Banning the burka

In an interview with the Financial Times today the French Urban Regeneration Minister Fadela Amara urged the banning of the burka (a type of Muslim headdress which covers the entire face, leaving only a slit for the eyes), saying that it represented “the oppression of women”. These comments come at a time when a commission has been set up in France to look into whether the burka should be banned or not. Ms Amara (who is an Algerian) argues that the burka represents “the political manipulation of a religion that enslaves women and disputes the principal of equality between men and women”. In effect she is saying that the French government should forcibly remove this symbol.

However the burka is just that; a symbol. Covering up ones face does not, in itself, imply enslavement. The burka is the symptom of the real problem, removing it will solve nothing. If the French government wants to prevent the oppression of women it needs to go far further than banning a piece of clothing. While it may represent something, in reality it is just a piece of fabric. Simply banning the burka will do nothing to prevent women from being oppressed. Essentially President Sarkozy, in pushing for this ban, is making himself look like a hard line politician willing to do bold things to solve endemic problems. It is all elaborate shadow play; in reality he is doing nothing to solve the problem, he is simply removing one of the major symptoms of it, making it look like the problem has gone away when it hasn’t

I do not doubt the claim that, in many cases, women are forced to wear the burka and I do not dispute the claim that this is immoral. However there are women who wear the burka out of choice; to ban it would be an affront to their freedom, the very thing that is supposedly be protected by this proposal. It would be akin to banning the wearing of a Christian crucifix. While the burka is not an item of clothing specifically Muslim (it actually predated Islam quite considerably), it has become synonymous with extreme Islamist regime, most notoriously the Taliban in Afghanistan, who required women to wear the burka. There is some grounding for the wearing of a Burka in the Quran; it says that both men and women should dress modestly, but does not specifically mention the burka or any other variant on the headscarf typically worn by Muslim women. The Taliban’s forcing of women to wear the burka was of course absolutely immoral, however the question has to be asked; what is the difference between forcing women to wear the burka and forcing them not to?

The French government claims that this will make women more free. However this belies a complete misunderstanding of the concept of freedom; freedom is a mindset, just having the rights to do something does not mean that people will embrace the. By forcing them not to wear the burka, the French government are trying to force women to be free. Freedom is defined as being without compulsion, so forcing or compelling one to be free is inherently paradoxical. In a seemingly innocent act intended to be against the oppression of women, the French government is trying to square a circle, it will simply solve nothing.

However the problem with the French proposal runs deeper than the paradox of forcing freedom on people, or failing to get to the heart of the issue, if they ban the burka the French government will go against the single purpose of government; the protection of its citizen’s rights to life, liberty and property. All humans have a fundamental right to do what he or she desires so long as it does not infringe upon the rights of others, that is to say we all have the right to say, think, do, wear, eat, drink and write whatever we want. So long as we do not prevent others from doing what they want, the government has no right to stop us. Any attempt to forcibly impose a standard of decency completely goes again the principles of government. So whether it is banning so called ‘hate speech’ or preventing women from wearing the burka, the government is acting not as the representatives of the people, protecting their rights, but as a dictator imposing arbitrary standards on its citizens. The French proposal to ban the burka is symptomatic of what is fundamentally wrong with governments the world over; it is impeding, rather than protecting our basic rights.

So Ms Amara may be right that the burka represents “the oppression of women”, but so, paradoxically, does the proposal to ban it. If the French government wants to stop the oppression of women it needs to do just that; stop the oppression of women, directly and without compromise, rather than simply engaging on political shadow play to make it look hard line. It is the duty of the French government, and all governments around the world, to protect its citizen’s rights, rather than further oppressing them.

Poor Bill Nye

To be honest, I have very little to talk about this week, so, as normal when I don’t have much to say, I went and looked around on the BBC website and then Reddit to see if I could steal a story from there and write about it. Thankfully Reddit provided me with a solution to my troubles!

Bill Nye was booed, actually booed, in Texas recently for making that laughable claim that the moon does not actually emit light, and merely reflects light. This appalling piece of science clearly offended members of the ‘moon is a small ball of burning gasses’ sect of retards down in Texas. Well actually it offended some Christians because Nye made the equally laughable claim that the statement in Genesis 1:16 that ‘God made two great lights -- the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night.’ Is in fact wrong, how silly of him. We all know that the bible is the infallible word of God and any apparent scientific truth which appears to contradict the bible is clearly false. Well that or we need to skilfully reinterpret the words of God to be contingent with reality, which is exactly what Jethro! (probably not of Jethro Tull fame) did. In a comment in the aforementioned news article he said: If Nye claimed that Genesis 1:16 said God created two "light sources," then Nye is wrong -- it says: "God made two great lights..." That the "lesser light" is reflected light, does not make it any less a "great light." Aside from the fact that he put a comma in where it’s not needed, he managed to misquote Nye; Nye never said ‘light sources’ and the article never actually claimed that he did, Jethro! completely lied to get his point across. His point is still wrong because the moon is a reflector, not a ‘light’. If everything that reflects light is a ‘light’ then, well everything that isn’t black is a reflector. Jethro! failed pretty hard there huh?

Back to the actual story instead of taking the piss out of people who comment on these news stories (because that is a little too close to home given that I’m writing a blog about the damn thing), not only was Nye booed, several people stormed out of the room in fury at Nye’s attempt to educate their children. One woman even yelled “we believe in God” on her way out, just in case we thought she was an extremely stupid atheist who didn’t like it when people insulted a book that she doesn’t believe is in any way important. I’m not even sure why she decided to yell that, I mean it’s not like you have to believe that every word in the bible is absolutely from the mouth of the Almighty Himself and therefore any science which contradicts it is the work of the Devil. Christ (if you’ll excuse the irony of my choice of profanity) if that were the case most people I know who are devout Christians would be burned at the stake for heresy.

This story really proves that people are stupid. It actually worries me that there are so many people out there who would choose to believe what it says in a book, which claims to be the word of God but cannot be proven as such, over science that is extremely well founded in reality. The fact that some people willingly choose to believe the creation myth of a random tribe from the Levant who happen to have survived long enough for their wacko religion to survive, over something that is scientifically proven is pretty worrying. You don’t even need to believe the bible is the direct word of God to be a Christian; most don’t, most Christians simply say the bible is a human attempt to understand God, rather that his dictated Word. Admittedly they’re deluding themselves (in my not-very-humble opinion), but at least they’re not failing as hard as the fundamentalists.

Most Christians today say that the Genesis stories are just that, stories. They don’t claim to make any statement about how the world was created, instead they simply teach people about the true nature of their God. The claim that Genesis is how it really happened is laughed at by most Christians let alone us cynical Atheists.

And now for something completely different; given that I have had the last week off I have been investigating a website called Loading Ready Run. It’s basically a bunch of people doing funny sketches and putting the videos on the net. I discovered them from the new videos on the Escapist website called Unskippable, which is done by the same people. You should all check it out. You should also check out Neutral Milk Hotel; they’re a band from the 90’s who probably kicked off the whole indie music thing in a big way. Their album ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea’ is pretty sweet. You should all listen to it.