Of Burqas, Blogs and Bans

The British press and body politic have been rumbling and hand-wringing over the French banning of burqas over the weekend and this has naturally infiltrated the columns of their national newspapers and their celebrity Twitter feeds.

Most of the stuff written is a bit ho-hum, but I did read David Mitchell's Observer column. I like Mitchell, he's an incredibly funny but also very thoughtful person. The link, should you be interested, is here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/25/david-mitchell-burqa-ban-tattoos

Mitchell titled his piece 'If Britiain decides to ban the burqa I might just start wearing one.'

If you don't read it, it certainly wasn't an apologist piece on religious freedom. Mitchell took a step back and said that if we ban people from wearing what they like (within reason) then personal liberty is threatened. The funniest part of the article was this:

'None of this means I think there's anything good about wearing a burqa. I think it's daft. I think any belief system that concludes that half the population should go around constantly covered from head to toe in black cloth, whether out of modesty, humility, tradition or stealth, has a massive flaw in it.

'And, while I'm at it, I think that it's ridiculous to believe in transubstantiation, that considering the Bible to be the literal word of God reduces that supposedly omnipotent being to a muddle-headed maniac and that the Hindu caste system and Roman Catholic rules against contraception could have been invented by Satan. There! Now no one will be able to guess who's killed me.'

So, just to confirm, he's not much one for religion.

Anyway, Graham Linehan, the brilliant writer of such things as Father Ted, Black Books (co-writer, anyway) and The IT Crowd weighed in on Twitter with this:

'@RealDMitchell nice piece, but disagree that a ban is a a sign of intolerance. It's saying we take equal rights for women seriously'

This made me think - Linehan went on to make the point that liberals (I'll assume he's including himself and Mitchell in that group) should be opposed to the burqa. I don't think Mitchell isn't, but he understands that banning it would be wrong from a personal liberty perspective.

The problem with banning the burqa, as I pointed out to Linehan, is that it probably won't help. Conceptually, we should be opposed to the burqa as we might be opposed to female circumcision, domestic violence and other heinous crimes against women and children. Women are left unable to challenge these things due to Islamic countries often having little in the way of formal education for women, leaving them with no intellectual stimulation. Oh, and they're liable to be beaten in some cases.

If you'll permit a personal anecdote, I'd like to recall a trip we had to KL last year. Malaysia is a very pleasant place indeed and despite its largely Islamic population, there aren't hordes of burqa/niqab/hijab-wearing women. In KL a minority choose to wear the headdress. There are plenty of them around, more so than I remember on my first visit in 2000 and two subsequent visits, but it's no Saudi Arabia.

Anyhoo, we were there around the Islamic Hari Raya festival, which is what the Malays call Eid-el-Fitr, the conclusion of Ramadan, I am led to believe that this is cause for great celebration and sees an influx of Gulf State Arabs set on a huge shopping spree. I have never, ever seen so many full-length burqa/niqab arrangements in my life.

I don't mind telling you, it's confronting for people who live in a country like Australia to see this, especially given the weather. What makes it worse is that you go somewhere like the Sunway, a waterslidey fun park and you see husbands wandering around in budgie-smugglers chomping away on an ice cream, often with multiple sons in tow doing the same. His poor wife is trailing along, head to toe in black and absolutely not allowed to have any fun whatsoever, but sit in the heat and watch. It was appalling.

I don't feel the need to see what's under the burqa, but why is are Muslim women subjected to it? As Linehan pointed out, this is a rotten thing to do to someone and anyone with liberal leanings should see the ban as a blow struck for the rights of women. In a perfect world, it would be. And it doesn't have to be restricted to liberals either, if you ask me.

They're both right, and this is the problem. This particular brand of Islam paints women into a frightening corner, a corner that no liberal, secular or even Christian-style government can extract them from. It's a helpless feeling that overcomes me when I see women obviously confined to this clothing - the 'I choose to wear this' line does not wash with me. Most often it's a choice between a wretched life trapped inside or a beating of some description; or wearing these unwieldy garments at all times in the hope of finding another human to interact with.

My wife sat near one of these women in the Sunway and had an awkward moment when the woman's daughter started playing a little game with her. My wife looked up for some sign from the woman of whether everything was okay and all she could see was a black screen of cloth. How do you communicate? The only thing that saved the moment was the fact that the woman spoke English and said, 'It's hard for women, isn't it?'

My wife desperately wanted to say, 'No, it isn't that hard.'

So I suppose the only answer is to say that the burqa ban is a good concept but its execution is poor. Right wing Islamic fundies aren't going to let their women remove the burqa in public, they'll just never let them out. For many French Muslim women, that means being banished to their two room tenement in a grim arrondissement.

It's probably also worth noting that, I think, in the end, the ulterior motive for the ban is to attempt to halt further Islamic immigration.