Scooting around the blogosphere on my lunch break today led me to a Conservative stalwart blog called Letters from a Tory. There’s an open letter to Nicolas Sarkozy, praising the French President for speaking out against the burka and other Islamic religious wear and making the first steps to banning them. Here’s the original Daily Mail report. The reason this has come to the fore is because:

A group of 58 MPs from the Left and Right has called on Parliament to take action against  women who are adopting what they called oppressive head-to-toe Islamic dress that ‘breaches individual freedoms’

LFT states:

First and foremost, you deserve congratulations for even considering this issue.  Unfortunately in the UK, no-one can mention the word ‘Islam’ without being accused of racism or lacking cultural awareness or some other complete rubbish.

This is typical rhetoric from those not willing to listen to the other side of the argument. Frequently from the right-wingers we hear bleating about what they ‘aren’t allowed to say’, as they bathe themselves in a swamp of paranoia. You can mention Islam, create a debate about the legitimacy of certain aspects of Islam in a progressive society and have a full and frank discussion without it amounting to being called a ‘racist’. LFT is yet another person in a band of many who rule out a debate before they’ve even started, rendering themselves thought-criminals and creating a huff about nothing. The opposition you believe to be up against is a fabrication of your own mind, LFT. Once you’ve finished sulking in the corner you can join the rest of us for a real debate.

On the issue of the burqa, LFT eventually brings himself to his argument:

On the issue of Muslim attire, I don’t think there are any laws in Islam which state the women have to wear a burka or niqab.  In fact, there seems to be some debate within the Islamic world as to whether they are needed at all – some think they are, some don’t, hence the number of variations in the style of headdresses and outfits.  Personally, I don’t see how anyone can complain about headscarves because there are no grounds to claim that women are being victimised in any way, and I’m sure many Muslim women are proud to assert their identity in this way.  However, telling women to cover almost their entire bodies in front of men they don’t know is really pushing the boundary.

How can this be anything other than an attempt to repress women and their individuality?  Obviously the burka is more common in Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia and I don’t think many people would question the submissive role that women play in such societies.  Personally, I have no wish to see such attitudes in any Western country and there is a strong argument to ban the burka and similar attire on these grounds.

LFT, in a way, undoes his own argument when he claims that their isn’t any Islamic law that dictates a burqa to be a necessity. Well, perhaps this means that women have more of a choice than you’d lead us to believe?

In any case, how would banning the burqa make any difference to how the patriarchs of the Islamic families who have burqa-clad women feel? Surely more efforts should be spent on getting the moderate Islamic community to work with the stricter faction, in a bid to persuade rather than coerce. Banning them would cause a ruction and greater isolation of strict Muslims, who already live far enough away from mainstream society as it is. Why do we want to push them further back when it’s bringing them closer that will ultimately lead to progress?

I don’t particularly want to see women wearing burqas. But banning them is just a superficial emancipation of the women who do wear them. It’s sweeping the issue under the carpet and offers no real solution to the fundamental issue. Taking measures to outlaw certain religious practices pushes people away, creating even more of a ‘them and us’ situation. If Sarkozy really did care about the female repression that it represents then he’d target the root cause.

The real issue is why people feel they should put a burka on – and that’s what we need to tackle.

Win that battle and there’d be no need to legislate.