To call the following CTV news report “tendentious” would hardly do it justice. It discusses the recent passage of a law against full-face coverings in Quebec, and the anchor naturally focuses on the injustices that it would impose on those poor, poor Muslim women — who will be “forced” to remain at home.
I doubt that the writers who composed the copy for this report realized the implications of their assertions. If Muslim women are forced to remain at home due to the burka ban, it means that the wearing of the garment is not voluntary, as the Progressives like to maintain. It is mandatory, not optional, implying that somebody, somewhere — presumably a husband, father, or brother — makes these women cover their faces in public.
Otherwise they would risk… What? What does CTV think the penalty would be for a failure to cover up? And who would administer it?
Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for annotating and uploading this video:
You just hit the nail on the head Baron. Of course it’s mandatory. The left have now exposed their own lie for all to see. I wonder how they going to talk their way out of this one.
I’m all for not allowing any new burqa wearers to move to the country, all for denying “service” to those who insist on wearing a burqa to the citizenship ceremony, and frankly, all for refusing to allow burqa wearers boarding a plane bound for Canada unless they identify themselves in the normal way to airline staff, be the staff male or female (i.e., I’d happily de facto keep them outside the country by their own choice). I’d happily go as far as to hold mosques liable for damages if their adherents are found to engage in terrorism (and de facto shut them down by selling their buildings to recover said damages). And many other similar ideas.
BUT, I think that not allowing burqa wearers onto city buses is a bad idea. It’s (a) too personal of an affront and that never seems to work, (b) while it may succeed in (slightly) reducing the number of burqa wearers, it will only deal with a symptom of the problem and (c) it limits the chances that such women will be out-and-about and more connected (work, studies) to the general society, giving them more of a chance to “escape” and less dependency on their husbands.
Mike,
If veiled women want to “escape” their husbands let them take the veil off once they are away from the house.
They could go to social services and ask for refuge.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that is the case. They enjoy being beacons of Islam. Islam is a political ideology more than it is a religion. For the most part these women are in agreement with that.
I suspect that a percentage are forced into this lifestyle by their spouses and general ignorance/fear about how to get out of it.
What the Quebec gov’t fails to consider, I think, is that many (most?) actually WANT this lifestyle for themselves, as bizarre as it may seem to us.
Definitely a good idea. We can’t have individuals excepting themselves from all the CCTV cameras in public places.
There is a very real probability that women who wear the niqab do so under pressure from their husbands, families, or the mosque; however, there is also the real chance that they do so of their “own” volition. But what underlies this choice?
Here is the crux of the matter, for what emotionally healthy female would choose to cover herself in a head-to-toe, all-enveloping garment that severely impedes her interaction with society, that draws attention to herself (remember that these are the women who claim Islamic “modesty” as a primary motivator), and that renders her essentially faceless and invisible to all outside her family and female friends who visit her home?
We might consider these the negative consequences of niqab-wearing. But for some who wear these shrouds these must be positive results. If you want to understand the motivation, look at the consequences. So, social isolation, attention-getting, and personal anonymity are the usual results to the niqab-wearer. Note that the latter two—attention-getting and personal anonymity—seem contradictory. But the attention is drawn to Islam and the submission of the female within it—not to any individual female, and the personal anonymity that results is further evidence of this. Attention is also drawn to the growing presence of Islam in our Western culture—more than that, attention is drawn to Islam’s seeming ability to override our cultural norms.
If these results are sought for, we must ask how intense has the indoctrination been in the woman’s upbringing to make her “voluntarily” choose to wear the niqab—a “sensory deprivation chamber” as Phyllis Chesler characterizes it. As well as the consequences above, the niqab ensures that its wearer is deprived of sunlight, the feel of the wind, and full use of the senses.
Many of the incidents in which niqab-wearers come into conflict with authorities show that the personal anonymity that is sought can’t be reconciled with the values and practices of an open and liberal society. Quebec has done the right thing with this legislation.