That was 2016; since then, Angela Merkel has called for a ban.

With its eyes on the Netherlands, where a ban just went into effect, Merkel’s party has once again brought up the matter. It will not go away, and Germany, which already has a partial ban, will eventually get a full one.

Yes, in covering the ban in Quebec, the writer begins and ends with the difficulties one Muslim woman there has had because she veils. UD looks forward to the day when at least a few writers covering burqa and/or hijab bans will bookend their articles with arguments that some forms of veiling represent “an affront to Muslim women.” Or begin by noting the women of Iran and Saudi Arabia who are organizing, at great personal risk, to rid themselves of veils. Or how about bookending articles with comments from Frenchwomen who used to veil and now don’t (because it’s illegal), and who report feeling as if they have been freed from prison.

But this is only a quibble. UD is actually thrilled by this article, because it’s yet another indication that under the pressure of rapidly globalizing burqa bans in Muslim and non-Muslim countries, more and more journalists are finally approaching the subject with a sense of balance. Kestler-D’Amours acknowledges up front the popularity of veiling bans in Quebec; she quotes generously from government officials making the case for integration, and at no point calls anyone in favor of bans islamophobic. She is, in short, even-handed; like most rational people reporting on the subject, she has surveyed the spectacular majorities for banning in most countries of the world (here’s an example, from one of Europe’s holdouts), and, whatever her personal views, has accepted this as a reality to be taken seriously.

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Indeed it’s time opponents of veil bans (which means virtually all journalists) grew up and stopped with the nahnahnah islamophobe business. The numbers (over 80% of the French supported the ban; over 70% of Germans would support one) and the laws are against them; it’s getting worse every day; and the only sensible route, it seems to ol’ UD, is for people writing about bans to make an effort to put themselves inside the heads not merely of people who want to wear veils, but also of people who object to them. In the immortal words of the immortal: You know something’s happening but you don’t know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones?

Talk about self-loathing. It’s not just imperialist Europeans who ban it; Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria… and Egypt’s been trying to ban them for years.

UD in fact predicts Egypt will be the next place the full face and body veil will fall. Meanwhile, welcome, Tunisia, to the developed world.

It doesn’t seem to bother them that, even as their defense of full veiling is going down the tubes all over the burqa-banning world, their arguments remain the lazy, unelaborated claims – with broad-brush insults and fear-mongering thrown in – that everyone has heard and dismissed. Behold Zahra Jamal in Foreign Policy.

Her subtitle, in which she evokes the violence of virtually pan-European burqa bans now “crashing down” on these shores (Quebec may soon ban them), sets the hyperalarmist mood of a piece written in the aftermath of countless non-violent and orderly local, regional, and national full-veiling bans. What world is the author living in? And has it not occurred to her that, given present realities, she should make some effort to accommodate herself to ours?

The fundamental polemical quandary the serious burqa defender suffers is this: She seems doomed at once to assert the obviously “sordid” (Jamal’s word) nature of burqa opposition, and to note that huge left and right national majorities, as well as international courts, support bans. To put her position concisely: Everyone sucks.

From beginning to end, Jamal describes enormous populations desperately under the thumb of powerful white nationalists. Somehow these clever charismatic people are convincing mental and moral midgets like Angela Merkel to call for serious restrictions on the burqa.

“For centuries, many Western scholars, church elders, and political leaders justified colonial and imperial incursions with the call to save Muslim women from Muslim men, citing the veil as a symbol of oppression. In contrast, in European and Quebecois political and popular discourse over the past decade, hijabs and niqabs have come to symbolize terrorism, thus reconstituting Muslim women from cause to enemy, from subjugated victim to powerful terrorist. According to proponents, bans on religious coverings are meant to liberate Muslim women from oppression, emancipate them into secularism, and deter them from violence. Burqa bans thus simultaneously falsely frame veiled women as security threats and legalize Islamophobia.”

Can you detect an argument in here? There’s nothing ‘in contrast’ about rejecting the burqa as both an instrument of oppression and a security risk. There’s no religious warrant for it, all ISIS, Taliban, and al Qaeda women and girls must wear it, and it has been used to hide the identity of terrorists and ordinary criminals. In its extreme physical muzzling, it creates a population of women overwhelmingly unlikely to become assimilated into modern open European countries. So, nu?

Weirdly, most of the subsequent essay reviews the spectacular success of burqa bans in Europe, across the political spectrum. Surely this amazing massing of votes and judicial decisions against full-veiling demands a powerful counter-response, one that begins with an effort to understand the determination of millions of ordinary people to ban the burqa.

“Ultimately, veil bans are about the sordid view that human diversity is a threat, and—similar to the flurry of state abortion bans in the United States—women’s bodies must be disciplined and regulated by the state rather than by women themselves to safeguard the nation.”

Yeah, if you want to see the flourishing of human diversity at its various best, take a look at a community of burqa wearers… Veil bans are, among other things, a rejection of the sordid practice of trapping ten year old girls under cloth – of men disciplining and regulating the bodies of helpless children.

Jamal’s essay is so lazy that UD begins to think burqa-defense has degenerated into virtue signaling. The author knows perfectly well that the tidal wave (to use her metaphor) of burqa banning is unlikely to be stopped, even if you spit Islamophobia and white supremacy at everybody. In lieu of serious appraisals of the banning trend, and serious arguments against banning, burqa defenders are left with vacuous indignation.

The strongest loathing of the burqa is from within.

My Google News feed for BURQA has gone mad. With Sri Lanka in mind (that country is in the process of banning it) India is going there; and I don’t know if you’ve noticed but India is a very big very contentious place. Everybody’s screaming and threatening to cut everybody’s head off about the burqa.

As a dedicated burqa-banner, UD would like to state the following: There’s a reason – hundreds of reasons, really – why India is the number one worst place in the G20 to be a woman. Read the brief report at the link to get a sense of just how grotesque it is to dare to be a female fetus, let alone a girl/woman/widow there. Franchement, much as UD applauds worldwide efforts to ban burqas, all such efforts in India are gonna do is make the numerous men there who want to abort, prostitute, or assault their women even more bloodthirsty. Fuggedaboutit.

The burqa has been a background story for awhile. To be sure, one country after another around the world has been restricting or outright banning this grotesque garment, and when each new law gets passed, there’s some press attention. But now that Sri Lanka, in the wake of the latest extremist atrocity, has banned them, the burqa’s on the front page again.

And what UD has long predicted – vanishingly few people and organizations are objecting to the ban – does seem to be underway, in Sri Lanka and around the world. So far, in all the articles and opinion pieces about it, UD has only found one attack on Sri Lanka’s new policy. More common has been acceptance without comment, or enthusiastic approval.

I’m not sure what’s taken the wind out of burqa-defenders’ sails – and maybe they’ll regain their energy – but I’m thinking the 2017 decision of the European Court of Human Rights not only to uphold but rather eloquently to defend Belgium’s burqa ban began the discouragement. Defenders were always up against large majorities of pro-ban citizens (85% of Swedes; 66% of Brits, for instance) in all countries in which the burqa is an issue, so… you know… democracy and all… And for all their talk of so few women wear it (not true; in England, which still allows them, numbers are going up) and it has nothing to do with national security and it’s perfectly possible to assimilate these women into our country as full citizens and it’s a religious obligation, a personal choice, and I don’t want to talk about the eight year old girls you see wearing them … for all of that, opponents just don’t seem to be making their case at all.

You can see the problem if you look more closely at Megara Tegal’s attack on the policy. Of course she shouts islamophobia, but given the sort of countries that now have bans – Denmark, for instance – it’s very very difficult to throw that one against the wall and make it stick. Eventually Tegal will have to call virtually every European country, along with increasing numbers of Muslim countries, islamophobic (Morocco; Algeria; Egypt’s close to banning them). So let’s see what else she’s got.

Muslim women who have covered their faces for over 20 years, are now afraid to leave their homes.

Think of it – there are women in the world who have never gone outside without entirely covering themselves in black. Even their digits; even their eyes (you’ve seen the get-ups that only give the wearer one eye-hole)! I’m afraid I don’t respond to this statement as an argument; I respond to it as a horror. Nor does what Tegal fails to mention – these women are very likely afraid to leave their homes because their husbands will beat them if they go outside uncovered – help her case. She’s up against the obvious – the burqa is an insanely blatant mark of the worthlessness of women within certain tribes.

An article about the niqab assures us that it’s entirely worn by choice, ignoring all sorts of evidence that, as Christopher Hitchens wrote, “goes the other way.” (Let’s not even talk about people who put their eight-year-old daughters under them.) The author goes on to endorse a niqab wearer who tells her that if we only learn more about Islam we’ll see the religious grounding for the garment. But those of us who have learned a bit about Islam know there’s absolutely no grounding for it; indeed, it’s illegal in increasing numbers of Muslim countries. Increasing numbers of imams in Europe and abroad have condemned the burqa/niqab.

The article goes on to condemn every one of the several million people in countries around the world who have supported a ban as racist.

… Muslim countries are falling all over themselves to ban exactly those garments. Algeria’s already banned them in the workplace; Egypt’s on its way to a more comprehensive ban.

What is striking … is that scholars at al-Azhar, the highest seat of Sunni authority in Egypt, back banning the niqab. While al-Azhar supports the hijab, it said the full-face veil is a step too far.

One of the most outspoken critics of the niqab is Amina Nasir, a member of parliament and a professor of philosophy at al-Azhar University. She described the full-face veil as a threat to national security.

“The full-face veils have nothing to do with the Islamic religion at all,” Nasir said. “It even contradicts some of the verses of the Holy Quran.”

There will be a national referendum on the question as well. Expect the Swiss to vote in favor of a country-wide ban by a similarly comfortable margin.

The top-to-toe burka, with its sinister, airless little grille, is more than an instrument of persecution, it is a public tarring and feathering of female sexuality. It transforms any woman into an object of defilement too untouchably disgusting to be seen. It is a garment of lurid sexual suggestiveness: what rampant desire and desirability lurks and leers beneath its dark mysteries? In its objectifying of women, it turns them into cowering creatures demanding and expecting violence and victimisation. Forget cultural sensibilities.

More moderate versions of the garb – the dull, uniform coat to the ground and the plain headscarf – have much the same effect, inspiring the lascivious thoughts they are designed to stifle. What is it about a woman that is so repellently sexual that she must diminish herself into drab uniformity while strolling down Oxford Street one step behind a husband who is kitted out in razor-sharp Armani and gold, pomaded hair and tight bum exposed to lustful eyes? (No letters please from British women who have taken the veil and claim it’s liberating. It is their right in a tolerant society to wear anything including rubber fetishes – but that has nothing to do with the systematic cultural oppression of women with no choice.)

The reference to rubber fetishes in connnection with the burqa is interesting. UD will admit to wondering about the darker jouissance (presumably having to do, as rubber fetishes do, with full-body constraints) possibly in play for some burqa wearers…. As in that “demanding and expecting violence” thing Toynbee touches on…

Until today’s article by Rebecca Tan, the Post‘s coverage was typical of mainstream Western journalism – burqa bans were pathetic and retrograde and after all almost no one in Europe wears the full veil. All reasonable people support freedom of religious expression, and that’s all the burqa is.

Yet the world of reality has been falling down hard around pro-burqers (if I may), and we begin to see more willingness to acknowledge that most Europeans are ignoring the tsk-tsking of the other side and going ahead and banning this grotesque garment.

[P]olicies governing head veils are likely to grow more prevalent … Countries having nationwide or partial bans are France, Belgium, Bulgaria, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands. Spain and Italy have some local bans in cities or towns. Legislation is pending for local or national bans in Germany, Latvia, Finland, Switzerland and Luxembourg… [G]overnments in Europe now feel like they have license to take such steps because of the legal precedents set by their neighbours.

Blanketing (if I may) the continent, aren’t we? Most of the British would like to ban it, but the moral scolds running the place think the people’s naughtiness needs to be reined in by their betters. Closer to home, Canadians by a large margin want to ban it, but ditto on the moral scolds.

The Post writer still has a little trouble believing you’d ban burqas for reasons other than bigotry or cynical political calculation, but you can see she’s beginning to kind of try to perceive morally legitimate arguments in favor of the ban.

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One suggestion for Tan, by the way: Throughout the article, she talks about the number of “women” who wear the burqa. All writers who want to enter the fray on this one need to realize that girls are typically smothered under burqas at a very young age: ten, eleven. An age when there’s absolutely no choice involved in the matter.

UD has often wondered why pro-burqers routinely fail to mention this as they sneer about how psycho we are to care about the very very few women who wear the burqa. She has wondered why they don’t ask themselves: What’s it like to be in a supermarket or a post office or a classroom and see a little girl lost inside a burqa? If they would just ask themselves that question – put themselves in the position of Europeans who witness this sort of thing – they might have less trouble understanding the enormous and growing popularity across Europe and many other regions of burqa bans.

Polly Toynbee:

[A Muslim spokesman] accused [Boris] Johnson of “dehumanising Muslim women.” That was a step too far. What could be more dehumanising than the niqab and the burqa? Hiding a woman dehumanises her completely, turning a person into an anonymous thing.

On visits to Afghanistan I have been shocked to see how contemptuously women in burqas are treated in the street, often shoved aside by men as obstacles in the way. The burqa doesn’t give women more respect, but less.

… Religions have always branded their identities by restrictions on women. Christianity, Judaism, Islam and others all set out with extreme rules proclaiming a disgust of unclean women’s bodies, with ritualised baths, head-shaving, denying abortion and contraception, arranged marriages, purdah, churching of new mothers, and barring women from priesthoods. Inside extreme cults and sects, abuse of women is almost inevitable.

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Yasmin Alibhai-Brown:

I do not think hijabs and niqabs should hereafter be proscribed or inadmissible subjects in conversations. Some reactionary Muslim organisations are using Borisgate to expand and strengthen their influence. They say outlandish stuff and are not challenged.

[S]carves, cloaks and masks symbolise the negation of the female form, female inferiority and menace, and most troublingly, a wilful distancing from other humans in the public space.

… [We Muslims need to] abandon regressive customs and integrate for the greater good and our survival. With the hard right marching again across Europe, Muslims face an existential threat. This is no time for cultural and religious obstinacy.

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Maladroitly, offensively, Boris Johnson has opened a door. Honest people are now speaking honestly about the appalling burqa.

In a statement [issued on her first day as a Canadian citizen], [Ensaf] Haidar [said] that she wanted to use her first day … to raise awareness about the plight of women forced to abide by Sharia, or traditional Islamic law.

“As a Canadian who was born in Saudi Arabia under laws of Sharia where human rights are non-existent, I realised the power [misogynist] men [have] over powerless women with no rights.

It is for this reason that on the first day as a Canadian I have raised the issue of banning the Burqa and Niqab in Ontario as I feel Premier Ford is a man who will listen to my plea and end the war by deception being waged by Islamists against Canadian values.”

Haider’s husband, a dissident against the appalling Saudi regime, remains in prison there.

What a rogue’s gallery. Quebec Province, France, Denmark, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Norway, Belgium, Turkey: All have total or partial burqa bans. Germany and England will probably have them soon. And now the Dutch are on the verge of a partial ban.

END THE ERASURE OF WOMEN.