Burkini brawl

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/08/16/burkini-beach-braw...

I confess I really don't understand the problem with this. Why and how could a town ban burkini swim wear?

Because it's France and from what I can gather they have a rather limited concept of free expression.

France has a stronger tradition of free expression than pretty much any country on the planet. They actually still have labor strikes. But there's nothing like holiday money to warp minds, and these days there's nothing like Islamic 'free' expression to rile the French, who have had a pretty bad year. Some of them are bound to lack restraint and discernment. But it's a pretty complicated problem. There's no doubt that given a generation of free expression, Islamic women would choose to wear less on the beach. On the other hand, living in a tourist region I have seen a lot of strange clothing on the beaches--the nude beaches have the most variety--and it's really the last place people ought to be making sartorial judgments.

Islam in France: http://muslimmirror.com/eng/three-muslim-skeletons-back-to-7th-century-found-in-...

I've seen brawls over Birkin bags.

>There's a drink here called a brkinc...non-alcoholic...a peaceable drink.

>3 RickHarsch: Well they did ban the wearing of religious symbols, including the Muslim headscarf in public schools.

I was asked to remove a ball cap once in a bank. Apparently the ball cap created difficulties with the surveillance cameras.

>8 richardbsmith: Many states now ask people to remove hats and eyeglasses for driver's license pictures. It makes for more accurate facial recognition.

I don't think being told to remove a baseball cap and being told to remove a hajib are the same thing, and I wasn't talking about identification photos.

>7 jjwilson61: I have no strong feeling about that particular subject. Keeping the practice of religion and religious debate out of pubic schools other than for purposes of study is okay with me. On the other hand if i were a Sikh I would damn well wear my silver bracelet. These are problems without easy solutions that tend to arise from perceptions tied to economic well-being.

This is one of those stories where I realize growing up in America has influenced me in a positive way. It is unthinkable to me that a prominent democratic nation like France would ban burqas, burkinis, etc. I mean, I'm not real happy when I'm driving down the street and I see something I find offensive, like a Confederate flag sticker (or a Trump/Pence sticker hahaha) on somebody's vehicle, but I'm not gonna suggest that the government ban them. What happened to liberté, égalité, fraternité, mes amis?

>12 artturnerjr:

Fraternity breaks liberty and equality.

So some women wear something that looks like a sufer's suit to the beach. And the men with them get so hot and bothered that they pick a fight with any other man they think is even looking at them wrong. The fight becomes a brawl using "hatchets and harpoons" and rocks and bottles and putting people in the hospital.

So naturally, it is all the women's fault. Ban the burkini. Besides, the Mayor of the town says women who wear it are "not hygienic."

Are you kidding me?

Here's a thought. Instead of banning burkinis, why don't you ban the hatchets?

>14 southernbooklady: Or ban the men! That would solve the problem.

>15 krazy4katz:

I like that! :)

>14 southernbooklady:

Is this about the Corsican story? (They are multiplying now...) There are conflicting versions about it ("who started it") but it all boils down to the burkini ban.

Equal parts ridiculous and sad.

>16 LolaWalser: I was just responding to the OP link? It's hard to keep track. But you know who didn't start it? Any of the women wearing the friggin' burkinis. (and how is that even a word?)

Personally I think people should wear whatever the hell they want, and more to the point, not wear whatever they don't want, without anyone else giving them grief over it. And I think if governments are concerned with public safety then they should be focused on the people actually doing the fighting, not whatever women are wearing, thank you. (and that still doesn't explain what's his name's comment about hygiene.)

But it is not lost on me that when you view the story as religious freedom issue, once again ""freedom of religion" is being tested by how much repression a religion can get away with. In this case, its "we have the right to treat women like objects, it's in our religion"

So I'm deeply cynical about the whole thing.

>17 southernbooklady:

But you know who didn't start it? Any of the women wearing the friggin' burkinis.

Maybe... There have been calls for "burkini activism" and general provocation, though. For some time now. In any case it's hard to argue they don't expect some media exposure, at least at this point.

I'm deeply cynical about the whole thing.

It's a tremendous riot of hypocrisy from all sides.

>18 LolaWalser: ..."media exposure"? ... I think what we are talking about here is media coverage.... :-)

>16 LolaWalser: Just to give you a little context and to show that I didn't invent this, here is where it comes from.

When the State of Israel was founded, there was a discussion among the powers-that-be about what governing rules should be enacted. Someone apparently proposed an 11:00 pm curfew for women. The goal was to protect them from free roaming men. Golda Meir spoke up and suggested that the curfew should be for the men, not the women, in that case. Of course no such curfew was ever implemented.

I don't actually know if this story is true but I remember hearing it when I was young.

>20 krazy4katz: Although there is some doubt if Meier actually said this the story has been around for years and I think it shows the proper way to address problems like this.
https://motleynews.net/2012/07/11/the-best-statement-made-about-rape-gold-meirs-...
http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/31325/did-golda-meir-make-this-quote...

>21 Taphophile13: Thanks! I never thought to google it! :-)

>13 timspalding:

So it seems.

>14 southernbooklady:

Besides, the Mayor of the town says women who wear it are "not hygienic."

Yeah, that was weird. :/

>14 southernbooklady: >23 artturnerjr: : "Unhygienic" is a catch-all excuse. It does, however, have a plausible basis in fact. I won't vouch for the accuracy of all the claims made in this piece (particularly since Gatestone rubs me the wrong way in general), but the general line of reasoning goes like this (based on reports from Sweden):

One of the problems is that young Muslim men refuse to take a shower before bathing, and keep their underwear on under their swim trunks. For obvious reasons, this is not allowed, and when the staff call out the violators on this, trouble and threats ensue. .... In Stockholm, the Husbybadet pool in the heavily-immigrant suburb of Husby was the first public pool hit by trouble. In 2007, it was reported that the municipality was forced to build a separate sewage treatment facility, costing millions of kronor. The reason was unusually high levels of nitrogen in the water, because many young people insisted on bathing with their dirty underwear on. The municipality property director told daily newspaper, Dagens Nyheter:

"Nitrogen is food for bacteria and a high nitrogen level produces malodorous air and filthy water. The nitrogen comes from urine and sweat. Quite simply, we have a problem with people keeping their dirty underwear on under their swim trunks. And then they get in the 38-degree 100-degree Fahrenheit water in the hot tub. It is like sitting in your washing machine's delicates cycle, and we use that water all the time. People should have swimwear on, not bathe in their regular clothes."

No way of telling what's beneath a Burkini, I imagine the argument goes, so there's a plausible concern regarding nitrogen issues. The argument is disingenuous, perhaps -- and redolent (sorry, couldn't resist) of stereotypical xenophobic tropes -- but not, in fact, so very weird, as it turns out.

ETA: Again, to repeat: I'd take all the reports in that piece with a grain of salt. But valid or not, you now know where the argument comes from.

They are on a beach. If they are worried about hygiene there's better targets:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/05/06/video-beyond-the-gl...

>25 southernbooklady: They are on a beach Ah. Didn't know that. Well, that nails the argument pretty dead. It smacks of grasping for anything with the slightest whiff of cultural currency as a laughably transparent justification, logic be damned.

Calling a group of people "unclean" is a time-honored way to make them outsiders and sub human. It's pathetic.

>27 southernbooklady:

Reminds me of the warnings about the "uncleanliness" of women on their menstrual period in the Old Testament:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus+15:19-30

Not to mention that ablutions I believe are quite important in Islamic daily life. I once read that Teheran used the most water per capita of any city in the world for this reason.

> Unhygienic

This sounds like a racist trope. Besides, if you want to do something about people not showering—a problem no doubt not confined by ethnicity—require people to take showers. It's just as easy to ban people for entering the water dry than it is for entering the water in a Burkini.

Speaking of water hygene, someone recently told me (again) that German pools have special substances in them which turn a bright color when someone starts peeing in the pool. When I was a kid I believed they not only exist, they show a dark black streak leading right back to the malefactor!

Apparently this myth will persist forever. Such substances do not exist.

Snopes on it: http://www.snopes.com/science/poolpiss.asp

>29 RickHarsch:

I don't doubt that Iranians ablute frequently, but Iran's chronic (and now dangerous) over-use of water seems to be about poor water management and low rates. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/irans-water-crisis-the-product-...

Interesting to google "modest (Christian) (Mormon) swimwear/suits". They show a bit more arm and leg than the burkini, and hair is not covered. One, a red tunic with cap sleeves worn over capri tights, looked practical and attractive to me.

Then there are babies and their dirty little diapers! ;-)
http://oureverydaylife.com/can-babies-wear-regular-diapers-swimming-5057.html

When I was little, women, but not men had to wear swimcaps in the pool. We were told that our longer hair clogs the filters? I hated the things!!! Pools must have better filters these days? Or a woman was finally in a position to make pool regs?

I most sympathize with women wearing Muslim garb in summer--how DO they manage to not look a sweaty mess? I would never deny them the simple relief of a dip because they choose to wear a burkini. The second or third time out, they might go for a less draped look with less drag in the water--AND their kids are more likely to learn to swim (= less likely to drown over the years) if mom takes them to the pool or beach

Weird to me that women athletes in Rio were wearing equivalent of two-piece swimsuits (with all the requisite tugging), while the men wore shirts and shorts. And what's with beach volleyball?? I was kind of happy to see the Egyptian women push back a bit, though lighter clothes would have been more comfortable with all that exertion. http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/08/muslim-beach-volleyball-players-refuse-to-show...

I think they look ridiculous but as long as they don't impose that shit on others, I'm not inclined to care. Personally I enjoy watching beautiful people in state of more or less undress performing athletic feats and welcome every single one of them as a brother and a sister in celebrating life and beauty.

Prudes be damned. One can always look away; few are paid and fewer forced to watch sports.

>30 timspalding: Over-use of water in the headline of a story that states they use but a little more than half what those in the US use. I get it, it still grates.

Sounds like women have a range of choices in attire for beach volleyball and are not being forced one way or the other--which is way it should be, IMO: http://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/08/women-beach-volleyball-bikinis-men-uniform-guide...

>33 RickHarsch:

It's about supply, though. Water is a serious problem in parts of the US. In other parts, it's just not. Iran's a dryer country, with a population explosion and worse infrastructure.

Long flowing robes are a not such a bad choice for summer they are well ventilated. Both sexes wear them over much of Africa and the middle east Arabia. Senegal, Tanzania, Kenya, wherever. I am sure the more enveloping types of Hijab can be a pain though. They need a vent.

>36 SimonW11: Long flowing robes are a not such a bad choice for summer they are well ventilated.

I think you're right. A mosquito net suit is too hot for me in summer, so I find it difficult to believe, but I recall a study that showed better airflow in traditional black robes than the white, or something like that. (A chimney effect?) An added advantage might be protection against dust? On the other hand, I recall that another study in sunny Egypt found more rickets in traditionally veiled women compared to the rest of the population. (I assume the voluminous black chador that traditional Bedouin women wear/wore?)

>36 SimonW11: Long flowing robes are a not such a bad choice for summer... Both sexes wear them over much of Africa and the middle east Arabia

When I lived in the desert in Sudan I would often wear a jallabia, ie a long flowing robe. Very comfortable and practical.

>9 Taphophile13: Many states now ask people to remove hats and eyeglasses for driver's license pictures

>10 jjwilson61: I don't think being told to remove a baseball cap and being told to remove a hajib are the same thing, and I wasn't talking about identification photos

I think you've highlighted an important difference. If there is a genuine practical reason, such as the need for identification in certain circumstances, then you ban covering the face in those circumstances - baseball caps, full-visor motorcycle helmets, burqa face coverings, balaclavas, the hygienic air filter masks that many people seem to wear a lot of the time in public in some countries, over-the-top sunglasses, the lot. But banning something for no obvious reason other than the perception that it is a symbol of religious extremism is bound to cause problems and merely exacerbates the existing tensions.

Incidentally, how different is a burkini from a wetsuit? Will French female scuba divers be banned from entering the water via the beach with their full kit on, including hood and face mask?

>36 SimonW11:

Except men get off much better than women, of course. Nobody can mistake what men are wearing for women's heavy black draperies. And if you travel there you'll notice quickly enough who gets the air and shade and air-conditioning and who does not.

>39 John5918:

But banning something for no obvious reason

You don't have to agree with the ban but this is simply not true. The reason for banning is nothing if not obvious--and that's ostentatiously religious garb worn in public. We'll see if the ban gets upheld; legally the French have started to defend laïcité.

If these women had worn wetsuits to begin with I doubt there'd have been a debate. But then it seems indulging "modesty" here took a backseat to issuing a challenge to the status quo...

And rather than fake concerns about French scuba divers, I think it would be more important to do something about the widespread imposition of sexually discriminatory practices on Muslim and non-Muslim women alike in so many Islamic countries.

Incidentally, how different is a burkini from a wetsuit? Will French female scuba divers be banned from entering the water via the beach with their full kit on, including hood and face mask?

Not very. Maybe that's the answer. Bonus: A huge rise in underwater sports!

You don't have to agree with the ban but this is simply not true. The reason for banning is nothing if not obvious--and that's ostentatiously religious garb worn in public. We'll see if the ban gets upheld; legally the French have started to defend laïcité.

"Ostentatiously" religious garb. They're wearing their customary religious garb. It's no more "ostentatious" than the customary garb of the average French sunbather.

This is a classic right-wing argument. People exercising perfectly normal behavior and asking for normal rights are being "ostentatious." Gay people--why are they "ostentatiously" holding hands and kissing in public? Why are they "ostentatiously" demanding legal rights, when they could just make private contracts and spare the world from their ostentatious gayness. The only difference is the target.

>41 timspalding:

"Ostentatiously" religious garb. They're wearing their customary religious garb. It's no more "ostentatious" than the customary garb of the average French sunbather.

"Ostentatious" depends on context--on a French beach, this is punch-to-your-eyes ostentatious.

The French don't want this to become "normal" on their beaches.

>42 LolaWalser:

Indeed. Just as white southerners didn't want blacks at their lunch counters, at the front of their buses, and in their pools to become "normal."

Have the French tried acid yet?

>43 timspalding: I don't remember those black folks at the lunch counters harassing the people in the diner that looked at them wrong.

>44 southernbooklady:

Well then you remember the period wrong. MLK preached nonviolence for a reason; he wasn't just repeating a response everyone would automatically do without him urging it. Not every response to white subjugation was passive and accepting. Jim Crow blacks were not unique saints, but people. And whether they accepted their subjugation meekly or not, it was still subjugation.

And if French authorities are concerned about harassment, they could, you know, deal with the harassment instead of the burkini they imagine is, by some crazy boomerang logic, causing it. By the same clothes-cause-crime logic, people argue skimpy clothes cause rape, and seek to outlaw the clothes.

Look, I think it's perfectly reasonable to question social values, within an religious-ethnic community or not. While I don't think see head scarves, or burkinis, as inherently oppressive, I do think head-to-toe burkas, which reduce women to a shambling mound with an opaque cloth weave over a small part of the face, are.

I still wouldn't ban them. It's a violation of basic personal liberty. Irrespective of that, if France wants its Muslims to feel "French" and assimilate to "French" mores, it's not going to get there by imposing laws directed at Muslims. The French speak of secularism, but it's much more about Islam per se, and the brown people who are Muslims. This is why such bans repeatedly, and cyclically, arise in conjunction with fears of brown people and their religion.

As the New York Times put it today:

John Bowen, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, said France tended to experiment with such restrictions at times when it was struggling with both domestic and international tensions relating to Muslims and the Muslim world.

This began in 1989 with the so-called affaire du foulard (“affair of the scarf”), in which three French schoolgirls were suspended for refusing to remove their head coverings. Ostensibly, this was because the scarves were visible religious symbols and thus ran afoul of the French rule of laïcité, or secularism. But laïcité had been on the books since 1905, with head scarves nonetheless by and large permitted.

What changed, Professor Bowen wrote in a book on the subject, were events elsewhere in the world that made Islam seem like a particularly pernicious force. In 1989, Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa against the novelist Salman Rushdie. Around the same time, some Algerians formed the Islamic Salvation Front, a hard-line Islamist party and later insurgency.

Banning head scarves from French schools became a way to deal with the anxiety arising from those domestic and foreign events, and to stake a claim to protecting French values.

Head scarves in schools returned to the national spotlight in 1993 and 1994, as the French authorities worried that young men from Algerian immigrant families would join the Islamist insurgency in Algeria. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, veils were once again a focal point for fears of Muslim communities that were isolated from mainstream French society and culture.

And this summer, France is reeling from a series of deadly terrorist attacks, and is increasingly concerned about young French Muslims’ traveling to Syria to join the Islamic State or other jihadist groups. Once again, some in France view the drive for assimilation as a national security issue.

The veil is an especially potent symbol of anxiety over assimilation because wearing it is a choice. Whereas fixed characteristics like race or skin color do not imply any judgment on French culture or values, clothing implies a decision to be different — to prioritize one’s religious or cultural identity over that of one’s adopted country.

Garment bans are meant, in effect, to pressure French Muslims to disregard any sense of communitarian identity and adopt the narrowly French identity that predates their arrival. But trying to force assimilation can have the opposite effect: telling French Muslims that they cannot hold French and Muslim identities simultaneously, forcing them to choose, and thus excluding them from the national identity rather than inviting them to contribute to it.

>45 timspalding: These bans are particularly insane. Just take a quick look at a photo of a woman in such a garment. She will appear to be having fun at the beach.

>46 RickHarsch:

Punch-in-the-eye abnormal!

France has a thousand times longer and more intimate relationship with Muslims--specifically Arab Muslims--than the US and very few Americans know and understand its history, context and the complexities of the current situation. I haven't seen any American commentary that isn't more or less uninformed, shallow and outright dumb, although most of the ones I'd care to read in the first place don't reach the ludicrous obscenity of >43 timspalding:.

I've absolutely nothing to say to you, Tim, and I'm only not putting you on ignore because of your technical importance for the site. I will call out any further personal insults you pile on me, or any implicit support you give to thugs who insult people you don't like.

As for what Bowen says... first, the vast majority of French Muslims--or, indeed, the majority of Muslims in any Western country--DON'T belong to the ultra-conservative strains that demand the wearing of the veil at all times, or total covering on the beach. Speaking of this minority as if it were representative is in itself an act of erasure and suppression. It's a basic grounding lie that distorts everything that comes on top of it.

Historically, France was the country people came to to be free--including black Americans running away from American racism, Arabs, Africans, Eastern Europeans... in many cases to be free from religious oppression.

As to wearing of the veil being a choice... the sheer hypocrisy of the lie is breathtaking. Where in the world is the wearing of the veil a real choice, made with equal freedom in either case? Not in Islamic countries, not in conservative enclaves in the West.

It's doubtful whether it can ever be a "real" choice, given the condition of universal misogyny. But at least striving toward the situation of this theoretical "real choice" should by degrees bring more freedom and security to women, who currently have none in countries most bent on women's "freedom" to veiling.

>48 LolaWalser: France has a thousand times longer and more intimate relationship with Muslims--specifically Arab Muslims--than the US

That's impossible, since Islam has been around for only 1400 years and US has had a relationship with Muslims since Morocco was the first nation to recognize us 239 years. If by intimate, you are referring to the French colonial empire, yes, the French did conquer Muslim lands like Algeria and Morocco, a move which does not seem to have been appreciated by the Muslim inhabitants of those nations, and the US's fairly brief and relatively small experiment in explicit colonialism avoided any Muslim nations.

France was the country people came to to be free

Ask the Vietnamese about that. Ask the Algerians about that. Ask the French who fled to the US after the failure of the Paris Commune.

Ask all the Jews who are leaving France now because they aren't comfortable living in France or that "In late 2013, the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency reported that a third of European Jews it had polled had admitted to refraining from wearing religious garb or Jewish symbols out of fear, with a further 23% avoiding attending Jewish events or going to Jewish venues." (cite).

Yes, lots of people have gone to France for freedom. People have also fled France for freedom, and people--including a lot of Muslims--have also fought against France for freedom.

It's doubtful whether it can ever be a "real" choice, given the condition of universal misogyny.

"Don't worry, honey, us white men know better than you do. You can't make a real choice, so we'll have to make it for you." Blech.

Here's the vicious hard truth about freedom; people, especially people from other cultures, given freedom, are going to make choices you don't agree with or like. If they don't have that ability, if they can only make choices you like, then they're not really free.

Here's the vicious hard truth about freedom; people, especially people from other cultures, given freedom, are going to make choices you don't agree with or like. If they don't have that ability, if they can only make choices you like, then they're not really free.

You tell this to the Saudis, the Pakistanis, the Iranians, etc. while I go "ask" the Algerians, the Vietnamese etc. as per your instructions, okaaay?

Frankly, you're a pain to talk with, pros, and not because you have a gift for intellectual posers. You tend to argue like a robot from the sixties teevee and you're a pedantic bore. :)

Bottom line--French law prohibits pushing your religion in other people's faces in public spaces. Coverings such as the burqa and the niqab are not allowed (in reality the ban is frequently contravened and not as often prosecuted). "Discrete" marks of affiliation such as scarves, yarmulkes, reasonably sized crosses etc. are allowed except in public schools and if performing offices such as policing, judging etc.

Like it, hate it, put it in your pipe and smoke it...

It remains to be seen whether the burqini bans will be upheld; I hope not.

Not secular enough seems to be the basic argument given for burkini bans in the articles. They mention hygiene, but I think the issue is the principle of secularism and the reaction to Islamic terrorism, not hygiene.

As far as confusion with diving suits, I guess the question would be whether the diving suit is required for religious reasons.

It may be difficult for US people to agree with the French on this. It appears there is a different emphasis about personal freedoms.

>50 LolaWalser: You tell this to the Saudis, the Pakistanis, the Iranians, etc.

Did you miss the Iranian Revolution? That would be where the Iranians said the West could go shove it with their pseudo-freedom, that they wanted an Iranian Iran.

There's a pattern here; the West liked Westernized dictators in Egypt and Iran better than actually giving the local people freedom, who have this awkward habit of making choices we're not happy with.

Frankly, you're a pain to talk with, pros,

Then don't. Whining about everyone who disagrees with you doesn't make your argument seem better supported or more intelligent.

French law prohibits pushing your religion in other people's faces in public spaces. Coverings such as the burqa and the niqab are not allowed

4Chan believes that women shouldn't push their gender in other people's faces on the Internet. Sounds quite similar; we are neutral, therefore the actions of other people who are different are "pushing" their religion or gender in other people's faces.

It may be difficult for US people to agree with the French on this.

Good thing that's not a requirement then.

It appears there is a different emphasis about personal freedoms.

You can say that again... Is topless legal on any public beach in the US yet?

Maybe the UN can put on hold whatever trivialities they are dealing with at the moment and work out an international quid-pro-quo agreement on this burning issue. France quits banning the burqini if South Beach is liberated for the topless visitors. We can all get along! :)

This seems to belong here, a piece about US Muslim olympians, clothing, and the reactions within the Islamic community: https://sobiaalifaisal.com/2016/08/19/enough-with-the-clothes-shaming-of-muslim-...

Muslim girls play sports locally without incident. It really feels not like they are pushing their religion on me or on their teammates. It feels more like they are practicing their religion.

I don't understand that as a religious requirement. And I am a big fan of topless beaches and of the more typical beach volley ball uniforms.

And it is not a requirement that the French agree with how this question is viewed in the US. That written, I think they are wrong. The French seem possibly to have made secularism something of a state religion.

>55 richardbsmith: 'The French seem possibly to have made secularism something of a state religion.' Much of the best humor is unintentional.

L'habit ne fait pas le moine!

Did they have a lot of trouble with fake priests there?

Ought to be noted, no doubt this is of highest interest to all the male champions of women's religiously-justified right to abasement:

Ni Putes Ni Soumises, approximately translating as "Neither whores nor submissive", is one of French feminist organisations with large participation of Muslim women--it was started by Algerian Fadela Amara in response to ghetto violence and ever since had Muslim women predominantly in the lead.

They supported the law against the burqa, i.e. full covering in public.

>59 LolaWalser: As a male champion of women's rights generally, I find the most comfortable strategy is to post relevant articles by women I agree with, as in #54, the author of which I would guess is comradely with Ni Putes Ni Soumises.

At the same time as I give primacy to women authors, I think it's important to remain engaged personally, for my sake because growth occurs on the margins of such issues, and for the sake of groups that without some engagement with Others risk losing themselves in isolation. Even if I am wrong, or thought to be wrong, it's seems best to me to take my chances to do my part in fairly presenting such groups the array of thoughts they are faced with.

That said, in this thread that can be limited to thoughts on banning of Islamic full-bodied swimwear, I continue to believe that the 'burkini bans' are absurd, and likely do very little to further any discussion of the rights of Muslim woman as curtailed by Muslim men.

eta to insert engagement in place of participation

A fatwa hotline manned by "sheikhas" and "muftiyas" represents, apparently, "moderate" Islam, i.e. PROGRESS--at least in today's UAE: The fatwa hotline: 'We have heard everything'

Even so:

she is approached by a young Palestinian woman in an orange hijab.

“Can I ask you about the hijab? Is it mandatory?” she asks hesitantly. Her question is startling. Few Muslim women in the region leave their hair uncovered, and fewer still question its necessity.

“It is mandatory, it is in Surah an-Nur,” Sheikh Naeema tells her gently, referring her to a specific chapter and verse of the Qur’an.

But the young woman is not satisfied. She explains that she has worn a hijab since she was a teenager but is now reconsidering. She is 30 and unmarried, and worries that perhaps she is seen as old-fashioned. Her sister, who wears a hijab, advised her it would be a sin to remove it. Her mother also wears a hijab but is ambivalent, having grown up in the more secular 1970s when few Arab women covered their hair.

What about the niqab, the young woman asks Sheikha Naeema, referring to the face-covering that leaves only the eyes exposed.

“It is a cultural option for some women in the Gulf countries, but you don’t need to wear it,” the scholar answers firmly.

The young Palestinian thanks her politely. Afterwards, she says Sheikha Naeema’s reputation in the community settled the question. “She has the knowledge, so I will listen. But I would prefer it if I didn’t wear it. I like to show my hair.”

I want to emphasise this bit:

Her mother also wears a hijab but is ambivalent, having grown up in the more secular 1970s when few Arab women covered their hair.

Guess how we got from "more secular 1970s" to the current situation?

Guess how a woman who lived then feels when she sees what "choices" her daughters are reduced to today?

I don't need to guess. We have a friend who married from Syria into UAE and lived for many years in Abu Dhabi--until about ten years ago. She grew up privileged, Muslim but educated and well-travelled. Had four children; never worked. Never wore covering except in the mosque. Marriage eventually soured and she divorced in her forties. Began to be interested in yoga and some Indian guru scam, travelled to India, became a disciple or whatnot... Came back to Abu Dhabi and--death threats. She's a quintessential flake with more money than sense, but basically a sweet, inoffensive person in connection with whom "death threats" just don't compute in any fashion.

She moved to Lebanon, then France, with three kids (all married now) following suit.

Marg, speaking of learning to swim, I was going through German press (looking for something that of course I couldn't find) and noticed several articles about cases where Muslim girls tried to get out of swimming lessons despite being offered to swim in burqinis.

Things noted:

1. Learning to swim is mandatory in German public schools.

2. the objectors are--so far at least--a small minority of Muslim girls (no Muslim boys mentioned in this connection at all), belonging to ultra-conservative families. In every article I've read (but I didn't go looking specially) only the father speaks to the press, in the girl's name, "Our daughter wouldn't like that" (boys in the class seeing her in bathing suit, even if it's a burqini--NB this girl was ten when the issue began) etc.

3. The problem, at least with some, apparently goes further than just swimming or not swimming, in a burqini or another type of swimsuit--and abuts in requests for gender segregation--AND--this is a biggie--for skipping sex ed.

Which, one might say, was to be expected.

As Muslim women, we actually ask you not to wear the hijab in the name of interfaith solidarity By Asra Q. Nomani and Hala Arafa December 21, 2015, Washington Post

For us, as mainstream Muslim women, born in Egypt and India, the spectacle at the mosque was a painful reminder of the well-financed effort by conservative Muslims to dominate modern Muslim societies. This modern-day movement spreads an ideology of political Islam, called “Islamism,” enlisting well-intentioned interfaith do-gooders and the media into promoting the idea that “hijab” is a virtual “sixth pillar” of Islam, after the traditional “five pillars” of the shahada (or proclamation of faith), prayer, fasting, charity and pilgrimage.

We reject this interpretation that the “hijab” is merely a symbol of modesty and dignity adopted by faithful female followers of Islam.(...)

Born in the 1960s into conservative but open-minded families (Hala in Egypt and Asra in India), we grew up without an edict that we had to cover our hair. But, starting in the 1980s, following the 1979 Iranian revolution of the minority Shiite sect and the rise of well-funded Saudi clerics from the majority Sunni sect, we have been bullied in an attempt to get us to cover our hair from men and boys. Women and girls, who are sometimes called “enforce-hers” and “Muslim mean girls,” take it a step further by even making fun of women whom they perceive as wearing the hijab inappropriately, referring to “hijabis” in skinny jeans as “ho-jabis,” using the indelicate term for “whores.”

But in interpretations from the 7th century to today, theologians, from the late Moroccan scholar Fatima Mernissi to UCLA’s Khaled Abou El Fadl, and Harvard’s Leila Ahmed, Egypt’s Zaki Badawi, Iraq’s Abdullah al Judai and Pakistan’s Javaid Ghamidi, have clearly established that Muslim women are not required to cover their hair.

I have always thought that arguing about what women should wear is not the way to go about empowering them in a male dominated society. Some women may wish to wear it, some may not. If we start with forcing a ban on "Muslim" wear, we antagonize women who believe it is necessary and create stress for those who feel they do not have a choice and therefore can not go out in public. Iran under the Shah was like that: women from religious families felt they couldn't go out in public because they were not allowed to wear what they (or their male relatives) thought was correct for them.

On the other hand, if we support women's right to own their own lives, gain equal education and status with men, they will have the power to live freely. That is what is really important. Then they will make the decision about clothing for themselves.

>64 krazy4katz:

if we support women's right to own their own lives, gain equal education and status with men, they will have the power to live freely. That is what is really important. Then they will make the decision about clothing for themselves.

Exactly so. Defend first of all freedom of choice, ensure first of all real freedom of choice.

That said, I have never hidden and never will what I personally think of veiling--defending freedom of choice doesn't mean one needn't have opinions on choices. The more so if one is a woman. I don't give a hoot what any man thinks on these matters and care even less to follow their orders. To me veiling is indefensible misogynistic shit and will remain forever so as long as it is restricted to women. If Muslim men could be persuaded to start veiling, then perhaps we could talk about it, by and by, as "merely" a symbol of faith--at least of a specific flavour of that faith. I will not allow erasure of Muslims who are devout without advertising their religion through clothes.

Veiled Muslim men and women would then be comparable to, say, Christians of either sex who wear crosses.

Personally I'd still think the idea of veiling hideous and insulting to life and any halfway-decent notion of god, but getting rid of the sexist dimension would be a definite improvement on the current situation.

This, unfortunately, isn't likely to happen.

I'm usually open-minded about attire, but I would ban this. https://www.amazon.com/Smiffys-Mens-Borat-Mankini/dp/B005HMHNX8

>66 theoria:

But the Bible says the man is pure image and glory of god, so I'd watch those impious thoughts of yours. Why not call a Jesus hotline and get a pro opinion on what to think?

Meanwhile, in Egypt, several female television presenters have been suspended because "too fat": Article in French with picture

On the upside, note she's not wearing any sort of religious covering. Quite evidently she's a radical feminist atheist. On television. In Egypt. Couldn't possibly be a "Muslim" woman. "Muslim" women, as everyone who reads the NYT knows, come strictly wrapped up in black casing, attached to triple buggies, several toddlers, and a male owner walking five steps ahead.

>67 LolaWalser: I was caught up in a fig leaf of my imagination. Blessed be.

>66 theoria: I could spend years in an asylum wondering why I REALLY won't wear one of those.

>59 LolaWalser: Ought to be noted, no doubt this is of highest interest to all the male champions of women's religiously-justified right to abasement:

I'm pretty sure a robot could make a better argument; a robot would at least be programmed to try and follow the logical thrust of people's arguments. Freedom for all, not just those who agree with us.

>61 LolaWalser: Guess how we got from "more secular 1970s" to the current situation?

Guess how a woman who lived then feels when she sees what "choices" her daughters are reduced to today?

I don't need to guess. We have a friend who married from Syria into UAE and lived for many years in Abu Dhabi--until about ten years ago. She grew up privileged, Muslim but educated and well-travelled. Had four children; never worked. Never wore covering except in the mosque. Marriage eventually soured and she divorced in her forties. Began to be interested in yoga and some Indian guru scam, travelled to India, became a disciple or whatnot... Came back to Abu Dhabi and--death threats. She's a quintessential flake with more money than sense, but basically a sweet, inoffensive person in connection with whom "death threats" just don't compute in any fashion.

Okay, if you don't need to guess, maybe you can tell us how we got from "more secular 1970s" to the current situation? I'm guessing the side effects of decolonialization and increasing Muslim desires in the countries to the west of India to be "authentic" and not feel like just cultural puppets of the West, but maybe you have some other ideas.

>65 LolaWalser: I work on a large campus in a medical school where there are professional female students who cover their head. They seem to interact with their fellow students and faculty quite "normally". So to me, the most important thing is that these women are able to pursue their professional degrees. I don't feel comfortable judging whether they are being coerced into wearing headscarfs or choose to do so.

>71 prosfilaes:

I'm guessing the side effects of decolonialization and increasing Muslim desires in the countries to the West of Africa to be "authentic" and not feel like just cultural puppets of the West, but maybe you have some other ideas.

The idea that covering, and specific covering, is somehow "authentically" Islamic and therefore privileged over some other or no covering, isn't true. The Muslim world is vast and culturally extremely diverse, with different histories to all stereotypically "Islamic" customs, including the veil. See the article in >63 LolaWalser:, for example, where the authors--Muslim women--explain the meaning of "hijab" and its imposition as the symbol of faith.

The work of Fatema Mernissi, who they mention, would be worth looking up, it seems to be available in English.

In general, that's an odd and unpleasantly orientalistic idea that "Western" dress somehow renders non-Westerners less "authentic". We all come from tribes with idiosyncratic ethnic and folkloric traditions, including "Westerners". It's a mug's game to decide what's "authentic" and what's not in a constantly inter-trafficking world.

>72 krazy4katz:

I don't feel comfortable judging whether they are being coerced into wearing headscarfs or choose to do so.

Yeah, not a good idea, I hope no one is asking you to.

>68 theoria:

Lol, fig... by association (and the mood this group puts me in) I irresistibly get to:



That's in my hometown!

Wow! What is that!! So cool!

>75 krazy4katz: That's the figa fountain in Split, Croatia. The gesture is a form of 'up yours' that is more of a kid's gesture, nothing terribly impolite.

>76 RickHarsch: I think I saw a TV program that said Michelangelo incorporated that gesture in the Sistine Chapel?

>73 LolaWalser: "In general, that's an odd and unpleasantly orientalistic idea that "Western" dress somehow renders non-Westerners less "authentic"."

The link between appearance and perception of authenticity exists in so many contexts throughout humanity, even down to something as simple as fan complaints that the rock band Metallica had "sold out" because the band members had gotten haircuts. I believe appearance will always be an important (if occasionally overvalued) form of communication and such perceptions and reactions will likewise always be a part of the social environment.

>76 RickHarsch: "... nothing terribly impolite."

That's disappointing *puts hand back in pocket*

>76 RickHarsch:

Ha! It actually looked to me like the American Sign Language sign for "toilet"*. Therefore, I immediately assumed it was a bathroom sign. :)

* http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/t/toilet.htm

>79 theoria: I think if you shout 'Figa!' with venom while doing it someone might turn and look at you at least. In fact, I think the Poles generally accompany the gesture with the statement, lest it be misunderstood (>80 artturnerjr: for US sign for toilet, for instance)...

>73 LolaWalser: The idea that covering, and specific covering, is somehow "authentically" Islamic and therefore privileged over some other or no covering, isn't true.

It so happens that that's irrelevant. You can West-splain to the various groups of Muslims all you want what is and what isn't "authentically Islamic", but they're under no obligation to give a damn what you think about the matter.

In general, that's an odd and unpleasantly orientalistic idea that "Western" dress somehow renders non-Westerners less "authentic". We all come from tribes with idiosyncratic ethnic and folkloric traditions, including "Westerners". It's a mug's game to decide what's "authentic" and what's not in a constantly inter-trafficking world.

I was speaking of internal feelings, not external ones. If a community feels that adopting Western dress makes them less authentic, who are you to call that a "mug's game"? It's easy to be cosmopolitan when your culture is at or near cultural dominance, but why is it a mug's game to worry about authentic dress and not a mug's game for the EU to spill 400 million dollars a year on translation when they could just use English?

>82 prosfilaes: I'm not sure how you arrived at 'I'm guessing the side effects of decolonialization and increasing Muslim desires in the countries to the west of India to be "authentic" and not feel like just cultural puppets of the West, but maybe you have some other ideas.' from where you were when we argued more or less this same point a couple weeks ago, but I think you're basically right. Though you must feel a bit odd to be one of two Westerners discussing the authenticity of those 'West of India.' One problem is that colonization and re-colonization interfere with social struggles that might solve such concerns as the status of women in Muslim societies. Obviously I can only guess as to where Iran would be today without the insidious interference of 1953. Walser's example of the French Ni Putes Ni Soumises might well be a blueprint for organisations that would have thrived in a secular Iran. And it IS agonizing to think of women watching their freedoms vanish (I have my own example of an Iranian who went through extraordinary pain, escaping Khomeini because she was an active communist whose cell had been discovered. She was disgusted by the religious turn the country took). But it's yet more complicated by the prevailing poverty of non-Arabain Islamic countries, where social issues are for far too many people luxuries. India, too, is horribly sexist; there are extraordinary women's rights groups there, but as poverty grows yearly so do their losses. It's hard to think straight when you are poor, and it is the rare poor Indian woman who fights against her strictures.

ETA emphasis

>75 krazy4katz:, >79 theoria:

The actual thing is part of a water fountain--water spouts from the finger into a funnel--but the gesture is Dalmatian for "fuck you". The Italians peddle it as a good luck charm--warding off the evil eye and whatnot--in Dalmatia everyone HAS the evil eye. We are people of intense passions running the gamut from A to B. Pretty much everything is a variant of "fuck you". :)

The pic with the water and the funnel--a nonsensical conjunction but with some tang of the local whimsy--

>82 prosfilaes:

You can West-splain to the various groups of Muslims all you want what is and what isn't "authentically Islamic", but they're under no obligation to give a damn what you think about the matter.

I can advise you once again to read the article written by two Muslim women that I linked in >63 LolaWalser:, but I can't extract your head out of your posterior for you.

Not interested in continuing any "conversation" with you, sorry.

>84 LolaWalser: Evil eye eh?

Good to know about the fountain and the new curse to add to my lexicon. My post-Marxist teachers used to hang out with Praxis types on Korčula during the summer.

Korčula during the summer.

NICCCCCE. You should definitely try to get a piece of that pie if any contacts survive! Tell 'em Marx lives! ;)

I know people who knew those people... even some people who were those people... mostly through my mum, and one ill-considered youthful affair, though (he's not speaking to me anymore...)

>84 LolaWalser: "We are people of intense passions running the gamut from A to B."

I wonder why I feel so strongly that you are right about that? ;-)

>88 krazy4katz:

AUTHENTICITY! :)

Gotta love this one:

Ugh, disgusting.

>90 timspalding: Where are the normal people...

Yes, exactly.

I was respecting your wish not to engage with me, but if you're going to do it.

Look, I understand the desire to influence society to be less sexist. While I respect people's choices, and their consciences, and their weird, individual lives and situations--often not just respect but approve--at some larger, aggregate, social level I agree that the increasingly move toward the veil is regressive.

The trick is, there's no "knob" you can turn--no simple way to use state power to achieve social goals, especially in such a thorny area. Banning conservative Islamic attire doesn't doesn't send out nice, nonthreatening social workers who meet with Muslim women and politely and respectfully persuade them--everyone happier and freer at the end. It means a bunch of young white guys with weapons standing around an middle-aged mother, humiliating her in front of scores of people you'd rather she integrated with. It means her children see a bunch of arrogant cops humiliating their mother, and creating in their mind the sort of us/them dichotomies you're trying to erase. It means a family that feels ashamed, angry and bullied, and doesn't go to the beach again. It means another immigrant family that feels even more marginal in French life. It means a community who takes from the affair not that France loves Muslims, but wants to persuade to make their own choices; it take almost the opposite conclusion--hostility to Muslims and arrogant coercion against women.

Meanwhile, non-Muslims take yet another message. Take the Thierry Migoule, the "head of Cannes municipal services":

"We are not talking about banning the wearing of religious symbols on the beach ... but ostentatious clothing which refers to an allegiance to terrorist movements which are at war with us."

Do you support that sort of talk--that wearing traditional islamic dress "refers to an allegiance to terrorist movements which are at war with us"? Isn't that racist claptrap? And if that's how government officials talk, how about others? We've already heard some of it--that Muslims have dirty asses, etc. And if state officials equate burkas with terrorism, is it any wonder that people are now regularly questioned for speaking Arabic or reading a book with funny letters on a plane, or that France is seeing a wave of attacks on Muslims, mosques and so forth?

Fatima Mernissi

Ah, I didn't know she'd died. I met her at one point, after a lecture.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/french-police-make-woman-remove-burkini-on-n...

"Her ticket, seen by French news agency AFP, read that she was not wearing “an outfit respecting good morals and secularism”."

It sounds like something that might suit a Puritan - a woman should dress in a manner respecting good morals and godliness.

It sounds like something that might suit a Puritan

The impulse is just the same, definitely. It's a phenomenon I've long noticed in Massachusetts, which went from being a virtual theocracy to one of the most secular, "liberal" states in the US. But the Puritan strain informs the liberal.

>95 timspalding: I can attest to the same.

(ETA: For instance, I distinctly recall that a girl I went to high school with had trouble get her prescriptions filled for her endometriosis. Because pretty young white girls shouldn't have need of contraceptives, apparently.)

There's also a somewhat distinct but closely intertwined strand of raw, seething reaction, as seen -- for instance -- in a large contingent of the police forces. The New England police union was very quick to endorse Trump -- happened way back in December.
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2015/12/10/new-england-police-union-endorses-donald-t...

But that happens to be only the tip of the iceberg. Witness, for instance, the rhetorical stylings of one James Carnell, head of the Boston Police Patrolman's Union's newsletter Pax Centurion.
http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/10829-outcry-against-police-union-leaders...

Oddly enough, the latter is personal for me, as I know James Carnell. I went to middle school with one of his kids. (Here.)

ETA: I suppose I need to follow that up somehow. So far as I knew, the guy was just a hardass with an occasionally foul mouth. He kept most of the vitriol away from young ears, I suppose. So I have no real revelations to make, and in any case I don't want to violate anyone's privacy. The one thing I can and will say is this: at the time that I knew him, his kid was not a very happy kid.

ETA: Here's a very indicative exchange that got reported by RT, of all places. https://www.rt.com/usa/boston-police-occupy-lewis-095/
(Ironically, at the time this story went worldwide, I was involved with Occupy in Michigan. You can imagine how I took the news...)

>93 timspalding:

Do you support that sort of talk--that wearing traditional islamic dress "refers to an allegiance to terrorist movements which are at war with us"?

No, I don't. As I've said before, I don't agree with banning the burqa (and/or the niqab--the two are frequently confused and meant interchangeably) on the streets, nor with banning the burqini. I do agree with banning religious symbols in public schools, and face-covering in schools and public institutions--something that Germany looks poised to impose as well, and probably other EU countries.

>90 timspalding: Jeez. So what it really comes down to is whether secular or religious methods are better for putting women in their place. Nice to know this the struggle over human rights doesn't need to worry about including women in the category of "human."

>98 southernbooklady: Exactly the problem. Both secular and religious rules regarding only female dress both lead to dehumanizing women. I would be equally against telling a woman to wear a hijab as to not wear one. In a school or anywhere else. Certainly on the beach!

>98 southernbooklady:

Yeah, but I think you're collapsing a key distinction--it's not secular versus religious, it's state coercion versus choice in a social environment. There's a big difference between the police power of the state forcing you to do something and your social environment leading you to want to do something, or maybe your neighbors (maybe) thinking worse of you for not doing it.

In this and many other things, France, and Europe in general, collapses the distinction between state and society, laws and community preferences. Europe is an angry old man ranting "there outta be a law!" (But then there is!)

There's a big difference between the police power of the state forcing you to do something and your social environment leading you to want to do something, or maybe your neighbors (maybe) thinking worse of you for not doing it.

Cough. Cough, cough.

>102 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

There's a big difference between the state putting you in prison and your neighbors not wanting to talk to you. (For starters, laws are a very bad way to influence the latter.)

No, I don't. As I've said before, I don't agree with banning the burqa (and/or the niqab--the two are frequently confused and meant interchangeably) on the streets, nor with banning the burqini. I do agree with banning religious symbols in public schools, and face-covering in schools and public institutions--something that Germany looks poised to impose as well, and probably other EU countries.

I understand--even if I abhor--real bans. But what good does it do to tell Muslim women they need to take off their customary clothing to pay a water bill, file a noise complaint, attend a public meeting, or pick up a benefit? This is trying to bring about social change by annoying and harassing people in little, stupid, but also degrading, ways.

Government by microaggression.

Horseshit. Prison is merely ostracism writ large.

And if you don't want government by microaggression, stop microagressing.

You are not the victim here.

>103 timspalding:

Horseshit to you. If your neighbors don't talk to you, you can leave, or just ignore them. You are free, but unable to control other people's choice to talk to you. You aren't sitting in a 10x10 cell figuring out how to dodge the local rapist tomorrow.

If ostracism is like prison, is the block button like the law punishing someone for their opinions?

And if you don't want government by microaggression, stop microagressing.

You are not the victim here.

Neither of us are victims of French burka bans.

>104 Jesse_wiedinmyer: "Horseshit. Prison is merely ostracism writ large."

Replace the first period with a colon and I'd say you're on to something.

The Warmth of Other Suns https://g.co/kgs/weGkao

>106 timspalding:

Let's not talk to Jesse. It'll be just like prison.

>107 St._Troy:

That's balls, babe.

>109 timspalding:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitary_confinement

>103 timspalding: "But what good does it do to tell Muslim women they need to take off their customary clothing to pay a water bill, file a noise complaint, attend a public meeting, or pick up a benefit?"

I'm not sure one of the freedoms western societies offers is the ability to conduct and transact business with government offices while concealing one's identity with a mask. I'm sure some disagree.

>109 timspalding:

How large does your cell need to be, you hotep huggable guy?

>100 timspalding: There's a big difference between the police power of the state forcing you to do something and your social environment leading manipulating you to want to do something

Fixed that for you. As Lola says, in the end, it's about freedom of choice. Apparently, when women exercise their freedom of choice, it is guaranteed to piss someone off.

Am only sporadically online at present and am coming to this belatedly. A few hasty thoughts:

I teach at a public university in France. I'm a "fonctionnaire" and am a part of the government system, at least as regards higher education. My first encounter with such issues was in the 90s, during the hijab controversy. I was troubled by what appeared to me to be ambiguous or double standards regarding what was considered "ostentatious." In secondary schools, it was "OK" for a pupil to wear a cross or a kippah but not a headscarf.

I remember one morning seeing one of my female students wearing a cross. (Maybe an inch long...a little longer than average? But what is average?) At the university, the dress code didn't apply but I remember wondering if I should call her out. Why "this" and not "that"? But she was minding her own business and I would've been an asshole to make a scene. I just got on with my class.

I embrace French republican values and laïcité. But appying the latter is a vexed issue, to put it mildly. Oh sure, we're religiously neutral, we tell our Muslim (and Jewish and atheist and whatever) students. By please remember, there will be no class or exams on the Monday after All Saints Day, or during Christmas holiday, or on the Monday after Easter, or the Thursday of Ascension, or the Monday after Pentecost. The official university calendar, established by the secular republic, tells us so. (You'll be on vacation August 15 so the holiday to celebrate the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven won't come into play, regarding classes or exams, but don't try to use the post office!) And every day, when you watch the weather report on your local TV station that receives public funding, you will be told what the saint's day is. (Today is St. Barthélémy, in case you were wondering...it also figures on my Exacompta agenda, which is standard gear for employees and students of the Education nationale.)

There are profound historical reasons for these trappings, to be sure. And I'm not suggesting that they're categorically "bad." They certainly aren't nonsensical. But they feel noticeably IN YOUR FACE a lot, culturally speaking, if you're from another tradition than Catholicism. (I was raised a Protestant in the rural America.)

I can understand how many French Muslims or immigrant Muslims can hardly keep a straight face from laughing when some state bureaucrat gives the standard speech about laïcité. As for sexual equality, I have still-working colleagues a bit older than myself who sat for the concours for the Ecole Normale (a test for prospective teachers) when it was still segregated between men and women. Historically speaking, "equality" in the institutions is pretty recent. It's a complicated subject.

This said, I'm very saddened by this burkini business, from a multitude of angles. Bigotry is being vented by lots of French people. And for the women wearing them, it's not something I can rationalize away in terms of "difference". But it's also not something I feel I can meaningfully lecture them about as a "Monsieur prof-guy." That's why groups like Ni Putes Ni Soumises are so important, in terms of the ongoing conversations. Alas, they're not all that numerous.

When I try to understand the motives of the young women embracing this kind of dress, I find myself thinking back to certain girls in small town Iowa when I was an adolescent, who rebelled against their religious codes (in this case, Christian) by adopting sexy tops and make-up, etc., asserting an agency which in hindsight was hardly liberating, less grrl power at that stage than playing to the gaze of horny young male classmates who were not the most sympathetic of listeners. At the time it might have felt like the only language these girls had to work with, to break out, but for some cases it was jumping from the pan into the fire. (Early pregnancy, dropping out of high school, no diploma and a consequent class trap--not a cliché in those parts.) Others did just fine, eventually, making their own way.

Lots of Muslims in France now feel, I'm sorry to say, disrespected by the state, and they find appeals to laïcité hypocritical and a smokescreen to defend the people who run the show. In order to express their agency, they don these symbols, as a push-back. I seriously doubt it'll do these young women much good. But that's where we are.

>115 southernbooklady: Everything everybody (not just women) does pisses someone off in some way; I'm sure this very post will manage to do that for someone.

The burkini issue is more a culture clash (French secularism vs. Islam) issue than a feminism one (although my statement as such will likely be seen as misogynistic and patriarchal etc. by the aforementioned "pissed off at this post" crowd).

>117 St._Troy: The burkini issue is more a culture clash (French secularism vs. Islam) issue than a feminism one

That has been made abundantly clear by both the secularists and the people who see it as a freedom of religion issue.

Saudi, Iran etc. don't just "manipulate" women (and men) to "want" something, they threaten, imprison, torture and kill in order to maintain gender apartheid and keep women subjugated.

The US rides no moral high horse vis-à-vis France, with the millions of Muslims it killed and dispossessed (and still kills and dispossesses), the legacy of its Middle Eastern wars, the ongoing fuckery of anti-black racism that can be measured in bodies imprisoned and killed almost daily, the paltry numbers of Muslim refugees taken, the Islamophobia so lunatic it dogged a President all eight years of his term because of a middle name and skin colour--and remind me, anyone, has France seen anything like this: Three Muslim students killed at North Carolina campus?

Anyone care to speculate about the reaction had a string of attacks such as January 2015, November 2015, July 2016 massacres in France happened in the US? Think the Second Amendment patriots, the NRA, the Tea Partyers and Trumpophiles of all shades would have taken it half as quietly as the French?

Perspective, please.

>85 LolaWalser: I can advise you once again to read the article written by two Muslim women that I linked in >63 LolaWalser: LolaWalser:,

It turns out that Muslims can disagree with other Muslims, too. The question of whether or not the burqa is "authentically" Muslim is still irrelevant; the argument was that people who felt that they were authentically Muslim (or rightfully Muslim, or distinctively Muslim) are the ones that forced women to wear them in opposition to what was perceived as western clothing.

The frustrating thing here is that I don't have much direct knowledge of why various Muslim groups started demanding various forms of covering in recent times. You basically asserted you did, and I said "maybe you can tell us how we got from "more secular 1970s" to the current situation?" You've never respond to that.

Not interested in continuing any "conversation" with you, sorry.

That is your privilege, but then you need to stop posting in response to me.

>155 Jesse_wiedinmyer: manipulating you to want to do something

Fixed that for you. As Lola says, in the end, it's about freedom of choice. Apparently, when women exercise their freedom of choice, it is guaranteed to piss someone off.

In the end, I think you're walking towards a very dangerous line when you say that someone's choice is merely a matter of manipulation by external forces and thus can be ignored. At the extreme you can argue anything that way, though it's never going to be used against the group in power. Women who have 12 children or women who have an abortion, some group is going to claim manipulation, that women wouldn't have really wanted that if they hadn't been manipulated. And yeah, as a gender thing, women are manipulated and wouldn't have really chosen that, and men made their choices. Same thing with religion; Muslims manipulate their families into following their religion, dietary restrictions, clothing choices, etc., whereas Catholics are just fine. Ultimately, if you take action against people who are "manipulated" into their choices, you're going to end up promoting conformity and giving more power to the already dominant. The Muslim girl who wears a headscarf as sign of her personal devotion is going to get shit, whereas the guys who wear the ubiquitous ball caps are going to get a walk, even if they hate the way it feels but are doing it because of pure social pressure.

why various Muslim groups started demanding various forms of covering in recent times. You basically asserted you did, and I said "maybe you can tell us how we got from "more secular 1970s" to the current situation?" You've never respond to that.

In the article in >63 LolaWalser:, for example, the authors write a bit about the context of what happened in Egypt, how the Muslim Brotherhood demanded imposition of hijab from Nasser etc.

As briefly as possible, post-colonial period saw the ascent of secularist political parties, supported in different countries by the USSR and/or the non-aligned bloc. Their dominance was steadily challenged by the US and its allies. The US has high tolerance for religious extremism, but none for socialism. Actively and passively this outlook worked to suppress progressive, modernising Muslim movements and helped the Saudis spread Wahhabism throughout the Muslim world (and brought Taliban to rule in Afghanistan).

Religious Muslim groups tended to be conservative as a natural result of competition with liberal Western values, and as the result of competition between themselves, they tend to extremism. The weakening of secular state opens up space for these groups to claim political power.

And with such groups in power, women who, given the cultural constraints, were only relatively emancipated to begin with (but more so than most Westerners realise), lose what little security as free citizens and independent agents they had.

In such circumstances it need not even take laws to impose restriction, women self-censor to spare themselves grief, if possible.

Illustrative examples abound: Iran, Bosnia, Iraq, Syria, Algeria (a particularly bitter example, with many most prominent fighters for independence ending up dead or exiled in--France)...

In every case the ascent of hardliners and religious parties to power was followed by a worsening of women's condition.

Syrian women burn burqas in celebration after being freed from Isis

>119 LolaWalser: I agree that the U.S. has serious racial problems, which are exacerbated by the ability to purchase a gun, but I also believe that as a country we are slowly making progress in decodifying racism (and other -ism biases), rather than writing them into law as the French appear to be doing with Muslim headdress and Switzerland by limiting how many mosques are permitted etc. The exception, as you mention, is the Second Amendment, which I do not believe for a minute means what the NRA et alia say it means. I think France is headed in the wrong direction on this one. I hope the US is headed in the right (i.e. correct) direction, Trumpets notwithstanding. Right now it seems that so many countries are having their ultra-right racist, insular culture moment. Perhaps this goes in cycles.

>124 krazy4katz:

writing it into law as the French appear to be doing with Muslim headdress

The French law concerns all religion, not Islam specifically.

#WTFFrance

>125 LolaWalser: Right, but I don't think that makes it better. And they know it does fall most heavily on Muslim women. As stated by >116 krolik:, there is some hypocrisy in all of this.

Apparently the ban is good advertisement.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37171749

What they might do is a little civil disobedience, and see how the French feel about filling up their jails with Islamic mothers and daughters.

All the armed police can be on burkini patrol, rounding up women who are too dressed for good morals.

>121 prosfilaes: In the end, I think you're walking towards a very dangerous line when you say that someone's choice is merely a matter of manipulation by external forces and thus can be ignored.

Bah. "Merely" is your editorial interjection -- it's a word often used to avoid the nuances and implications of an argument.

Everyone is raised into a set of cultural assumptions and are in effect prisoners of those assumptions. Far from ignoring this, I am more and more hypersensitive to it. "Freedom" is always qualified, our freedom of choice is always circumscribed by cultural pressures. The trick is to recognize it when we see it, and more importantly, when we do it to others.

From my perspective, Tim's distinction between "state" and "social" pressures here are irrelevant. Both are patriarchal institutions built on the idea that women are inferior to men. It hardly makes a difference whether it is state pressure pushing women to unveil themselves, or social pressure pushing them to cover up. Do Muslim women choose to wear these things? Sure. Should they be able to? Yes, because they should be able to wear what they want, dammit. But does this make the demand to veil women somehow okay, not misogynistic? Not in the slightest. No more than your average bikini calendar is not misogynistic. Women are still primarily objects either way.

Which, by the way, makes a mockery of the idea that this is a conflict about freedom of religion, of conscience. It is a battle being fought over whose method of controlling women is more "right." But the womens' freedom of choice, of conscience, isn't anyone's priority.

>129 southernbooklady:

It is a battle being fought over whose method of controlling women is more "right." But the womens' freedom of choice, of conscience, isn't anyone's priority.

THIS.

Amening a thousand times...

>116 krolik:

Thanks for that. Always nice to get some "on the ground reporting".

>129 southernbooklady:

Yep, nailed it. As John Lennon and Yoko Ono put it:

https://youtu.be/a1R67ILXZX8?list=PLkWmV4SU9yshPtF-Kx62N7tuWu_FJIFd_

>129 southernbooklady: But the womens' freedom of choice, of conscience, isn't anyone's priority.

I think you're overstating your case. Quite a few people on this thread have stated how they think the burkini bans are wrong AND forcing women to wear burkas is wrong. That's not nobody who feels that the woman's choice isn't a priority.

>132 jjwilson61: I refer you to the tweet at >90 timspalding: which is only "funny" when women are on their knees, surrounded by men who are entitled to assert their power over them.

That is, not funny at all.

>133 southernbooklady: That tweet has generated quite a bit on outrage all over the world, so I don't see how you can conclude that no one cares about women's freedom of choice.

>134 jjwilson61: #NotAllMen ...?

How dismissive. Pointing out that the majority of *people* in the Western world at least believe in allowing women to choose what they wear doesn't diminish the stupidity of what the French are doing.

>129 southernbooklady: Everyone is raised into a set of cultural assumptions and are in effect prisoners of those assumptions.

Then "freedom" is a sham, an illusion, and it's a farce to worry about anyone's freedom of choice.

The trick is to recognize it when we see it

That's no trick; if you see something done by humans or made by humans, it's shaped by cultural pressures.

"Bah" is also a word often used to avoid the nuances and implications of an argument. At what point does someone being a prisoner of their cultural assumption mean you can ignore their overt choices?

>137 prosfilaes: Then "freedom" is a sham, an illusion, and it's a farce to worry about anyone's freedom of choice.


No, it simply means that it's scope is dependent on context. That's the basically the point of my opinion on this particular burkini bru-ha-ha: that in discussions or conflicts between "secular" and "social/religious" the perspective of women aren't part of the understood context. The fact that we can argue over how one side or the other dehumanizes women doesn't negate the fact that women get dehumanized either way. Calling it a human rights argument is indeed a farce.

"Bah" is also a word often used to avoid the nuances and implications of an argument.

Heh. Touche.

>136 jjwilson61: Pointing out that the majority of *people* in the Western world at least believe in allowing women to choose what they wear doesn't diminish the stupidity of what the French are doing.

Ah, but it is what the French, and their Muslim citizens, are doing that's relevant here. Ultimately my opinion on an internet forum has little immediate or direct impact on a woman being pressured to wear or not wear something traditional (aka "extremist") just because she 'd like to go to the beach.

In Canada one may now see Mounties in hijabs as well as men in turbans (Sikhs). http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rcmp-diversity-policy-hijab-1.3733829 . I doubt hijab-clad Mounties are being coerced into wearing the scarf.

>139 margd:

No, but I hate to think of the effect on Muslim officers who DON'T want to wear it.

I don't think it's a good idea for police to flaunt their religious and political affiliation. Sure, sometimes it may help, but obviously at other times it may make interaction worse.

I want to point out how even in this thread, a micro-example, there is a blatant trend of expectation that Muslim women will be/WANT to be covered--there's even a suggestion that anything else is not "authentic".

That too is how coercion is established.

Also, I want to note that Christian conservatives welcome Islamic conservatism as a tool of doing the "dirty work" of oppression for them. Helps to keep women in line generally, you see.

How sad is this?

http://mystealthyfreedom.net/en/

In Iran women have to cover their hair in public according to the dress rule enforced after the Iranian Revolution in 1979. My Stealthy Freedom is an online social movement where Iranian women share photos of themselves without wearing the hijab.

Climate change, the devastation of the biomes, unsustainable urban growth, increasing social inequality and political unrest--you call that a problem? Above ALL let's make sure we control the women by any means necessary!

And by "we" I don't include me--religion doesn't give a shit for what a woman thinks.

>140 LolaWalser: No, but I hate to think of the effect on Muslim officers who DON'T want to wear it.

That is how coercion is established. I prefer the model that treats Muslim officers that don't want to wear it as people with free will who have freedom to choose whether or not to wear it.

I don't think it's a good idea for police to flaunt their religious and political affiliation.

That's a fairly safe statement, until we get into context. Again, the supposed neutral is rife with non-neutral associations. In the US, most police officers are Christians and wearing clothes standard for Christians. Forcing Sikhs to not wear their turban hardly does anything to avoid the known religious and political affiliations of most police departments. Certainly driving Sikhs and Muslims away from being police officers just makes the police officers more biased in a way that they need no symbols to announce.

>141 LolaWalser: there's even a suggestion that anything else is not "authentic".

If you're referring to me, I claimed that Muslims groups that made the covering mandatory felt they were authentic. It seems bizarre and irrelevant for us Westerners to argue about that; if they were authentic in every way, would that make it any better?

>142 LolaWalser: Climate change, the devastation of the biomes, unsustainable urban growth, increasing social inequality and political unrest--you call that a problem?

That seems like a double-edged sword you're wielding there, one that could be wielded against those protesting the hijab. Iran is on a course to have cities become uninhabitable without air conditioning in the summer, and you're worried about the hijab? If we're going to argue against the hijab, then I think arguing that underlying issue is unimportant is not a good approach.

>133 southernbooklady: I must have missed something. I thought #90 was posted for its hideousness. I thought that was obvious. It's a very ugly photo and I thought that was self-evident.

There is, to use the language of 141, a great deal of talk on this thread that suggests well-meaning people who can't understand the ban of the burkini are somehow really fucked up. And there was absolutely no suggestion, at all, that woman not wanting to be covered is thought to be 'not authentic'. That's a gross misrepresentation of an argument that meant to try to explain what has been going on in Islamic nations.

No one here deserves a medal for brilliant argument, but I am not sure any deserve the least derision, either.

I've spent much of my time on Pro and Con arguing with Spalding, but if you really think he posted that photo because he thought it was funny I think, I hope, you are nuts. Otherwise, please, Tim Spalding, tell me you posted it because you got a kick out of it and I will perform a self-lobotomy (and no fair lying just so I do it).

>145 MMcM:

Great, Iw as waiting for that!

Burkini ban in one municipality has been overturned; sets a clear precedent for all other.

>144 RickHarsch: I must have missed something. I thought #90 was posted for its hideousness. I thought that was obvious. It's a very ugly photo and I thought that was self-evident.

In fact, here is a case where context really matters, and is very much missed. Tim's "you gotta love this" comment sounded approving, which didn't help my immediate repulsed reaction. But the tweet itself comes from Afua Hirsch, who I had to look up. She is a journalist, formerly of The Guardian, of Ghanian heritage and who reports on human rights. So I suspect that like me, she is faulting the whole controversy for pretending to be about human rights when in fact it is simple a squabble over how to deny women any.

But dump the picture into a conversation about whether a burkini ban violates someone's religious freedom, and you lose all that.

Tim's "you gotta love this" seemed sarcastic to me. Meaning that he intended to communicate he did not approve of the police assault on the birkini clothed woman.

The internet needs a sarcasm font.

No, it simply means that it's scope is dependent on context. That's the basically the point of my opinion on this particular burkini bru-ha-ha: that in discussions or conflicts between "secular" and "social/religious" the perspective of women aren't part of the understood context.

Game. Set. Match?

There are several themes to distinguish here, connected, but not necessarily discussed in the same breath--the practical application of French (and Belgian and, upcoming, German and probably other European) laws on display of religious affiliation, generally and/or specifically regarding Islamic covering for women; the specific "burqini bans"--which this thread is "about"; the principle of, the reason for, the religious justification of sexually discriminatory covering and related wide sexual discrimination against women of which religious covering is just one facet.

WRT wearing of a burka

Is it a religious symbol or is it a religious act?

That distinction has occurred to me during this thread when prohibitions against ostentatious displays of religious affiliation. Which prohibition seems odd to me if to no one else.

I'm going to indulge my inner cynic and say that it's time to start handing these burkini things out like candy at Cannes. Get enough big names to agree to photoshoots with them, and you've solved your problem.

>153 davidgn:

The sales have gone up!

Fixed that for you. As Lola says, in the end, it's about freedom of choice. Apparently, when women exercise their freedom of choice, it is guaranteed to piss someone off.

If you have a penis why are you still talking?

This discussion was done 100 posts ago.

If you are a male, shut up.

Shut the fuck up.

Listen.

Which fucking part of this is so hard to understand?

Men do not get to dictate women's choices.

Stop speaking.

Shutting the fuck up. Now.

Thread on ignore.

Ignore?

No.

Listen.

>152 richardbsmith:

Which prohibition seems odd to me if to no one else.

No, this is typical of most Americans. I don't think it's particularly rare in Europe either, but yes, it is more rare there. It concerns different understandings of what separation of state and religion entails, different views on the role of religion, or rather, an important distinction in Europe, the role of "the church", i.e. organised religion in public life.

In simplest terms, the trend in Europe has been toward relegating religion to the private sphere, which idea still has little traction in the "but everyone believes in some god" North America. In a generalisation, people came to America in order to practice their religion and this particular "freedom" is still widely deemed to be more important than any other.

In Europe, Enlightenment fought against religion's dominance in public life.

Generally, Americans give more importance to religion and practice of religion than Europeans do--this is demonstrable on many variables.

Muslim immigrants are overall more like Americans than Europeans in this regard. But Americans are more like Europeans, at least nominally, than either are like Muslim immigrants when it comes to mixing religion with the legal system.

>158 richardbsmith:

-You have just exemplified the two extremes. Either "I talk" or "I ignore.".

There's a fucking middle ground.

It isn't just religious dress, French-speaking entities also regulate language, banning terms like "le baseball". English-speakers are more likely to incorporate good words from any language.

>162 margd: You speak as though the pronouncements of the Académie française had the force of law or something.

(Oh, wait: I'm supposed to be gagging myself.)

Yeah, I wish men made more of an effort to imagine how women feel about restrictions imposed on them within and by the patriarchy. It's easy to shrug "well, that's culture" and prattle about "choice" when you are not, even theoretically, subject to suffering that shit.

>145 MMcM:

Sigh of relief. Look forward to when the burkini fuss is only a footnote. More important questions await.

>163 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

I don't get why they blocked his account.

But the comparison of Muslim women with Catholic nuns is enormously stupid. If anything, it works AGAINST sympathy for Muslim covering.

>163 Jesse_wiedinmyer: >168 LolaWalser: What it shows is the hypocrisy of prohibiting expressions of religion on the beach via style of dress (for women). The fact that the nuns most likely are voluntary wearers of their clothing and that may not be the case for the Muslim women should be immaterial to the government.

>165 davidgn: force of law

There is a language law in Quebec: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_the_French_Language .

>155 Jesse_wiedinmyer: If you have a penis why are you still talking?

If you aren't a Muslim, why are you still talking? If you aren't French, why are you still talking? If you aren't a burqa-wearing French Muslim woman, why are you still talking? I'm pretty sure a lot of the people this applies to would be more upset that a bunch of atheists were talking about it than that a bunch of males were.

>157 Jesse_wiedinmyer: Men do not get to dictate women's choices.

Atheists don't get to dictate Muslim's choices. Heck, women do not get to dictate women's choices; people have individual freedom of choice.

>169 krazy4katz: The fact that the nuns most likely are voluntary wearers of their clothing and that may not be the case for the Muslim women should be immaterial to the government.

I wouldn't assume that just because a woman joined a nunnery that her preference in clothes was a penguin suit, especially on the beach; maybe it was something she did because she had to as part of the nunnery. Given that nuns universally had a life outside the nunnery, and presumably most of the Muslim women on the beach have been covered most of their life, it's quite possible that more of the Muslim women had internalized the rules than the nuns had, that the nuns if kicked out of the nunnery could and would go to the beach in standard clothing, whereas some of the Muslim women, if exiled from their community, would still find that relative lack of clothing personally abhorrent.

>172 prosfilaes: Possible. Doesn't change the argument though.

>169 krazy4katz:

I completely agree that it's hypocritical to ban religious garb on the beach for one religion and not another. But, I was making another point.

Nuns aren't just a random bunch of extremely devout women; they are religious "professionals", belonging to religious orders, having undergone a specific process of education, initiation etc. They are separate from the mass of lay women (no tasteless jokes, everyone! ;)) institutionally and philosophically.

Even highly religious lay people are not expected to behave "like" nuns (or priests)--with no loss of "authenticity" in their faith, be it said in passing. I know a lot of Catholics who have great respect for nuns and priests but who'd be alarmed, to put it mildly, if their kids or spouses started affecting nun and priest-like behaviours.

Implying that ordinary Muslim women are like Catholic nuns--as opposed to the mass of ordinary, lay Catholics--only enforces the notion, already strong, that they are religiously extreme.

By the way, I find it highly amusing that even nuns, i.e. a corpus of believers that is officially most highly religious, or devout, or however one wants to express it--show more skin than the supposedly "ordinary" Muslim women. You can see knees, calves, you can see ankles! Positively pornographic. :) (ETA: re photo in Jesse's link.)

>174 LolaWalser:: "By the way, I find it highly amusing that even nuns, i.e. a corpus of believers that is officially most highly religious, or devout, or however one wants to express it--show more skin than the supposedly "ordinary" Muslim women. You can see knees, calves, you can see ankles! Positively pornographic. :)"

Yes, I wonder if nuns were always such "exhibitionists" or whether that is corruption brought on by modern culture. ;-)

>174 LolaWalser: Would you (or anyone else) have the same concerns about lay women being fully clothed at the beach if they were Amish or possibly Hasidic Jews? Has France outlawed long dresses at the beach for them too?

>171 prosfilaes:

Are you male or female?

I don't particularly recall you responding in a straw poll.

Regardless of your answer, do you find it disheartening that the majority of respondents (and mostly likely Pro & Con posters) are male?

And that many females feel their voices are completely devalued by larger society?

Huh. Weidinmyer got canned? Did I miss something? I certainly hope so!

A perspective from author, Arundhati Roy, an Indian woman with Hindu and Christian roots:

When, as happened recently in France, an attempt is made to coerce women out of the burqa rather than creating a situation in which a woman can choose what she wishes to do, it’s not about liberating her, but about unclothing her. It becomes an act of humiliation and cultural imperialism. It’s not about the burqa. It’s about the coercion. Coercing a woman out of a burqa is as bad as coercing her into one. Viewing gender in this way, shorn of social, political and economic context, makes it an issue of identity, a battle of props and costumes. It is what allowed the US government to use western feminist groups as moral cover when it invaded Afghanistan in 2001. Afghan women were (and are) in terrible trouble under the Taliban. But dropping daisy-cutters on them was not going to solve their problems.

>179 davidgn: I believe he removed himself. I hope he's okay.

Yeah, me too.

>180 margd: Afghan women were (and are) in terrible trouble under the Taliban. But dropping daisy-cutters on them was not going to solve their problems.

But this begs the question, what would? They are in terrible trouble precisely because of the patriarchal culture that puts them there. If you advocate tolerance of the culture, you advocate tolerance of that same "terrible trouble." Ultimately I think the West finds it more convenient to focus on surface issues, like how people should dress, rather than come to terms with the fact that half the population exists as second-class citizens by tradition, convention, religion. Sooner or later that will have to be confronted, and either changed -- no matter how much people wail about tradition, or not change, in which case we've accepted that it is acceptable to treat women as sub-human. In effect, that the repression of women is an acceptable price to pay for a man's religious freedom.

>183 southernbooklady: Remember how things got to be that way.
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2009/11/20/najibullah/

ETA
http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/brzezinski.html

Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski from Le Nouvel Observateur*
January 15-21, 1998, p. 76*

...
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?

B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundementalists, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries. ...

ETA:
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a0999fuller#a0999fuller

>184 davidgn: Remember how things got to be that way.

Secular regimes aren't de facto feminist ones. Mostly, they are a different brand of misogynist. Ultimately, "how they got that way" is irrelevant. What's relevant is whether we think women are human beings or not.

>176 krazy4katz:

Would you (or anyone else) have the same concerns about lay women being fully clothed at the beach if they were Amish or possibly Hasidic Jews?

Where did you get the idea that I have concerns about fully clothed women at the beach?

That's completely false--utter distortion of everything I said and argued in this thread.

You can read my posts again from the beginning, I'm not interested in defending myself from such blatant malice.

>184 davidgn:

Breathtaking, isn't it.

>186 LolaWalser: I am not attacking you. I am trying to clarify the issue of clothing for Muslim women in particular. They are not the only women with a religious dress code. Yet everyone is focussed on them. Probably because their numbers are so large in comparison. And Amish people don't live in France.

>185 southernbooklady:

Secular regimes aren't de facto feminist ones. Mostly, they are a different brand of misogynist.

True enough, but it doesn't mean the situation is completely the same. You really can't imagine until you go to some of those places how much of a difference even little liberties and most basic legal protection makes.

Even a purely formal assurance of rights and equality is better, makes for a better situation, than a formal assurance of inequality! The oppression is expressed not just in the letter of the law but in what people believe they can do and say to you.

I have yet to meet an Iranian woman who lived the before and after Khomeini's revolution and thinks the "after" was just the same.

Living as a woman in secular Syria was not the same as living in Pakistan. Or in the ISIS-occupied territories.

>185 southernbooklady: I don't even know how to respond to that without pissing both of us off, so I spent a couple minutes trying to find an illustrative video instead. Watch this short clip, then tell me that it's been all the same for Afghan women -- secular Afghanistan or the Taliban -- because neither regime was satisfactorily feminist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WTD7ru7jXc
I haven't fact-checked the whole thing, but it seems broadly accurate.

>189 LolaWalser: True enough, but it doesn't mean the situation is completely the same. You really can't imagine until you go to some of those places how much of a difference even little liberties and most basic legal protection makes.

I do understand this, and I'm not trying to argue abstracts here. One of the reasons I studied the Middle East was because I have family in some of these places. It's not an academic or theoretical issue to me, this constant questioning of culture vs misogyny. So while I agree with Roy that we can't just drop western principles into the mix and expect them to work, I can't shake the suspicion that there is something fundamentally incompatible between what is "traditional" and a society where women are equal.

>188 krazy4katz:

I have no problem with women in full clothing on the beach. I have stated from the start the burqini bans were ridiculous and said I hoped they wouldn't be upheld.

I've never heard of the Amish and Hasidic Jews going to the beaches--isn't that too much diabolical hedonism for such puritans?--but if they do, obviously it's hard to come up with a specific reason to care.

I am trying to clarify the issue of clothing for Muslim women in particular. They are not the only women with a religious dress code. Yet everyone is focussed on them. Probably because their numbers are so large in comparison. And Amish people don't live in France.

In a European context, covered Muslim women are currently the most numerous religious group easily identifiable in public. The covering itself correlates with conservatism. Not all covered women, as far as anyone knows, are necessarily conservative, but all conservative women can be expected to be covered. What's new in Europe isn't the presence of Muslims as such (France for instance has not only the largest but also the oldest Muslim population in Western Europe), but the presence, increasingly, of covering. Taken as a general index it gives a measure of increase in population of religiously conservative Muslims, which, rightly or wrongly, in a time of war (the "Middle" East is much more "Near" to Europe than to the US overlords cocooned between the oceans), refugee influx, increasing Islamist attacks on European soil, causes alarm.

That's one aspect of the situation. Another, more or less specifically--or particularly--French, is laïcité, the engagement and sharing in the public life of a society as a "lay person". What American France-bashers don't or won't understand is that this isn't something invented yesterday specifically to oppress poor women in burqas. Rather, those poor women in burqas posed the most recent test for it, and the answer was the law about face covering in public and displaying of religious symbols in such public institutions as schools (elementary and high school only), courts etc. But, as I said before, there is a larger fundamental disagreement between the general American and the general French/European point of view on religion that pretty much guarantees ensuing clashes of opinions.

The burqini bans were set by individual mayors of French towns citing "security" reasons. Whatever the merit their concerns, they are not representative of the French "state" or society as such, as we can also tell from the fact that the bans are not receiving judicial support.

>180 margd:

Thanks, I agree with much of what she says, but I'm not sure about this:

Coercing a woman out of a burqa is as bad as coercing her into one.

Ataturk coerced women and men "out of the burqa". It saved Turkey.

I'm afraid the ambivalence surrounding this idea can't be dispelled. Is Saudi coercion of women somehow less repellent than if French do it because... well, why exactly? Because they're more remote, not-Western, because "that's culture"?

No, I'm afraid I can't draw such a complete equivalency between the two. It's suffering violence in either case, but in the end, I'd rather be dragged out into the light than forced into darkness. However, maybe we are posing false dichotomies--I certainly hope we are. I can agree with Roy--and Nikki and I said it above before--that the thing to strive for is securing real freedom of choice, imperfect as it may be.

>191 southernbooklady:

I can't shake the suspicion that there is something fundamentally incompatible between what is "traditional" and a society where women are equal.

Oh yeah, given what was/is "traditional"...

>192 LolaWalser: That's one aspect of the situation. Another, more or less specifically--or particularly--French, is laïcité, the engagement and sharing in the public life of a society as a "lay person". What American France-bashers don't or won't understand is that this isn't something invented yesterday specifically to oppress poor women in burqas.

No, it was invented a century ago in part to oppress poor women in burqas. Pretty much anything done a century ago in a colonial power didn't have the interests of poor women in burqas in mind, and laïcité is pretty clear in setting up the normal and putting Muslims and many other non-French groups in opposition to it.

But, as I said before, there is a larger fundamental disagreement between the general American and the general French/European point of view on religion that pretty much guarantees ensuing clashes of opinions.

Yes, there is, though French point of view seems to differ from several other European nations I'm familiar with. I don't think I'm being unreasonably partisan to appreciate the form that prioritizes personal freedom to be religious and pushes the state away from being religious (note that the only religious holiday the US Post Office is closed on is Christmas (plus Sundays, which is its own thread).) I found >116 krolik: to be a little disturbing; it makes French secularism look a bit farcical.

Hey, look, it's 95 degrees out. Let's go the beach.

Wait. God wants us to cover ourselves in black cloth from head to toe.

OK. That's better.

Can you put some sunscreen on my burkini? Make sure it's SPF 75, because that's what God would use. Anything less is for infidels.

It's so hot here. I wonder why. Let's go in the water.

Wait, something's pulling me down. I feel heavier for some reason...

>195 barney67: You're not the one wearing it so why should you care?

As a woman, I would be insulted by any suggestion of a town chief dictating what I wear. Considering the Spanish were quite offended by French, British and German women showing their breast in public in our beaches in the sixties and seventies and we just had to "deal with it" I must suggest the French get over themselves and worry about things like unemployment and strengthening police vigilance against true and quite violent threats.
Also, Laicite is supposed to apply to religion and religious symbols in public life, and pants, long sleeve and a scarf wrapped around your head is something I have worn quite often in the fall in New England. Since I am absolutely catholic I believe you can not call that kind of outfit a religious symbol. I know people will argue my intention was not to preserve my modesty, but to keep out the freezing cold. Still, I think we can all agree that when state officials get to take action base on their guess on your intentions or the content of your thoughts we are descending into dangerous totalitarism.

>198 lordoftheuniverse: "descending into dangerous totalitarism"

An interesting thought from someone who calls herself "lordoftheuniverse".

barney67,

My on-line name comes from the fact that my last name is Dios (God) who is indeed the lordoftheuniverse, but I have to admit that my lack of humility does undermine my point a little, but only a little.

Vaya con Dios.

Fixed that for you. As Lola says, in the end, it's about freedom of choice. Apparently, when women exercise their freedom of choice, it is guaranteed to piss someone off.

So, in the name of women's freedom of choice, you would restrict women's freedom of choice? Got it.

If you are a male, shut up. Shut the fuck up.

No. Because issues of personal liberty are human rights, and therefore issues for all humans. People who think that women should be forced to dress or undress a certain way by law aren't having a private conversation about gender in a safe space into which I am intruding. They are supporting state action against a basic freedom. That matters in and of itself, even if had no implications for me and my gender (which it does).

I'm afraid the ambivalence surrounding this idea can't be dispelled. Is Saudi coercion of women somehow less repellent than if French do it because... well, why exactly?

I certainly think Saudi coercion is much worse--it's much more total. If this were a thread about Saudi Arabia, you could count on me to rail against them for this, and much else. I would also point out their definition of "darkness" matches up with yours in other places, such as legal suppression of Christianity and Judaism.

in the end, I'd rather be dragged out into the light than forced into darkness

So would I. But that's not the question. You aren't the operative agent here and never will be. Someone else--some politician, some movement, or strongman--will decide what's the light and what's the darkness.

You may not be a Muslim, but, as an atheist, you're a walking target of such rhetoric--a target of those who want to bring you to the light and out of the darkness. You either have to hope you're always going to be on the winning side of every such clash, or live in a state with legal protections of fundamental rights. I prefer the latter.

And Amish people don't live in France.

They did. They were driven out by state-sanctioned efforts to bring people to the light. Apparently around 2,000 Mennonites remain in Alsace. As the saying goes, "you'll never guess what the state regulated about them too!" (Their clothes, of course.)

>202 timspalding: So, in the name of women's freedom of choice, you would restrict women's freedom of choice? Got it.

Actually, I think you missed it, completely. :-)

>202 timspalding: And Amish people don't live in France.

They did. They were driven out by state-sanctioned efforts to bring people to the light. Apparently around 2,000 Mennonites remain in Alsace. As the saying goes, "you'll never guess what the state regulated about them too!" (Their clothes, of course.)

Interesting! When did that happen? Not that living in France was actually my point. I was trying to clarify something — I forget what, quite frankly. Maybe that among religious-oriented dress for lay people, Muslim women appear to be the most targeted perhaps because they represent the largest religious group with "non-western standard" attire.

"If you are a male, shut up. Shut the fuck up."

Intolerance in the name of tolerance, open-mindedness, progressivism, freethinking, compassion...

Has this person ever gone a day with profanity?

>205 barney67: What fucking difference would that fucking make? Fuck.