En Unveiling the Truth About Burqa Bans
In a free society, no one should be forced to integrate
Steve Chapman contra-argumenta:
They insist they are safeguarding the values of a democratic society as well as the rights of women... The veil, we are told, is a symbol of oppression imposed on women by husbands and other male relatives. Could be. But how do the critics know? The same thing can be said about surgically enhanced breasts in Europe and the United States....But outlawing the burqa merely trades one form of compulsion (you must wear this) for another (you may not wear this). Besides, it is bound to backfire: If brutal men can no longer prevent women from wearing veils when they leave the house, they can prevent them from leaving the house at all.
A more imaginative argument is that covering the face is an attack on civilized norms...But in a free society, none of us is obligated to integrate. The Amish don't. Neither do the Hare Krishnas. Or Trappist monks. Wearing a suicide bomb around your waist is aggressive. Concealing your face is peaceable.
It's also claimed that covered faces are a security threat, since criminals have donned burqas in a handful of instances. Veils can be put to sinister uses—just as scarves, ski masks and sunglasses are often worn by camera-shy bank robbers. We don't ban those, and absent compelling evidence of an epidemic of burqa-enabled felonies, we shouldn't ban veils.
The axiom of a free society [is]: Live and let live
En France's Phony Secularism
Secularists should leave Muslim women and their clothes alone
Shikha Dalmia compara los desafíos de las comunidades hindú-musulmana y francesa-musulmana para demostrar que tanto el Gobierno francés, como su Presidente, Sarkozy y Christopher Hitchens lo que hacen es contradecir precisamente los principios de un Estado secular y liberal:
Nor will it do to justify this ban on grounds that it will save women from having to make painful personal choices. It is not the job of liberal governments to make personal tradeoffs painless—just possible. Giving individuals the right to exit without fearing physical retaliation provides an automatic check on oppressive traditions without taking away the crucial tool that minority communities in liberal polities have to perpetuate themselves: moral suasion. Banning the burqa or the Sikh turban or the Jewish yarmulke is tantamount to telling observant Muslims, Sikhs and Jews that they don't have a right to exist.
Despite years of sectarian bloodletting, if Indians still intuitively understand this and take a benign view of the burqa, it is hardly because they are inherently more rational. It is because their secularism has been shaped by India's dominant religion—Hinduism—whose non-monotheistic ethos allows the space for multiple faiths. In this sense, Hinduism is perhaps more profoundly in sync with liberal tolerance than monotheistic faiths.
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