Islam and the west

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

There are some shopping centres that have since over a decade ago banned hoodies as well as baseball caps etc which can obscure the face and prevent identification on CCTV which is prevalent throughout the centre. If the shopping centre applied that rule equally to religious garments as they do to baseball caps and hoodies is that racism or entirely appropriate in your eyes?

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Here in the US, private companies and individuals are are free to do as they like on their property, so long as they don't run afoul of legislation regulating them. There is no legislation limiting what rules they can apply on outerwear (provided they use the rules consistently, of course).

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Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy

Except covering your face is acceptable.

Incidentally, Rand, if you want something to only apply in specific, limited, circumstances, you need to say that. Every time. You don't get to try and use general and universal language almost exclusively and expect us to derive your intent by telepathy, particularly when the basis and justifications you offer for your position are themselves universal applicable.

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I have specified it every single time. I specifically said that ​if covering your face is unacceptable then don't cover your face. I assume that both you and everyone else here is familiar with if ... then ... logic, if anyone is not familiar with logical statements.

If covering your face is acceptable then there is no need to not cover your face.

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Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy

Here in the US, private companies and individuals are are free to do as they like on their property, so long as they don't run afoul of legislation regulating them. There is no legislation limiting what rules they can apply on outerwear (provided they use the rules consistently, of course).

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So if a rule was applied equally that face-covering garments are all unacceptable, whether that garment is a religious one or a sporting one, then would that be racism or acceptable in your eyes?

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

I have specified it every single time. I specifically said that ​if covering your face is unacceptable then don't cover your face.

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Except all your arguments constantly convey that you think covering the face is unacceptable at all, whether because it "oppresses women", runs counter to what you think secular government should be, or with nonexistent security threats posed by all the burqa-wearing terrorists which have shown up nowhere. You've made it clear that you object to the concept of the burqa, and so your pretense at "if" is meaningless. It's also very, very far from something you've specified every time.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

So if a rule was applied equally that face-covering garments are all unacceptable, whether that garment is a religious one or a sporting one, then would that be racism or acceptable in your eyes?

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If a bank added "no masks or other face-covering material" to a "no shirt, no shoes, no service" sign, I would not consider it racism and would consider it completely unobjectionable. If the government declared they aren't allowing facial garments, I would not consider it acceptable, mandating types of clothing not a place for legislation or police power.

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Originally Posted by Loki

Except there are no security rules banning masks. :bored:

Just how illiberal have you become? You think it's the state's duty to condemn or support different pieces of religious attire?

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It should be society condemning hijab, the state should have no inhibitions forbidding the face veil.

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Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy

Except all your arguments constantly convey that you think covering the face is unacceptable at all, whether because it "oppresses women", runs counter to what you think secular government should be, or with nonexistent security threats posed by all the burqa-wearing terrorists which have shown up nowhere. You've made it clear that you object to the concept of the burqa, and so your pretense at "if" is meaningless. It's also very, very far from something you've specified every time.

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Yes I find oppressing women unacceptable, don't you? Also did I specify terrorists? I thought I said crime, there is more to crime than terrorists. It seems you made the connection between this topic and terrorists all by yourself, I can understand why but don't project that to me.

Though you haven't made a connection between unacceptable and a ban. Do I view the niqab and burka as unacceptable? Yes of course I do, how could you not? I also view smoking, creationism, racism, homophobia, sexism and socialism amongst other things as unacceptable. Though I haven't called for them to be illegal.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

Yes I find oppressing women unacceptable, don't you?

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I think I'm uncomfortable with the blanket labeling of a garment choice as oppression here, especially if it is the woman who is choosing to wear the garment. Where and how can you draw that line? Are dresses past the knee also oppressive?

I am uncomfortable with labelling compelling women to lose their faces a "garment choice".

If women wearing skirts beyond the knee dehumanised them to the point they couldn't be identified and were being told that they must wear dresses beyond the knee and that anyone who doesn't is a harlot and a heretic and bringing shame upon their family them yes it 100% would be oppression. Some "choice".

Saying it is chosen is like saying abusive relationships are OK because they were chosen too. Worse, at least abusive relationships aren't normally instigated by parents arranging them. Well not here normally at least. This abuse is however.

[QUOTE=RandBlade;176976]Yes I find oppressing women unacceptable, don't you? Also did I specify terrorists? I thought I said crime, there is more to crime than terrorists. It seems you made the connection between this topic and terrorists all by yourself, I can understand why but don't project that to me.[./quote]

Fine, burqa-wearing bank robbers. You'll let me know if there's a wave of them too, right? And it is not an adequate answer to oppressing women to start oppressing them yourself. There is absolutely NO DIFFERENCE between forcing them to wear a burqa and forcing them not to wear a burqa. The tyranny required for both is identical. You are dehumanizing them either way.

[quote]Though you haven't made a connection between unacceptable and a ban.[quote]

I don't need to, you did by demanding disrobing to meet your acceptability standards at all.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

I am uncomfortable with labelling compelling women to lose their faces a "garment choice".

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I think the onus is on you to show compulsion. The countries you are talking about aren't Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or Afghanistan. These are Western democracies.

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If women wearing skirts beyond the knee dehumanised them to the point they couldn't be identified and were being told that they must wear dresses beyond the knee and that anyone who doesn't is a harlot and a heretic and bringing shame upon their family them yes it 100% would be oppression. Some "choice".

Saying it is chosen is like saying abusive relationships are OK because they were chosen too. Worse, at least abusive relationships aren't normally instigated by parents arranging them. Well not here normally at least. This abuse is however.

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I'm confused, because at first blush it seems like you are talking out of both sides of your mouth on this issue. If religion is a choice, something you have long maintained, and something I agree with, then these women in Western democracies are free to follow or not their religion of choice and its tenets as they see fit. That hardly fits with your religion as compulsion/abusive relationship argument. If religion is not a choice, then your championing of religious discrimination bears only minor syntactic differences to racism.

And if you think that oppression is simply anything contrary to your personal cultural mores, then you seem to be replacing the oppression of religion with the oppression of Randblade's whims. I believe it would be up to the woman to decide whether or not their choice of dress dehumanizes them. I've heard it described paradoxically as both liberating and stifling.

[QUOTE=LittleFuzzy;176981][QUOTE=RandBlade;176976]Yes I find oppressing women unacceptable, don't you? Also did I specify terrorists? I thought I said crime, there is more to crime than terrorists. It seems you made the connection between this topic and terrorists all by yourself, I can understand why but don't project that to me.[./quote]

Fine, burqa-wearing bank robbers. You'll let me know if there's a wave of them too, right? And it is not an adequate answer to oppressing women to start oppressing them yourself. There is absolutely NO DIFFERENCE between forcing them to wear a burqa and forcing them not to wear a burqa. The tyranny required for both is identical. You are dehumanizing them either way.

[quote]Though you haven't made a connection between unacceptable and a ban.

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I don't need to, you did by demanding disrobing to meet your acceptability standards at all.

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Which is why I'm not proposing we force them to not wear it any more than we force people to leave abusive relationships.

We should do more to help support and educate those who are victims of this abuse just as we do those of other abusive relationships.

Not wearing an abusive veil is not the same as disrobing.

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Originally Posted by Enoch the Red

I think the onus is on you to show compulsion. The countries you are talking about aren't Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or Afghanistan. These are Western democracies.

I'm confused, because at first blush it seems like you are talking out of both sides of your mouth on this issue. If religion is a choice, something you have maintained, and something I agree with, then these women in Western democracies are free to follow or not their religion of choice and its tenets as they see fit. That hardly fits with your compulsion or religion as an abusive relationship argument. If religion is not a choice, then your championing of religious discrimination bears only minor syntactic differences to racism.

Additionally, I believe it would be up to the woman to decide whether or not their choice of dress dehumanizes them. I've heard it described paradoxically as both liberating and stifling.

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Religion is a choice. The threats and intimidation that accompany those who deviate from religion, especially nasty medieval religions, is not a choice. Thousands of honour attacks happen each year in the UK alone. Yet another honour killing of a British Muslim woman (in this instance her ex husband who is her cousin) has been in the news in the last 24 hours.

We need to offer sanctuary and support to those who wish to leave this abuse just as much as any other. And treat those who encourage or instigated such abuse with the contempt they deserve.

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Originally Posted by Enoch the Red

I think I'm uncomfortable with the blanket labeling of a garment choice as oppression here, especially if it is the woman who is choosing to wear the garment. Where and how can you draw that line? Are dresses past the knee also oppressive?

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Too bad that 'but she choses to wear it herself' doesn't work with a dress code that lays the burden of controling the male sex-drive with the woman. No amount of free will professed is going to wash away the fact that the reason why she is supposed to do it, is because random men may not be able to control themselves.

That also means the onus of proving compulsion is not on Randblade or me for that matter. The compulsion lies in the fact that men are the yardstick for the extent a woman needs to cover themselves. You seriously could not make up the hysterical - pardonnez le mot - solutions the same people who love the niqab come up with to defuse the devastating effect the presence of a woman has on any man who is not a direct relative.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

Religion is a choice. The threats and intimidation that accompany those who deviate from religion, especially nasty medieval religions, is not a choice. Thousands of honour attacks happen each year in the UK alone. Yet another honour killing of a British Muslim woman (in this instance her ex husband who is her cousin) has been in the news in the last 24 hours.

We need to offer sanctuary and support to those who wish to leave this abuse just as much as any other. And treat those who encourage or instigated such abuse with the contempt they deserve.

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Then it seems like you would be better served by focusing on the threats and intimidation that accompanies religious heterodoxy, and not the choice of dress of the faithful and fervent.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

Which is why I'm not proposing we force them to not wear it any more than we force people to leave abusive relationships.

We should do more to help support and educate those who are victims of this abuse just as we do those of other abusive relationships.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

Religion is a choice. The threats and intimidation that accompany those who deviate from religion, especially nasty medieval religions, is not a choice. Thousands of honour attacks happen each year in the UK alone. Yet another honour killing of a British Muslim woman (in this instance her ex husband who is her cousin) has been in the news in the last 24 hours.

We need to offer sanctuary and support to those who wish to leave this abuse just as much as any other. And treat those who encourage or instigated such abuse with the contempt they deserve.

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This is not the position you took earlier in the thread. Two examples.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

Just as Christian doctors shouldn't be able to deny abortions, Muslims shouldn't be able to conceal their identity.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

Schools and airport security for starters. Because covering ones face is detrimental to education/security.

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And I'd just like to note that, in the US at least, schools represent one area where what you term "special protections" for religion absolutely SHOULD apply. Because the highest law of the land here prohibits interfering with the free exercise of religion and your ban is designed, by your own words above, to try and drive people away from their religion and its practices in a coercive environment.

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Originally Posted by Hazir

It is not irrelevant to face covering garb, because it is exactly that which besides posing a serious safety risk, also imposes, both on the wearer and those around her a model of male-female interaction that is intrinsically sexist. It reduces the woman to an object of male sexuality and the male to a leech by nature. The West has taken long enough to fight the worst of its own sexism to now forcefully reject any attempt to re-introduce it by the backdoor of what is a minor religion in its lands.

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You know what are (really) serious safety risks?

- Youngish Muslim men with access to encrypted phones
- Youngish Muslim men with access to encrypted communication
- Youngish Muslim men with unmonitored access to the internet
- Youngish Muslim men with EU passports
- Youngish Muslim men among refugees and asylum seekers
- Youngish Muslim men living in extremely segregated and isolated neighbourhoods
- Youngish Muslim men with trucks
- Youngish Muslim men
- Saudis
- Salafist preachers
- Russian hackers
- black kids
- drugs
- cars
- Lewk's swimming pool

All of those things are much more serious safety risks--quantitatively and qualitatively--than some women in burqas. If safety--the most legitimate interest of the state--is your concern then you should consider doing away with those things long before you even glance disapprovingly at an adult woman's "freely" worn burqa even if no-one can deny that she is--probably--in reality a willing prisoner of an oppressive and primitive culture.


I'll be honest with you. In the past I have been inclined to be at least as pragmatic as you wrt bringing about what I believe to be the "right" or most "Just" kind of society. I still have this inclination, to some extent, to just give people really forceful nudges in order to make society look the way I want it to look, to save people from themselves and so on. However, I have recently become increasingly disenchanted with that arbitrary and paternalistic approach to justice and increasingly inclined to focus on considered compromise, consistency and the lack of arbitrariness as being indispensable components of justice. I can shift back and forth between these views from time to time but I don't think I can justify making exceptions to the right to religious freedom or freedom of expression in this matter, no matter how much I'd like to. By arbitrarily overriding our principles in order to "fix" society one injustice at a time we risk undermining those selfsame principles and opening the door to greater injustice in the future. That's currently my view. Ymmv.

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Originally Posted by Enoch the Red

I think the onus is on you to show compulsion. The countries you are talking about aren't Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or Afghanistan. These are Western democracies.

I'm confused, because at first blush it seems like you are talking out of both sides of your mouth on this issue. If religion is a choice, something you have long maintained, and something I agree with, then these women in Western democracies are free to follow or not their religion of choice and its tenets as they see fit. That hardly fits with your religion as compulsion/abusive relationship argument. If religion is not a choice, then your championing of religious discrimination bears only minor syntactic differences to racism.

And if you think that oppression is simply anything contrary to your personal cultural mores, then you seem to be replacing the oppression of religion with the oppression of Randblade's whims. I believe it would be up to the woman to decide whether or not their choice of dress dehumanizes them. I've heard it described paradoxically as both liberating and stifling.

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I don't think the burqa itself can be seen as anything but a symbol and an effector of oppression. While these women are not actually in SA, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia etc, they may as well be for all practical purposes given the pressure exerted on them by their heritage, their families, their friends and acquaintances and, of course, their own thoughts and feelings that have been shaped over many years by that oppression.

But if an adult dresses in this way and does not express a wish to dress some other way, does not ask us for help, is not overtly threatened or physically harmed, and even says that she's dressing this way out of her own free will, it's very difficult to justify letting the state step in and do what it believes--probably with good cause--to be best for her. Hell, we can barely do anything when someone is physically abused. Ban the burqa for adults and these women will become prisoners in their own homes.

Banning it in schools may work better because you can simultaneously, in some places, force kids to go to school. But then you run into the problems Fuzzy alluded to.

106 replies and we get an acknowledgement at last that it is both a symbol and effector of oppression. That's progress.

Such sexism wouldn't be tolerated at all if it wasn't for the religious motive making it almost impossible to acknowledge the truth.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

106 replies and we get an acknowledgement at last that it is both a symbol and effector of oppression. That's progress.

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That's not progress, because it was never in doubt. Way to keep on missing the point genius.

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Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy

This is not the position you took earlier in the thread. Two examples.



And I'd just like to note that, in the US at least, schools represent one area where what you term "special protections" for religion absolutely SHOULD apply. Because the highest law of the land here prohibits interfering with the free exercise of religion and your ban is designed, by your own words above, to try and drive people away from their religion and its practices in a coercive environment.

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It is interesting that in the US 'not establishing a religion' came to mean protecting religious prejudice over individual dignity. What makes such even stranger to me is that especially non-Muslims seem to feel they should come to the unconditional defense of blatant oppression of Muslim women.

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Originally Posted by Aimless

You know what are (really) serious safety risks?

- Youngish Muslim men with access to encrypted phones
- Youngish Muslim men with access to encrypted communication
- Youngish Muslim men with unmonitored access to the internet
- Youngish Muslim men with EU passports
- Youngish Muslim men among refugees and asylum seekers
- Youngish Muslim men living in extremely segregated and isolated neighbourhoods
- Youngish Muslim men with trucks
- Youngish Muslim men
- Saudis
- Salafist preachers
- Russian hackers
- black kids
- drugs
- cars
- Lewk's swimming pool

All of those things are much more serious safety risks--quantitatively and qualitatively--than some women in burqas. If safety--the most legitimate interest of the state--is your concern then you should consider doing away with those things long before you even glance disapprovingly at an adult woman's "freely" worn burqa even if no-one can deny that she is--probably--in reality a willing prisoner of an oppressive and primitive culture.


I'll be honest with you. In the past I have been inclined to be at least as pragmatic as you wrt bringing about what I believe to be the "right" or most "Just" kind of society. I still have this inclination, to some extent, to just give people really forceful nudges in order to make society look the way I want it to look, to save people from themselves and so on. However, I have recently become increasingly disenchanted with that arbitrary and paternalistic approach to justice and increasingly inclined to focus on considered compromise, consistency and the lack of arbitrariness as being indispensable components of justice. I can shift back and forth between these views from time to time but I don't think I can justify making exceptions to the right to religious freedom or freedom of expression in this matter, no matter how much I'd like to. By arbitrarily overriding our principles in order to "fix" society one injustice at a time we risk undermining those selfsame principles and opening the door to greater injustice in the future. That's currently my view. Ymmv.

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Aside from salafi preachers I see nothing in your list that I consider a security risk sufficient for the state to act on without any corroborating conditions. And then with most of them the reasonable state intervention is not suppression or prohibition.

Like I have stated several times : with the hijab being unacceptable already in a society believing in real equality between men and women I don't understand why you think a prohibition of an form of the same that also constitutes a safety risk should provoke such a principled defense.

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Originally Posted by Hazir

It is interesting that in the US 'not establishing a religion' came to mean protecting religious prejudice over individual dignity. What makes such even stranger to me is that especially non-Muslims seem to feel they should come to the unconditional defense of blatant oppression of Muslim women.

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Individual dignity defined not by the individual in question but by you. :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Loki

Individual dignity defined not by the individual in question but by you. :rolleyes:

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Why do you support a practise that is based in nothing other than the idea that the burden of protecting random men against their sexual deprevation falls on a woman they are not even related to?

Were you also on the baricades defending the right to multiple marriage with underage girls in the Warren sect? After all those girls also felt a religious duty to become sister-wives and have the children of their Prophet. Or would you be willing to forbid them exactly that what gave them a sight on salvation and living in eternity in the presence of Heavenly Father in their holy bond?

I don't support the practice. I also don't see any sane grounds for banning it.

Are you suggesting that adult Muslim women should be treated as minors by the law?

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Originally Posted by Loki

I don't support the practice. I also don't see any sane grounds for banning it.

Are you suggesting that adult Muslim women should be treated as minors by the law?

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Are you suggesting some undesirable practises can be excused by a claim of religious necessity where others can not ?

They're not being excused legally. We don't make an otherwise legal act illegal just because it is a "bad" religious practice.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

Yes I find oppressing women unacceptable, don't you?

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What do you think about what this woman has to say about what happens to women in middle east?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eqYEVYZgdo

That's a 30 minute clip. Tell me what times to watch for...

All of it, she's a great speaker.

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Originally Posted by Aimless

Interesting. You seem to believe that a religion is the same as a profession. How retarded.

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Originally Posted by Loki

They're not being excused legally. We don't make an otherwise legal act illegal just because it is a "bad" religious practice.

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Covering your face is not 'otherwise legal'. Government seems to have no qualms legislating also against a lack of clothing.