Burqa bans, like marijuana, can be gateway drugs; they can lead to more dangerous bans. And while UD agrees that little girls are obviously unable to give consent to the hijab, the more important principle here is one of restraint and religious liberty. For UD, the burqa/hijab difference has to do with a fundamentally uncivil refusal to be visible in the public realm, vs. a visible face, a willingness to be identified as part of a free and equal society. Female-identity-crushing burqas are eccentric to any authentically egalitarian setting, whereas hijabs allow wearers to remain within the democratic orbit.
April 10th, 2021 at 11:52AM
A lot of the people pushing bans of traditional Muslim garb are not necessarily doing it from a place of respecting women, but from a place of bigotry.
April 10th, 2021 at 12:22PM
Matt: Here’s how I look at it: Sixteen countries (including Morocco and Tunisia) have burqa bans; many regions of many more countries have burqa bans. Many countries – prominent among them Egypt – have partial bans and seem on their way to expanding their bans. While there are certainly people who like the idea of bans because they’re bigoted, it really does no good to say that a lot of people working for bans are bigots. Some are; to say lots cuts off serious discussion and diverts it into name-calling.
No one who looks even cursorily at the nature and development of bans around the world should conclude it’s mainly about Islamophobia. When bans pass by 70%, 80% in some countries, you are forced to conclude that the overwhelming number of people in countries like France, where significant numbers of Muslims support bans, are bigots. I don’t think they are; nor do I think calling them all bigots does anything but divert attention from the issue.
Second: The burqa is not traditional Muslim garb. Nothing in the Muslim tradition or in Muslim law says anything about covering women’s faces; the tradition talks about female modesty generally. The burqa is traditional tribal garb.