The French ban on the Niqab comes into force today thanks to the half pint shorty Sarkozy whose belief in freedom of choice extends as far as allowing his wife to model naked but bans approx 0.1% of French Muslim women a similar choice about how to dress.
The ban has nothing to do with equality or a concern about the role of women's status but is purely political and an attempt by shorty to equal the narrative of right winger Marine Le Pen who compares Muslim prayers on the streets of Paris to the Nazi occupation of France. In addition to Len Pen, Jewish extremists like Jean Francois Cope are also engaged in stigmatising Muslims and this from a man whose family was saved from the Nazi concentration camps. Perhaps Sarkozy is trying to copy his Minister Eric Beeson who is typical of French white racist male hypocrites that have a Muslim girlfriend while pushing for a ban on the Niqab.
Chelsea's Nicholas Anelka has highlighted the racism of the French towards Muslims in a country where John Galliano can get arrested for an alleged anti semitic remark but still finds it perfectly legally acceptable to ban the Niqab in a Europe which has a convention on Human Rights. Research has also highlighted the discrimination French Muslims face in the French job market compared to Christians.
LM believes there is a perfectly legitimate debate over the religious justification of the Niqab in Islam. I don't support it or encourage it but respect any Muslim sister who for reasons of personal piety and their own conviction believe the veil is justified. LM is no scholar but my understanding was the veil or the "curtain" as mentioned in the Quran was a piece of protocol that applied only to Prophet Muhammads (pbuh) wife's and was a symbol of their undoubted superior status. Muslim women like men are required to dress modestly but are not told to veil themselves or seclude themselves from view in a separate part of the house, developments that came into the Muslim world from Persia and Byzantium where women had long been treated in this way.
France should be ashamed of what it has become a sad nasty unwelcoming and bitter ex colonial empire whose decline in economic and political influence is matched by the rise of racism. LM believes one immediate response from Muslims around the world is to drive the French language into the gutter where it belongs. Why for example should Muslim kids be forced to learn the French language in UK schools so I along with others in London have already started a campaign to replace French in both the primary and secondary school curriculum with Arabic.
The ban has nothing to do with equality or a concern about the role of women's status but is purely political and an attempt by shorty to equal the narrative of right winger Marine Le Pen who compares Muslim prayers on the streets of Paris to the Nazi occupation of France. In addition to Len Pen, Jewish extremists like Jean Francois Cope are also engaged in stigmatising Muslims and this from a man whose family was saved from the Nazi concentration camps. Perhaps Sarkozy is trying to copy his Minister Eric Beeson who is typical of French white racist male hypocrites that have a Muslim girlfriend while pushing for a ban on the Niqab.
Chelsea's Nicholas Anelka has highlighted the racism of the French towards Muslims in a country where John Galliano can get arrested for an alleged anti semitic remark but still finds it perfectly legally acceptable to ban the Niqab in a Europe which has a convention on Human Rights. Research has also highlighted the discrimination French Muslims face in the French job market compared to Christians.
LM believes there is a perfectly legitimate debate over the religious justification of the Niqab in Islam. I don't support it or encourage it but respect any Muslim sister who for reasons of personal piety and their own conviction believe the veil is justified. LM is no scholar but my understanding was the veil or the "curtain" as mentioned in the Quran was a piece of protocol that applied only to Prophet Muhammads (pbuh) wife's and was a symbol of their undoubted superior status. Muslim women like men are required to dress modestly but are not told to veil themselves or seclude themselves from view in a separate part of the house, developments that came into the Muslim world from Persia and Byzantium where women had long been treated in this way.
France should be ashamed of what it has become a sad nasty unwelcoming and bitter ex colonial empire whose decline in economic and political influence is matched by the rise of racism. LM believes one immediate response from Muslims around the world is to drive the French language into the gutter where it belongs. Why for example should Muslim kids be forced to learn the French language in UK schools so I along with others in London have already started a campaign to replace French in both the primary and secondary school curriculum with Arabic.
Where is the Freedom in France to be free? Where are the human rights groups to call out against this racist regime in France? Hypocrisy, Hypocrisy not a democracy!! Shame on France and the EU
ReplyDeleteThey should just ban midgets like Sarkozy from wearing heels!
ReplyDeleteFrance has not always been the most welcoming to immigrants from its “departments”. The main reason they even encouraged immigration was for cheap labor and when the populations began to grow the government didn’t really reach out a helping hand to pull the new citizens into society. They basically just pushed the new immigrant citizens into the suburbs where there was really no need or push to assimilate. Between that, police brutallity/harrasment and now this, the government is just breeding more ethnic issues.
ReplyDeleteAnd an Imam's comment
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1375770/The-burka-oppresses-women-required-Islamic-law--doesnt-mean-Britain-follow-Frances-footsteps.html
Now he couldn't be right could he, he must be a kaffir
You obviously don't get the old equality for women thing, do you?
ReplyDeleteYour comment about Sarkozy 'allowing' his wife to pose naked just sums up the whole muslim attitude towards women. Carla Bruni chose to pose naked - her decision - she chose - all alone - without having to ask a man's permission.
This my friend, is equality. A woman's right to do with her body as she chooses - not to swathe herself in a black tent so that men who can't control their lusts (poor weak creatures) aren't tempted by a flash of hair or ankle, arm or neck, or heaven help us, any other part of the glorious female anatomy.
Please don't give me the usual guff about wearing the burkha being part of the same freedom of choice. It's not. We all know it's not. It's worn out of fear, subjugation, indoctrination and a misguided belief fuelled and fed by men in order to keep women exactly where they want them. Servile - frightened - without redress or choice, or any kind of real human rights.
The post which starts with "you obviously..." is very well put.
ReplyDeleteSarah Sands in the Standard also summed it up well last night...
"It looks paradoxical to impose freedom by force but sometimes it has to be done. I am with Ataturk so far as the burka is concerned. Modernisation matters. Women who chose to enslave themselves in burkas, because of an imagined Islamic teaching, harm the whole of womenkind. It is like torture being a rebuke to civilisation. If my daughter began practising genital mutilation, I would intervene. And it would break my heart if she chose to throw away centuries of hard-won rights by wearing a burka. It is not bullying by France but a firm stand against male oppression and female brainwashed complicity."
I've got to hand it to you muslims. Dressing up a fascist, totalitarian, military-political ideology as a religion was a stroke of genius. If only the Communists had thought to say that communism was a religion. They might have gotten somewhere. so simple, but brilliant. if anyone in the west tries to cramp your style, you can claim "religious intolerance", another piece of genius considering there is none in muslim countries.
ReplyDeleteAnd now you have your socialist lapdogs doing all the running for you - another superb piece of manipulation of the weak minded Westerners.
The only way to deal with a threat like this is the following:
1) nuclear weapons.
2) pave over.
3) relax.
One of my doctors wears a modernised muslim outfit. A long patterned skirt, arms covered with a cardigan, and a head scarf.
ReplyDeleteNow what do I feel when I visit the practice, I see a devoted muslim religous person, not a doctor practicing modern medicine.
America, Europe and Africa and most of the asia fall to the hate of Islam and recism.. this is great decline of mankind and hate crime... Islam never allow hate any one.. This is the limit of media and allies of anti Islamic propganda.......
ReplyDeleteAs an above commenter stated, Sarkozy didn't "allow" his wife to do much of anything... And the use of the analogy is illogical. Bruni doesn't prance around naked in streets of Paris, just in private rooms for photo shoots. I don't know French laws about running around naked but you will be arrested for doing so in the US and probably France as well. Sarkozy hasn't prohibited anyone from posing in as many burqa fashion shoots as she well pleases, merely from running around in a burqa in public.
ReplyDeleteSo yeah, the comparison makes little sense and the usage of allow is pretty frightening.
Having said that, I do think a woman should be able to legally dress however she damn well pleases. In France, but I that includes me wanting to wear short skirts while in Afghanistan too. The planet belongs to each and every single one of us and borders are arbitrary.
Now, when men force women to do things (like wear a veil), particularly if they use force... That would be a different matter.
Interesting blog, interesting comments. Too bad there's plenty of hate to go around in here -- and I don't mean from the commenters. You are posting a lot of interesting information and offering some perspective in an accessible manner that the "western" world badly needs.