Dutch have it in for the burka
If you live in Holland and the burka’s your kind of fashion statement then the news is all bad.
The country’s hardline Integration Minister, Rita Verdonk, known as the Iron Lady for her series of tough anti-immigration measures, told Parliament that she was going to investigate where and when the burka should be banned.
Mrs Verdonk gave warning that the “time of cosy tea-drinking” with Muslim groups had passed and that natives and immigrants should have the courage to be critical of each other. She recently cancelled a meeting with Muslim leaders who refused to shake her hand because she was a woman.
An outright ban would conflict with Holland’s religious freedom legislation. However, on grounds of public safety the garment may be banned in shops, public buildings, cinemas, train and bus stations and airports, as well as on trains and buses. Which is just about everywhere, is it not?
Elsewhere, some European towns have banned the burka locally.
Last year several Belgian towns, including Antwerp and Ghent, banned the wearing of the burka in public, and recently started issuing £100 spot fines for breaking the municipal ordinance. Several towns in Italy, including Como, have invoked legislation introduced by Mussolini that bans hiding one’s face in public to impose fines on burka-wearers. France and several regions of Germany have followed Turkey and Tunisia in banning the wearing of the hijab, which leaves the face visible, in public buildings, most controversially in schools.
And in Holland itself Utrecht City Council has decided to cut the benefits paid to women whose wearing of the burka prevents them from getting a job.
Utrecht based its decision on the Work and Social Security Act, which states that somebody receiving welfare must not do anything to prevent getting work. The city also noted that the Equality Commission, an official anti-discrimination body, backed employers who refused to give jobs to people wearing burkas, because being able to see someone’s face was an essential part of many jobs.
Personally, I’m not for banning items of clothes like the burka despite them being an ugly blot on our streets. If we’re to ban the burka I’d first like to ban the wearing of jeans that ride half-way down their chav owner’s arses to reveal their tacky Anne Summers thongs…
lol how is wearing a burka in a public - like a shop or a cinema a threat to public safety?
Nice to see the Italians using an old fascist law introduced by Mussolini to help race relations.
Maybe those who wear the burka should be frog-marched and enrolled in Women’s Studies course at universities around the country - where they can be forced to read feminist texts until they are suitably enraged enough to burn their burkas along with their bras. Trouble is you’ll then have feminist lefties - so you’ll then have to make them read the dire Daily Mail for a year until they are properly assimilated.
As far as I’m concerned with the Burka - employers and schools should be able to set their own dress code within reason - however outside of that I don’t see why then can’t wear the burka anywhere they like.
Comment by GaffaUK — October 14, 2005 @ 1:27 pm
I find it interesting that countries like Afghanistan are trying desperately to get rid of the burka; countries like Turkey are proud of Kemal Ataturk for abolishing the burka; yet here in England we want to tolerate something that stands as an affront and defiance of much of what we as a nation have painfully evolved over the centuries. There is nothing to be said for it, and everything to be said against it. If we tolerate that, we tolerate all that it stands for - child marriage, arranged marriage, domestic seclusion, patriarchy, and all the rest of it. We may not be able to do much about these things, because they are done behind closed cultural doors; but we can jolly well not permit its public manifestation. The burka is a crime. It should not be tolerted in this society.
Comment by robert aldridge — October 14, 2005 @ 4:19 pm
That bit in the Koran where it says that men should not shake hands with women:
Oh I lied. There isn’t one.
Comment by DE — October 17, 2005 @ 10:23 am
Gaffa, if you can’t see their face they have anonymity. So stick a male terrorist in a burka and he can get away with, well, murder, basically.
Robert,
The danger is that banning the burka won’t alter any of the things you consider it stands for but it willalmost certainly consign hundreds of Muslim women to permanent house arrest when their husbands ban them from going out.
DE,
Not sure what the Qur’an says about shaking hands but I do know that it is not acceptable to more hardline Muslims. I once went to shake hands with a Muslim and he simply pressed his wrist against my hand. Awkward and discourteous. Something I’m supposed to tolerate I guess.
Comment by Gary Monro — October 17, 2005 @ 11:15 am
I take your point - but no-one knows how people will react; some will be consigned to stay at home, others will be allowed out with a head scarf - after all, there is no Koranic injuction to wear the burka; thus the burka people will be split between the scarfites and the domestic prisoners. The latter would be seen even more clearly as a crime, and greater legal pressure could be put on those families. I agree this is all speculation; and I agree that the whole issue is fraught with difficulty; to change any entrenched cultural habit is extremely difficult. Normally I would say that it was not justified; But I’m afraid that I regard the burka as appalling. Perhaps it will just fade out over time; but given the social isolation, the ghetto mentality,and ultra conservativism of many Muslim families, I think that it could take generations; and I think that that is unacceptable in our society. As for the other social practices mentioned - let us take one thing at a time!
Comment by robert aldridge — October 17, 2005 @ 3:07 pm
> If we’re to ban the burka I’d first like to ban the wearing of jeans that ride half-way down their chav owner’s arses to reveal their tacky Anne Summers thongs…
Comment by Nuke Labour — December 25, 2005 @ 10:24 pm
… you said.
We should consider such a ban, but only after reviewing copious volumes of photographic evidence clearly illustrating the problem.
Comment by Nuke Labour — December 25, 2005 @ 10:26 pm