Controversy Over the Burqa France first passed its ban on the burqa in 2011 and the European Union Human Rights court voted again this year to uphold the ban. Muslim women in the country have cried out in anger that it is a violation of her right to practice her religion, but feminists have argued back that they are "liberating" them from a "male-centric culture", with little to do with religion.
The law in France makes it so that women cannon leave go to public spaces with their faces fully or partially covered, which includes the burqa and niqab. As it is, any woman that leaves her house wearing either item can be fined 150 euros (equal to $205), while anyone reportedly forcing a woman to wear one would face a fine of 30 000 euros. To this point, over 600 fines have been made for women wearing the burqa, and none for them being forced into it. |
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Banned From School
Belgium also followed the example of France’s national education system’s ban on all religious symbols in classrooms. In France, this led to a 15-year-old Muslim girl being banned from her school because she decided to wear a long black skirt, which the education system deemed a symbol of religion. Later, thirty Muslim students were banned from their schools in Brussels for wearing long skirts. A 17-year-old Muslim girl was reportedly banned for wearing a long turquoise skirt, and another, 22-year-old girl was banned for wearing something similar.
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France and Belgium were not the only country to pass such bans. Following France’s example were:
I was banned from school just because I was wearing a long skirt |
The Question of Oppression It has been a great debate among many people in the Western world whether or not the hijab and other female garb for the Muslims is a source of oppression or liberation.
On the one hand, a great many feminists argue that the burqa or even the hijab is a form of suppression from the Muslim males. On the other, a great many Muslim women, such as Naheed Mustafa, argue that it is a source of liberation for the women, not oppression. While oppression may be the case in some areas where shari'a is the government law, the question all comes down to this: is the clothing being forced upon the women, or is it her choice? If the answer is that it is forced, then it is oppression. If the woman is choosing for herself to wear the burqa, hijab, niqab, or other Islamic clothing, then she is not being oppressed. Some women who support Muslim clothing argue that they are battling against oppression that women in Western society are facing. They argue that those against the Muslims’ clothing are unable to recognize their own oppression because it is so normal in our society: the objectification of women faced every day in the media and the pressure to fit one narrow standard of physical beauty. Either way, whether it is oppression all comes down to whether or not it is the woman’s choice to wear it. |
In the Western world, the hijab has come to symbolize either forced silence or radical, unconscionable militancy. Actually, it’s neither. It is simply a woman’s assertion that judgment of her physical person is to play no role whatsoever in social interaction. Wearing the hijab has given me the freedom from constant attention to my physical self. Because my appearance is not subjected to scrutiny, my beauty, or perhaps lack of it, has been removed from the realm of what can legitimately be discussed. Muslim women argue multiple points in favour of the hijab:
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