norsk

Quite funny story, even if it isn't really socially acceptable (until 2011 when the law comes into force anyway)..

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...rage-case.html

Alexa

So she left the country is disgust to never return (the teacher). I wonder...where to????

norsk

I'm pretty sure it is the emirati woman who left in disgust to never return

so effectively France 1 - Veil 0

I'm sure there are plenty other french people who've got €750 spare as well...

Boomhauer

Oh the poor little angel

Alexa

Yup, I read it wrong. thanks for the correction.

Bahtatboy

I love the hypocrisy. The teacher shouts the greatness of France's freedom while at the same time denying someone else the freedom to choose how to dress. (And before you jump down my throat, who's to say she didn't choose to dress like that?)

Ethos83

What's the saying? East is east and West is west and the twain shall never meet?

I fully support democratic values and the principles of freedom but like most Europeans I don't like seeing women in burqa on the streets of our cities.

The burqa is one of those sticking points, especially the fully covered burqa, that severely divides conservative Arabic Islam from modern Western values. Fairly or not the burqa carries a lot of symbolism.

Even out here when I see a woman in a burqa my reaction sharply differs on how she wears it. If she, like most Emirati women, wears a burqa with glittery beads and doesn't cover her face she can appear stately and attractive - there have been a few that even had me pause and think, 'oh, quite nice.' But towards the ones who fully cover themselves and wear black gloves so not a single square cm of skin is showing, my attitude is, well, perhaps more hostile because it represents a complete antitheses of the modern democratic values I grew up with. Nowhere in the history of the West or Christianity did we ever condemn women to such extreme forms of representation.

Bahtatboy

I agree with what you say. I abhor repression as much as I abhor hypocrisy.

Norm_uk

There's freedom and then there's cultural and social norms...in most places on the planet only eskimos, bank robbers and ninjas cover their face to such an extreme. The French law does two things 1) It allows security officials to ask to see someone's face and not be accused of racism (or that stupid phrase Islamophobia - as if bashing a religion is the same as knocking someone because of their skin colour) and 2) it draws some lines for French and Western culture for a change and tells people this is how we behave so if you want to be accepted here follow the rules.

Besides how many women and men have seen the inside of a jail cell in the UAE for things most of the planet considers totally acceptable like kissing in public, consensual adult sex and speaking your mind about certain religions.

Irony rather than hypocrisy would be the right word methinks.

And I wonder how many non-Muslims have left the GCC in disgust...it works both ways does it not?

N.

Bahtatboy

And that's precisely the hypocrisy I'm talking about. Liberté, égalité, fraternité: but only if you slip into a dress like mine.

Norm_uk

When in Rome...all these laws and ideals still have a root culture and norms to adhere to. To be honest mad old ladies attacking people aside, I don't see the problem when compared to the massive rotten egg that is Sharia law...

Still maybe that's because for me a woman shouldn't be brainwashed into thinking she is less than a man simply because of her genitals. I also adhere to odd and strange ideas like women shouldn't feel they must cover their face so as not to tempt men...I'm odd that way.

N.

ctfc

Not quite true actually. It's a shame westerners keep getting on a high horse about all of this.

The Victorians were pretty strict about showing ankles:
Harpers Bazaar on skirt length

In the scale of history, 100 years or so is pretty insignificant.

The veil came from the ancient Greeks, kept as a tradition in the Eastern Christian Church in Byzantium, where it went first to the Persians and subsequently to the Arabs of the Gulf. Veils were common in England up until almost Tudor times, and certainly for a woman to show her hair was quite unseemly. Any woman who's had a traditionally styled white wedding in the UK will have walked up the aisle wearing a full face veil.

What I don't understand is the lack of response from moderate Islam on the adoption of the niqab as a religious sticking point. The niqab is not, nor ever has been, a part of Islam per se - it's a cultural choice.

In particular find it very strange that no-one mentions that during the Hajj women are explicitly forbidden from wearing a face veil. Clearly if this is the case, it cannot be a requirement of Islam.

It's a skirmish in an Islam/anti-Islam battle which both sides are deliberately playing up, and nothing truly to do with free speech or free choice. There are much more important problems to solve in the world than this.

Ethos83

Oh, puhleeze.

You can't compare the Victorian norms to the burqa. The Victorians didn't keep their women cloistered in the house all day. The Victorians didn't prevent women from being seen in public, forcing them to cover every square cm of their skins. The Victorians didn't advocate such extreme separation of the genders. Your typical Victorian found the burqa pretty appalling too.

Besides as a student of history, your claims below aren't entirely justifiable. Medieval women did not wear the veil in public as per custom/religious traditions. If they covered up in a cloak or a veil it was largely to keep dust and pollution at bay. Certainly peasant women and what passed for the "middle class" in those days were far too active in everyday life, whether working on farms or running small businesses, to bother with having to cover up and wear a veil. Covering the hair in public is one point I will allow you, a practice that lasted till fairly recently but for most of Western history the hair of most women was never completely covered. Only fashionable ladies of means would have had the leisurely opportunity to wear elaborate hair coverings.

Regardless of whether we can argue over the amount of skin that may or may not have been covered, Western women throughout history were given far more control over their public appearances than Islamic women. The outward appearance of fashion has played a much more significant role in European history than it does in the Islamic world, which is historically much more private and family oriented. A side note, this also explains why Islamic cities evolved quite differently from Western cities - the lack of grand open spaces and boulevards and squares where the citizens, both male and female, could gather and parade in public (essentially showing themselves off to all and sundry) is not generally found in Islamic cities with the exception of the open spaces within a mosque. When the Arabs conquered the old byzantine and Roman cities along the Mediterranean and ultimately Constantinople, one of the first urban features to disappear were the squares and open forums. It rather explains a lot about the Arabic versus European mindset, even these days. As it is, the Western male has long been used to showing off his women in public and as a consequence the Western woman has always had a much greater role in the public sphere than women in the Arab world were allowed.

ctfc

...and the origin of the niqab is as a face cover to protect from the desert sun and dust.

Just as Christianity has some weird outlying sects, such as the Mennonites, so does Islam. The niqab has evolved, quite recently, from being a piece of traditional dress into a symbol linked with faith,predominantly by the (extreme in Islamic terms) Salafist group. Of the estimated 1.6 billion muslims in the world, a tiny, tiny fraction claim the niqab as obligatory dress.

It is true that many women who wear the niqab do so through genuine free choice and value it as a sing of their religious and cultural beliefs. It is also true that many women have it imposed upon them for the wrong reasons.

I find your implicit value judgement abhorrent and your blanket refusal to accept cultural differences sad and disappointing.

ctfc

FYI, the burqa implies a face covering.

The Emirati dress you're referring to is a form of hijab - or modest dress - comprised of the gown - abaya (called jilbaab elsewhere) - and head scarf - shayla.

The cloth face covering worn by some Khaleejis is the niqab - the metal or leather mask worn almost exclusively now by the older generation is called a batoola.

The term burqa is usually reserved for the whole body and head covering "shuttlecock burqa" dress seen in Afghanistan - often blue coloured. And yes, it's very extreme.