The New York Times reports: MADRID — In a significant escalation of Spain’s debate over how to handle radical Islam, the Senate on Wednesday narrowly and unexpectedly approved a motion to ban Muslim women from wearing in public the burqa or other garments that cover the whole body. The vote, 131 to 129, was another setback [...]
Austin Cline highlights an article about the ineffectiveness of unrevealing clothing in preventing harassment and assault of women in Egypt. (You may remember that Egypt is also the nation with the recently released ad campaign aimed at getting women to cover up precisely as a remedy to such problems, which bewarethelizards42 perfectly skewered.) Cline quotes from [...]
The Telegraph calls it “burka rage”: A 26-year-old Muslim convert was walking through the store in Trignac, near Nantes, in the western Loire-Atlantique region, when she overhead the woman lawyer making “snide remarks about her black burka”. A police officer close to the case said: “The lawyer said she was not happy seeing a fellow [...]
Now in Australia, a senator is making this argument: Tasneem Chopra comes off most impressive. Your Thoughts?
Some shaky camera work and rough audio, but a must for any who are Lykke, Robyn, Queen fans like I. And the whole veil symbolism is much appreciated. And a few awesome more professional quality Queen, Lykke, and Robyn videos since the mood has been terrifically set: Your Thoughts?
The official reason was strict public health standards: PARIS — A Muslim woman who tried to go swimming in a head-to-toe “burquini” has been banned from her local pool in the latest tussle between religious practices and secular authority in France. Officials on Wednesday insisted they banned the woman’s use of the Islam-friendly swimsuit because [...]
There is a lot to chew on in this latest rant from Pat Condell on the need for the tolerant to be more intolerant of intolerant religions than they are intolerant of denouncers of intolerant religions. While Condell’s attack on multiculturalism is too broad and at times his rhetoric is cringe-inducingly counter-productive, I do share [...]
Aaron writes this wonderfully thought provoking reply to my post about moral motivation apart from reference to God: I had an argument a few years back with someone over this. She thought I’d go to hell for not believing in Jesus, even thought she thought I was a great person. I found that troubling. It [...]
From Feministing, worth reading in full: But then the argument goes: surely for the women who choose to wear the burqa, the garment is a choice not a tool for suppression. This argument obscures the fact that there is a pervasive, sexist propaganda in many Muslim communities in favor of the burqa. Many women are [...]
Njustus has kindly accepted my gauntlet to readers to offer on the possibility of the French government outlawing women from publicly wearing burqas. And his reply is a good one: From a Lockean ’social contract’ perspective, I believe the state should have the power to regulate the wearing of burqas if it can offer a [...]
