… and we’re off! The French ban (the first of many, UD predicts, in Europe) has really gotten people talking, and UD is thrilled. Time for a real debate on the total cloaking of women and female children.
At the University of British Columbia, Farzana Hassan gave a lecture on April 16 in which she called for Canada to “pass a law denying public services to women in burqas.”
When she was finished, Najma Mohammed of the B.C. Muslim Association stood up and said she felt insulted.
Which doesn’t take us anywhere near a real debate. But let’s see what else Mohammed said.
Mohammed went on to accuse Hassan of “inciting differences” so that she can make money selling books, DVDs, videos, and CDs.
She said she wears her hijab because she wants to; no one insists that she do so. (Hassan’s law would apply only to the burqa.)
… Hassan asked, “Do you have a question?”
To that, Mohammed replied: “I’m not giving you a question. It’s a statement. I don’t think you are worth a question.”
Still not much progress toward a real debate.
Hassan cited the murder of a sixteen year old Canadian girl who refused to wear the hijab; she described “four-year-olds who are being coerced into wearing the hijab because, you know, the philosophy is they need to get into the habit of wearing it so that when they attain puberty — when this becomes mandatory according to them — they will not object to it.”
Mohammed failed to respond to any of this.
Mohammad needs to sit down and think about how she’s going to defend making children wear hijabs and burqas.
But meanwhile, the main thing is that France has galvanized debate on the matter. The university is a very good place to stage that debate.
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What a woman wearing a burqa in a free society is saying, is that she is a repressed individual, the property of a man, someone who believes in sexual mutilation, and is a prisoner of cultural dogmatism.
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(Update: I originally identified the author of this statement as David Frum. UD thanks a reader for the correction.)
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Oh. Whoops! I thought women could debate. Sorry.
April 18th, 2011 at 4:30PM
i wish that this “The university is a very good place to stage that debate” was true but i have seen little evidence to support it and all too much that proves otherwise. hope springs eternal i suppose.
April 18th, 2011 at 6:53PM
The burqa bursts out of the gate.
Not just angry, she’s truly irate.
It’s my choice. ‘T is my place.
Let my mate hide my face.
And he says “no – there’ll be no debate.”
April 18th, 2011 at 7:19PM
Nice one, jeremy.
April 19th, 2011 at 4:46PM
I always thought the niqabitches would have the last word in the French debate. They seemed very peeved that any group of menfolk thought they could mandate what women should wear.
April 20th, 2011 at 2:25PM
It was not David Frum who said who you said he said. It was Peter Worthington.
April 20th, 2011 at 3:02PM
Thanks for the correction. I’ll fix the post.