Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East.
(From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)

Wednesday 29 September 2010

Costume Dramas (Part Two): Burkhas and Niqabs – The Case for a Ban

A compelling if often overlooked argument for a ban on the burkha (the robe with the gauze grille), as well as upon that other face-covering garment, the niqab (the robe with the eye-slit), must surely be the damaging effect that these shroud-like garments have on the health of pregnant wearers’ babies. In Australia, Britain, and other western countries, rickets – a disease of the past among inhabitants generally – is increasing in the offspring of women who wear these all-concealing garments. The reason, of course, is the insufficient exposure of the mothers to sunlight, and the consequent deprivation of the foetuses of Vitamin D. The lack of that vitamin is also causing bone disease among the women.

In some countries – Britain is certainly one – such Muslim women are being given vouchers for Vitamin D supplements, fortified baby formula, fruit and vegetables . This is a typical politically correct reaction – but why is it not deemed politically incorrect for the state to encourage in this way a garment which is a prison for women, designed to protect one man’s sexual property from the gaze of other men?

Australian former Prime Minister John Howard described the full cloaks and face coverings, in contrast to the hijab, as “confronting” for the population at large; British former Home Secretary Jack Straw stated that he’d ask any veiled constituent who came to speak to him to remove the impediment to free communication; Conservative MP Philip Hollobone, who announced his refusal to meet any constituent with her face covered, and delivered what the left-liberal Guardian perversely called “a slur on the burkha", was referred to the race relations authorities; Conservative MP Damian Green, Immigration Minister in the Cameron-Clegg Coalition, has breezily assured everyone that no Continental-type ban on the burkha would occur in Britain – such a ban is “a rather un-British thing to do” ; Conservative MP Caroline Spelman, Environment Minister in the Coalition, debased herself and betrayed other females by describing the burkha as empowering for women – seeing it on location in Afghanistan had convinced that “the burka confers dignity”.

Have people like Spelman never read what women who have worn the burkha or niqab say regarding what it feels like to wear these erasures of their femininity and personal identity?

Here, for example, is a British-born journalist of Pakistani origin, Zaiba Malik, describing her experience of the niqab (and remember, folks, that’s not the one with the grille, which must be terribly hard on the wearer’s eyes):
 “The reality is, I'm finding it hard to breathe. There is no real inlet for air and I can feel the heat of every breath I exhale, so my face just gets hotter and hotter. The slit for my eyes keeps slipping down to my nose, so I can barely see a thing. Throughout the day I trip up more times than I care to remember. As for peripheral vision, it's as if I'm stuck in a car buried in black snow. I can't fathom a way to drink my cappuccino and when I become aware that everybody in the coffee shop is wondering the same thing, I give up and just gaze at it.”
And here’s Elizabeth Wynhausen, a Sydney journalist, who similarly experimented with wearing the niqab:
 “I found that even on a mild spring day, the outfit was suffocatingly hot. The cloak restricted my movements. The veil restricted my vision. The straps pressed on my eyeballs. With my head swaddled in cloth and my face covered, I felt I could scarcely breathe. The sense that I had become an alien being was more oppressive still.”
The banning of the burkha and the niqab can be justified on the grounds of health and safety alone. It’s not just the risk of rickets. The restriction of peripheral vision has caused car accidents even for experienced wearers, and there have been accidents in which wearers have been strangled to death when the garments have become lodged in machinery – this happened recently in Australia, when a young mother’s head covering became entangled in a go-kart.

Tellingly, the disgusted stares that greeted Ms Malik and Ms Wynhausen as they went about their business fully covered was not confined to non-Muslims; there were plenty of dismayed glances from Muslim women dressed less drastically, in hijabs and long skirts. At a recent demonstration against proposals to ban the face veil in public held in Sydney, a niqab-clad speaker railed that "Islamic values are superior to flawed Western secular values”. For women like her (and the men who often compel them to drape themselves in what is effectively a portable form of purdah), the face-covering is emblematic of rejection of the surrounding culture and of integration.

But it’s not as if the Quran makes the all-enveloping garments mandatory. There is no shortage of imams and Muslim scholars who have pointed that out. Syrian universities have banned such garments even as western “liberals” strive to present bans as “Islamophobic”. As the Canada  Muslim Congress observed in a long and thoughtful article:
"We believe that the facemask worn by some Muslim women [is about] political symbolism that reflects the contempt of radical Islamist groups for Western civilisation. Today, the only forces that demand Muslim women to cover their faces are: the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Arab World [and Europe], Al-Qaeda, and the Saudi religious establishment. All four groups see women as a source of sin and objects of sexuality, and Canada and the freedom of women in Canada and the West as manifestations of evil sexual depravity. Yet it is worth noting that leading clerics and scholars from both the Shia and Sunni communities have stated quite explicitly that the burka or niqab are not an Islamic requirement, but a cultural and tribal custom."
There is also the security issue: male robbers and other criminals (not only in non-Muslim countries) have dressed in burqas to disguise themselves, and there is also the threat of terrorists concealing weapons.

And for a taste of life in Islamic London see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdRfT76s7UQ&feature=player_embedded

10 comments:

  1. the French video you've linked to about the islamic enclave in east London contains shocking
    glimpses into how women and kuffirs are regarded - have a look at this too

    http://starcmc.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/us-isp-bluehost-is-home-to-salifimedia-com-terrorists/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Many religious traditions come across as weird. Check out Brooklyn during Kapparot, many people would find the mass shlegging of 1000's of chickens pretty unwholesome. These scenes are unique to areas of a high concentration of a particular tradition, and do not represent a religion as a whole. I believe chicken sacrifice and total face veils are only maybe 20% of Jews and Muslims.

    Maybe the face coverings do cause issues with safety. In cars maybe the police should treat niqabs and burkas the same way as using mobile phones, and charge the offenders with 'driving without due care and attention'. As for the vitamin D problems, well the whole of the UK needs to get more sun. 10 minutes of daylight is fine for most people (if you can get 10 minutes in the UK).

    Which is worse, the 'Jews are taking over the world' conspiracies or the 'Muslims are taking over the world' conspiracies? I think both are unrealistic and a tad unhinged.

    ReplyDelete
  3. if you were living in northern Europe where aggressive islamacists in no-go areas for people who aren't muslim call for shariah and try to outbreed kuffirs you might not think its so unrealistic

    ReplyDelete
  4. Micha "Muslims are taking over the world' "
    is no conspiracy, I wish it were.

    If you are in the US you may still think that, but I suggest instead of reading the news from the "left" look at the accurate and 'real' news from the "right"

    You media is not very open in regards to what is really happening in the US. I have managed ti wake uo my American friends

    Check out Brigitte Gabriel, Pamela Geller,Robert Spencer to name a few

    Pip speaks the truth.

    Why do you think Geert Wilders has done so well and the same in Sweden now.

    Look at these two videos.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX7oezVO1Bk
    The Islamisation of Paris

    This is about Malmo in Sweden, it's a few years old and from what I hear things have gone from bad to worst

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl6OluJnT7Y&feature=related

    ReplyDelete
  5. I have seen that link you posted PIp

    That abomination Choudrey should be hung, drawn and quartered !!

    That video is most upsetting to me. Stepney, now called Tower Hamlets, is where I grew up and it was a beautiful warm, vibrant place to grow up in

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  6. Shirl says : 'Micha "Muslims are taking over the world' "
    is no conspiracy, I wish it were.'

    This statement makes no sense. Are you claiming Muslims are taking over the world? In which case that IS a conspiracy. The dictionary says : 'In a political sense, conspiracy refers to a group of persons united in the goal of usurping or overthrowing an established political power.'

    Do you mean it is not a conspiracy theory? Which is usually a term to describe a fringe belief that is not based on credible evidence.

    Judging by the video in this post, it would seem as though Muslims have usurped Tower Hamlets councils swimming baths. That means they have control of maybe 0.1% of the UK swimming baths, if Muslims wish total control they have a long way to go in the world of swimming pools. In my town we have many swimming baths, if you count the school baths with public access. At this time I can visit any of these baths and wear a skimpy swimming costume with no fear of retribution from law, sharia or otherwise.

    Sorry, I am not yet convinced. I think Europeans are far tougher than you give credit. We are not ready to be overthrown at this time, no matter what the grinning Imam says. We have our own culture, which includes the freedom to be gay or to wear revealing bikinis. I think Tower Hamlets is an example of a concentration of a particular faith or tradition, in this case Islam. Now thats another issue entirely, of whether it is a good idea to create concentrations of an individual faith in one suburb of a major city.

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  7. At least three Islamic schools in Britain are requiring girls to wear the burka or niqab - London’s Sunday Telegraph reports the compulsory veil policy applies when girls are walking to or from school at Madani Girls' School in east London; Jamea Al Kauthar in Lancaster; and Jameah Girls' Academy in Leicester – all three are independent, fee-paying schools only for girls ages 11 to 18."It is absurd that schools are enforcing this outdated ritual – one that sends out a damaging message that Muslims do not want to fully partake in British society," Ed Husain, co-director of Quilliam, the counter-extremist think-tank, told the Telegraph. "Although it is not the government's job to dictate how its citizens dress, it should nonetheless ensure that such schools are not bankrolled or subsidized by the British taxpayer." He also told the Telegraph that forcing young girls to wear the niqab is not a mainstream Islamic practice."It is a desert practice which belongs to another century and another world," he told the Telegraph.Dr. Taj Hargey, an imam and chairman of the Muslim Educational Trust of Oxford, told the Telegraph, "It means that Muslim children are being brainwashed into thinking they must segregate and separate themselves from mainstream society. The wearing of the burka or niqab is a tribal custom and these garments are not even mentioned in the Koran." Anastasia de Waal, deputy director of think-tank Civitas, said: "We now have a scenario where schools such as these will be able to apply to become free schools, under the Government's policy, and therefore receive state funding. We need absolute clarity on what the position is going to be on such applications."

    ReplyDelete
  8. "Muslim woman sacked from estate agency for REFUSING to wear a headscarf," from the Daily Mail, October 3):
    A Muslim woman has been awarded more than £13,500 after she was sacked for refusing to wear a headscarf at the estate agency where she worked.
    Ghazala Khan - a 31-year-old non-practising Muslim - was fired less than two weeks into her job at a company run by traditional Muslim businessman Masood Ghafoor simply because she refused to cover her hair.
    Mr Ghafoor told Miss Khan, who had nine years experience in the trade, that his wife and female relatives all wore full veils or burkas, telling her that her parents had given her 'far too much freedom'.
    A tribunal heard that Miss Khan had been employed to run Mr Ghafoor's Go Go Real Estate office in Leeds, West Yorkshire, in June 2009.
    However, within days of working there she was left feeling 'very uncomfortable and intimidated' when Mr Ghafoor put it to her that she had not been brought up as a 'good Muslim' and that if she had been his daughter she would not be allowed to work and would have been long since 'married off'.
    He asked her to wear a headscarf at work - even though white non-Muslim women he employed in the same office were never asked to and never did.
    On the day she was due to start her third week in the job, Mr Ghafoor told her not to bother coming in.
    When she eventually caught up with him later that evening he told her that members of the Muslim community had been 'gossiping' and suggested that she was not 'respectable' and that there might be 'something going on' between her and members of staff.
    Mr Ghafoor added that his cousin Shakeel, who was also employed in the office, was unhappy working with a female especially as she did not wear a headscarf, was not religious and was Westernised. [...]
    The tribunal heard that at her job interview Miss Khan had worn a grey pinstripe trouser suit, described as 'conventional modern professional dress'. [...]
    Changing his story:
    The tribunal heard that Mr Ghafoor had originally told Miss Khan there was no problem with the way she dressed.
    'He was happy that she was fully covered up by the black trousers and long sleeved blouses and tops that she wore to work,' the tribunal heard.
    'By the time of the hearing, he was saying that she had chosen to wear clothing of a very revealing nature.'

    ReplyDelete
  9. What has happened to, and England? I read this article earlier today.

    Surely, if wearing a headscarf was not stipulated in the original contract of employment, the woman could not be sacked !!

    Certainly that would be the case in this country.

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  10. The article above relating to the sacked estate agent is good proof the England is still very strong in regard to unfair dismissal. The Muslim employer who obviously discriminated against the Muslim lady was forced to pay compensation. You may feel the figure of 13.5k was too small maybe?
    I would think the courts would have got as much as they could from the employer, and this figure is what can be expected from a employment law tribunal. If the Muslim lady used the tribunal services to claim unfair dismissal, she will not be able sue the employer for further damages. I think judging by the figure this will be the case. In order to sue for damages she would have had to pay a solicitor huge sums of money to pursue the case, maybe not even winning, but could have sought a much higher amount than the seemingly measly 13,500.
    She probably won the severance pay she was entitled to if she was made redundant, maybe 6 months pay or some such figure, as is the result of a successful unfair dismissal tribunal (a free uk service for people who want a fair dismissal), she would have probably not wanted her job back, which is often the only other outcome.

    All in all..England is great, she got abused, she made a claim, and she WON!!

    I love England.

    ReplyDelete

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