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| British school girls forced to wear burkas or veils in 150 U.K. schools. |
I have to post the full article Religious Freedom and the Burqa, from the Wall Street Journal as it's behind a paywall, which I've done below the fold.
Charlotte Allen talks of a "critical mass" of Muslims in a population after which the culture becomes Islamic, like it or not.
Some time ago I did an analysis of Islam as a percentage of a country's population against its freedom, based on the Freedom Index. The result was that there is no country in the world that has a Muslim population over 6% that is fully free. It's here.
The U.K. has a Muslim population close to 5% now. And it's rising quickly. One can already see the Islamification of society with 100+ Sharia courts. The lobby group One Law For All has shown, in a detailed report about three years ago (actually 2010....), that Sharia courts discriminate against women and children. The report was ignored by the U.K. government, despite having been written by reforming Muslims and ex-Muslim WOC).
Click here to see how much there is on this issue of One Law for All which ought to be a given in the UK but is not. And it's only not because of the pressure of Islamists.
Sharia Courts in the U.K. are accepted as part of being a "tolerant society". As are a growing Muslim population which demands its women be covered up.
Charlotte Allen asks: how long before any woman can't go out of doors in the U.K. without a veil? If that seems unduly alarmist, let's go back to discussions on this issue ten years ago. Our worst fears, then derided by the apologist Left as xenophobic, have been exceeded. Things are actually worse than we feared. There has been no assimilation or integration. There has been no shift to liberal western values. Are we then just to abandon them, because, you know, it's "culturally arrogant" of us?
Things will get worse. Boris is spot on and should be supported. Theresa May should be mocked for asking him to do "sensitivity training". If there's to be any "sensitivity training" it ought to be the other way around. For misogynist Muslim men and Stockholm-syndromic Muslim women and their apologists.
The article link (full text below)
Former U.K. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson recently generated outrage with comments about the burqa. In a column for the Telegraph earlier this month, Mr. Johnson joked that the head-to-toe veils made a woman look like a "letterbox" or a "bank robber." Muslim leaders in Britain labeled the remarks dehumanizing and called on Prime Minister Theresa May to investigate "Islamophobia" in the Conservative Party. She demanded her former cabinet member apologize.
Mr. Johnson's ham-handed humor obscured his actual argument: He opposes, on grounds of personal freedom, government-imposed restrictions on female veiling. And there is great variety within Islamic headgear. Not all Islamic veils are technically burqas, which cover a woman's entire body, including the face. Other garments include the niqab, where a face-covering allows the eyes to be seen; the chador, which leaves the face uncovered; and the hijab, or head scarf.National bans of varying comprehensiveness have been passed in Denmark, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Some localities in Germany, Italy and Spain also have restrictions in place. Some African countries, including Chad, Cameroon and Niger, have restricted Islamic head-coverings too, often citing terrorism concerns.
Supporters of such prohibitions typically argue that requiring a woman to cover her face or hair, as many interpretations of Islamic law do, is simply "misogynistic," as Farzana Hassan wrote in the Toronto Sun last year. Ms. Hassan argued that headscarves promote "archaic notions of gender roles and women's modesty." Traditional Muslim cultural norms, dictated and enforced by men, make it impossible for young women to throw off their hijabs without incurring social sanctions. "Refusal is not offered as a realistic option," Ms. Hassan concluded.
Opponents counter that restrictions on head-coverings reflect anti-Muslim prejudice, as the bans are often supported by the nationalist far right. They also argue that prohibition threatens everyone's religious freedom. Bishop Michel Santier, the French Catholic Church's top official for interreligious dialogue, declared in a 2010 statement opposing the anti-face-veil legislation: "If we want Christian minorities in Muslim majority countries to enjoy all their rights, we should in our country respect the rights of all believers to practice their faith." He added: "The French, including the Catholics among them, should not let themselves be gripped by fear or a 'clash of civilizations' theory."
These arguments become more appealing after looking at how the religious fare in America today. Only a narrow Supreme Court ruling in June prevented an evangelical Christian baker from being forced to create a custom wedding cake for a same-sex marriage. A live-and-let-live attitude toward minority religious practices may be the only way that believing Christians can guarantee their own protection from a secular elite that openly despises them.
Further, while many Muslim women may feel pressured by male authority figures, many wear their veils and scarfs freely and proudly, as markers of their religious and cultural identities. New Yorker writer Elif Batuman, a secular Turkish-American, has written about donning a head scarf while traveling in Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Turkey. Instead of regarding her with hostility and suspicion as a young foreign woman traveling alone, Turkish men and women treated her with respect and deference: "I felt a rising sense of freedom, as if for the first time I could look wherever I wanted and not risk receiving a hostile glance."
Nonetheless, the "clash of civilizations" is real enough. In Britain, home to about three million Muslims, some estimates show the Islamic population has been growing 10 times as fast as the non-Muslim population. When Muslims reach a critical mass—in Britain and elsewhere—the culture becomes Islamic, like it or not. What was graciously tolerated in a minority suddenly becomes mandatory for the majority. Earlier this year it was reported that some 150 schools in Britain, including schools receiving government funding, make the hijab compulsory for female students. In 2014 the Subway sandwich chain removed pork-based ham and bacon—staples of the British diet—from its menu in 200 branches across the U.K. and Ireland.
Boris Johnson may believe in the "sweet air of freedom" that would allow a woman to wear a niqab on a public street if she likes. But most religious Muslims don't share that Western tolerance, and they certainly don't share in Westerners' breast-beating over "white privilege." Soon enough it may be as unthinkable for a U.K. woman to go outdoors without her head scarf as it is to find a slice of real bacon at a U.K. Subway. The problem of what to do right now about Islamic head-coverings will be solved in one unpleasant way or another.
Former U.K. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson recently generated outrage with comments about the burqa. In a column for the Telegraph earlier this month, Mr. Johnson joked that the head-to-toe veils made a woman look like a "letterbox" or a "bank robber." Muslim leaders in Britain labeled the remarks dehumanizing and called on Prime Minister Theresa May to investigate "Islamophobia" in the Conservative Party. She demanded her former cabinet member apologize.
Mr. Johnson's ham-handed humor obscured his actual argument: He opposes, on grounds of personal freedom, government-imposed restrictions on female veiling. And there is great variety within Islamic headgear. Not all Islamic veils are technically burqas, which cover a woman's entire body, including the face. Other garments include the niqab, where a face-covering allows the eyes to be seen; the chador, which leaves the face uncovered; and the hijab, or head scarf.National bans of varying comprehensiveness have been passed in Denmark, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Some localities in Germany, Italy and Spain also have restrictions in place. Some African countries, including Chad, Cameroon and Niger, have restricted Islamic head-coverings too, often citing terrorism concerns.
Supporters of such prohibitions typically argue that requiring a woman to cover her face or hair, as many interpretations of Islamic law do, is simply "misogynistic," as Farzana Hassan wrote in the Toronto Sun last year. Ms. Hassan argued that headscarves promote "archaic notions of gender roles and women's modesty." Traditional Muslim cultural norms, dictated and enforced by men, make it impossible for young women to throw off their hijabs without incurring social sanctions. "Refusal is not offered as a realistic option," Ms. Hassan concluded.
Opponents counter that restrictions on head-coverings reflect anti-Muslim prejudice, as the bans are often supported by the nationalist far right. They also argue that prohibition threatens everyone's religious freedom. Bishop Michel Santier, the French Catholic Church's top official for interreligious dialogue, declared in a 2010 statement opposing the anti-face-veil legislation: "If we want Christian minorities in Muslim majority countries to enjoy all their rights, we should in our country respect the rights of all believers to practice their faith." He added: "The French, including the Catholics among them, should not let themselves be gripped by fear or a 'clash of civilizations' theory."
These arguments become more appealing after looking at how the religious fare in America today. Only a narrow Supreme Court ruling in June prevented an evangelical Christian baker from being forced to create a custom wedding cake for a same-sex marriage. A live-and-let-live attitude toward minority religious practices may be the only way that believing Christians can guarantee their own protection from a secular elite that openly despises them.
Further, while many Muslim women may feel pressured by male authority figures, many wear their veils and scarfs freely and proudly, as markers of their religious and cultural identities. New Yorker writer Elif Batuman, a secular Turkish-American, has written about donning a head scarf while traveling in Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Turkey. Instead of regarding her with hostility and suspicion as a young foreign woman traveling alone, Turkish men and women treated her with respect and deference: "I felt a rising sense of freedom, as if for the first time I could look wherever I wanted and not risk receiving a hostile glance."
Nonetheless, the "clash of civilizations" is real enough. In Britain, home to about three million Muslims, some estimates show the Islamic population has been growing 10 times as fast as the non-Muslim population. When Muslims reach a critical mass—in Britain and elsewhere—the culture becomes Islamic, like it or not. What was graciously tolerated in a minority suddenly becomes mandatory for the majority. Earlier this year it was reported that some 150 schools in Britain, including schools receiving government funding, make the hijab compulsory for female students. In 2014 the Subway sandwich chain removed pork-based ham and bacon—staples of the British diet—from its menu in 200 branches across the U.K. and Ireland.
Boris Johnson may believe in the "sweet air of freedom" that would allow a woman to wear a niqab on a public street if she likes. But most religious Muslims don't share that Western tolerance, and they certainly don't share in Westerners' breast-beating over "white privilege." Soon enough it may be as unthinkable for a U.K. woman to go outdoors without her head scarf as it is to find a slice of real bacon at a U.K. Subway. The problem of what to do right now about Islamic head-coverings will be solved in one unpleasant way or another.
Ms. Allen is author of "The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus" (Free Press, 1998).
