02 May 2010

Europe continues its war

against Islam

Several amusing/ironic/whatever that term is points
1) "Only around 30 women wear this kind of veil (niqab) in Belgium, out of a Muslim population of around half a million." Ahh yes, the old pass a gigantic restrictive law to get at a handful of people who might be accommodated in other ways (as dealing with the supposed security issue of identification)
2) Most of these women will now effectively be on house arrest. They wear the niqab or burqa out of religious devotion and possibly because their husbands/families make them. This second reason is perhaps a reason to want to intervene, but I am disturbed that the intervention takes the form of telling people what they can and cannot wear as clothing. Since the effective response of women in this environment is not to become liberated and expressive people who were somehow confined by their clothing choices (presumably by their husbands/families) but instead to become even further withdrawn and isolated from the broader society within the protective cloister of their supposedly tyrannical families/husbands, this does not seem like a sensible approach to the actual problem.
3) "They chose to live with us in Christian countries so they must obey our customs" - I'm pretty sure that even Belgium has some Constitutional strictures that prevent the imposition of freedom of religion and customary behaviors (at least where they are non-violent or harmful to others, as clothing choices surely are).

I had some thoughts related to this around the time France was debating a similar law. One key difference I've heard between France's attempt and this one in Belgium appears to be the among of consultation and cooperation with Muslim scholars or the Muslims themselves in the process. I don't know that this cooperation "helps", in the sense that it makes such an interference in privacy and personal choices more wise and necessary, but it does seem like an important step to at least include the minority whose choices are about to become legislated in the process of that legislation.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't think this situation should be referred to in a freedom of religion context. Whether the person who is wearing something that obscures their face is religious or not is irrelevant. I would assume that Belgium has some festivals, some holiday, some something during which people customarily wear a costume. They are effectively outlawing Halloween, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and any other costume that "obscures the identity of the wearer in places like parks and on the street."

In my opinion, this is a freedom of expression situation. These lawmakers are prejudiced against these women because of their religion, this much is obvious. Through this prejudice these lawmakers are creating a law which could adversely affect many people's freedoms.

Will Kiss be allowed to play in Belgium? I don't know if Kiss is headed to Belgium or if they are playing in a venue that is considered public, but if Kiss can't play Belgium the Belgiumites will have no one to blame but their government.

Sun Tzu said...

1) I'm certain the law makes an exclusion for certain festivals, such as holidays (this is noted in the portion regarding fines).
2) I'm pretty sure that it bans more specifically the use of the niqab or burqa rather than heavy face makeup or costumes for the purposes of free expression.

I would agree the context of the law is free expression being denied, but that free expression seems pretty limited to a particular religious-related expression.

Sun Tzu said...

Correction: it does not ban specifically such things according to the BBC report I linked. It does however in so far as I can extract the text of the law and in particular the body of protest against it.

If it were a broader law against free expression of costumes and clothing, then I suspect we might be seeing broader condemnation than merely civil liberties folks like Amnesty Intl and the Muslim spokespersons.

Or else Belgians are just dumb.

Anonymous said...

They would be dumb if the law they wrote specified Muslim attire. I That would be ridiculous and transparent. The revisions before passing the law are probably in regards to this small oversight.

I reread the article and it specifies clothing, so face painting and the like wouldn't be attacked. That actually puts a bigger hole in their logic If obscuring identity is the issue then no person, old or young (I'm thinking two-year-olds in Spiderman costumes.) should be able to obscure their identities through any means.

The bottom line is that burkas make them feel "oogy" and the Belgiuminiums want it to stop. You can't help people who don't want to be helped. You also can't change people's minds, habits, or rituals by force. If these women are consenting adults, or even non-consenting children, who are not being technically abused, then the government should back off and look at solving bigger problems.

Did you know that very few people speak Walloon any more? The Belgiumize government should be getting right on that and starting initiatives to prevent people from speaking Arabic, Urdu, Sindhi, Farsi, Pashtu, Bengali and Dari in public. This would have nothing to do with the fact that these are languages that a Muslim person might speak. If you are not speaking any of the aforementioned languages then you are just that much more likely to choose to speak in Walloon.

Sun Tzu said...

I think it draws a distinction for anyone under 15 (which must be something like a legal adult status over there). So the two year old who wants to dress up like spiderman is probably still in the clear. But the 20 year old isn't. Unless it's Halloween (which I'm not sure how big that would be in Belgium anyway).

Even so, the problem is a particular form of expression seems to bother them and they think it should stop, for no apparent reason. Or at least, their transparent paternalistic reason of "the womenz must be free!" doesn't exactly work that way. They mostly succeeded in putting them back up further into a closet rather than being the mighty liberators.

We are not exactly immune from such things, but I haven't seen Americans get too worked up over these things that we are calling for laws which overturn religious and personal expression en masse like this yet. But the "I'm tired of pressing 1 for English" crowd is a pretty close analogy.