Should countries outlaw the hijab, niqab and burka?

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Besides, it's hard to tell, this far away.

You don't liberate women by telling them what to wear, whether you are the state or the mosque.

So you believe that women's equality is enshrined in every decent legal system. Which ones would those be? Is it the job of any culture which first makes progress on a human rights front to impose its standards on others? When has that worked?All the West has to do to hobble reform movements in Muslin nations is to express support.Every patriarchal religion has texts detailing the appalling things husbands and fathers may do to their wives and daughters (and sons). In cultures where that is lacking, the men generally make do without it: the fault is not in our gods. There's a fine irony from someone who wants to come for the Muslims. Yeah, well, bite me--I'm not a good person. But I am an old, experienced one, and I've read a great deal of history. Your rhetoric is as tired as your bigotry is thinly veiled.You would make a fine leader of mobs. Many Muslim women choose to wear the things you want banned.Perhaps you know of some society where gender equality has been perfected--was it achieved there by changing which men tell women what to do?

To quote a great Canadian, "The trouble with normal is it always gets worse."Since it's Canadian human rights you want to abridge in the name of freedom--you know, to keep freedom safe--I'll leave you to their tender mercies.Anyway, say something once, why say it again?

I wish I had a double cheer button.

It's just what ringo says on the web now anyway. Video or it didn't happen.In the multiverse of all possible worlds, there must be at least one where ringo is a hot young Sharon Stone who can shoot but seems to like me okay.Damn. Wrong universe again.

They would hear me cheering twice as loud for their right to decide for themselves. You'd be surprised how sweet that sounds to someone usually only offered a choice of masters.And from you they would hear only their marching orders. Liberty is not "the freedom to obey"* someone else.What they ought to hear from other Canadians is how to engage the law in protecting their rights and welfare. Those laws exist. Instead of promoting access to those laws by Muslim women, you want to give their men (and the women's right to choose for themselves) a great big slap in the face, leaving the men even more alienated and the women more vulnerable.How nice for you.Once you've accomplished that, you can forbid Haredi Jewish women from covering their hair with wigs, Orthodox Christian and Eastern Catholic nuns from wearing apostolniks, and Episcopalian women from wearing their hats to church.You'll be shocked to know that high school girls throughout North America are prevented from wearing the halter tops and short-shorts they favor to school. And in gym class, unlike the boys, they can't take off their shirts when it gets hot! Let's wake up all oppressive North American men and free those breasts! A lot of girls might not like it, but there are principles involved that are more important than their modesty or preferences. You've got a life-time of telling women what to do ahead of you. I'm surpised you have the time to lie to us.By the way, as a technical side-note, because I like to study alternative realities: When you are accused of lying about thousands of Muslim honor killings in Canada, do you figure lies or insults are the most effective reply?______________________
*Green Day rocks!

GIA will conflate them, pose them as two horns of a dilemma, twist them in any way required to grafity GIA's self-righteousness.GIA is practicing moral terrorism: you're either with us or a'gin us. Agree with me, in diagnosis and prescription alike, or you are a moral leper. It is the rhetoric of a lynch mob. What would people not agree to if this stuff carried the day?It's a child-like, bully vision of good and evil: easy to distinguish, easy to destroy the outward signs of what we abhor, easy to believe that then all will be well.It's not about the oppressiveness of burkas; it's about the refusal to live with the differences they represent.I hate to fall to Godwin's law, but this is how you get there.NB: Subtitle sucked.Edited by Omnivorous, : pronouns

Nearly 100 posts into this discussion, and that's still all you've got--agree with you or we're evil.We might as well be debating the Taliban. You are what you claim to loathe.

That's what I thought--"holy me and evil thee" really is all you've got.I'll pop in occasionally to remind you of that.In the meantime, consider the fact that on a discussion board with Christian believers, Jews, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, liberals, conservatives, and socialists, et alia, nearly all of whom advocate liberty and reason--you are finding no support for your proposition.Like "Only-One-in-Step" Johnny, you must be very special.Edited by Omnivorous, : No reason given.

Nope.

Our Constitution tolerates alien and subversive worldviews. To my undying gratitude, we don't prosecute thought crimes.On the other hand, perhaps we should round up the Amish, the Dominionists, the Catholics, the Hassidim, polygamous Mormons, hippies in communes without personal property rights, Protestants and Catholics who swear fealty to Something other than the rule of constitutional law in our secular republic--but, gosh, we'd be busy! And who would be left? You know, we began this thread discussing GIA's concerns about the freedom of Muslim women in Canada. If we're going to concern ourselves about violence against women in Canada, we should look at the big picture.From the Canadian Women's Foundation: The Facts About Violence Against Women

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* Half of all women in Canada have experienced at least one incident of physical or sexual violence since the age of 16.

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* 67% of all Canadians say they personally know at least one woman who has been sexually or physically assaulted.

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* On average, every six days a woman in Canada is killed by her intimate partner. In 2011, from the 89 police reported spousal homicides, 76 of the victims (over 85%) were women.

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* On any given day in Canada, more than 3,300 women (along with their 3,000 children) are forced to sleep in an emergency shelter to escape domestic violence. Every night, about 200 women are turned away because the shelters are full.

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* Each year, over 40,000 arrests result from domestic violencethat’s about 12% of all violent crime in Canada.5 Since only 22% of all incidents are reported to the police, the real number is much higher.

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* As of 2010, there were 582 known cases of missing or murdered Aboriginal women in Canada. Both Amnesty International and the United Nations have called upon the Canadian government to take action on this issue, without success. According to the Native Women’s Association of Canada, if this figure were applied proportionately to the rest of the female population there would be over 18,000 missing Canadian women and girls.

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* According to the Department of Justice, each year Canadians collectively spend $7.4 billion to deal with the aftermath of spousal violence. This figure includes immediate costs such as emergency room visits and future costs such as loss of income. It also includes tangible costs such as funerals, and intangible costs such as pain and suffering.

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* In a 2009 Canadian national survey, women reported 460,000 incidents of sexual assault in just one year. Only about 10% of all sexual assaults are reported to police. When it comes to sexual assault, women are frequently not believed, blamed for being assaulted, or subjected to callous or insensitive treatment, when police fail to take evidence, or when their cases are dropped arbitrarily. Only a handful of reported assaults ever result in a conviction: each year, only about 1,500 sexual assault offenders are actually convicted.

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* About 80% of sex trafficking victims in Canada are women and girls.
More than one in ten Canadian women say they have been stalked by someone in a way that made them fear for their life.

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* Provincially, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, which have consistently recorded the highest provincial rates of police-reported violent crime, had rates of violence against women in 2011 that were about double the national rate. Ontario and Quebec had the lowest rates of violence against women. As is the case with violent crime overall, the territories have consistently recorded the highest rates of police-reported violence against women. The rate of violent crime against women in Nunavut was nearly 13 times higher than the rate for Canada.

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The statistics on the economic status of women in Canada are just as abysmal. I'm confident the relative numbers of victimized women in the U.S. are just as horrific, if not worse; the absolute numbers are staggeringly higher.GIA doesn't give a fig for Muslim women, wanting to criminalize that which now only faces intolerance. Maybe you should concern yourself a little more with the disastrous failure for women of the Western principles you so esteem.Maybe you should wonder what GIA would impose on you.Finally, of course, the wearing of the burqa here in the U.S. is protected by the Constitution. Are there other people you wish to deprive of Constitutional rights that you enjoy?

Well, that was a Titanic load of unsupported assertions. I don't need a seat on that particular boat. Actually, they are.Everyone has the right in the U.S. to seek changes, profound or trivial, to our legal and cultural foundations by persuading voters it should be so, or by selling enough Thai food. The Constitution can be amended, and has been, to benefit women, among others. It is not an inerrant sacred document but a flawed, secular, social and political contract.We can burn the flag. We can organize and agitate to change this country into a parliamentary social democracy. We can form a political party based on the premise of incorporating Sharia law. We can even advocate the denial of our rights to others, as you do. So a Muslim woman doesn't have to actually try to subvert anything, she just has to wear a burqa. Then her constitutional rights are forfeit, because Muslim.Have you identified any pockets of Sharia law here? Because I've identified communities here that use different codes to decide matters customarily left to mainstream civil law, and you don't seem to mind, because not Muslim.The Constitution protects all of us from that kind of tyranny. You don't get to set a dress code for people here because other people in Marseilles are vandals.But perhaps you could quote the passages in the Constitution that prove me wrong. In my experience, people who use the Constitution like a cudgel with which to beat others know very little about it and understand less.It is a breath-taking irony, Faith: you enjoy the Constitution's protections of your freedoms of religion and expression, and you want to throw them out.