No, it shouldn't be banned but requirements to show your face for a drivers license or so a police officer can identify you is, in my opinion, reasonable.
There is freedom of speech in France, and elsewhere - some of you guys seem to think you have the monopoly on it. When an impressionable young girl is repeatedly told by the males in her family that if she doesn't want to cover up completely she is a slut and they'll punish or disown her, that profoundly limits her choices. If you think that never happens on US territory you are profoundly naïve.
So I;m hearing on CNN right now that covering the face is no part of Muslim law but is a"custom" of some Muslim groups. Which answers my question about Allah demanding this.
How about I crouch down behind a woman covering her face and then somebody push her over me?
I think pretty soon there will be a new Muslim custom!
A very black and white answer for a very black and white world in which we don't live.
Your answer would be fine if every woman under a burqa were wearing one out of free choice, but they're not. Many are under a burqa because of force, or fear of the consequences if they don't tow the line. Many live in communities where rejection by family and community would be too hard to bear, hence they do as they feel they should so as not to be cast out, stigmatised or punished. Yes there will always be some exceptoin to the rule the Sunday papers who says she loves living under a curtain and she chose it, but they're far from the majority. Let's cut this crap that most burqua wearing women are free thinking feminists who've chosen to live covered - that argument sinks like a stone. And let's be frank about what wanting to keep wives and daughters under such subjugation really says about how much you value women as equals. Certain civil freedoms quite rightly take priority over a supposed religious freedom such as this one.
Doubtless as ever on DP, the usual French bashers, relying on Fox news and having never set foot on French soil, will crawl out of the woodwork here. All I can say is that as somebody who isn't French but lives in France, most women and most muslims (of both sexes) here welcome this ban. A few mullahs will scream injustice, but they're not representative of the majority.
I'd like to see the Jersey Shore arrested for their fashion...
*rolls eyes*
I forgot that freedom of religion only applies if someone is trying to suppress Christianity/Judaism...
Well the law in France banned anything covering the face, be it veils, balaclavas or masks. Can you imagine all the kids that'd get arrested on Halloween if the US introduced a similar law?
Tomorrow France's Burqa Ban law goes into effect, would you be in favor of a similar law here in the United States?
So I;m hearing on CNN right now that covering the face is no part of Muslim law but is a"custom" of some Muslim groups. Which answers my question about Allah demanding this.
How about I crouch down behind a woman covering her face and then somebody push her over me?
I think pretty soon there will be a new Muslim custom!
Then when she reaches the age of majority she can choose for herself whether she thinks she's a slut if she doesn't cover herself up completely and then do so or don't do so as she chooses.
So this is a Fox bashing moment for you? You weren't too bad up till then, but then you had to bring in something ridiculous. What does Fox have to do with this? Please explain to me how Fox has anything at all to do with this.
More imporantly, if she wants to wear the niqab and hide her ugliness from the world, France has severely limited her choices.
France has lost freedom, that's all there is to that. There are already laws in France against beating women to make them conform, aren't there? Then should't those laws be enforced someday?
Tomorrow France's Burqa Ban law goes into effect, would you be in favor of a similar law here in the United States?
Debate as France readies burqa ban - UPI.com
Rather like the previous poster, you seem to think it's so easy for the battered wife to just take herself down to the police station. Many non muslim battered women have difficulty doing it - add the constraints of living in such a close knit community with very rigid ideas.
Im for banning the burqa, imagine that. Then we ban the mosque.