It’s banned in Cameroon, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Tunisia,  China, Kyrgyzstan, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. There are also tons of partial bans, in Muslim and non-Muslim countries. Burqa bans have regularly been upheld by the courts.

In short, however you personally feel about the burqa, its restriction has become a routine and largely uncontested part of the life of many countries and territories, and discussions about banning, or further banning, are ongoing in lots of locations.

It’s a thing, babe, in Morocco as much as in Italy.

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Now, UD‘s own US, largely because it’s so large (most people here don’t ever encounter burqas), hasn’t had anything to say about burqas; but, well, England. Now England…

England’s the big holdout; no burqa bans here!

Many of its neighbors, as we see, have gone the total or partial ban route.

And at the very least, these neighbors don’t consider mere debate about the burqa to be an abomination. How can it be, considering what’s going on in the world with the garment? Do you really want to hold yourself snobbily aloof from this widely shared/discussed concern?

Embarrassingly, yes. An MP brought the matter up in PM’s Questions the other day – the sort of thing one would expect to happen, and one would want to be prepared for – and got a fierce appalled Lady Bracknell put-down from the PM and others.

I mean how dare you. How dare you.

It is amusing – embarrassingly so – that England continues to feign indignation that anyone, anywhere, would have the nerve…

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Here’s the deal. The story is now all over the British press, which means the latent unhappiness in much of the population with full facial veiling is now being made manifest.

Dig. You’re supposed to shut up about the burqa and keep it out of the press precisely because the moment you break the uncomfortable national silence about it, millions of Brits will realize that now that you mention it they are quite unhappy with the thing.

I mean, uh, strong majorities, when asked, support a ban.

It’ll be interesting to see whether the government’s attempt to strangle vox populi through incredulous contempt will work.

Here at UD, we cover both anti-hijab and pro-hijab protests in Iran, where they put you in prison, or at least bankrupt you, for failing to wear the mandatory hijab.

[Photo Vahid Salemi/AP]

Here, enraged women eviscerate the government for failing to destroy the anti-hijabis, and, while we’re at it, we demand MORE VEILING YOU FOOLS YOU INFIDELS.

Why let women get away with a dinky little head doily? Make it black, make it thick, make it full body, baby!

However!

Tehran Governor Hossein Khosh-Eghbal said … that the [pro-hijab] demonstrations were “illegal” and warned that police would disperse any further protests held without permits.

lolololol

An Iranian filmmaker offers his all-hijab all the time movie at Cannes, where, interestingly, all of the film’s actresses showed up hijabless.

And big thick black robeless! MOST immodest. I hope someone has reported them to the Chastity Law’s Morality Police.

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

Ah. That’s more like it.

Nothing like informed consent to this serious constriction can be said to exist; nor is there any reason for a modern society to play along with the grotesque belief that five year old girls must cover themselves because they are sexually arousing to men.

Macron’s party proposes forbidding “minors under 15 from wearing the veil in public spaces,” and would make it a “criminal offence for coercion against parents who force their underage daughters to wear the veil.”

For most of these children, the veil is only part one. There’s the unvarying uniform of the long baggy black dress, and the comprehensive gender segregation that keeps them out of many normal childhood activities. The French government rightly sees this mode of female upbringing as emblematic of a repressive fanaticism seriously at odds with the free, egalitarian values of the state.

[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.

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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.