Originally Posted by Northern Monkey (Post 9858174)

Good on them.Proper feminists with a real cause. :clap1:

Originally Posted by Livia (Post 9858186)

Hmmmmmmmmmm..... Monkey. I'm going to leave that comment hanging before I drag it off topic :-)

Originally Posted by Northern Monkey (Post 9858192)

Yeah yeah i know,Gender pay gap,rape culture,male patriarchal society,bathe in male tears yada yada blah blah

:laugh:

Originally Posted by Adam. (Post 9858194)

Women will never be treated equally in those sort of countries unless they elect a leader who is in their favour

Originally Posted by y.winter (Post 9857919)

I think it's a good thing, of course and I wish them well. Brave and dangerous.

Originally Posted by Brillopad (Post 9858006)

I fervently believe that any Western country that wants to ban a garment that promotes inequality and contravenes its equality laws it should be banned. Those that choose to come and live here should respect that. If they don't they should live in a country where such views are shared - not to, at worst, try to force their views on the indigenous population or at best expect them to tolerate it. If the shoe were on the other foot it would be very different.

It is definely a step in the right direction when Muslim women stand up for themselves in this way. It also takes a lot of courage for women to do so in such a country and is an issue that should be addressed everywhere but of course it will have more significance when it is Muslim women themselves standing up to be counted. Good on them.

Originally Posted by jaxie (Post 9857936)

But surely a line must be drawn with some primary school children being forced to wear it. Otherwise the message we are allowing little girls to have is that there is something wrong with them that needs covering while their brothers are perfect. That's pretty awful.

Originally Posted by Maru (Post 9859310)

You both do also realize that these are very much the same sort of arguments the progressives use in order to erode our rights to freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom of religion, etc.

Both these lines sounds exactly like a social justice argument:

Originally Posted by Maru (Post 9859313)

Originally Posted by Maru (Post 9859310)

You both do also realize that these are very much the same sort of arguments the progressives use in order to erode our rights to freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom of religion, etc.

Both these lines sounds exactly like a social justice argument:

Originally Posted by Brillopad (Post 9859337)

How can you have equal rights for such oppressive sexist religions and female equality together when clearly one undermines the other?

Originally Posted by jaxie (Post 9859334)

What about the freedoms of the child to be a child?

I do believe discussion is important.

I always said I was probably more of a natural socialist than most fans of the leader of the opposition. :hehe:

Originally Posted by Maru (Post 9860018)

Well, here's a similar example in the US of where we did try to intervene.


The US raided the FLDS camp after they received a phone call on abuses in 2008, but then ended up having to leave because they never found the caller or could substantiate that any abuses were going on.

So those parents got on television and literally begged to get their children back while they were in state custody. If we had pulled those children from those mothers without evidences of abuses, not just what mainstream culture deems an unacceptable norm, then we would've been guilty of abusing their human rights.

So in the case of the Muslim schools, if they are wearing a hijab at home and we are telling their parents they aren't allowed to at school, even though this is their culture and what they were taught to do and is their right to do so on US soil, then more than likely they would retreat into their communities and self-police/home school their children, much as the FLDS had because of their practices of polygamy... it wouldn't necessarily make those kids any less disenfranchised, or even, more susceptible to Western values... in fact, it would do the complete opposite, it would feed their belief that the outside world is evil and morally corrupt.

It can be then also be argued we robbed those kids of an adequate education because we saw fit to intervene in their cultural practices. And we know education is a huge predictor of lifetime success, so in some ways, they're worse off despite the "good" we think we were doing to ban it's practice.

I understand for you this is a issue with equality, but what you are arguing against being a higher priority is a considered a human right. That is, we as individuals have a right to believe in whatever it is we choose to believe in (not just religion) and to lead our lives however we choose. If the school is a private one, much less a religious one, then we have no right to interfere in what their rules should be short of regulating the schools to be sure they are providing a certain level of education (here in the US anyway).

We can't separate the human rights aspect from the cultural practice and treat them exclusively. Moreover, we're opening the floor to those who feel it is their right to correct us and enforce their cultural values upon us ... and who is this individual? Is it you, is it me, or is it someone whose values are completely different than our own? Then we are saying we as a culture have a right to dictate what is deemed sexist and so antithetical to our own culture... and it's a slippery slope, because as it stands as a society, there are several different interpretations of what exactly constitutes equality and so we're arguably going to go for one of the more extreme definitions by removing their hijab... and so it's a slippery slope.

I'd disagree agree anyway that we would be shaping their minds in a positive way. It just feeds into the same the West is the vindictive and oppressive narrative that gets fed in those circles.

Several people have escaped the FLDS over the years and those folk are the ones going back and talking to them and the people they know and getting others out. So it's better it is getting the attention it needs in other ways, and the mainstream media is covering it and empowering these men and women to be able to move on with their lives when out, no doubt with interview money and bringing them to the attention of other charitable folk. Rather, than us simply just pulling them out and playing moral authority... and for what? It's not like we can stop the church, they'll just create a compound in another state (it's one of the reasons they're in TX). (edit) They will find some other way to continue their ideology...

Even if we were to pull those girls out of the FLDS against their will, we wouldn't be creating the kind of progress that would make them more "open" to personal freedoms. They would latch harder onto their religion and say that we are the devil that they were taught we were to be, and it would make it much harder to get any one of them truly "out".

My point is, it's not as simple as banning hijabs and it would likely flare those divisions and scatter the issue (edit)... while opening doors for other ideologies to come in and dictate the moral course of our culture using ultimately what is an ethnocentric attitude and emotional reasoning for intervening in other people's lives.





See above :laugh:

Originally Posted by jaxie (Post 9860126)

I think we've gone a bit off topic with this discussion anyway but for the sake of a bit of background.

This is a new thing starting to happen in public schools (not speaking of muslim religious schools) where in some communities they are trying to enforce the wearing of the hijab at much younger ages than previously. Which isn't a particular teaching of the religion. Ofstead who regulate public schools recently spoke in support of a headteacher after she spoke out about it.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...-a8191251.html