Poll shows majority of British people support burqa ban

The thing I worry about is that these women are caught in between their religious leaders and scriptures telling them to hide their bodies, and western authorities forcing them to dress in a way that makes visible the body that they have been made to feel so many negative things about. They're caught in a crossfire of shame and control. I hate the idea of a woman being covered but we shouldn't target the woman. France should have targeted the religious men who coerce these women into dressing in such a way.

This is the worst attempt at an argument I've seen on here for a long time, and that is saying something.

Ladies and gents, I give you the TSR mods.

I'm not a fan of the burqa (read: niqaab) either, but a lot of Western work to emancipate women from other cultures is done via the angle of painting men in said countries as savages who must be defeated by the Enlightened White Man; this perspective is ********.

The recent French ban on the burkini for example, failed to take into account the agency of women; it mirrors the oppressive patriarchal thinking - top-down control over women's clothing. It has nothing to do with "liberating" women, as the French Supreme Court was able to recognise and overturn the ban.

It reminds me of the colonial mentality: Both the British in India and the Americans in Afghanistan made women’s clothing and gender crimes into signatures of an alien and barbaric culture. Moral campaigns against such ‘offensive’ practices are in reality sophisticated imperial technologies of control. For populations ‘at home,’ bare-breasted Hindu women and burqa-clad Afghan women become convenient emblems of both strangeness and the need for corrective conquest. When the Hindu woman puts on a long-sleeved blouse and a petticoat, or when an Afghan woman throws off her burqa, it equals conquest and success of the colonial venture.

The singling out of gendered crimes, sati in India and honour killings in Afghanistan, dramatises the otherness of the Hindu or Afghan male. He becomes an indigenous evil requiring heroic foreign intervention. The sophistication of this kind of enemy-making is that it renders one half of the local population – the victims of these crimes – allies of the occupation. Actual Hindu widows and Afghan women are rarely, if ever, heard from, as their experiences and perspective might complicate a silence that the Anglo-American empire can imagine as gratitude.

If the niqaab were to be banned here, the opposition would mainly consist of Muslim women, not men.

This is true, the reasoning provided by French authorities was BS.

I think the only way we will see the end of control of women's dress and bodies through religion is through careful education of both girls and boys in schools.

There is a problem in religious women believing that they are making their own decision and have their own opinions about their own bodies. If it's not obvious enough to anyone from the outside, I grew up in a Christian family and can confirm for you that you really are not making your own decisions and you certainly are not finding freedom in subjecting yourself to the will of God.

I think they would argue the purpose is VERY import

But one is a work uniform one is a fashion choice so no they are not comparable or equal in this respect

comparable would be balaclava but that's about it (even a helmet has a safety function)

Also worth bearing in mind that the full habit is essentially ceremonial wear, worn during services, religious duties, etc. Most of the time, many nuns wear regular clothes.
Here is a picture of some nuns.


And some more.

As much as the "alt-right" (nothing but empty contrarianism) like to insist, memes don't have a place in proper discussion

The state has no business policing people's choice of clothing.

It's not an argument, it is a view.

I watched the Prisoner of Azkaban on shrooms and to this day my heart races when ever I see a niqab.

I don't think covering your face should be legal, there's freedom then there's religious over-privilege.

This is the worst attempt at an argument I've seen on here for a long time, and that is saying something.

Ladies and gents, I give you the TSR mods.

The state has no business policing people's choice of clothing.

It already does and has always done it.