Grounds for a burqa ban

Katie van Schaijik | Jun 25, 2009

Before gracefully bowing out of the discussion, Professor Seifert made a point about burqa banning that deserves a separate post:

[M}any of those who want to force Moslem women to take off their veils do so out of an idolization of Western pseudo-civilization and forget the horrors of our own libertarian and degenerate society. Compared with the acts of “legalized” crime and oppression (that alone the abortions here and the increasing threat to the freedom of conscience constitute), I find wearing burqas (even if I wish women replace them by other decent robes) not only completely harmless but in no way intrinsically wrong, and certainly nothing that our states should hypocritically forbid (in contrast to some of the other practices you mention: forced marriages, honor killings as well as schariah laws such as to kill one’s own child if he or she become Christian etc.), where of course the state has to interfere against crimes and grave oppressions of religious freedom of this nature. [see entire post]

I agree with him that it would be wrong to ban burqas on secularist grounds, as France does—making public schools, for instance, “religion free zones.” I also deplore any idolization of Western civilization, (though I may not call it a pseudo-civilization.) But though I, too, regret the prevailing fashions of Western clothing, I do think the freedom that women have in the West is a genuine and great achievement, for all its attendant evils. And if burqas were to be banned in the West, they should be banned on grounds first of women’s freedom and equal dignity as persons and citizens, second of common social values, and thirdly on practical security concerns.

I don’t agree with him that burqas are “completely harmless” and “in no way intrinsically wrong,” since, as Teresa Manidis expressed so well in her comments on an earlier post, they go hand in hand with the subjugation and de-personalization of women. (It is the element of coercion that at least approaches intrinsic wrongness, I think.) It’s true that they do not remotely compare in grievousness with the moral crime of abortion. But surely we shouldn’t refrain from addressing injustices recognized by our society because it fails to recognize worse ones?

Finally, I suspect that as a matter of fact, unreal romanticism and multi-cultural relativism is a greater factor in our failure to stand up against the oppression of women in much of the Islamic world than an idolization of our own society. Aren’t we more prone to cultural self-hatred than triumphalism?