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As an exmuslim this is an issue that I have quite a lot to say about. On one hand there are lots of women born in conservative muslim families who have hijab forced on them, and it does a number on their mental health and happiness, I have seen that way too many times. They spend a large part of their formative years internalizing the idea that any outward display of beauty and personality is detestable and they are the ones at fault for their objectification as women, this sort of brainwashing from an early age can be extremely harmful.
Whereas telling people they cannot wear a certain type of clothing voluntarily is also extremely reactionary and it does more harm than good as it unnecessarily infringes on the rights of those who wear it voluntarily. I feel the solution to the hijab issue should be to very different. There should be publicity campaigns to fight against the idea that not doing hijab makes you dirty and unclean, and forcing the hijab on children should be seen as a form of child abuse. But any adult who voluntarily wears it should not have to face any prejudice for doing so.
Apologies if this is too serious and lame for the site. I am new here so I am not very well acquainted with the culture here, and I just have a lot to say about this.
Apologies if this is too serious and lame for the site.
Nah it's not, it's good.
It's very sneaky because they're banning all face coverings including ski maskswhich means people won't be able to anonymize themselves at protests
We have a similar "burka ban" here in Denmark. For legal reasons it is worded as a ban on public face coverings but the cops and the racist Karens who call the cops over other people's headgear knows who it is intended to harass.
It has given some rather absurd results, especially during covid. For instance a woman was given a ticket for wearing a Muslim face cover on a train. The other passengers wore face masks and could have been fined for not covering their faces.
I get the argument about conservative Muslim communities using face covers to oppress women. Racists will pay lip service to that argument as well. But that is not what the law is about. The people who enacted the law doesn't give a shit about the well-being of Muslims. Most of all they would like to deport all of them to some far-away warzone. This law is all about racists being mad about other people being publicly Muslim.
I don’t get it under the oppressing women angle either. Like if this law is to help her how does fining her or being punitive fix anything?
Yes you are absolutely right. If they really wanted to help muslim women they should make forcing a child to wear hijab a form of child abuse. Punishing the victims and those who wear it voluntarily is counterproductive to say the least.
this is still racist. i'm trying to express this without morally haranguing you and the other people in this thread, but it ought not be the work of a white european "civilized" state apparatus to hammer the barbarians into a sufficiently liberal cultural mold.
It's not racist, because Islam is not an ethnicity, I was born a muslim but I left Islam, would you call me a muslim still? Or maybe there is some cultural misunderstanding and you are using the term differently from what I understand to be its meaning?
...to hammer the barbarians into a sufficiently liberal cultural mold.
Liberalism has nothing to do with it, it's incredibly harmful for children to be told that their body is shameful and that they are responsible for their own objectification, it creates a lifelong feeling of inadequacy and inferiority. I know, because I have lived through this. And why should a government not try to help a child who is a citizen just because of the religion of said child? If child abuse is considered wrong then it's wrong irrespective of the religion of the abuser.
Also of course it would be great if we could change things in muslim countries first, and that's what people here are fighting for everyday, many feminists go to jail and are killed in broad daylight fighting this fight. It's not like people are not trying to change this everywhere. But if it is possible to help these children who are in western countries right now then why should they not be helped?
It is racist because in Switzerland and Denmark Islam is a "nonwhite" practice associated mostly with immigrants. Like, 'people who wear durags' isn't a race, but making it a finable offense to wear a durag would be racist
Ok that's interesting. But I don't see how trying to stop parents from forcing hijab on their children is racist in any way? Especially when this is a thing that many leftists and feminists who were born as muslim have been fighting for decades.
I agreed that a hijab ban is counterproductive and achieves nothing. I was advocating for making the act of forcing hijab on children a form of child abuse.
However framed, I would still personally view a mandate of that nature as motivated by anti-immigrant racism in a Swiss context. It's tough because I do see the reasoning, as with the handshake drama, but as with that, the racist elements that come out of the woodwork in support of these nominally 'feminist' points quickly shut out the well-intentioned. Its a matter of bad bedfellows: the Swiss nationalists who pump this shit, like the French or Dutch ones (and I assume elsewhere in Europe) are vile conservative little worms, and the thin figleaf of feminism quickly falls away when you look at their other priorities. The Swiss party responsible for this is literally a christian nationalist party.
I think I understand what you are saying, that this will increase anti-muslim sentiments and justify more prejudice towards muslims. Though at the same time I feel some sort of protection must exist to stop this from happening, but I am perhaps not the right person to propose what form that protection should take since I have little knowledge regarding the plight of muslims in western countries.
I think a law like that would just end up being "well we can't prove she's NOT being forced to wear it so oops all Muslim parents are being punished for child abuse." it'd be used badly as any hijab/face covering laws tend to be.
But how exactly does a child consent to covering themselves up to protect their modesty? Children rely on their parents and schools to tell them what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false, they have no judgement that they develop on their own, there is no 5 year or 10 year old who voluntarily decides to wear hijab after doing their own research or something. Many of them agree to it because they have been convinced that their bodies must be hidden otherwise they are sluts who will burn in hell for eternity or because they have been made to believe that every strand of their hair that a man looks at will become giant snakes that will devour them as punishment. And let's not even get into the cases of all those children who despite all the brainwashing refuse to wear it and are abused mentally and sometimes physically to get them to comply.
So many of my friends used to take off their burqa when they got to class, and when their parents got wind of it they stopped allowing them to wear anything underneath the burqa when going to school. Anyways what I am trying to say that I can guarantee you no child who is doing this is doing it of their own volition, they have been mislead by the people they trust the most, and have been convinced of a very explicitly sexist and harmful narrative. Which is why I don't think it's unreasonable to postpone this practice until the child reaches adulthood and becomes capable of deciding for themselves.
I'm not arguing that children aren't forced to wear it. I'm Muslim and Roma, so headcoverings and extreme modesty are very enforced in my culture as well. I have seen a lot of the effects of it myself and with friends/family. But I do think a law like that would target Muslims and gypsies, as some of our kids wear a headscarf (not for modesty sake but it's a different tradition entriely). I don't know, I see it only going bad to have any laws regarding hijab in Europe. Maybe in an ideal world where Europeans aren't racist and islamophobic, but we aren't in that world. And then to even be fair, you'd have to extend the law to Christians who force modesty onto their kids even in lesser ways (forcing girls to wear only skirts, no shorts, no tank tops, etc and being told they'll burn in hell too if they don't comply). Would you agree those parents too should be punished under the law? Because it would be the same type of abuse, but white people won't see it that way. Only the bad people (Muslims and other nonwhite cultures) will be punished by such a law.
But again, as a Roma, i am so used to seeing our children taken away under false accusations of child abuse, so i am... weary of many laws.
Would you agree those parents too should be punished under the law?
I mean if it was only up to me then of course. But I think there is a huge gulf between being forced to cover one's satr, which even in the most liberal interpretation is one's whole body except for the hands, and being forced to wear more restrictive clothing. But I think I understand your point, which is that the enforcement of such a law will not be just, especially when the there is systematic prejudice at play, and that certainly makes sense. My perspective is narrow in this case, since I have not lived in the west.
The reason I am so adamant about it simply because from my experience somehow stopping people from being able to force this on children would save so many people, maybe not so many in the west.
Ah, yes I feel perhaps in countries where Muslims are the majority, such a law or idea would be more fitting. Or at least less likely to fuel oppression. I don't disagree that it could be a good idea as something to be enforced or considered, just moreso in the West (especially Europe) it would end up only in oppressing Muslims and others further.
But I appreciate your perspective on all this as well. It is a lot different in Eastern countries for sure, and I wouldn't have as many arguments against it if it wasn't in the context of a white-majority country if that makes sense.
We have a similar “burka ban” here in Denmark. For legal reasons it is worded as a ban on public face coverings
Exactly the same in France, including the pretense.
Ah yes, a country that took until 1990 to give women universal voting rights suddenly appears to give a damn about them. As if this whole thing (I’ve read that it is estimated that there are only 2 dozen of niqab wearers in Switzerland) isn’t just virtue signaling to make it clear to muslims that they are 2nd class citizens that should be deported as soon as possible, just like the minaret ban.
And of course they included exceptions for churches and swiss traditions (though not for protests wink wink). This just demonstrates that direct democracy can only work with solid protections for minorities, anything else just devolves into populists blaming those who cannot defend themselves to distract from their own incompetence.
Gaddafi proven right yet again: http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1926053,00.html
Hell yeah Switzerland should get Anschlussed by Germany love doing fascist jokes
You can't he's dead just like Mussolini and Hitler who also proposed this.
No I said what Gaddafi proposed was proposed by fascists before him just like I'm not calling you a fascist but I'm saying that it's a joke that's rooted in fascism
It's obviously a ridiculous proposal but it's not relevant whether fascists had also proposed it in the past. They weren't even the first ones who did so, it's a very old idea. It's a joke about Gaddafi, not fascism. Gaddafi was not a nazi and he stood to gain absolutely nothing by Switzerland splitting up. It was simply an absurd dig at Switzerland.
k? It's still a fascist joke you could literally make that same absurdist joke without relying on some weird 'Völkisch' notion, that grew into fascism, and make the same point, balkanize the country into it's 3 parts then intervene when Rätia declares independence, ridiculous proposal and you don't rely on fascist notions like 'same language same people same nation'
I mean, maybe someone should have told Gaddafi that so that he could have made that proposal to the UN instead, but unfortunately it is as it stands and your proposal hasn't been officially submitted to the UN lol
at least you agree so would you now mind not making fascist jokes or repeating them, consider this the proposal submitted to whatever you want to be.
Do you realise you're missing the point and just wanna get mad in the abstract/go on an unnecessary history lesson, or do you still not genuinely understand why Gaddafi said it (because people were doing the exact same thing about his country and he was pointing out the absurdity and double-standards)?
Vast majority of such coverings you see are on extremely wealthy tourists, who 100% will be excluded from prosecution because Switzerland is run by a collection of tiny monopoly men with dollar sign eyes
