Or so cry the French and also some Australians who want a woman to remove her veil whilst giving evidence in a trial against an Islamic cleric. French president Nicolas Sarkozy himself has said "The burqa is not a religious sign, it is a sign of the subjugation, of the submission of women. I want to say solemnly that it will not be welcome on our territory.”

What's your opinion on burqa's/niqabs etc? Do you view the burqa as an expression of inequality and a symbol of female opression within the Islamic world (which the burqa predates Islam), where the women as part of cultural tradition are forced to shroud their face so as to perserve the 'honor' of the woman's partner from others preying eyes? Does it isolate the wearer from the rest of society? After all, facial expressions and been able to interpret them are an important aspect when interacting. Then there is the shrill cry of security risks and all that.

Or, should we just butt out from forcing others to change their customs and practices of another religion to satisfy our own insecurities? Is such an attempt to ban it bigoted and just plain wrong?

Feel free to discuss...I'll add my peice later on.

if anyone believes this law is based on equal rights for women,i have some prime swampland in arizona for sale.


granted,i fully believe society will be better off when religion is dead and buried.but this law is vindictive in nature and is wrong.

If you're talking about absence of religion then that is a truly ridiculous leap to make. I am not religious and I have high moral standards. Morals come as much from philosophy as from religion, and the difference is that one is an obligation through fear, and the other one is a personal obligation to oneself. As for hope for the future, religions all come with their own apocalyptic endtimes that are only hopeful for the few who believe they follow the precise religious doctrine that was intended from the beginning as opposed to those guys over there who definitely got it wrong.

Religion is not the foundation of society at all, nor is it the foundation of civilisation, only of empires and oppression.

Abso-bloody-exactly

Well, personal hope for the future is fine, you can have that.

My personal moral standards are founded on the idea that words are not actions.

But really, I think you should read about the history of the Christian church, seeing as how it was created specifically to control the Roman populace by standardising their beliefs. The entire history of Europe is conflict between religious empires and "heathens". Some of the earliest European settlers in the US were religious extremists fleeing oppression. As for the notion that the USA was founded on Christianity, I think you'll find it was founded on religious freedom, as an attempt to break away from the old European traditions of empiricism. The "Christian values" that America was supposedly founded on are values found in most religions and amongst secular societies. It's not like without religion people wouldn't know not to kill each other, or not to steal. Those ideals predate any of today's religions. The Sumerians had written laws as early as 2050BC.

Anyway, on the fundamental point we do agree, there should be a certain amount of religious freedom provided it does not impinge upon wider society.

I myself recently have learned some of the mistakes of "religion" and I find being a spiritual person to be much more rewarding. I dont quite know how to explain it but its explained well in this interview.


(If Dan reads this (Stephanie)...yes I really am obsessed with Cash.)

isn't this an argument about an item of clothing and not morality (which is totally different.... i also find it amusing how people attach morality to religion, as if someone who does not follow a religion is banned from having morals).

anyway, i think everyone has the right to wear whatever they want as long as it covers the bits which need covering in polite society.... as long as they are not forced into wearing it then it has nothing to do with me.... if they are being forced into wearing it then we need to tackle the reasons behind it and not the item itself.

No shock at all. I could have a problem about paying my light bill, and you will be able to find an advice from Johnny Cash on youtube lol

The bit in bold is just plain silly. If there wasn't religion, the world would be a massively better place in my opinion. Religion is just another reason to segregate people into different classes. You got colour, nation and religion. There's violence about colour, there's violence about what nations your from but I can pretty much guarantee there have been millions more deaths because of religion. Religion is a means of controlling people, it's a way of giving people a reason to not fuck up and go on a mad raping spree - because if they do they'll burn eternally. Now that sound's a pretty good idea, but only if the person in control of the religion is a fucking saint and is just out for everyone's best interests which for thousands of years they haven't been. Religion from my point of view seems an absolutely ridiculous idea just full of indoctrination, persecution and segregation. Fuck that, I am a good person because I like the rewards of being a good person, not because I'm scared of going to hell. And so no, a world without religion would not be madness, it'd be a far saner place than it is at the moment.

And about the burqa, as much as I dislike religion I'm not going to be hypocritical and become the reason that I dislike religion by being controlling and telling people what they can and can't do. However, I do think that burqa's are a step too far and they represent one of the negative parts of religion. It doesn't at all show any of the good aspects of religion like hope, morals and justice, it's just pretty much oppression in my opinion, if a woman want's to wear a burqa out in public, go for it, but in a court of law, school, hospital etc they should follow the rules like everyone else. Though I don't see why you'd want to wear one in Australia you'd boil but yeah, if it's the woman's choice she can wear a hotdog on her head for all I care, just in 99% of the cases it's not the woman's desire to, it's more the fact they're scared of what will happen if they don't...

It would, just a substantially different one.