Harry's Place

“Kafa” signatories -

Daud Abdullah Muslim Council of Britain, Annas Al-Tikriti British Muslim Initiative, Amir Amirani filmmaker, Lord Ahmed, Mohammed Ali Islam Channel, Moazzam Begg ex-Guantanamo prisoner, Tony Benn, Lauren Booth journalist, Louise Christian human rights lawyer, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Professor Terry Eagleton, David Edgar playwright, George Galloway MP, Lindsey German Convenor StWC, Father Alan Green Chair of Tower Hamlets Inter-Faith Forum, Shamiul Joarder Friends of Al-Aqsa, A.L.Kennedy writer, Bruce Kent, Ken Loach filmaker, Lowkey rapper, Alice Mahon, Drew McConnell Babyshambles, John McClure Reverend and the Makers, Councillor Abjol Miah, Seumas Milne journalist, Andrew Murray Chair StWC, Peter Oborne journalist, Gareth Pierce human rights lawyer, Murad Qureshi AM GLA, Mohammed Sawalha BMI, Mark Serwotka General Secretary PCS, Phil Shiner human rights lawyer, Clare Short MP, Jonathan Steele journalist, Baroness Jenny Tonge, Walter Wolfgang, Councillor Salma Yaqoob

*Shudder*

It’s pretty much a complete list of HP nemeses, isn’t it?

No, in fact it is the list.

Peter Oborne??

Are you expressing surprise that he should be attending, or surprise that he should be included in a list of HP nemeses?

And “It’s a local costume”? Well, no doubt in some places it is. Not in France, though. Or Britain, for that matter.

I’m not in favour of banning the burqa, though I’d be relaxed if it happened. I’ve no wish to make life in my country any easier for those who believe in that sort of thing. But as it clearly isn’t an integral part of the Muslim religion, it must be intended to convey a message. For me, that message is that the wearer and her family support terrorism and those forces against which our soldiers are fighting, and so are going to get no sympathy from me. It isn’t banning the burqa which fuels Islamophobia, it’s the burqa. Dress normally, and we’ll treat you normally.

Mark T: No, I genuinely hadn’t clocked that he was that way inclined.

Once you start down the road of dress codes enforced by the State where do you stop?

Did Peter Oborne bother to read the statement he was signing up to, I wonder.

It talks about the “growth of racist attitudes towards Muslims”.

FFS, surely the first thing we all have to learn when discussing Islam and Muslims is that MUSLIMS DO NOT CONSTITUTE A RACE! I thought that’s why the term ‘Islamophobic’ was invented?! Deary me.

And the use of the word ‘xenophobia’ in the MCB’s criticism of Sarko is interesting as well. We are talking about French citizens residing in France. Why does the MCB want to encourage the idea that Muslims are intrinsically ‘foreign’ and can never successfully integrate?

(Of course, I think that the wearing of the burkha is basically like putting two fingers up at all notions of integration)

Sometimes it’s like the Islamists and Muslim-bashers are following the same script.

Maybe I’m just being a pedant about the use of these words, but I suspect that mainly what this demonstrates is that Islamists in the MCB and ‘Kafa’ are really, really thick.

Any motorcyclist entering a petrol station, can be, and will be, refused service unless he or she removes the helmet and visor, to make themselves easily identifiable.

So why should anyone in a burka expect to be admitted to a bank, building society, school, hospital, jewellery shop, supermarket or anywhere else in the public domain?

The argument against burkas, is the same as the argument against hoodies, and blokes who visit the bank with a stocking over their head.

Concealment is not acceptable in the public domain.

Any motorcyclist entering a petrol station, can be, and will be, refused service unless he or she removes the helmet and visor, to make themselves easily identifiable.

So why should anyone in a burka expect to be admitted to a bank, building society, school, hospital, jewellery shop, supermarket or anywhere else in the public domain?

The argument against burkas, is the same as the argument against hoodies, and blokes who visit the bank with a stocking over their head.

Concealment is not acceptable in the public domain.

http://www.iengage.org.uk/home/1-news/404-daily-express-calls-for-banning-the-burqa

I have doubts over whether this ban will be effective, by the way, and suspect Sarko is just being his populist authoritarian self…but surely some state restrictions on dress codes are acceptable. Isn’t it generally agreed that the banning of political uniforms in 1936 helped undermine Mosley’s fascists?

Jailing people for wearing the wrong type of dress, is something that occurs in repressive regimes, hardly a great advert for Western liberal democracies eh?

Bernard Henri Levy and Ken Livingstone debating burkhas on Newsnight in a minute.

An increase in violent attacks on Muslims in the streets and on Muslim places of worship

Yada, yada, yada. The usual inversion from these scum.

Monty: yes indeed.

Women who wear burquas and similar garments do so either because they’ve been forced to, or because they masochistically subscribe to an interpretation of a religion which thinks they’re obscene and second-class. We permit masochistic practices in Britain, but in private, in the bedroom or sex-dungeon, not in the street or in the classroom. ‘Freedom’ does not extend to being allowed to walk down the street in fetish-wear – if you do, you get arrested for outraging public decency.

Peter Oborne??

Yep! I spotted his name too…but there must be more to this as he presented the C4 programme last year on Islamophobia.

It’s perfectly rational to ban the burqa, just as it’s perfectly rational to stop people wearing hoisties (isbaal) and ask them to shave unsightly, raggedy beards. We already have a de facto set of taboos that govern our dress code: for instance, anyone charging down Oxford Street in the nud would most likely be arrested for disturbing the peace; women do not generally show thei breasts in public etc.

I do agree that the government shouldn’t get involved though. However, it should be perfectly acceptable for someone to refused entry to a shop, employment, public transport etc.

My main argument against it though is that there’s less chance for young British non-Muslim men to court Muslim girls who wear it…

Just a thought: if the burqa were banned along with the niqab, no doubt scholars would formulate a legal ruling enabling dedicated burqa/niqab wearers to wear something else to cover themselves…

Just a thought…

A.L.Kennedy, ooh noes.. Where does she fit in here? I really really like her- well I did, till now.

“tim
24 June 2009, 11:03 pm

Bernard Henri Levy and Ken Livingstone debating burkhas on Newsnight in a minute.”

Yep and Canny Ken did a lot better than Bonker Bernard.

The problem with Levy’s approach is that it is kind of disembodied. Really criticising the Burkah only makes real sense if you identify what Islam’s ideology is and what its ambitions are.

I think there is an argument for banning the Burkah in public places but it is the same argument for banning the display of Swastikas.

If a white man and a black man, decide between themselves, that the black man will wear rags and shackles, and the white man will lead him around the town centre, with a sign saying “Darkie for sale”, are you going to let them do that in the public domain?

My answer would be no. Such a spectacle would be entirely offensive to most members of the public. You don’t get to do that in the public sphere.

The public domain is a real, tangible, common asset. There are rules, and if you don’t like them, steer clear, stay home.

So you don’t get to march down the high street with your willy hanging out of your pants. And you don’t get to drown kittens in the childrens’ paddling pool either.

So what.

On Newsnight, Ken Livingstone airily dismissed the French/the Enlightenment by saying they had a bloody revolution and ’slaughtered all their priests’, etc. etc. Livingstone is evidently one of those cunts who gets his French history from Scarlet Pimpernel films and thinks British history was one long game of cricket. The death toll for the English Revolution aka Civil War was an estimated 800,000, and that’s just for starters…

There is nothing ‘canny’ about Ken’s position. The first counter-argument he produced was ‘nobody complains about Orthodox Jewish dress’. no anti-Semitism there then.

Disgusting.

How can people on the left stand to see Red Ken slithering about promoting an obviously oppressive form of dress like the burka?

It is obviously a question of equality, as Henri Levy said.

“If a white man and a black man, decide between themselves, that the black man will wear rags and shackles, and the white man will lead him around the town centre, with a sign saying “Darkie for sale”, are you going to let them do that in the public domain?

My answer would be no.”

Well said, Monty.

a bit hard to argue against dress codes in Saudi Arabia, if you enforce a (well intentioned) one in your own country.

The Burqua is more a political statement when worn in the West; it should be reviled for what it symbolises and critiqued and stigmatised as the abomination that it is. It’s every bit as bad as a swastika armband and worse than a BNP badge. But it should not be banned, except in places where masks should not be worn – banks, railway stations, airports, hospitals etcetera. Employers should be free to insist that staff conform to a dress code which would exclude the Burqua and anyone running a business should be free to prevent people wearing masks coming onto their premises.

a bit hard to argue against dress codes in Saudi Arabia, if you enforce a (well intentioned) one in your own country.

Fuck Saudi Arabia. We should be doing what is right for Britain.

Monty is correct.

There is nothing admirable about the burqa or ANY veil. ALL forms of religious clothing should be banned forthwith.

This is the fucking space age. You are a mentally deluded simple-minded cretin if you get your mores and values from either a paedophile pig-fucking gangster and warlord who died 1300 years ago, or some imaginary jealous petty small minded tyrant ((c) Pat Cordell) that there is no fucking evidence that ever existed.

For fucks’ sake.

We send people to the fucking moon and these fucking cretins think that if a woman’s nose or a curl of hair is exposed they’ll get raped by any man who sees it?

Fuck that shit!

We are fighting a war against the Taliban (whether this is a good idea or not is an entirely separate question). These people are killing our soldiers and vice versa. So wearing Taliban uniform is not just like going around wearing swastikas, but like going round wearing swastikas in 1940. I don’t think the government should need to ban it, just that we should all feel free to express our disdain by any means necessary. It should be regarded as a straightforward provocation.

I saw Ken on Newsnight earlier discussing this with the French geezer Bernard Henri Levi, who I thought put up quite a good show. I heard Ken compare the Burqua to Jewish dress and groaned…what a bit of work! Some people around these here parts actually wanted this frightful man to remain London’s mayor. There’s no accounting for folk!

An alternative response (for blokes) might be to cultivate, or affect, a sexual fetish for women in upturned bin-bags, to leer grossly at them and give off a salacious “phwoaarrr!!” as they pass by, with one clenched fist tucked firmly into the crook of the opposite elbow….

We do have a dress code in this country. It is illegal to go naked in the public domain.You have to cover up your tits, your cunt, your willy and your arse- delete as applicable-.

Your gun, your knife, and your baseball bat aren’t exactly welcome either.

We have this annoying habit in this country, of making ourselves publicly identifiable, and publicly unarmed. Funny thing is, they seem to do the same in almost every part of the first world.

Mark T. gives us the list. It’s interesting to speculate who declined to join. Think hard!

But Benn and Walter Wolfgang? Have they gone bloody nuts?

‘Kafa’ is good; using the word ‘kufr’ in public is to be avoided as a dead-giveaway. Pronounciation practices all round, comrades!

Diane Abbott is a shameless grievance-monger, as ever.

A grizzled cynic would say Gareth Pierce has gone from snuggling up to the I.R.A. to snuggling up to Al Qaida.

Quite a gang, innit?

SMART TIP FOR THE BNP:

Whenever the BNP runs for election they ought to arrange for bevies of burqa babes to parade in public in every part of the electoral area a few days before polling day.

That ought to decide the waverers.

Nick SA –

We were obviously watching different programmes.

Levy didn’t do any damage to Livingstone. On the terms of the debate as conducted, Livingstone’s point was a good one. Why should an Orthodox Jewish woman hide her hair for fear of what Levy called “scandal”. Face and hair – is there really a radical divide? If there is, Levy did not express it. Maybe he was at a disadvantage not speaking in his first language.

One cannot ban the Burqa on libertarian grounds. I think a ban can only ever be justified because it is a symbol of a specific totalitarian movement that has a clear intention of destroying our democracy and making of all us who refuse to follow the movement second class citizens. It is in other words a mortal threat.

On those grounds a ban on the Burqa as an act of self-defence is fully justified in my view.

God, what an awful thread. I have made the case against dress codes here.

http://blog.z-word.com/2009/06/the-state-and-the-burqa/

I somehow doubt that those so fixated with Burqas will understand the underlying point tho.

Modernity –

Yep, that’s a pathetic piece.

No. 1. The state does enforce a dress code, everywhere, in every state on the planet. Do you deny that? No, because you can’t. In the UK it is still illegal to walk up and down the High Street utterly naked.

No. 2. If there is any justification for banning the Burqua it can only be as a symbol of a movement that is at war with our community and means to do us great harm. That is logical, rational and defensible.

field,

Granted not one of my best, but it contributed to a debate.

Frankly, coming from a xenophobic, roma hating bigot such as yourself, I am most gratified that you disliked that small post.

btw, how is your mate, Geert Wilders? has he got a thing about the Roma too?

Modernity, on the blog you linked to the better arguments were made by those who opposed your point of view:

http://blog.z-word.com/2009/06/the-state-and-the-burqa/

Modernity – I agree with you. The burqa is largely a symbol of oppression and is lamentable, but introducing a layer of further oppression on top of it, by banning it, is entirely the wrong way to go. One of the arguments against it is that some women don’t wear it by genuine choice. The answer to certain people’s inability to exercise their choices freely is not to remove the options altogether, other than in some Stalinist alternative world.

One of the arguments on this thread is that the burqa is a deliberate symbol of aggression against the West/Britain because of what Islamist terrorists / the Taliban are up to. I don’t think we’re there yet (in the way that the swastika is directly linked to a criminal ideology). Whilst it is a symbol of a more radical and fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, I think it is stretching it to say that every burqa wearer must, by the wearing of it, be a supporter of terrorism. It’s similar to the argument that anyone who sports the Union Jack is a BNP supporter or racist, and it is unfair on those Muslims who wish to practice their religion or indulge their cultural preferences freely and do not support terrorism. In the long term, the best way to make women feel that they do not have to wear the burqa is to keep Britain a free and open society (although perhaps the game is already up on that one).

The slavery analogy is also inappropriate. Slavery is criminal and illegal so if the “white and slave” show was serious, the white man would be arrested. If it was a show designed to make a point about (I don’t know) the continued oppression of minorities, and as the original poster suggested the white man and the black man were in it together and freely, then they should be (or ought to be) perfectly free to do so. On the other hand it is not illegal to be a Muslim and have a fundamental interpretation of your religion. Nor should it be (as catastrophically wrong-headed as it is).

The likes of Monty are effectively saying “there are a quite a lot of things I don’t like, and lots of others don’t like them too, so it’s right that they should be banned”. With respect, I don’t think that should be the test.

I do, however, agree with those who say that private and some public establishments should have the right to require uncovering of the face by burqa wearers as a pre-condition of interaction with them. If you, a burqa wearer, want to make a transaction in my bank, I’m entitled to request of you that you allow me to establish your identity by seeing your face, failing which I can decline to serve you. In the public domain there are many other obvious examples – airport security being the clearest. For security purposes I think it is legitimate to require all those using public transport or facilities to have their faces uncovered. People (not just Muslims, I include for example skinheads who might want to roam around in balaclavas) must understand that there is a legitimate security interest in people’s identity being ascertainable in certain situations, and that if your cultural/religious sensibilities clash with that interest, you must decide whether you want to use the facilities involved and uncover your face, or not.

Frankly, I am astonished that many who would normally sympathize with Libertarianism and liberalism become confused on this topic and seem to become rather illiberal and un-Libertarian when faced with the issue of someone else’s clothing.

I am against the burqa, but allowing the State to dictate dress codes is the wrong way to deal with it.

HP admins? moderation please!

Some decades ago it was made illegal to wear a mask in public in some areas of the United States. This is primarily to keep the KKK from running around in hoods, and it was a good thing.

In the same way, REGARDLESS of any “religious” argument, the state has an interested in never permitting any person, save little children on Halloween, to appear in public places with their faces covered. We all have the right to see the faces of other people in order to be able to judge their intentions.

I am not saying ban the veil, although there are certainly times and places where it should be banned, but the burqa and the niqab should definitely be banned, along with the KKK hoods and the rest of that anti-social garbage.

Maz you nailed it right there.

Having worked with the Roma in Belfast can I confirm that Old Toad is a disgusting racist fuckwit.

I’ve had many a post removed from this site, and never cease to be intrigued by the scattergun moderation policy here. Quite why Old Toad’s comments, encouraging hatred towards an entire race of people, woman and children included, are allowed to stand is beyond belief. Get this fucker banned.

Life is so easy for the Roma:

http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2009/06/23/kosovo-poisoned-lead

Still, at least Old Toad will raise a smile at this.

What about Ataturk?

Well it’s nice that Moustafa Al Shaka’a from Al-Azhar use the concept ‘personal freedom’.

Easily the most interesting part of this thread is Mark T’s ‘Kafa’ listing. Has there ever been such a concise listing of absolute bastards? (Nuremburg perhaps?) Sweet Jesus even Jonathan Steele is there, proof positive that something less than human can make good in this world.

This is a fun list to try and pick a ‘top three’ from. Almost impossible, but based on the damage they cause and the lies they spout I’d go for Milne, Steele and Edgar.

Is it possible that a new word – or two – is/are about to enter public discourse?

Burkaphilia: a mental condition widespread among Guardianista dhimmis; “Well, yes, I suppose it IS indicative of the most appalling cultural retardation but they’re foreigners, poor dears, and they simply don’t know any better”

Burkaphobia: a feeling of impotent rage on seeing this ghastly garment, wiyh all its implications, in a free society.

Django is, of course, right about the Kosova Roma having an awful time subsisting on someone else’s bread and tea after being resettled on a cluster of toxic dumps.

Those Kosova Roma ought to be settles as a cordon sanitaire around the surviving Orthodox Christian sites in Kosova, to protect them.

The problem about so neat a proposal is that with six months they’d have nicked everything worth nicking and there wouldn’t be anything left to protect.

Nice.

I picked up the Kafa leaflet in Housmans.

It is a sign of the times – the UK does not have one credible UK wide anti-racist organisation (at a time when the UK is electing fascists as MEP’s!) yet here is yet another organisation being formed based around one particular religious group.

Depressing.

It’s a pity the Muslim Council of Britain wasn’t around when Monty Python was in its heyday.

“Jailing people for wearing the wrong type of dress, is something that occurs in repressive regimes, hardly a great advert for Western liberal democracies eh?”

I agree entirely. However, I think it is reasonable to prevent people from entering various public places if they are not dressed appropriately or if a condition of entry is showing your identity.

On the other hand, let’s say a very strict father made his children wear – in public – a dunce hat and a t-shirt describing their transgression if they misbehaved. Would we consider this a form of abuse, or would we say the way people dressed was no concern of the state?

I am more amused by the presence of one of Babyshambles on the list. Funny on so many levels.

I was thinking this morning about the Muslim Council et al. Where are their statements on the situation in Pakistan and the massive displacement of two million people? Don’t they care about fellow Muslims? I was interested to see in the filmed newsreports that the women are desparetly trying to keep their faces hidden as they are crouched in their tents. I was also interested to see in a film of a family eating their tea, that teh mother had to sit apart from the ather and sons, rather like a dog. Anyway, I await the MCB views on the Pakistan crisis.

Diane, you are due to speak at the Briefing AGM this weekend.

I realise that because of your, er hum, relations with Jeremy, he might well want you to wear a Burka.

Perhaps I will remind you of this.

A L Kennedy was in conversation with Shalom Auslander at Jewish Book Week last year on Auslander’s very dark, scabrous and hilarious account of how fundamentalist Judaism had blighted his upbringing. It was an excruciatingly funny evening, with Kennedy contributing with relish to the tone of irreverence towards all religion.

You can listen to it here:

http://www.jewishbookweek.com/2008/280208g-transcript.php

I wonder if she adopts a different tone when among her Kafa friends.

Brett – in your example of the child in the dunce hat, it is absolutely none of the state’s, or anybody else’s, business. Of course in nanny Britain, the state thinks this kind of thing is its business. I believe Tony Blair once said something like “I can’t bring people’s children up for them”, as if to suggest that such a state of affairs would be the ideal, but just not practical.

And what about penis sheaths should they be banned as well?

Who was attacking who at Conway Hall?

The Kafa signatories represents the most concentrated list of our enemies I’ve read in my life.

Crapwits, cowards, surrender monkeys, friends of terrorism, Jew haters,
they’re all here. Even the terminally boring Loach. What an all star cast !
Where’s that woman who went muslim after the taliban removed her brain,
forget the idiot’s name, used to be a Sunday school teacher.

Now, let’s not hope any audience members get too excited, or their suicide vests might explode.

modernity

Catsmeow is right. Our state does enforce dress restrictions as do all democracies.

We simply do not allow a free for all dress code.

Now whether or not that is right is another question.

Thus a ban against a burqa might appear to be discriminatory it is not inherently so if such legislation added a clause such as ‘or any other form of dress that allows complete anonymity for the wearer and is perceived, by a reasonable observer, to oppose the democratic principles of equal treatment, and participation in public life.

In fact such a law would expressely uphold a democratic convention rather than the policing of some peoples dress through public decency or public order laws as we have now.

modernityblog
24 June 2009, 10:39 pm

Once you start down the road of dress codes enforced by the State where do you stop?

——-

In this country, under the Public Order Act 1938, it is already illegal for people to wear political uniforms in public. So there is, in this country at least, already a law ‘dictating’ to people what they may and may not wear.

Much as I abhorr the wearing of burkhas, I can’t see that the banning of them makes for a liberated society any more than the requirement to wear them does in countries like Saudi Arabia. The state just cannot be allowed to dictate dress choices beyond requirements absolutely necessary for the security of the population, because to do so legitimizes every (repressive) dress code worldwide. Or does Sarkozy plan to claim superior morality as his defence?

On the other hand, the idea of allowing burkhas to be worn but then banning the wearers from public services, particularly those which they are generally likely to find necessary in the course of regular daily life (like banks and train stations) is even worse, and harks back to the BNP and banned jobs situation. If something is legal – you cannot legitimately start banning people who engage in it.

Not to mention that the argument that to ban face covering is necessary for identification purposes is a complete straw dog. Identification is much more easily to be made, where deemed necessary, by document, fingerprint, or a myriad of other technological ways. Is there any evidence that burkas have been used in the UK (or in France for that matter) to hide identity for the purpose of terrorist activity? Have unidentifiable burkha’d women been robbing local banks? Is the fear that they might any more legitimate than the fear that a bare headed woman might over inflame the senses in Saudi Arabia?

MPACuk’s take on the issue – with its usual defamation and character-assassination of opponents (in this case Saira Khan) – can be found, in all its sub-literate glory, here:

http://www.mpacuk.org/content/view/5792/102/

“Is there any evidence that burkas have been used in the UK (or in France for that matter) to hide identity for the purpose of terrorist activity?”

Yes, the guy who killed the polish policewoman fled the jurisdiction disguised in a burkha.

Yes Basil, burkhas have figured in several terrorist and straightforward violent robbery cases. Men wearing them as a disguise. By all means allow burkhas, but then we need a system of fingerprinting or biometric identity cards to ensure people are who they say they are. Probably, biometric would be the least invasive.

“On the other hand, the idea of allowing burkhas to be worn but then banning the wearers from public services, particularly those which they are generally likely to find necessary in the course of regular daily life (like banks and train stations) is even worse, and harks back to the BNP and banned jobs situation. If something is legal – you cannot legitimately start banning people who engage in it.”

No, you’ve got that all wrong. There is already a law that requires you to present yourself without disguises to access various services. No one can enter a bank, for example, with a full head covering, be that a stocking mask, a crash helmet or disguised as mickey mouse. Enforcing equal compliance with the law is not discrimination… quite the contrary.

spot on

Brett you wrote:

“However, I think it is reasonable to prevent people from entering various public places if they are not dressed appropriately or if a condition of entry is showing your identity.”

how so, what mechanism? and if broken do you lock people up? it is a very messy method

In the UK, which, let’s not forget, has been the target of Islamist attacks on ordinary people going about their lives, the burqa is as much an issue of security as any pretence at religious observance.

I am at a university in London with a large Muslim student population who are peaceful, decent people on the whole, (notwithstanding attempts by the Muslim Society there to bring in idiots like Tiddley Ridley to address the faithful). Quite a few female students cover their faces, and I have seen one who wears a burqa.

I invite anyone to tell me how security can be maintained in such circumstances.

Brett: how about thick facial hair? Do you make men shave before you let them withdraw their cash?

“.. defies universal values…”

???

MCB has finally slipped its moorings. Does it actually believe that the Muslim decision to “disappear” women is universal and its right?

mettaculture,

I take your point, but, and you are better probably at pondering this, do you really want State jurisdiction over what people can wear?

I am against the Burqa, but legal means are not the route to go down.

“Women who really are suffering abuse will not be helped this way. Women who are instead happy to live in a mobile prison whenever they appear in public should be free to do so.”

Habibi:

I live in downtown Toronto and have seen young females clad head-to-toe in heavy black clothes, including the niqab that had only a narrow slight for vision in our sweltering, 33 – 40 celsius humid summer weather while the father and brother are clad in light colours and, in the case of the boy, knee shorts.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s child abuse.

Modernity:

The burqa isn’t the hejab. It’s an instrument of control that imposes heavy control on the women who must wear them. It’s been used by thieves of either gender to commit crimes and could also make it impossible to know if the female wearer is being subjected to physical abuse.

If you are opposed to a legal ban, what do you propose in it’s place? An eduation campaign aimed at Islamist males? That’s gonna work real well.

Lynne T,

please, I know what the burqa is, I am NOT arguing about that.

Could you cast your mind back, years, and remember when dress codes were imposed on women? I believe they were called the Puritans?

I am against dress codes. period.

Whether they are in Saudi, etc to enforce the wearing of those garments, or France against the wearing of the garments. Period.

“Neither the burqa or the niqab is ordered by Islam,” Al Shaka’a told Gulf News. “They are local costumes…”

I grew up in Newham, East London. Even in those days, there was a sizeable Muslim population, yet I never once saw a burqa or a niqab on our streets. Asian dress, yes, but no veils. The only place I saw them was while working in the West End, and only then on the wives of Gulf Arabs shopping in department stores. It was such a unique sight that it was something to tell people about: “yeah, honestly, she was wearing a mask!” (and even then some wouldn’t believe you.)

Now when I visit Newham, niqabs are a common sight. You’ll see them on every shopping thoroughfare, worn, usually, by second and third-generation Pakistanis, Indians and Bengalis with no cultural connection whatsoever with the Arabian Peninsula. So you have to ask – why do they wear them? Or, perhaps more pertinently, why did the Muslim women of 20-30 years ago not wear them?

“Brett: how about thick facial hair? Do you make men shave before you let them withdraw their cash?”

Don’t be stupid. There’s already a law that says you can’t enter a bank wearing a balaclava or a crash helmet. Of course a person could shave or dye their hair, or grow their hair and beard, or put on a false nose after a robbery, but it is obvious to most sensible people that this is not quite as quick or convenient, or as effective, as a full head covering.

Do you propose to mae an exception for burqas or to scrap entirely the law saying you can’t enter a bank wearing a stocking mask?

“I am against dress codes. period.”

I have to agree with Modernity, with – as I’ve said – the proviso that there are no special laws excepmting people from dress codes when they are required for good reason.

It follows that if you should make no law specifically banning the burqa, you should make no laws specifically allowing it (when other forms of clothing are controlled) either.

“how so, what mechanism? and if broken do you lock people up? it is a very messy method”

Messy? How? What do we do right now if a person enters a building site without the required high-visibility jacket and helmet? What do we do today when someone tries to enter a bank wearing a crash helmet, or wants to ride on the rollercoaster with a long flowing Doctor Who scarf?

We say “no”.

Modernity:

Your logic is off.

The wearing of the burqa = conforming to puritan dress codes that go beyond anything the Plymouth Bros ever contemplated. Opposing the burqa = opposing a form of puritanism that is imposed on women in certain countries by the theocracy, and in others via a myscogenistic culture. If Muslim men had to wear the equivalent garb, the burqa would be long gone.

Brett,

Outlawing the Burqa on the street, etc is not the same as a building site.

Do you favour criminalising the wearing of non-approved clothing?

think on that for a moment, there are many implications.

This featured letter in the Times today,by Dr T. Hargey, Chairman, Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford points out that the Koran does not mandate the veil for women let alone the hiljab or the burqa. These are as he points out cultural traditions specific to particular regions not a religious rule.

Here is an extract

“For too long a foreign-inspired Muslim clergy that defends female inferiority and gender discrimination has subjected Muslims in the West to virulent indoctrination. This brainwashing stems from the Middle East and South Asia but has no Koranic foundation. It is propagated by nefarious factions, including the hardline Wahhabi-Ikwani-Salafi- Deobandi sects.

“These currently ascendant sexist groups in Europe peddle the myth that full body covering and face concealment for women is a religious requirement. On the contrary, it is nothing more than a cultural choice, a personal preference. The mullahs fail to tell their flocks that nowhere in Islam’s transcendent text is there any mention of the word burka or niqab.

“Since the Koran declares itself to be immutable and that nothing has been omitted from the scripture (vi, 38), why is there a need for latterday misogynists to impose a draconian dress code that is not specifically sanctioned by the holy book? Other than calling for public modesty of both sexes, Islam’s sacred scripture does not prescribe any specific sartorial code.

“As with everything else that brings Islam into disrepute today, the Muslim clergy relies on secondary sources, particularly the hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad) to support their questionable theological views, including the need for women to hide their faces. But it is a historical fact that the hadith, many of which are suspect or spurious, were compiled about 250 years after the death of the Prophet. Clearly, where these human statements conflict with the divine text, they have no legitimacy.

“While Muslim women should be at liberty to decide what to wear, they have to be truthful and say that they are upholding cultural mores and tribal traditions when they veil their faces. They cannot honestly claim that this trendy fad, which evokes understandable fear and negativity in European society, is a koranic imperative or a religious duty. ”

(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article6571025.ece)

It is interesting too that the more fanatical “radical” male Moslems here, like Anjem Choudhary and his crew,wear male robes or “dresses” which again are specific to the Middle East. In Pakistan the traditional attire for both sexes is the tunic and trousers Salwar kameez.

There is a lot of talk about how the wearing of total concealment is voluntary. The trouble is that when you are a member of a religion which esteems the more avid practitioners, then there is always going to be pressure on its members to wear the more extreme clothing to show they too are very devout. In this case it is noticeable that Moslem men are not walking around in robes – mad self appointed clerics aside – in everyday life. They were mainstream western clothing and use their women to demonstrate their devoutness for them.

I personally have no problem with headscarves. My GPs’ receptionist wears one (for religious reasons). I would have severe problems interacting with anyone who deals face to face with the public, who covered their face.

Mrs Ben, I do have a problem with headscarves, although I acknowledge that they have become a common sight on British streets. I hate the patriarchy they are boasting off, and the belief that the kufr is less than them. I scorn the idea that a woman is less eligible than a man. However, I have learnt to deal with it by thinking to myself, ‘Stupid cow.’.

Serendipity: You begin by considering practical ways of deporting beings that prefer to dress like Martians to Mars

“Outlawing the Burqa on the street, etc is not the same as a building site.”

Modernity, do I really have to repeat for a 4th time that I agree with you that a *general* ban is unacceptable.

I thought I had stated this very clearly – repeatedly!

The burqa should NOT be banned – there should NOT be any special regarding the burqa, *either* banning it *OR* exempting it from laws that apply to other clothing.

NO specials laws for burqas!

I trust that is clear now.

Further to my last post, The Saudies don’t seem to have any difficulties regarding deporting Martians to Mars. What’s their secret? Commitment? Determination. No-liverlillied, disorientated, unprincipled liberalism?

thanks brett, my apologies, my reading skills not up to scratch :)

“Is there any evidence that burkas have been used in the UK (or in France for that matter) to hide identity for the purpose of terrorist activity”

Yes there have been a number of robberies, and in at least oone case a terrorist on the run from the police used one to make his escape. But I think that most of the crooks were menfolk.

Many years ago, in Paris, there was a spate of attacks on women. A gang clad in burkas would use the disguise to follow women into ladies toilets. Once they got in there the woman would be attacked and her handbag stolen.

As I said earlier, the government of a “free” country mandating against a form of dress because of the possibility that some women do not exercise genuine free- by wearing it, is simply not the way to resolve the problem. It just transfers control of what people wear from the people who everyone here are complaining about (the Muslim theocrats) to the British state. The difference being that the control exercised by the British state then has the force of law behind it, and it becomes de jure control as opposed to a cultural phenomenon which is subject to change, persuasion, assimilation etc.

What’s the next step? Banning make-up because some women feel culturally obliged to wear it?

And what happens when the Muslim women this ban is supposed to protect suddenly disappear from the streets because they aren’t allowed to leave their homes by their menfolk. How’s that going to help them? Presumably the government should legislate that they’re allowed a certain amount of time outside everyday?

That should of course read “free will” in line 3. Sorry, it’s 9pm here and I’ve had a couple of beers…

“thanks brett”

Think nothing of it. ;-)

Modernity

The problem with the wearing of the niqab and the Burkha in Britain is that we are not dealing with cultural tradition.

As has been pointed out these items come from traditions of the Arabian peninsula.

Of course then Muslim women usually of the 2nd or 3 rd genration of Indian subcontinent are entitled to wear such things as a personal choice.

It is a choice, no more of their tradition than me wearing a Poncho or dressing as Geronimo.

But, but, but.

This personal choice of clothing is a political statement it declares a person, quite clearly for someone born here, who is not a woman from some of the states of the Arabian peninsular, to be committed to a radical theocratic totalitarian political ideology, inimical to the democracy in which they live and deeply opposed to the social tolerance that they exploit in order to wear a garment to show their contempt for the society which grants them this privilege.

So it is not fear or phobia or a reactionary anti-Muslim hatred that most people (including myself) feel when confronted by a woman born here wearing something out of the Islamist Arabian Knights dress up box; it is annoyance at yet a further example of ‘in your face’ piss taking.

If you doubt the association of extreme veiling of women with Islamism and Jihadi sympathising radicals then go to an Islamist meeting and count how many women in UK typical dress with uncovered hair there are (if there are any women of course otherwise you might have to stalk the men until you see their wives and no prizes for predicting how their wives will be dressed).

Dress is not just protection from the elements but a set of signs and symbols that can be read for implicit or explicit statements.

In this case (and note in France there is no history of the Burkha among women from the Maghreb) we are dealing with primary explicit symbols of clerical fascism that only secondarily serve as clothing.

We are wilfully blind if we choose to read this as only an issue of clothing rather than of the obviously extreme political statement that has become the predominant meaning and purpose in choosing to wear such clothing.

I am not sure I know exactly what to do. I would not be inclined to ban the burkha (the metal cage face masks i find the most shocking but realise that, so far, they are culturally traditional dress for middle aged women born elsewhere).

I am certainly not going to defend it as clothing rights for all either and have no more intention of having the piss taken than the authorities in any Muslim country do..

At points where a visual identification is necessary, for example passport control, a man (policeman, guard or soldier) simply asks the woman to step aside (sometimes there is a screen sometimes not but the woman is not exposed to the public) and reveal her face.

I certainly would refuse to be served, or taught, or otherwise required to respond to a woman who covered her lips in public.

Actually I am a partial lip reader so I feel quite comfortable with such an assertion.

I have spent many years in countries where women do wear such coverings and I am at the minimum neutral and polite about it but in practice very much more accomodating (for example when I have given lectures of seminars) realising that these women have no real choice.

But here, where there is an absolute freedom of choice to these mostly young women, because the social and political meaning is so clear I am far from accomodating but I take a hands off ‘you stay out of my space and ill stay out of yours’.

Such a born again Muslim Islamist totalitarian might well detect a frostiness in my response.

If she considered my response Islamophobic rather than a detestation of the views that she waves like a flag with her clothing, well that I see as just more piss taking, where the reciprocal privileges of belonging to a democracy are seen by some as rights that they can demand in return for nothing but contempt.

So how exactly do you feel about people wearing symbols of belonging to a fascist movement modernity?

How do you feel about people wearing Swastikas and SS Uniforms in Public?

Women who want to wear this garment should be free to do so, but they alone should be expected to bear the burden which inevitably ensues. They shouldn’t expect concessions from the rest of society.

There are numerous transactions which need identifiability on the part of the applicant. So if you won’t make yourself identifiable, you should be barred from making the transaction.

Incidentally, most employers wouldn’t consider a fully veiled individual at a job interview.They need to know who they are letting in to their premises every day. So you could be making yourself unemployable, and therefore entitlement to unemployment benefits should be withdrawn.

MAZ

‘because they aren’t allowed to leave their homes by their menfolk.’

‘This is called false imprisonment and it is the imprisoner who should end up imprisoned’

Absolutely we should not tolerate men locking girls and women up in the home. It is illegal here, as it is in Iran.

See the Iranian film ‘the Apple’ by Samira Makhmalbaf, where a female social worker is called (by a worried neighbour0 to a house where a blind father locks his daughters inside, not allowing them to play because he fears he cannot guard their honour.

The social worker is incensed and threatens to have him thrown in jail. As a lesson she lets the children out and puts a lock through the bars of his door so that he will know ‘what it feels like’.

Mettaculture – I don’t think you can compare the Swastika. That is undeniably symbolic of a criminally murderous regime, the word
“criminal” being the key. I agree that the burqa is representative of an oppressive totalitarian theocratic political/religious system. However much I dislike that belief system, I don’t think the state should ban its symbols. It’s not the state’s job to police our ideas. The state’s job (in this sphere) should be limited to preventing or punishing actual incitement to violence or crime, which to my mind wearing a swastika would be, but the burqa is not.

Incidentally I am probably one of the few British men to have worn a Burkha.

An Indian femminist friend of mine made me wear one and go out with her, whereupon she dumped me near a mosque.

Obviously I couldn’t have removed it so I was compelled to sit and learn the lesson that you are invisible and in a curious way protected as long as you don’t try and do anything untoward or unbeffitting someone given all the individuality of a laundry basket.

I think I have still got it somewhere. its a nasty 100% polyester thing, with a fake embroidered viewing grill. You can only see through a dozen or so crude burned holes with melted edges that make you itch.

maz

I wouldn’t ban the burkha I was just drawing an extreme comparator to show that extreme veiling is a flagrant symbol of an extremist political ideology.

I would move away if someone wearing an ‘I love BNP’ T shirt sat next to me on the underground, I don’t if a veiled woman does.

If however there are a group of obvious Islamists shouting Allah u Akhbar I do and I get of the train at the next station and say shame on you.

The fact that I treat female Islamists differently says more about my old fashioned boy scout like morality rather more than it does about an acceptance of their fascist clothing choice however.

Wearing a swastika is legal in Britain (though obviously not in some European countries) although you would probably find yourself arrested on one of the infinitely inclusive public order offences ,which could but probably wouldnt nor shouldnt ’stretch to cover’ the Burkha.

It is worth pointing out that two of Europe’s most constitutionally secular states France and Turkey both ban the headscarf in public service and schools.

In both it is seen as a strong symbol of opposition to democracy.

Metta,

We both know the history of these awful clothes, that is not disputed.

I am NOT disputing any of this.

you wrote:

“Dress is not just protection from the elements but a set of signs and symbols that can be read for implicit or explicit statements.”

Yes it is and no it isn’t. Depends. I fear that this topic is getting caught up in something of a moral panic, and the rational issues concerning legislating dress codes are ignored.

There is a terrible tendency, as you will see above (with Field, Morgoth’s, etc comments), that this issue is being caught within the clutches of Daily Mail hysteria.

I think we need to step back and think of the wider implications, legislating dress codes, even non-legal but coercive dress codes is not the way to go and anyone of an older generation will remember the rebellions of the 1950s and 1960s concerning clothes.

Metta, I don’t disagree with what you say, but the legislative method is clumsy and brutal.

And what when you have such a piece of legislation which outlaws the Burqa, what next?

A rightwing government comes into power then outlaws men from wearing dresses? etc

I think it is a terrible precedent.

I grant you this is a stronger argument, and the swastika and SS uniform point would not appeal to me, but if such neo-Nazis, and if they were only real neo-Nazis, then I would be happy to physically persuade them otherwise, if necessary.

I don’t view the Burqa as the same as Nazi paraphernalia.

Either way I wouldn’t want legislation.

Is it my imagination, or does the number of women covering their faces rise dramatically for a while after a news story on the niqab? There seemed to be niqabis everywhere I looked today in Walthamstow and I seem to remember the same thing after Jack Straw’s comments on the issue a few years ago

“I think we need to step back and think of the wider implications, legislating dress codes”

Well that is what I was saying with relation to introducing legal precedents about political party membership and access to jobs. Sometimes we have to accept that in a free society people exercise their freedoms in ways we don’t like.

Tendance Coatesy has made an official statment on this matter.

http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2009/06/25/ban-the-burkha/

My fervent wish is that the events in Iran put a stop to all this nonsense. It’s all to play for at the moment.

Modernity

of course i don’t want legislation on dress codes either as I have repeatedly said.

But i do want a debate about what these things mean.

in fact I want to reduce by 90% the endless stupid legislation by a cowardly government for a cowardly populace who want to absolve themselves of the responsibility for mutual social policing.

the law is for when the normal social and cultural mechanisms for conflict resolution have been exhausted.

However the breakdown of civic conflict resolution is one of the first and most serious consequences of the pillarisation of society consequent to deluded multiculturalism.

How can one pillar make any statement about anything going on in another pillar at all?

It is this hands of social passivity and hence a weak form of complicity in the growth of extremism.

I would not legislate against the burkha or the niqab but I certainly would not legislate for it.

And to allow say the niqab to be included as a ‘culturally authentic’ manifestation in anti-discrimination law is legislating for it.

If someone is talking to me with an invisible face in a muffled voice from behind a cloth, I do not wish to be told that I am discriminating against her ‘right’ to wear this garb and thus be found guilty of some form of ‘racial’ discrimination.

I will say excuse me can you remove that or find someone else to serve me i cannot understand what you are saying.

but as always these debates have an unreality about them because we are not talking about clothing we are talking about Islamism, a totalitarian ideology that allows for no social tolerance, cultural relativism or social, sexual, cultural or political diversity, which in fact is committed to the overthrowing of democracy and its replacement with a violently reactionary theocracy.

The major tactic, and an unbelievably successful one with no sign of any end to it, of Islamism is to engage in an endless culture war, with one challenge after another, whose only end must be the unravelling of all the little fudges and harmless fictions that have made us the least racist in our history.

So Sikhs get to wear turbans instead of crash helmets, no big deal its not my brain on the pavement.

But the principle of accomodation that allowed such an exception cannot be subjected to an endless bombardment of accomodationist demands by islamists whose endgame is not mutual accomodation but an endlessley increasing seperatism and subversion until the time when replacement and takeover of our historical system of democracy with their preferred theocracy (in their minds) arrives.

We can no longer position ourselves against the reactionaries of the traditional political right and say ‘hold on that is not fair or it is excessive’ without realising that we merely embolden the Islamist right.

It is incumbent upon us to say what we will do to stop socially destructive Islamist seggregationist creep.

Where do we draw the line?

because modernity you and i both realise the Islamists are never, never, going to settle for less than everything they can get to further their aims no matter how destructive this is to a society that they hold in the greatest contempt.

my view is htat if we wish to remain a free society then we have no choice but to behave more like the US.

We have to use contempt and mockery and ridicule and dissaproval and just plain insistence ‘no you do not do that here it is not acceptable. Women in this culture are treated equally and do not wear such ridiculous clothes. This is how we do things here, please respect this and then you will not be mocked or excluded but respected and included as we are sure you must want.

America does not legislate for these things but daily reinforces them, in countless ways, with the assertive but courteous manner with which Americans deal with each other in Public.

I have the dubious pleasure of finding myself in agreement with Nicolas Sarkozy. Face-covering (not head-covering, but face-covering) is incompatible with the conduct of British, as of French, social and cultural life.

Onwards in sympathy for opposition to usury, but also in total opposition to any according of legal status to Sharia law, to Muslim schools here (where my own Catholic schools have existed since a good thousand years before any other kind did), to polygamy, to male no less than female genital mutilation, and to the building of mosques with domes and minarets, which are triumphalistic manifestations of an Islamised society, culture and polity, and which were in that spirit added to former churches during Islam’s forcible overrunning of the Eastern Roman Empire. But halal meat is a serviceable weapon in the armoury against the hunting ban.

Will Sarkozy, among so very many others, now also see the light over Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Xinjiang, Turkey…?

I totally agree with Mettas comments about islamic mission creep.

Friends at a local company have told me that they are being taken to an employment tribunal because they dismissed a muslim female member of staff. The issue in this case was not the wearing of a burka, it was her announcement, two weeks after starting at the firm, that she would have no further dealings with men, either in person or on the telephone. Her job was in the purchasing department, arranging scheduled deliveries of components needed for the production line. Those folk are on the ‘phone pretty much all day. People are angry about it because they reckon she never intended to take the job seriously, and just wants to cause trouble and drag them to a tribunal. She won’t come out of it empty handed, the company will end up having to pay her money.

What do you suppose that company’s hiring policy (I mean the real, unspoken, unpublished one) will be in the future?

David I’d gladly genitally mutilate you (via a stoutblow to the bollocks) if you care to pop over to Belfast.

I think I have been persuaded by modernity on this one, although I’d like to enter a caveat that the right to dress as one pleases should not confer other rights. The case Monty mentioned must be successfully defended by the company in question, and my right to treat burqa-wearers with disdain must not be infringed.

What metta said. I am in favour of a ban though. Leaving aside the notional political symbolism or emotive freight this garb carries, from a purely pragmatic perspective, in these times banning the burkha should be regarded as an explicit security issue-related undertaking for the benefit of society as a whole. That’s what should be focused on. Not the supposed violation of the rights of a minority (of a minority?) to wear a piece of cloth. Do we have to have the first UK burkha-facilitated suicide bombing before reason reasserts itself?

Also, there is an absurd, shouting, false equivalence in arguing that banning total face-covering garments is as much a restriction on personal freedoms as legislation to enforce the wearing of same (would be). I mean, FFS! How have we come to this state of affairs? This is arrant arse-about-face perversion of wisdom and indicative of the way that liberalist narratives are engaging in a worldwide exhibition of self-strangulation and vitiating of values.

So why don’t Muslim men in UK also wear traditional middle eastern dress, which by and large (apart from the likes of Chouhdary)they do not? Why does this religious edict only apply to women?

Because, Mrs Ben, men are important beings and can’t be expected to suffer the inconvenience attaching to such edicts.

Mettaculture -

Yes, very well put. One point:

This is how we do things here, please respect this and then you will not be mocked or excluded but respected and included as we are sure you must want

Perhaps. I wonder, though, whether maybe exclusion is what’s really sought here, and maybe even mockery or at least friction. This friction fuels the confrontational atmosphere, which after all is how the endless attrition works: 1. You are mocking us. 2. That’s “discrimination”. 3. We demand special treatment of our “rights”. 4. A weary and cowardly society gives in yet again to yet one more demand, and the ratchet moves yet one more cog forward.

That is why I have always said that the exemption to Sikhs from crash helmets was a terrible mistake.

If there were no muslim’s in the country we wouldnt be having this debate would we?, That makes the BNP right in my opinion.

It’s as easy as that.

There is a terrible tendency, as you will see above (with Field, Morgoth’s, etc comments), that this issue is being caught within the clutches of Daily Mail hysteria.

Oooh, Daily Mail mentioned, argument proven (extra points for saying ‘hysteria’).

I don’t view the Burqa as the same as Nazi paraphernalia.

Why? It’s the outward manifestation of an explicitly totalitarian ideology. And don’t tell me it’s just clothes, protection from the British weather, because it isn’t.

I grant you this is a stronger argument, and the swastika and SS uniform point would not appeal to me, but if such neo-Nazis, and if they were only real neo-Nazis, then I would be happy to physically persuade them otherwise, if necessary.

I have a sneaky suspicion that you would object to people taking the law into their own hands and attacking women wearing burqa or niqab. You are making an arbitrary distinction between what you personally don’t like and is permissible to attack, and what you personally don’t dislike and is not.

metta, don’t disagree one bit :)

“That makes the BNP right in my opinion.

And that makes you a cretin.. in my opinion, of course.

Please fuck off.

“I don’t view the Burqa as the same as Nazi paraphernalia.”

So what, in each case a precedent is being set. If that is your whole argument you have lost the debate.

Monty, can’t the company countersue for breach of contract or something? When she was hired, the company presumably informed her in detail what sort of work she would be doing, and she presumably agreed to do the job as described. Didn’t she?

If there were no muslim’s in the country we wouldnt be having this debate would we?, That makes the BNP right in my opinion.

No Muslim’s ~*what*~? You should have put the apostrophe in wouldnt.

PS You do realize that no part France has been governed from this country for almost 500 years?

haverill, if you really, want my whole argument then either read the whole thread, or notice that the above line was in response to a point that metta raised :)

it is good to actually read the thread, plenty of arguments either way, you must try it sometime.

If there were no muslim’s in the country we wouldnt be having this debate would we?, That makes the BNP right in my opinion.

It’s as easy as that.

Life can seem quite easy when you’re thick as shit.

‘Hitler had the right idea!’ etc etc

Moron.

“If there were no muslim’s in the country we wouldnt be having this debate would we?”

If we had fewer knuckle-dragging troglodytes who don’t know where to put an apostrophe we’d probably be a lot better off too.

And yes, spot the deliberate mistake.

PS You do realize that no part France has been governed from this country for almost 500 years?

Ooo-er, do those tradition-obsessed fuckwits at the BNP maybe want to implement a radical revision of this country’s relations with France? After all, what could be more British than laying claim to the French throne?

Is it my imagination, or does the number of women covering their faces rise dramatically for a while after a news story on the niqab? There seemed to be niqabis everywhere I looked today in Walthamstow and I seem to remember the same thing after Jack Straw’s comments on the issue a few years ago.

Let’s recall that Straw is partially deaf, so benefits from seeing lips.

Also, would those comparing the burka to a simply dress-code be opposed to prohibitting public nudity? Now, before the naked cycle rides by Debbie Finks of the bicycle community are suggested (Modernity, I am thinking of you), these are controlled events. I can just about tolerate them, but would take a different view on someone walking down the street or going into Tescos stark bollock naked.

I can walk around my house in the buff or my underpants, but would not venture outside like that.

I’m not sure which case Monty is refering to, but here’s a parallel one.

Sorry to say, but I’m pro ban.
No society is risk free and no decision is. The families where the woman wears Burqa have at least 42 countries to chose where to live.
Why do they chose to live in a secular country.
Facial expressions and interpretation of these, are an integral part of western culture and the way we communicate. By wearing a burqa you excluse yourself from the society. Why live here.

Joe I don’t know the details, just what my friends have told me.

But most job descriptions wouldn’t specify things in terms of dealing directly with male contacts in meetings, and by telephone. They are more general than that. For example negotiating price, delivery and payment terms with suppliers. And I think she is claiming she could do everything by e-mail. (That isn’t really feasible, she would need to have face to face meetings with sales reps. And folk on the shop floor don’t have PCs.)

They should have included a probationary period in her contract, though she probably could just have easily have waited till that had expired to make her demands.

mrs ben
25 June 2009, 6:08 pm

So why don’t Muslim men in UK also wear traditional middle eastern dress, which by and large (apart from the likes of Chouhdary)they do not? Why does this religious edict only apply to women?

I’m sure some of them do, Mrs. Ben, but the male garb doesn’t include anything like the burqa or the niqab, but rather flowing robes, loose pyjama bottoms and little caps. Nothing nearly as confining or demeaning, so even if 100% of Muslim males wore traditional garb, it wouldn’t be the equivalent.

This good artacle! Yes, burqas must not be baned. Burqas are protection for woman and command from Allah subahana wa tala and our Beautiful Prophet Muhammad sala Allahu aleyhi wa sallam. Muslims must not lose rights like halal food, poligamy, namaz times ect.

Allah speaks true. Soon more womans will wear burqa and niqab. Islam fast-growing deen in England. Al-hamdullilah!

A few years ago a study was carried out in Germany, by the Adenauer Foundation, into the reasons why Turkish women living there wore headscarves.

One of the study’s findings was that most of the women interviewed wear the headscarf for religious reasons. (That is they believed they had a religious duty to wear it). Ninety-seven percent regarded it as a religious duty. In most cases the decision to wear a headscarf was a personal decision influenced more by the woman’s father or mother than by persons outside the family.

Frank Jessen, one of the authors of the study, pointed out that when asked if they ever felt put at a disadvantage because of the headscarf, 54 percent of the women said they felt put at a disadvantage, 18 percent were not sure, and 28 percent said they didn’t feel put at a disadvantage.

A majority of the Turkish-born women wearing headscarves did not feel at home in Germany. Their sense of solidarity with Turkey was appreciably higher at 71 percent than with Germany. Eighty percent of the participants stated that Turkish people in Germany were treated like second-class citizens.

The authors of the the study identified “the great distance these women felt from the host country in which some of them were born, at least in any case in which they have lived for quite a long time … here we see an immediate need to start an intense dialogue, because these are attitudes that are not favorable for integration into mainstream society.”

This must be one of the more worrying aspects, that by causing women to be separated in where they live, where they work, and how they look, from mainstream British society, we make it harder from the community as a whole to integrate. Only a few die hards like Ken Livingstone presumably still cling to the now largely discredited idea of multi cultural ghettos.

Wearing the full hiljab or the burqa and living in ghettos cannot be helpful to further integration of ethnic and religious minorities. And the alienation this generates in the young males in the community.

This good artacle! Yes, burqas must not be baned. Burqas are protection for woman and command from Allah subahana wa tala and our Beautiful Prophet Muhammad sala Allahu aleyhi wa sallam. Muslims must not lose rights like halal food, poligamy, namaz times ect.

Allah speaks true. Soon more womans will wear burqa and niqab. Islam fast-growing deen in England. Al-hamdullilah!

Or what?

It is my experience with women wearing the hijab that they will not engage in friendly banter or eye contact that is normal among women who may not be friends but are at least friendly. I do not know if the same is true among school age girls. My youngest daughter is visiting a mosque with her class next Monday, I have been told to provide a headscarf. I will do so, but I personally don’t see why ten year olds have to follow the diktats of a alien religion. They are also charging each child £1.00 to visit their place of worship. Personally I would refuse to pay it, no other temple, synagogue or guadwalla (Sikh temple) has asked for a penny piece, but I know that Eglantine woudl never forgive me if I made a fuss. Doesn’t sound like integration to me.

Modernity –

I object to being called xenophobic and Roma-hating (it’s a capital “R”) on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. I have always had a great interest in people of different cultures. As a child I liked nothing better than listening into radio stations from around the world on shortwave (this was before the internet had been invented!). Hardly a trait of the xenophobe. I’ve always been interested in other peoples’ take on various subjects. To be able to discern some differences between Islam and Buddhism or between Roma immigrants and Polish immigrants is not a crime.

Geert Wilders is not “my mate”. I think his political views are sometimes naive and certainly counterproductive in the way they are expressed. However, he is a legitimate democratic politician and his ban by the simpleton Jacqui Smith was an outrageous misuse of executive power.

The word you are looking for, I think, is abuse (of executive power).

SueR: that charge is outrageous; but you know very well that integration is the last thing on their mind.

SueR
25 June 2009, 9:53 pm

It is my experience with women wearing the hijab that they will not engage in friendly banter or eye contact that is normal among women who may not be friends but are at least friendly.
————-

I suspect that most burka wearers are doing it to be hostile and offensive. They are allowed to be hostile and offensive, it’s their call.

A headmistress who lives locally, has told me that she likes to keep in touch with her ex-pupils. Especially “my girls” as she calls them. But most of the headscarved ones won’t even make eye contact with her. There is only one who responds, and enjoys the company of her old teacher. (And even visited her in hospital when she had her hip replacement. )

There seem to be discontinuities in their lives, points at which everything changes. Leaving school is one such milestone, because there is no longer an official agency of the state enforcing any degree of moderation. Another seems to be when they get married, or if their Dad dies. In either case they change “ownership”, and become the “property” of their brothers, or their husbands.

@Field

Pay no attention to Modernity. He likes to think he’s above the great unwashed here, exemplified by his resorting to ad hominem attacks at each and every opportunity. Ignoring him is the best solution.

This must be one of the more worrying aspects, that by causing women to be separated in where they live, where they work, and how they look, from mainstream British society, we make it harder from the community as a whole to integrate. Only a few die hards like Ken Livingstone presumably still cling to the now largely discredited idea of multi cultural ghettos.

Good point, Mrs Ben. My argument is that we only ‘truly’ integrate as a society when we intermarry. If Muslim girls are theologically, culturally, geographically and physically (sartorially) prevented from contact with indigenous British men, how will they ever meet, interact and fall in love? This is partly the agenda of the bigoted racists in the Asian Muslim communities: it’s always accepted for Muslim men to marry non-Muslim girls because there’s pressure on the girl in question to convert and the children will be considered Muslim. The opposite is unthinkable for many Muslims and they’re able to get away with their racism because liberals accept that its a relgious prescription…no questions asked; move along now, nothing to see here!

No (believing) Muslim respects the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In fact Muslims have concocted the ‘Cairo Declaration of Yuman Rites’ which subjects all human rights under the sharia, the barbaric Islamic “law”.

Worthless, useless and absurd.

The freedom sack is an abomination and an in-your-face rejection of our society and values. Those who travelled through Muslim countries in the seventies hardly ever saw as much as a hijab. (except in Afghanistan and some backward Arab fiefdoms) The re-Islamization, or jihadization came with the oil-boom and the Saudi trillions which are now used to conquer and subjugate infidel nations by stealth. Most of us know that Saudi money is driving the Islamization of our (Western) countries as well as the global jihad in more than 30 theatres of war world-wide and in formerly ‘moderate’ countries like India, Malaysia and Indonesia we see increasing fundamentalism and intolerance along with the obligatory terror attacks.

It is Saudi doctrine (Wahabism, but not only, the “Iranian Revolution” has a fair bit to do with it) that mandates the burka, and Saudi propaganda that forces it on indoctrinated, illiterate, disenfranchised females. The silence of Western feminists is unbearable, it breaks the imaginary “glass ceiling”. But lets not forget that its not only the burka that is unacceptable to us Westerners who are concerned about our culture and the future of Western civilization. It is also polygamy, misogyny, the abominable, barbaric practice of female genital mutilation, segregation of the sexes, the hatred that comes in the mental baggage of every Muslim towards non-Muslims and Jews, and at the same time the scrounging of the welfare state, to which Muslims have contributed little.

The obsessive Islamist wingeing and whining over Universal Values, over us infdels telling women what not to wear, is as false as a 13-dollar bill and should be rejected by everyone who still has his faculties intact. There is no justification for this ‘portable seclusion’ that reduces women to non-entities, and Muslim demands on us to accept the unacceptable must be ridiculed and rejected, totally.

But so far there is only one upright politician in Europe who speaks up against this new uncultured imperialism, and he is not even allowed to set foot in England. A sad state of affairs. However, to understand Islam and its doctrine a little bit better, lets hear it from Muslim scholar Bassam Tibi: According to Tibi, the quest of converting the entire world to Islam is an immutable fixture of the Muslim worldview. At its core, Islam is a religious mission to all humanity. Muslims are religiously obliged to disseminate the Islamic faith throughout the world. “We have sent you forth to all mankind” (Q. 34:28). If non-Muslims submit to conversion or subjugation, this call (da’wa) can be pursued peacefully. If they do not, Muslims are obliged to wage war against them. In Islam, peace requires that non-Muslims submit to the call of Islam, either by converting or by accepting the status of a religious minority (dhimmi) and paying the imposed poll tax, jizya.” (Our dhimmi governments are paying billions in tribute to further Islamic causes, and call it ‘aid’)

Jihad,Terrorism are acts of “opening” the world to Islam and expressing Islamic jihad. Relations between dar al-Islam, the home of peace, and dar al-harb, the world of unbelievers, nevertheless take place in a state of war, according to the Qur’an and to the authoritative commentaries of Islamic jurists. Unbelievers who stand in the way, creating obstacles for the da’wa, are blamed for this state of war, for the da’wa can be pursued peacefully if others submit to it. In other words, those who resist Islam cause wars and are responsible for them. Only when Muslim power is weak is “temporary truce” (hudna) allowed.

So Muslims are only doing their religious duty to make the world Islamic, and the burka is part of this “opening the world to Islam”. Perhaps it is time for us infidels to religiously fight them just like our forefathers have done, otherwise we will all end up under a burka (or dead)

Field,

You can object all you like, but HP archives are almost overflowing with your borderline comments on these topics, and more recently your nasty views on the Roma.

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/06/19/should-gipsies-be-allowed-to-jump-the-queue/

I have no doubt that you’d wish to forget your previous remarks, but they are on record. I stand by my comments :)

Modernity –

Well feel free to quote these awful comments rather than hiding behind thread references, which anyone can do (knowing that hardly anyone will follow up).

I seem to recall a thread where you advocated the torture of kittens. I just can’t be bothered to quote it.

For the record, the points I was making about the Roma were:-

(a) Any violence towards them was to be condemned and to be punished with all the severity of the law

(b) The mainstream media were not reporting how the Roma came to be in Northern Ireland. Anyone is going to be interested in that. Why had they decided to settle there? It’s an interesting question. I passed on what I had gleaned from the internet by way of answer given the absence of info in the MSM.

(c) I made some observations about Roma people being involved in Big Issue sales and begging in London from my own experience. It appeared to me, from my own experience that it was the Roma women who were left to sell the paper on the street. I’ve had personal experience of Roma women using the “showing the baby” trick to gain money. The Roma connection with begging is well known. Do you want me to pretend it is not well known? That what I have witnessed myself is not true?

(d) I offered the person debating the issue with me many chances to contradict the facts of what I was saying. He/she did not.

I might add that I have a friend of several years who is a Romanian and who has interviewed Romanian immigrants. She views people as individuals – there are individuals who come to this country who are prepared to work and contribute positively to the country. I do as well. But it is simply PC nonsense to pretend there is no connection between Roma communities and criminality and/or begging. If you want to live in a dream world feel free.

I think the problem with your sort of PC talk is you want to have your cake and eat it. You want to define individuals by group identity but you don’t want group identity to be connected to individual behaviour.

My position is consistent. In terms of the law people should be treated as individuals and not as members of ethnic, racial, religious or other socially defined groups. However IF people are going to use social groups as identity reference points then it is legitimate to look at “group” outcomes. For instance in the UK we have Muslims being over-represented in prison by a factor of 4 I think it is. In France it is some absurd figure – something like a factor of 10 or more.

This sort of information is relevant for when people say something like “Muslims have a strong sense of moral duty to the community and actively seek to do good.” The sort of stuff school kids are taught. It is legitimate if such claims are made to look at the evidence.

Of course this approach can be applied to all groups. I don’t think the record of the “British” Anglo Celt communities stands much scrutiny – involved in slaving and imperial oppression on a planetary scale for a good 300 years. I’m not surprised that we are heartily detested in many parts of the world. Whilst I am a supporter of the Iranian revolution I don’t blame Iranians for hating us for removing and executing their democratically elected president just because we wanted their oil at a cheap price. That’s despicable.

Feroz

You are, of course, winding us up. At least I hope you are.

Many of my female Muslim friends and colleagues in my bit of the Middle East aspire in small ways to make their own lives resemble what they understand to be a free, ‘western’ way of life.
Even though by law they have equal rights, the cultural mores of their families and communities often make it quite complicated to exercise them.
Further education, the right to persue a career outside the home, driving, the choice of whether to marry or not, the expression of sexuality, control over fertility, dress, the right to sing or play a musical instrument in public are just some small examples of battles women are fighting every day in order to acheive what they see as a better life.
Often they are inspired to fight these battles by what they see as the nirvana of women’s rights in the West.
Personally I feel that these tiny personal battles, as well as improving the lot of the individual woman, have a positive effect on society as a whole.
I’m not sure what sort of contradictary message we are sending to women who do still need our inspiration to free themselves of archaic social restrictions if we approve the reversal of freedoms of women of their religion living in the West in this most visible of manners by allowing men to dictate what women wear in a way which is recognised as a method of restricting liberty.

It’s interesting that one side of the ‘burqa’ argument is based on the inadvisability of allowing a government to legislate on clothing. I wonder if this is really an argument in support of the freedom principle or a reaction to the interference we have experienced from the State in recent years?

Perhaps there are health and safety laws which would prohibit the wearing of a burqa. From what I’ve been told this garment limits and blurs both direct and peripheral vision. Can a wearer see to cross the road? Might she miss the pothole or slightly raised pavement or any other everyday hazard? Would there be a danger to the wearer’s children if she could not see clearly when out? Apparently, even experienced wearers are prone to falling or tripping. Driving would be out of the question – if, of course, she was allowed to do so by the patriarchs of her family.

Quite apart from the above, I would recommend reading the many articles and books written about and/or by women who have escaped societies in which they have been forced to cover up, experienced segregation and generally treated like third-rate chattels of men. I thought I had a fair understanding of what such a life must be like but these stories made me realise I didn’t know the half of it. My understanding had not gone beyond imagining how unfulfilled and unhappy any individual woman would feel living in a world that she can see but not touch or have an opinion about – since that is the province of the men who governor her. The real women writing about their experiences in this world also speak of their home lives; of being raised by mothers who are not necessarily indoctrinated and compliant, but bitter and unhappy. Of fathers who place little value on them and of male siblings and relatives who are allowed to reign supreme alongside their fathers. These women wrote thoughtfully and intelligently about the effects on the individual, on society and even on the economy. Dr Drabu may argue that it is offensive and patronising to assume women wear the burqa because they are forced to but we only have to look at the countries where it is worn to see that they are hardly cheerleaders for women’s rights and, the oil-producing countries aside, they aren’t exactly shining examples of social, educational and economic success either.

It is also worth mentioning the case of Sabina Begum whose fight to wear the jilbab at school ended up at the court of Human rights. Sabina attended a school where the uniform for the observant was the shalwar kameez and hijab. Consider the reason why the Headmistress – also a Muslim – believed the fight was worth all the hassle and stress; peer pressure. She was worried that other girls would feel themselves obliged to follow Shabina’s example. There had to be far more to her worry than the simple matter of clothing or principle.

Some time ago Israelinurse mentioned the period when Peter Sutcliffe was at large and how the police proposed a curfew on women – even though they were pretty sure their suspect was a man. It demonstrated the unconscious attitude of men who apparently hadn’t even paused to consider banning their own gender.
Well, I’m not a rabid feminist but I do wonder whether men who support what they believe to be the choice of the woman or the inadvisability of the government to legislate for clothing would be half so ready to defend their position if they were the ones who would be wearing the burqa and whose position in life would be akin to many of the women who have to?

Israelinurse

Your comments about women viewing the West as their inspiration and how we are sending out contradictory messages are exactly the same as those I’ve read time and time again from the women who have escaped. They despair of what they believe to be our skewed thinking on these issues.

Another Penny:

Although Modernity thinks the only body of laws that restrict what we can and can’t do in society are criminal laws, there are definitely workplace health & safety regulations and other regulations that do dictate what people may and may not wear, for their own safety and the safety of others.

Like the Sikh turban, the hejab probably isn’t a danger in all but a very few situations, but the burqa and the neqab both are as they obstruct vision.

There are also certain requirements for a person to be identifiable in public or in the workplace and can be refused service, employment or access to the courts for refusing to comply.

I also think there’s a fair argument that parents imposing the burqa or other heavy clothing on female children living in hot climates is a form of abuse.

But underlying it all is the cloistering psychological effect of wearing the burqa. It severely restricts the lives of the wearers to participate in society. The hejab doesn’t come close. If women wearing the hejab appear to be refraining from contact with “the Other”, it’s that woman’s mindset. Mount Sinai, a hospital built by Toronto’s Jewish community nearly 100 years ago and still very much financially supported by that communit, provides internships to hejab-wearing young doctors who treat male and female patients alike and you’ll see a number of women patients there wearing fairly conservative Muslim garb. (I can’t say I recall seeing any burqa- or niqab-wearers, though.)

Torturing kittens, eh?

Are field and modernity aware of the Great Bonsai Kitten Hoax?

Lynne T,

You misrepresent what I say.

NO where have I said:

“Although Modernity thinks the only body of laws that restrict what we can and can’t do in society are criminal laws”

If you wish to use civil laws, fudges and sophisty to ban the Burqa, then fine go ahead, but be aware of the political ramifications. They won’t hold water in the long run.

Modernity:

Some of these laws exist already. We see challenges to them at human rights tribunals here in Canada from time to time, and, where warranted, the laws get modified or are struck down.

As for me misrepresenting what you have said, all I recall reading in your various postings here and over at z-blog is that we can’t clap people in jail for what they wear, and (illogically) likening the prohibition of the extremely puritanical burqa to the upholding of puritan dress codes.

Modernity – I really do understand the point you are making. I’ve argued over precedents a few times, too. But I also think we have many laws which could be deemed to be a slippery slope. They aren’t, simply because they exist with checks and balances included.

We have a law which prohibits me from making a certain amount of noise in my own home. If I persist I will be warned, if I ignore that warning I may have equipment seized or face prosecution. By your argument I could ask what’s to stop the state imposing a ban of silence on me? You surely have to balance out the stress on my neighbours, the restrictions my noise makes on their ability to enjoy a reasonable life against the extreme position of a law which one day may turn totalitarian and demand my absolute silence in my own home.

You ask if the State legislates against the burqa what is to stop it saying we (let’s say ‘men’ just for argument’s sake) must all dress in white shirts and black trousers. The two arguments aren’t equal. Many of the posts already give an opinion on the implications of the burqa so I won’t restate them. The wearing of white shirts etc is really just a random example that doesn’t prove your masculinity and rights would suffer.

How can I be sure that the standards that permit the total covering of women in one group will not, at some undetermined time in the future, be extended across all groups? I could argue that these things aren’t necessarily one-way only streets.

I think the State probably have powers to act against clothing. What would happen if I decided that my two-year old son should henceforth be dressed as a girl? At age five I send him to school in a frock with his hair in pigtails and ribbons and refuse to back down claiming freedom of choice and my belief in a system which requires me to supress my son’s masculinity because I believe it to be dangerous to women and society in general. Given that kids are quite cruel and can bully over even the slightest of perceived differences – right down to they type of trainers worn – what chance would my son have of avoiding torment – to say nothing of confusion about what and who he was?

How long would it take social services to be banging on my door? The case against me wouldn’t, in essence, be about the clothes but about a) the effects they are having on my son’s emotional, psychological and social development and b) whether I was in need of some form of intervention myself. Of course, I don’t know for sure but I expect that in such cases – and I believe they have happened -most people would believe that the intervention of the State, via social services, was the correct course of action.

The burqa isn’t simply about a woman being completely covered up, but the underlying reasons for it which are based on a belief system that does not hold women in high regard, deems their appearance dangerous to a moral society and their conduct a matter of male honour. Interestingly, the women who have escaped this type of existence point to our ‘blind eye’ in these matters as racism.

Field:

“I think the problem with your sort of PC talk is you want to have your cake and eat it. You want to define individuals by group identity but you don’t want group identity to be connected to individual behaviour.”

I think you have hit the nail on the head there.

We have people clothing themselves in the uniform of a group, which makes a public declaration of their political, religious and social allegances and sympathies. And it signifies their seperateness and disassociation from the rest of the society around them.

I’m sick of people justifying their retarded views under the flag of religion. I know they have quaint views about their gods and what it entitles them to do but I’ve evolved past all that bollocks and while being reasonably laid back I draw the line when it results in such things as women’s evidence being worse less than a man’s in a court of law and numerous other similar foul perspectives.

Field – just so that I can be sure:

You are aware that the “Roma” ethnic identity has nothing whatsoever to do with coming from Romania?

I really hope so.

Ermintrude –

Yep. Of course I do. That’s where my intervention began because someone was ignorantly claiming there couldn’t be racial prejudice because these Romanians would be “white European”. My involvement in the debate began with me pointing out they were Roma – people who originally were a people from the Indian sub-continent and fairly dark skinned.

The Roma/Romanians in Ireland, I have read that they were mainly occupied in begging in the way we see Roma begging in London. Can anyone verify if this was the case? If it is true it does make you wonder if, for want of a better description, they were operating a Roma begging franchise in Belfast and if this was an underlying cause of the resentment against them.

I would be interested to know if this was actually the case or have I just developed a case of Daily Mail-itis?

This on Cultured View’s blog:

“….. You also won’t go far, especially in Belfast, to find a street or location that does not have Roma women begging passersby for money. This tradition of theirs, and it is a tradition, has not made the Roma’s overly popular with the locals.

“They are prolific in their activity; they stand beside you at ATM’s, approach you in carparks, outside shops, restaurants, nightclubs – one hand held out to you and the other clutching a mobile phone.

“To be perfectly straight the people here do not like it or accept it. To see these women standing outside nightclubs in the small hours with very young children begging or trying to sell you a wilted flower is quite an affront to a society not accustomed to street begging.

“The people of Northern Ireland lived through great austerity during and after the war, through the sixties and seventies – they knew very hard times and if you could not buy food you grew it…and you only ate what you could grow.

“I am told however that to go out begging, no matter how needy you were, was simply unthinkable. The people in those times were too proud to do so – and now to be constantly approached by these newcomers who boldy ask for money at every turn…?

“This nation is still evolving and for a country that had little to no immigration for so long – until recently – it is a very tolerant society. While nobody condones those attacks on those people it would help the Roma’s case alot more if they understood that what they do on the streets of Belfast is not an example of ‘good integration’.

“If the Govt is going to allow unchecked immigration here surely it is good policy to ensure that these people are given a better understanding of the local culture – and that they are more than welcomed to share the best of theirs.

Mrs. Ben –

Oh dear, watch out – here comes Modernity with his “racist” red pencil to censor you.

You mustn’t speak non-PC truths.

I was merely quoting someone else’s blog and asking if it was true….but as I am probably going to get it in the neck anyway, is there any truth in the rumour that the Roma have left Belfast headed not for Romania but for London?

Romani (the language of the Roma) is still spoken by some of the Kali Roma, who are resident in North West Wales. Most Roma in the UK are settled (as are most across Europe, actually) – Roma tend to move when they feel persecuted.

There are affluent Roma, honest Roma, Roma who have entirely abandoned the Roma culture (married out into gorja families) – there are also dirt-poor Roma and those so marginalised (sometimes as a result of extreme discrimination in the countries of Eastern and Central Europe) that they have taken to begging or crime.

There are also a whole plethora of more-or-less nomadic other peoples in Europe – it is sometimes the case that these Travelers are confused with Roma. Unlike the Roma, these tend to be the product of wide-scale economic and social change squeezing out marginal groups into nomadic, or semi-nomadic lifestyles.

The de-classed, lumpen attitudes and lifestyle (begging, petty crime) of some of the Roma immigrants in the UK from Eastern and Central Europe do not reflect the traditions of Roma self-sufficiency. Rather, they reflect the parlous and often highly oppressive and prejudicial conditions of existence that the Roma communities of places such as Romania and elsewhere have faced for generations – conditions that have significantly worsened since the early 1990s.

This is not to excuse, but to explain.

What I find most disturbing (and I accuse no-one on this board of making such claims) are the too often claims that in the wake of Roma immigration comes crime and disease. This is surely all too reminiscent of the sort of violent anti-Semitic commentaries that did the rounds in Britain’s cities over a hundred years ago with the arrival of poor Jews from Eastern and Central Europe.

Yet the prejudice is not simply a White person’s burden. Pakistani are sometimes immensely hostile to Roma – a prejudice that is somewhat mollified when Panjabi shopkeeps discover that Romani speakers can make out about 2/3rds of what these Panjabi speakers are saying.

Ermintrude –

I don’t think I made any claim about Roma being associated with disease but obviously there are issues over health care, vaccinations etc with any travelling community.

But I think the association between criminal/begging activity and Roma communities is I am afraid too strong to ignore. Are you saying it is simply impossible for an identifiable social group within a community to display a higher level of criminality than another? That would be a very odd claim.

We know children in one parent families have higher levels of criminality.

So do young people who are not in education or employment.

Why is it that a particular ethnic group with a particular culture and lifestyle could not produce higher levels of criminality or begging than seen in the wider community?

Field

I don’t think I said *you* made any connection between Roma and disease. I know I wrote that this connection was made (along with the one about criminality) in the same way as was made of the Jewish immigrant poor of central and Eastern Europe by some of the more violent anti-Semites over a century ago.

I find it disturbing that you associate criminality with an entire ethnicity, nonetheless.

modernityblog
25 June 2009, 4:04 pm

Metta,

We both know the history of these awful clothes, that is not disputed.

I am NOT disputing any of this.

you wrote:

“Dress is not just protection from the elements but a set of signs and symbols that can be read for implicit or explicit statements.”

Yes it is and no it isn’t. Depends. I fear that this topic is getting caught up in something of a moral panic, and the rational issues concerning legislating dress codes are ignored.

There is a terrible tendency, as you will see above (with Field, Morgoth’s, etc comments), that this issue is being caught within the clutches of Daily Mail hysteria.

I think we need to step back and think of the wider implications, legislating dress codes, even non-legal but coercive dress codes is not the way to go and anyone of an older generation will remember the rebellions of the 1950s and 1960s concerning clothes.

Metta, I don’t disagree with what you say, but the legislative method is clumsy and brutal.

————

There is already a law on the statute books that covers the wearing of certain types of dress – the Public Order Act 1938 – banning the wearing of ‘political uniforms’ in public. But I don’t hear you protesting about that.

Willing to accommodate fascism as long as it emanates from brown-skinned people?