[A school-age hijabi is typically] banned from riding a bike, swimming or participating in other activities that characterize a healthy childhood. She is taught, directly or indirectly, from an early age that she is a sexual object, and it is her responsibility to hide her features from the opposite sex, lest she attract them. A heavy burden for modesty is placed squarely on her shoulders. So many women have been traumatized by such an upbringing, which, I believe, frankly borders on child abuse. 

Various European schools have already banned the child-hijab, and more are doing it all the time.

Und so weiter. You really do wonder, as well-meaning idiots in secular countries crash into problems over and over, what it will take for them to cut it out.

Now that the city of Montreal has removed the image of the hijabi from its welcome poster, perhaps that municipality has finally realized that (say it with me, one more time), Quebec is secular.

*****************************

Maybe this will help: Iran is not secular. It is a theocracy. It mandates that all girls and women cover themselves with hijabs and chadors and if they don’t do it they go to horrible disgusting jails for decades. Women in Quebec on the other hand are free to wear or not wear hijabs, except in certain public sector settings.

Quebec is considering expanding Bill 21, which already keeps public sector employees from wearing religious clothing/objects while on the job. Not only teachers, for instance, but also students, would, in this proposed expansion, not be permitted to wear hijabs.

Of course the Muslim community spokesman in my headline reveals the problem: Secular legislation is wildly popular in secular Quebec. Banning religious garb is indeed a surefire way to bolster your poll numbers. So the question at issue is whose “fundamental rights”? UD, for instance, considers it a fundamental right of secular countries, states, and provinces to protect their secularity in certain restricted realms (government schools being one of them). Further, she fully admits that her support for restricted secular laws has to do not only with respect for the strongly expressed will of people in some localities that the secular nature of their sense of themselves as a culture be enshrined in law, but also with her belief that schoolgirls too young to have any say in the matter should not be draped head to toe. This obviously repressive form of fundamentalist religious expression offends her liberal sensibilities; it degrades the promise of equality at the heart of democratic regimes. I don’t think parents have a fundamental right to wrap their eight year old daughters in head and body sheeting before they can go outside.

Postmodern surveillance technology maintains a medieval state.

Strange brew.

… that.‘ Ayatollah Khomeini 

Without them veils I'd be a goner.
I must have taken too much bourbon ...
Quick!  Lend me PDQ your turban!
Ah.  Now I feel at peace, and calmer."

Shot secretly in Iran, ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’ has received international acclaim. It has won awards at Cannes and other major film festivals…

Here’s part of what you can’t see in India.

Navratilova nails it on the Sadeian sick boys of Iran, who elaborate upon their torture fantasies with each iteration of the beautifully named Chastity Bill.

And keep your eye on the Islamists who just took Syria. UD’s optimism about them is high; but they too may want to scrape clits off, force black robes on, forbid going outside, etc. etc.

Sure hope not! But wouldn’t be surprised if it’s in the cards.

The just-elected Iranian president seems to have a pretty good grasp of basic human decency, which certainly sets him apart from the ruling theoapparatchiks. We shall see whether he’s able to call off the mad dogs of the Morality Police.

[New French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal] started [as Education Minister] last summer by declaring that “the abaya can no longer be worn in schools.”

His order, which applies to public middle and high schools, banished the loosefitting full-length robe worn by some Muslim students and ignited another storm over French identity. In line with the French commitment to “laïcité,” or roughly secularism, “You should not be able to distinguish or identify the students’ religion by looking at them,” Mr. Attal said.

Rather unfair of the NYT to end its piece about the latest legal decision in favor of allowing employers, in very restricted circumstances, to ban the hijab in public work settings, with this dismissive statement from a lawyer for the hijabi who sued. And rather unwise tactically.

I mean, on the reasonable assumption that the NYT is appalled by burqa and hijab restrictions, it does its position no good by featuring the it’s all a tempest in an abaya line, which people are always doing. People are always telling us how risibly few female children and women wear the burqa, the abaya, the hijab, so why make a fuss?

Whereas numbers are actually going up in most places.

So to align yourself with people who dishonestly downplay a phenomenon which does in fact demoralize many citizens of secular countries (they tend to vote overwhelmingly in favor of restrictions) is to put yourself in a place which is itself subject to dismissal.

And as to the amusing pathetic crumbly fragility of a laicity which would fail to stand up to brave little Belgium’s little case — pshaw. Obviously it IS standing up to theocratic threats — by recognizing and managing them.

“You’re legitimizing one of the most barbaric laws” by agreeing to wear the hijab.

… catastrophe.

Bad enough that infidels with cameras keep filming our attacks on insufficiently swaddled girls; far, far worse that the Nobel committee has given the Peace Prize to one of the more prominent unswaddled, unchaste among us.

Yeah, yeah, the usual suspects are fussing up a storm, but France is adamant that its Olympics athletes will not wear that must-have Iranian fashion statement, the hijab.

Meanwhile, the world’s hardest working organization, CAIR, which must express outrage every day as hundreds of countries and regions all over the world (including, for instance, Egypt) outlaw public-sphere wearing of such things as burqas, hijabs, abayas, chadors, etcetcetc, is drawing itself up yet again this morning in high umbrage over a secular republic’s declaration that people representing that republic and its values to the world may not wear religious stuff while doing said representation.

France is not a theocracy, and women whose fanaticism burns so bright they refuse to take off a headscarf in public fit uneasily into seriously non-theocratic states. These women, like CAIR, are free to spend their lives in worldwide social and judicial combat over escalating and widening public-realm Islamic dress bans; or they can move to more blanketing-friendly places, like Malaysia (uh-oh). Hell, in England they’re erecting statues to the greatness of the hijab! (The monumentalized hijabi in question don’t look too happy, IMHO, but whatever.)