Andrew Brown and myself on the burqa ban

Today saw a post be Andrew Brown - Behind the burqa ban's reasoning. I think burqa-wearing is not a religious issue but a culturally driven discrimination against women issue. While political right-wingers may be using the burqa issue to push their own political agendas, there is no intrinsic link between the desire to ban burqas and conservatism. And I find the pope's "freedom of choice" argument against banning the burqa to be a disingenuous ploy to keep women in their place while working to keep religion exempt from anti-discrimination legislation (this from the guy who had Michelle Obama wear a veil in his presence, not to mention the Vatican's dress code).

I think some people find the idea of a woman in a burqa almost romantic - almost every story on the burqa seems to have a photo of a close-up of beautiful eyes. In example, here's the one from Brown's post ...



We seldom see other kinds of burqas or the whole body covered by it. Here's a photo of a burqa-clad beggar in Afghanistan, from Wikipedia ....



Here's just a bit of Andrew Brown's post ....

[I]t does seem clear that there are some French people who, without any particular hostility to Islam or to Muslims, believe that the burqa is incompatible with republican values of liberty, equality and fraternity. It may assert brotherhood, but only as a superior way of being to sisterhood. It shouts in favour of inequality; and though it can be defended as a demand for liberty, it is only the liberty to demand submission.