Some of the muslim women wear those here too, but mostly only in winter. lol it's a bit hot and humid here in the summer I would suspect.

UT...I agree and that's a large part of why I think it's important to be tolerant and try to understand the culture more because if understanding is working one way, often it will lead to better communication the other way as well.

Although I'd be a bit hesitant in agreeing that education solves all problems.

Please, I'm trying very hard not to be intolerant.

But, at one level, I cannot understand the attitude that allows the wearing of burkha's in such a sensitive environment as a Church of England Primary school, yet bans 'hoodies' from shopping malls and crucifixes from BA check-in desks.

Try harder? She wasn't allowed to wear a burkha in a C of E school. The ban on hoodies was patently ridiculous...a knee jerk reaction by the Blue water shopping centres, there is no ban on wearing a crucifix on BA check-in desks merely an employment regulation that such crucifixes be worn under the shirt not in view.

Well, I'd probably wonder why a Muslim woman would want a job in a Christian school to start with, that being said though, I think Dana cleared that particular situation up and it would seem that there was some deception employed during the process of her being hired.

As to hoodies in shopping malls, I'm a bit gobsmacked about that. Hoodies are the height of fashion over here during winter and I can't imagine why they'd be banned. Well I can imagine why they have been elsewhere and a case could be made for the same here, but I'd doubt it's solved any problems. With regard to the cricifix issue, it wasn't even a crucifix, It was simply a cross. There's a huge difference. Either way, I think it's a stupid company policy and staff should protest loudly about it.

sorry, you'r right, it wasn't a crucifix, just a cross......



still got banned, though.......


and as for the Bluewater mall...... are Burkha's allowed in there?

They should be, just as teenagers wearing hooded tops should be. But really, are we going to base our definition of tolerance on what some stupid commercial enterprise thinks is reasonable? And the cross wasn't banned. They asked staff not to wear them on the outside of their clothes, but under the shirt instead. I also think that was unreasonable. As unreasonable as telling a moslem woman that she shouldn't wear the veil in public.

I dont agree with the fact that they did so, but I can totally see the logic.

Problem is, logic is far from everything.

I'm sure I said this already........ I have no problem with people covering their faces in public.


mmmmm.......

specially the ugly ones huh?

They only know women. ;)

I don't think that's the case either. My argument was to Jay suggesting that a burka stops people from communicating. Obviously it does not.

I disagree, at least here, women wearing burkas (rarely) or veils (more common) do not talk to men they don't already know. It's impossible to start a conversation with them. :headshake

I back up Bruce here.

In Muslim tradition, women and men just don't interact (Edit per Husband ((backseat writer)): other than their relatives). The women generally tend to only know their own women friends and only unveil around these women in the privacy of their homes.

For a man to even look a Muslim woman in the eyes is a serious offense, hence the desire of the women to remove the temptation.

I heartily agree that being full covered is a dinstinct impediment to communication, for a number of reasons. We communicate by sight, by body language, by shape, by scent, by reading the expression in the eyes combined with the expression on the rest of the face. Someone in a burka becomes an anonymous blob, really. Not to be offensive to the one who chooses that garb, but more about what my impression is on the outside.

I haven't actually seen anyone around here in burka, just tons of hijab (the nun-like scarf around the head), but I could imagine it would be pretty off-putting, especially in a society that tends to communicate a lot through their use of style, or lack thereof.

Even the women I've seen in hijab don't make eye contact or act friendly. Even with each other, if they don't already know the other woman. It's really kind of awkward when our kids are playing at the park.

But that's all part of their culture, part of how they were raised and how they want things to continue to be.

I can see why the Dutch, or any Western nation, would be threatened by that. It totally changes, and challenges, the rules about how we present ourselves, how we chose to be perceived and how others perceive us. KWIM?

Further edit by hubby: (why doesn't he just sign up? grumble grumble grumble) Traditionally, Muslims live their entire lives within the walls of their homes. They don't have windows looking onto streets like we do. Their homes are literally surrounded by high walls.

In Algeria, when the Arabs saw the French with their big windows, they were appalled, thinking, "Why do I want to see inside this person's house?"

Have any of you lived in a very cold climate? Fact is inside or out people who are bundled up don't interact as much. There is an element of unknown to everything unless you know the person well. That said there is not much that can be done about the weather. It's silly to suggest it outright stops communication but it's a hindrance.

Once again, they are immigrants in public. If they want to be in a private setting and wear it fine. If they want to go to a country that allows it fine. If they want to go to the Netherlands the message I'm getting is you're going to become part of Dutch society.

And you know how the Dutch are . . .

We visited hubby's aunt and uncle. She's Swedish, he's Dutch. In their kitchen cupboard hubby found a mug that said "I Respect My Father." He thought that was very scary.

Until we visited a gift shop and saw a whole shelf of them.

In other words, I would not use the word "flexible" to describe them.

In a sense, they don't. They by their own religious law can only "get to know" half, or less than half of people that they might meet. Even associating with other women is under the control of their husbands (or fathers, if unmarried).

If they have any unsanctioned interaction, they face punishment from either their husbands or from the religious authority.

Punishment, under Shariah Law, is not pretty.

Well ok, I understand all the points you've all made, and they're all very fair, however, in reality - at least over here - the vast majority of Muslims I have met/known/interacted with on some level just don't fit the picture you're all trying to create.

Maybe the culture here is different. Maybe Australia is where the 'less hardline' Muslims come to in order to avoid persecution by others.

Australia is a long way from Europe. I would say that bad policies in other European countries (say, oh, Sweden) are a lot more influential to the Netherlands than to Australia. That's only a guess however.

That may be the case in strict islamic countries....it may even be the case in some families/sections of the moslem diaspora in Europe. It very much is not the case with most of the moslem woman i have met and interracted with. Now, granted the ones whom I have met and interracted with are, by dint of my interracting with them, not the ones who live in seclusion...and those who live in seclusion I obviously haven't interracted with. But, my primary experience of moslem women/girls, is of strong minded and highly political, well educated people who take an active role in their towns and cities. My university is full of them; Bradford university even more so. There's nothing shy or shrinking about these gals, I can tell you. I met quite a few of them through the Student Labour group and the anti-fascism coalition. I never had a problem interacting with them and more importantly neither did our male co-activists.

I used to be really, really anti-the veil. As a feminist the whole concept appalled me. After all, my only real knowledge of such things had come from the horror stories of the taliban enforced disenfranchisement of the women and girls in Afghanistan. Then two things happened to change my thinking somewhat: During the bringing in of laws outlawing the wearing of headscarfs, veils and other 'religious' symbols in French schools, I heard a french moslem woman interviewed on the radio. She was a staunch feminist and an educated, strong woman. She said "twenty years ago, i fought for my daughter's right, not to wear the veil.....now I am fighting for my daughter's right to wear the veil."

I think that sums up the changing nature of veil/burka wearing. Yes, twenty years ago, it was something that was imposed on women by a deeply patriarchal culture.....but whilst that may still be the case in some parts of the world, and amongst those immigrants arriving for the first time in the West, the majority of girls and women born in the West, who choose to wear it now, do so for their own reasons.To me, the decision to wear something which so visibly identifies one in terms that have become almost routinely hated and discriminated against in the West, to proudly declare a cultural heritage and identity, in the face of such hostility is a brave stance to take. It doesn't declare them as non-British(in the case of those living here), it declares them proudly Islamic. The two are not mutually exclusive.

The second thing that has changed my thinking is having several heated debates about the veil with feminist, veil and non-veil wearing moslem women. I ended up confronting my own prejudices. The arrogance that assumes these girls have no choices in life, and are fundamentally weak, merely because they exist in a different paradigm.

I saved a girl from an honor killing here. Her crime? Behaving like an American teenager. She was caught wearing pants and makeup. And talking to a boy. Very bad girl, she was. Got really good grades too.

I have also worked with an Islamic family whose very crazy daughter was hitched in an arranged marriage. They imported a guy from the old country who was wed to her sight-unseen. She now has two children she's too crazy to take care of, but that's what her blonde Main Line Muslim step mom's for.

Wearing veil or hijab are very different from wearing burka.

I have a hard time imagining a muslim woman wearing burka but being willing and open in talking to others, especially men.

Chastity of the person is part and parcel of wearing burka. I don't see muslim women having one without the other.

If they compromise on the chastity of the person, there is no reason to wear the burka.

Think in terms of a Catholic nun in habit. She wears the habit in public, so everyone knows her reglious stance. But if she were to have a sexual affair, in offense of her vows of chastity, then the wearing of her habit is going to make the offense all the worse in her own mind. She has to chose to be guilt ridden every time she puts on the habit or she has to chose to disassociate the act from the habit.

In the end, it is the same. Along with the wearing of the garb comes the whole philosophical and cultural aspects associated with it. I don't see having one without the other.

At my uni, there are girls wearing the full cover up. Just the eyes showing, through a small letterbox like slit in the headgear. Now, i don't know all of them, but I am on regular chit-chat terms with a couple of them and they don't seem to have a problem interracting with the rest of the university community.

Interesting. That is certainly not typical.

Makes me wonder how long before they throw the cover off. The cover is all about chastity, but if they are not having chastity of the eyes, then why continue to where it?

I wonder if this is part of their slowly moving away from the standards of their parents . . .

I wonder how the lecturers coped.

'Can anyone answer this question? Yes, you, miss..... hah, sorry, third burkah from the right...'

How did they know whose marks were whose? who did well in class and who didn't?

What do their passport photo's show? And their driving licences? And does my bomb look big in this?

Jay...my husband is a lecturer and has always spoken very highly of his muslim students and doesn't have problems identifying them...even the ones wearing traditional dress.

I'm sorry to hear about your husband.... for a while there, I had high hopes...

ah well, back to reallity.....


In truth, how does he cope? With 5 or 6, maybe more, burkhas before him, how on earth does he tell one from another?

It must surely be like the old chinese thing.... they all look alike to me. only in spades!

Well, I'll have to ask him how he tells them apart, but I suspect it's because even when people are dressed alike, you can tell them apart...if you care to take the time to get to know them.

My only concern about burkhas...

Dont they get FUCKING HOT, not to mention uncomfortable and claustrophobic?

but surely this comes round as the perfect circular arguement... the burkha is designed as a wall, the ultimate 'i don't want you to get to know me' ?

Generally for good students it's beneficial to be known by your lecturer.

Doesn't that in itself make them different from the majority of Muslim women, especially in the middle east and southeast Asia? Maybe even in Australia, Britain and the US? :confused:

Test driving a burka.

Many many of hubby's Muslim students come from the middle east, as did a lot of the students I studied with when I was at uni.

How many million female Muslims are in the middle east? What percentage of them aren't allowed to go to school at all?
But isn't the fact they traveled abroad, as well as went to the university, make them different from most of their peers?:smack:

I suspect that the state of education for girls (and even for boys) varies drastically between rural and urban settings. It is also likely to vary drastically according to class, sect and ethnicity. The same could be said of Hindu communities and African communities. This is not peculiar to Islam.

You'd be amazed. In one of the Axis of Evil members, Iran, 45% of the students are female.

Yes, urban vs rural would probably show a big difference. Does anyone know, in the urban setting are they schools separate sexes, and do they get the same subjects of instruction? :confused:

In most countries people who attend university over seas are different. I can't say what makes them different other than their nationality.

My chief contact with Muslim women has come through my practice. In Canada (we lived there for two years) there was a number of Muslim families in my practice. The married women were always accompanied by their husbands, who spoke for them! It was bizarre to ask a woman a question and have her remain mute, while her husband answered for her. If I said, "Where does your leg hurt?" she would say nothing, just look at her husband, and he would gesture vaguely toward her lower leg and say, "It hurts there." Not a recipe for quality medical care.

Usually they would have a child or two along with them, and the father would be the only one to speak to the children - until they were out in the waiting room again, when the woman would speak English to the kids. This was not a language barrier in the usual sense.

The Muslim women who came in on their own had husbands who were 'away' for a prolonged period of time, in another country :neutral: ; and these women, every one, were depressed, super-anxious, and on the verge, or over the edge, of nervous breakdowns. There were very few ways to help them, because they were dropped off and picked up by male family members, and they were not permitted to go to counseling of any kind. It was the most upsetting thing in my practice.

I realize that not every Muslim woman in the world (or at least, in the West) is having a nervous breakdown or not permitted to speak by her husband. But the number who were either severely anxious, or not permitted to speak to a female doctor, in one limited population sample, was astonishing. I didn't have any Muslim families with a basically healthy wife who was allowed to speak for herself.

After that experience, I have a dim view of the claims that veiled Muslim women are 'liberated'. That term didn't exist for the women I saw.

I think Holland is trying to establish a quid pro quo. If they want to move to another country from these Arab "homelands", their must be a reason. Thus, there should be an inherent sense of give and take. Historically, other cultures moving into Western Europe and North America have inreasingly faced govenments trying to accommodate them, with the hopes that they will inegrate into their communities and interact. The problem is that recently, these populations immigrating seem to be more take than give.In my hometown there was only one female Muslim MD, and her practice was overrun by Muslim women patients, because they were not allowed to be touched or examined by a male. Yeah, that's real enlightened.

I, for one, feel that there is a tendency for "Western" democracies to allow individuals to immigrate, and join the melting pot. Then all of the sudden we discover that these groups, by and large, stick together and hence areas like Little Italy or Chinatown flourish. No surprise, but these communities and cultures co-existed and combined to form present-day Western democracies, while still retaining some of their original integrity.

The trouble is that in the last few years, say 25 or so at a guess, these countries have allowed in vast numbers of immigrants who wish to continue the attitudes and actions of their homeland, just as they have since WW II, at least, but in a much more intolerant manner. The liberal governments have then bent over backwards to allow any group to dictate to them by evoking the principles of freedom of speech and religion, and consequently have eroded any backbone that may have been politically present. The fact that these governments were predominantly white WASP-descended engendered a sense of "let them be, we are trying to show how tolerant we can be".

The problem is that most of these groups tend to exhibit too much take, as I said before. A muslim group in Ontario wanted to forego Canadian laws and impose Sharia law on their community. Someone or some people in Ontario finally had enough backbone to say "sorry, this is Canada and we do not allow religious law; we ALL abide by the same set of rules." Unfortunately, many Muslims have shown a considerable reluctance to abide by this principle. They obviously feel that they are emigrating to another country with the aim of continuing their lifestyle as it was in their homeland. How "Animal Farm"!!

What will happen is that eventually these fringe societies will eventually take on political force, and suddenly we will wake up too late to the fact that extremism has a political foothold. This movement needs to be checked, and I think THAT is probably the message the Dutch government is sending. Democracy is founded on the greater good, and strict followers of Islam seem to be missing this.

Good point.

And after finally seeing Syriana tonight, I agree even more than I did before, that Muslims are not seeing the concepts of freedom and civil rights with the same eyes we use.

It is hard for us to accept that they are not interested in freedom the same way we are, therefore, it is hard for us to understand that they may be fighting the good fight for political reasons that have nothing to do with civil rights.

The picture of moslem women unable to speak for themselves is a genuine one. The picture of moslem immigrants unwilling to adapt or intergrate, is a genuine one.....but the picture of western born moslem women who are strong minded individuals is also a genuine one, as is the picture of moslems who love their adopted country.

The reality is that the moslem diaspora is very very large. One simply cannot generalise across the entire diaspora through a single view of moslem behaviour. There is as much variance within the moslem population as there is amongst the Christian population.

Very true.

Which is why making laws is a tricky business. We must keep the general populace safe, even if it means infringing on the rights of a few. The potential downside of incorporating the rights of the few is too huge in this case.

There certainly are Muslim families in Holland like Orthodoc describes, but in my experience they are in the minority.

What I do see here are many self-assured young muslimas, many of them wearing headscarves out of own free will, very well being able to speak for themselves.

Having said that, I realise there's quite a way to go for the muslim male population.