I think the only way to avoid this result is either to be completely draconian about it and kill every man, woman, and child who believes, or to refrain from attacking the group while gently forcing them to change their visible behaviour.

Take for example the Jews in the Middle Ages. The Jews in Christn lands firmly kept their traditions and identity because the Christian rulers were such assholes. However, the Jews in Arab lands were almost assimilated. At about 1100 AD, the Arab-Jewish rabbis were in a panic because most young Jews didn’t give a rat’s ass about “Jewish Culture”: they were thinking of themselves as Arabs. But such enlightenment didn’t last, a couple shortsighted Arab caliphs saw the Jews as a source of quick money, and the Jews got their identity back real quick.
There’s a reason fundamentalist leaders (Christian and Arab) try to paint their people as oppressed; it’s a uniftying factor. The best way to eliminate such things is not to give them a rallying point, but rather to ignore them, while forcing them to behave outwardly like everybody else. As long as that forcing is gentle and continuous, you have a pretty good shot at dissolving their culture.

Oh… one other thing. Christianity didn’t prosper on the tide of a widespread movement away from older Roman religions. If you remember, Christianity stuck around for over 200 years while the Roman religions were still going strong. In fact, it was that 200 years of persecution that helped strengthen Christianity. When the Christians finally did get a major political convert, Theodosius, it only made sense. In return for a litle lip service to this all-powerful God, Theodosius got tons of wild-eyed fanatics who would do his bidding. Not a bad deal, really.

40

Sarcastic much? And Christianity didn’t do particularly well during the first 300 years of its existence, as a matter of fact. Many scholars believe that even in the East, only around 10% of the population was Christian at the beginning of the reign of Constantine. The numbers were worse, probably much worse, in the West. If not for Constantine, Christianity never would have taken hold the way that it did. If, for instance, Galerius hadn’t died of that horrible disease in 311 or whatever it was, and the persecutions of Diocletian and Maximian had continued, this widespread discrimination would have eventually destroyed Christianity. Remnants of it would have survived in the East for a few centuries, I’m sure, but Islam would have exterminated it by 700. Christianity blossomed because of one man – Constantine.

BTW, to address Anaxagoras, the persecutions in no way strengthened Christianity. They almost destroyed them on numerous occasions, and there is some reason to believe that Christianity was wiped out almost entirely in the West around the end of the first century, due to possible persecutions by Nero and Domitian. Nobody knows for sure, though, as the religion is mentioned only a couple of times during this period in Tactius and Suetonius, and a fair number of people think that these sections were inserted much later as a way of propping up Christian traditions. Such as the rumored Domitianic persecutions, for which there is no real evidence whatsoever.

And, um, Theodosius the Great? He greatly strengthened the role of Christianity in Constantinople, mainly because he was Ambrose of Milan’s whipping boy, but the road was already paved by Constantine, his fanatic son Constantius II, and Gratian. Constantius II really did the most to turn Rome into a Christian empire, pulling the statue of Victory out of the Senate for the first time, demolishing temples, and pulling back state financial support for the old religions. Gratian went further, pulling the money out altogether. Theodosius came in to nail the coffin shut, banning sacrifices.

The point is that laws like this are protecting freedom. How do you not get that? There is a real social pressure that goes with wearing Islamic dress, one that is incredibly repressive towards women, and inevitably leads towards racial discrimination. France is making this move in response to social problems involving Muslims, the rise of anti-semitism, and so forth. These are real issues, they’re serious, and they should be met head-on. Why endure this stuff? I’m not saying that banning head scarves will solve all the problems, but it’s a step in the right direction.

You do know that this clothing isn’t worn for traditional reasons, right? That it’s worn to cover up women, to save them for the eyes of their husbands and fathers, essentially to control them and keep them as chattel? It isn’t an expression of religious faith, it’s an expression of control and submission. You don’t wear this sort of thing, the traditional male mindset is that you are a whore with no respect for yourself. (You get the same treatment from a lot of Arabs as a male, btw, if you go out wearing shorts.)

Ever actually hung out with Arab guys in the Arab world? Let me tell you, even the younger and the most liberal of them have pretty low regard for women, by Western standards. If a woman doesn’t wear the right clothing in say, Cairo or Amman, she will be treated with zero respect. She will be openly pawed on the street, unless she is with a man. Men won’t even speak to her. Go to a smaller centre, a village, or even the old side of town in a mid-size city, and it’s a lot worse. There she will be openly derided. And I’m not even talking about racy dress, mind you. I’m talking about jeans and t-shirts, with hair exposed. Why should we let this sort of thing get a foothold in the West? Haven’t we advanced well beyond this sort of medieval thinking? (One cool thing about this? Walk around with a few women and the local men treat you like a god. :D)

Furthermore, the custom has precisely fuck all to do with Islam. This sort of thing represents the hijacking of the religion by rural extremists. It shouldn’t be tolerated in the Arab world. And it certainly shouldn’t be tolerated in France.