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by Jack Straw, a politician with the Labor Party in Britain, is demanding Muslim women remove their veils. He asserts that the veil makes face-to-face relations more difficult and that his motive is a "profound commitment to equal rights for Muslim communities."
Is this a violation of the civil rights of these women, or is the removal of the veil a worthy sacrifice to improve immigrant relations?
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I tried to relate to this situation by imagining that I had a favorite, I dunno, hat or something, and the government tried to order me to take it off.
Yeah, I'd be annoyed. But it wouldn't be the end of the world. And if my hat interfered in some way with my job or getting along civilly with other people, I'd have to admit that the government had a point.
Deciding what to wear for ourselves is a civil right, yes. It's the right of liberty. But sometimes we have to abrogate some of our liberty voluntarily in order to participate in a polite society.
I think on the list of social outrages, "Take your silly mask off, woman" ranks pretty low.
I agree. It's the same reason you can't walk around in the nude in public. That would certainly be excercising a great deal of liberty, but the fact is that it does something intangibly negative to everyone around you. It's not too much to ask a nudist to wear clothes in public and be nude in private. Likewise, I don't think it's too much to ask others who participate in a social group to make similar sacrifices in order to maintain social norms.
Ironically enough, the same people who are claiming "civil liberties" pertaining to the veil are also refusing cab service to blind people with seeing-eye dogs and people carrying alcohol. Whose "rights" are trumped? This quote is telling: "The owner of the minicab firm, Niven Sinclair, was also very insensitive, telling me {the blind lady} that what had happened to me wasn't really very important, and I should have more respect for other people's culture." No, she shouldn't. Not to the point that you have to subsume your own culture - the culture of the land you also happen to live in. This is insane. Y'all who deployed remember the Cultural Sensitivity training that admonished us to not be "an Ugly American?" Why is there no admonitions against being an "Ugly Immigrant?" Can you imagine the fallout if a Christian pulled something like this? When does it stop?
I don't get it........This is the most silliest thing ever. It's none of Jack's business to 'demand' Muslim woman to take off their veils. It's like, 'take off your bloody hat because it's bothering the willies out of me!'
I think as a politician, Jack must have better things to do than fiddling with these trivial matters....
There is much to be said about where to draw the line in the conflict between religious and cultural tradition and law-making. But I think there's an issue that's being undersold here. As I understand it, Jack Straw is neither promoting any laws, nor is he "demanding" anything of anyone. All the stories I've read, including the one linked here, have indicated that he's asking or requesting that women remove their veils during meetings with him. After being questioned directly as to whether he'd rather the veils be discarded completely, he simply said "Yes."
I'm not making any point as to whether his request is reasonable or not at the moment, I just want to make sure that any discussion on the issue is relevant to the question, which is not one of civil rights vs. religious doctrine, but rather one of communication vs. cultural sensitivity.
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Just ban them all together by Anonymous :: NR0 :: on 08 October 2006
The UK should do what France did and ban the headscarve in public schools. That country's going to be in a big mess if one part talks about letting women have equality and freedom while another huge part practices keeping women like pets. For that matter, is the UK going to start sanctioning polygamous marriages? That's a Muslim practice, if you can afford it.