Comment: Below is a well-balanced opinion-piece on the Burqa ban in France that some True Finns’ Islamophobists should take the time to read before they decide to go on a similar path in Finland.
The following statement summarizes well the “problem” in France: “The full force of the state is coming down on fewer than 2,000 Muslim women out of a population of 6.5 million French Muslim citizens. For what purpose? We are told it is for security, the preservation of “French values” and to alleviate the oppression of women.”
I personally believe in a secular society but I respect those that may disagree with that view. Our liberal, democratic and Western society permits us to make lifestyle choices that are exclusively our own.
Banning dress or other forms of cultural expression should never be the role of the state except for in exceptional circumstances.
Moreover, undermining civil liberties is an attack on our own values and usually ends up becoming a Pyrrhic argument.
Do you agree?
___________
Sarah Joseph*
London, England (CNN) — The ban imposed by French President Sarkozy on wearing a face-covering veil, or niqab, is simply dangerous gesture politics, representing little more than pandering to the far right in France.
*Sarah Joseph OBE is the CEO and editor of emel Media. She is a regular contributor to public and governmental discussions pertaining to Islam and was listed by Washington’s Georgetown University as one of the world’s 500 most influential Muslims.
Hmm… what about not wearing a burqa? “Wear a headscarf or we will kill you”?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1377780/London-Taliban-targeting-women-gays-bid-impose-sharia-law.html
Two wrongs do not make a right.
So, Allan, what is the point? Instead of trying to destroy bridges why not build and conserve those that we have. This point I think is the difference of those that want to impose their ways on others: They feverishly search and when they find something they blow it out of proportion when, if fact, it is only a storm in a tea cup. And Daily Mail… Hmmmm.
I dont think death threats are a storm in a tea cup. I think the whole “burqa ban” was a misdirected step exactly to ban some people imposing their ways on others.
And Daily Mail? Look at what happened in Finland – the newspapers tried to keep the lid on until PerSut bubbled out. The issues people do not like do not go away if you hide them, they need to be addressed or the pendulum starts to swing and then you get two extremes.
—And Daily Mail? Look at what happened in Finland – the newspapers tried to keep the lid on until PerSut bubbled out.
Let me get this straight. All the media in Finland decided to censor the True Finns but then one guy started to bash Somalis and the “truth” was uncovered? You know very well that Finland is a democratic country. It is pretty useless trying to control the media here.
Allan Beck
This kind of thing is nothing new to the East End of London. There have been regular outbreaks of yid bashing, paki bashing, spade bashing and queer bashing in the areas of what are now Tower Hamlets and Newham over the last hundred years or so. This behaviour has often also had an overtly ideological motivation.
Like football violence, it is also partly fuelled by media attention. The Daily Mail is the new Fleet Street patsy for this kind of attention-seeking. All it takes to grab the headlines on Sunday and Monday is to break a few heads down the Roman Road on a Friday night and drop a few hints to the hung over hacks who come sniffing round the market on Saturday afternoon. You can then trust the Daily Mail, NOTW or other bingo rags to spin the story into the final-end-of-life-as-we-know-it.
I’m so glad France is taking the right step forward, let’s hope the UK eventually get’s round to it…
Maybe we should ban the wedding veil? Or the white wedding gown itself? Since both of these symbolized the purity of the bride as she was bestowed upon her husband.
Better yet, why don’t we institutionalize a national uniform for everyone to wear, like those blue polyester jackets and caps the chinese wore during the time of Mao Tse Tung. And why not have Marimekko make it? That way it would be truly finnish!
Now isnt that a great way towards integration. Guess I should suggest this to my favorite True Finn member of parliament!
Perhaps it’s best to insist that an entire community follows an ethnic dress rule, if they insist on having their right to do so. I personally think that many of the men need desperately to have their faces covered, not to mention their bodies. IF it were imposed, then the men who disobeyed could be arrested, and the whole story would turn a new way: should any group within Finland have the right to impose their sartorial rules on another? If not, then these Somalian men have no right to impose it on their women, and they should be arrested.