Heard a lot of talk this weekend about Jack Straw's comments on Muslim women removing the veil... I have to say, I think he is way out of line. Did Commisioner Gordon ever ask Batman to take his mask off when visiting his office? Of course he didn't. Or did Big Daddy ever make Kendo Nagasaki take off his mask? I can't help but agree with the Muslims who think it's one rule for the West and one rule for them.
3 comments:
It's a difficult one. On the one hand, in a society of free speech, he has the right to say whatever he wants. It is his belief that women should not wear veils and he's entitled to that belief. On the other hand, I don't really see what his issue with the veil is. I don't think it harms social interaction as much as he says it does, and the offence caused by its removal is far greater than the one incurred by the wearing of the veil. I read somewhere that the equivalent would be asking a Western woman to remove her blouse.
In a multicultural society, there has to be compromise; we have to achieve a balance of allowing other cultures to express themselves while also respecting the common values of Britain. Some practices are simply unacceptable to a Western culture and we have every right to stand up against them - honour killings is one such example. But veils are nowhere near in this league, and so I think Straw probably wasn't right to say what he did.
The wearing of veils for Muslim woman is not actually anything to do with religion. It was started by royalty stating that all royal women be made to wear these veils so that their faces were not seen by "normal" or poor lowely people. It finally stopped when a Queen (don't know her name) who was very very beautiful stopped wearing the veil, saying that God had given her her beauty, and to prove her love and devotion to him, she should uncover and let her face be seen.
It was probably started again by some guy not wanting his mates to see the face of his ugly bird.
I think his comments were quite badly misrepresented, and I think that too many people jump straight on their high horses over something like this. At the end of the day, he's just expressed a personal preference, along with articulating something which a lot of people feel. It's not necessarily anything to do with Islam; most would say that they feel uncomfortable when dealing with anyone who hides their face. If he'd said "hoodies" rather than "muslim women", everyone would have been behind him. That said, everyone in the country has a right to wear whatever he / she wants.
Welcome back, btw... my spam word this time was "nzjibe". How does blogger.com know that I like to mock New Zealanders?
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