Jasmine Loves Children, Magic & Freedom (This Prompts Muslim OutRage)

[WesOlsen]

I believe that what I am actually referring to is the the French form of secularism; Laïcité.

The definition of 'laïcité" is absence of religious involvment in government affairs and absence of government involvement in religious affairs. Banning the niqab is a violation of laïcité, not an example of it.

Political secularism or laïcité is the idea that the government should be as neutral as possible toward religion, neither promoting nor oppressing it. Banning an article of clothing because of what its religious significance is oppression. And it's stupid, since oppresson promotes solidarity in the oppressed.

I suppose the work around is what has already been suggested, banning a face covering not on religious/anti-religious grounds but on public safety grounds. If face coverings of any kind were uniformly banned in public this could certainly help to quell much of the inevitable fuss from muslims. However we then get in to more moral and practical quicksand; what constitutes a public space? And is there sufficient public interest to warrant such regulation? The smoking ban in the UK covered public and privates spaces for example. Even private businesses (pubs, restaraunts, shops etc) were not given the freedom to decide the rules for their particular premises. This is why government regulation is so great but also so bad.

The best way of course would be able to convince people, without coersion, that religious face coverings are completely stupid and are routed in dominant male tribal attitudes, not the will of some daft deity. Until the cycle of family and community indoctrination can be somehow interrupted however, how do we begin to save women from the talons of stupidity?