The Progress Party (FrP) wants a ban on hijabs and burkas in school, and to allow employers to ban them in the workplace.

[Siv Jensen] justifies this with integration concerns, and believes that the hijab is oppressive of women. Muslim women in Norway have gone in protest against it. - I don't believe this will be a large problem in Norway. I believe disagreement is of a more political character. It's been claimed by many that these are political symbols in the Islamist movement. One places a stamp on a group of people, in this case young women.

- How about other religious symbols such as crucifixes, turbans and calotts?

- We have no opinion about that. What you list are religious symbols. The things we have discussed we don't consider religious symbols.

The hijab as a political symbol of Islamism, not a religious symbol - that's an interesting way to put it. Too bad it's bogus. Even assuming that only radical Islamists wear hijab's, to them politics and religion are the same. A political symbol is a religious symbol, and vice versa. And even if Per Sandberg is correct that the Koran does not mention hijabs ..

There is nothing in the Koran, nothing in Islam, which says that girls must dress this way to symbolize their own religion.

.. it's not for a non-Muslim to say that hijabs have nothing to do with Islam. True Islam, like true Christianity, is a meaningless concept for a nonbeliever. Everything that calls itself Islam or Christianity is, whether it's a commandment supposedly from God himself or a recent invention. The most an outsider can say anything about is how common it is for women who call themselves Muslim to wear hijabs, and whether it is right by our standards to do so. But to say that it isn't Islam to wear hijabs is equivalent to an atheist giving theological advice to a Christian - and don't you Christians just hate it when we do that? As an atheist, it's ok for me to say it's wrong for Christians to discriminate against gays, but I can't say that this isn't true Christianity. Only a Christian can say that.

I see why it's tempting to define the hijab as a political symbol. Most of us would find it easier to ban political than religious symbols in school, it's within our accepted standard of intolerance. All you must do is show that the political symbol is dangerous or bad, and many people will accept that it doesn't belong in school. That standard does not apply to anything religious, and I'm mostly glad it doesn't.

FrP should be honest about what it's advocating here - government interference with the religious life of citizens. Once we acknowledge that, we can (and should) discuss this honestly. The proposal can not be dismissed automatically. Few of the obvious counterarguments apply. Deputy leader of the Conservative Youth party, Torbjørn Røe Isaksen says:

I don't have words for how hopeless I find this proposal. FrP are even so openly racist that they make a proposal exclusively designed to target those who wear Muslim hijabs, and not those who wear for instance other religious symbols.

But there's no racism here. To FrP, this is a women's rights and integration issue. They want to advance liberal Western standards among conservative Muslim immigrants, and they believe Muslim women will benefit from this. A racist or xenophobe wants to harm or kick out foreigners and outsiders, and they see these outsiders as the aggressors. The intention here is the opposite, to aid and include, and they see the Muslim women as victims.

Neither is it relevant that the proposal targets Muslims. A ban that applies to all religious symbols might be easier to defend for some people, but if the problem is primarily Muslim, there's nothing hypocritical about the solution to it also being targetted at Muslims. What need is there for a general ban? I believe that conservative Christanity is often harmful, for instance, but I'm also aware that it is far more compatible with liberal democracy than conservative Islam, that it - in Norway - is culturally and politically irrelevant, and that it's on the retreat. Besides, even if I believed it was a threat to the wellbeing of women and children, and that the government should fight it, it would be meaningless to do this with a ban on crosses in school. The same goes for other religions. There are no extra benefits to banning all religious symbols from school - except to the conscience of multiculturalists. I'm not very concerned with the bad conscience of multiculturalists.

The arguments that do apply here is that it's undemocratic for a government to fight this kind of religious tradition, and that I'm not convinced it's necessary to fight it this way.

Democracy is about giving up some benefits in return for others. A democratic society limits its opportunity to control citizens in ways that might be beneficial to themselves and to others, and in return it also limits its opportunity to control citizens in ways that would be harmful. Few democracies began this way, but they've all been moving in that direction the last 200 years, and I think we can all agree that it has been a change for the better. To look at democracy as a tool for solving all the problems of society is a mistake. If solving problems is your top priority, tyranny is your tool of choice. Democracy means accepting that many problems go unsolved. It's the price we pay for individual freedom. Democracy means staying out of your neighbours private business in return for him staying out of yours. It means allowing your neighbour to indoctrinate his kids with moderately harmful ideas in return for your freedom to indoctrinate your kids with what you see as beneficial ideas.

Democracy, in this sense, isn't just majority rule, it's limited majority rule. The ways in which everyone gives up power is just as important as the ways in which they are given power. Banning hijabs in school isn't just a matter of banning a piece of cloth from a particular location - it's a public declaration of war on a particular tradition among a particular group of citizens, with the aim of ending that tradition and the worldview that inspired it. And it's done in a way that has few tried-and-tested democratic precedents. There's no clear rule for what kind of problems democracy can allow itself to solve, but there are precedents. We know that some forms of problemsolving are fully compatible with democracy, and others have traditionally been considered incompatible. Everyone agrees that child abuse must be illegal, for instance. But we can't apply that standard here, the cases aren't similar enough. There's no democratic precedent for the government interfering with its citizens in this way, at least none that we have chosen to preserve. The proposal is, in other words, undemocratic. Not very undemocratic - let's avoid dire warnings about the coming tyranny of the majority - but somewhat.

But it isn't enough to establish that the proposal is undemocratic. A measure can be somewhat undemocratic and still necessary. The second criteria we must consider is whether we need to do this. Is the problem really that bad, and are there really no other ways to solve it? Consider a resurgence of fascism. A fascist movement becomes popular, and though it is a legitimate political movement, it promises that when it comes to power, it will establish a fascist state. Would it be undemocratic for the government to actively fight this movement, for instance by limiting its freedom of speech or organization? Yes it would. Might it also be right? Yes, if the threat is real enough.

Or to take a more relevant example, FrP has also proposed to limit the right to family reunions. Family reunions are abused by immigrant parents who trade off their children for marriage to family back home. It severely limits integration, and it's harmful for the people who are married off. By the same standards I used above, a proposal that is explicitly intended to discourage this by raising the barrier for family reunions is undemocratic. The aim is similar, integration and liberalization, and so is the target - conservative traditions among immigrants. But I also think this proposal is right. The problem is big enough and the solution good enough to justify a somewhat undemocratic measure.

I'm not convinced that's the case with hijabs. The problem - a conservative form of Islam that discriminates women - is real, but there are better ways to deal with it. One would be the abovementioned proposal to discourage forced marriage with foreigners, thus removing a major source of anti-integration impulses, and then simply wait for the liberal ideas of our society to seep in. This process has been going on for decades, just not fast enough. By limiting forced marriage we may quickly have a net gain in integration. From there on it's only a matter of time. We have no crisis. We can afford to wait a generation before we apply crisis measures.

I also doubt that the solution would work. What do we accomplish by banning hijabs in school? Very angry parents, and fewer hijabs in school. (Likely also fewer Muslims in public schools.) Why would this lead to fewer hijabs out of school? Could it not have the opposite effect? And why would fewer hijabs out of school lead to less discrimination against Muslim women and girls? I don't see a clear connection. The hijab is a product and symbol of discrimination, but at most an indirect cause of it. Perhaps with luck this ban could lead to a more general confrontation between liberal and anti-liberal ideas, but that's a long shot. We know some of the price, but the benefit is up in the air.

So I'm not convinced. The proposal to allow employers to ban hijabs in the workplace is ok, though. That's well within the established domain of an employer, especially if the employees are oftten in contact with customers. Staying in a particular job is voluntary. Going to school isn't.

Banning hijabs in school. Partly a difficult question. In my eyes, there should be a blanket ban on _all_ headwear in classrooms. That includes hats, hijabs and others. I might be a tad old school there, but I simply hate it when I see people with headwear when indoors. Leave the hats and so forth at the door, please.

However, in the hourly breaks - on the outside, I cannot see any reason to ban it. If people want to put it on when going out - then go ahead.

When it comes to workplaces.. it depends on whether there is a dress code. If people won't follow the dress code, well, then they have nothing to do at that workplace. The dress code should be at the discretion of the employer.

Who decides that the hijab discriminates against women? What supports this supposition? The purpose of the headcovering is to promote modesty, a value that we implicitly embrace in Christian and secular culture as well. We're not going to force women to wear miniskirts because we figure it's oppressive to women to cover their knees - how can we say that covering your hair and neck is different?

And I would argue that working isn't voluntary. People have a right to make a living and should be allowed to wear anything that doesn't interfere with their productivity or their safety.

The whole issue of gender inequality is much more complex than most people realize. In many Islamic societies - even fairly traditional ones - the fact that men and women have separate religious roles does little to affect their societal standing. Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia have had female heads of state. There are some disturbing misogynistic trends in many Islamic communities, but it is not automatically so that conformity with traditional norms is anti-female.

(Forced marriages should be illegal because they are *forced*. And so it goes for most of the examples people bring up to prohibit religious expression.)

The whole topic of integration needs further discussion. We'd like a society that invites participation from the diversity it contains, but we have to start by accepting the diversity for what it is. And Norway has to gradually get used to defining itself less by ethnic than by legal standards. A Norwegian Moslem named Akhtar is no less Norwegian than a Norwegian Christian named Torbjørn. There is a difference between integration and assimilation, where the former is a process of mutual accomodation, and the latter is a process of turning one into the other.

As part of a wider dress code (many places in the US do not allow baseball [aka "gimee"] caps to be worn on school grounds with the bill at the back) for some places it may be OK to ban, but it was a religious symbol first and a political one after.

Hijab, chador, whatever: such coverings have been around a lot longer than Islam and evolved from merely practical garments into having religious meaning in some sects. Orthodox Jewish women cover their hair outside the home (often with a wig so as to fit in with local social practice), Tuareg [Bedouin] men cover their faces. Sikh men [age 15 or more, I think] wear a dagger (during the sixties and seventies bomb scares in the US, they could get a permit to wear them on airplanes, but I don't think they can now).

"The proposal to allow employers to ban hijabs in the workplace is ok, though. That's well within the established domain of an employer, especially if the employees are oftten in contact with customers."

Or with machinery. Remember Isadora Duncan, whose long (WWI aviator's) scarf got caught in the gears of a motorcycle? If a person does not want to remove such things (IBM, for example, requires electrical engineers working on mainframe computers to remove wedding rings - some object) then a different job should be found.

One could argue covering one's hair is Jewish, look at all the images of Mary.

Or Arab, but not Islamic, history precedes them.

But making women cover their hair because hair emits rays which entice men???? Looonnnyy! (1981 fatwa(?)!

Read Amir Taheri on it. Only started coming around in the 70s in Beirut because of Arafat wanting to distinguish muslim women so they don't get shot and based on the nuns' habits worn in Israel.

Book says modestly, so they can go naked but would be considered modest if their hair is covered???

I don't know where you draw the line. The hijab is about 30 years old and did represent a particularly nasty form of Islam. Maybe it does not mean the same thing today.

I suppose if I became Grand Dragon of the Church of the Thunder Lizard and required my flock to wear gator heads as hats that's OK, but should we be allowed to wear it in school? Oh did I mention that we followers of the Thunder Lizard are a murderous repressive lot who want to kill or convert all westerners?

30 years on when maybe only half of the Thunder Lizard flock wants to kill or convert all westerners, is it a good hat? Does it have enough history behind it to qualify as "traditional or religious garb?"

Can the KKK kids wear their pointy hats to school? That's mixed with religion and has a much longer history than the hijab.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/GuestColumns/Taheri20030819.shtml

All these and other cases are based on the claim that the controversial headgear is an essential part of the Muslim faith and that attempts at banning it constitute an attack on Islam.

That claim is totally false. The headgear in question has nothing to do with Islam as a religion. It is not sanctioned anywhere in the Koran, the fundamental text of Islam, or the hadith (traditions) attributed to the Prophet. 

This headgear was invented in the early 1970s by Mussa Sadr, an Iranian mullah who had won the leadership of the Lebanese Shiite community.

In an interview in 1975 in Beirut, Sadr told this writer that the hijab he had invented was inspired by the headgear of Lebanese Catholic nuns, itself inspired by that of Christian women in classical Western paintings. (A casual visit to the National Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, or the Louvres in Paris, would reveal the original of the neo-Islamist hijab in numerous paintings depicting Virgin Mary and other female figures from the Old and New Testament.)

Sadr's idea was that, by wearing the headgear, Shiite women would be clearly marked out, and thus spared sexual harassment, and rape, by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian gunmen who at the time controlled southern Lebanon.

Sadr's neo-hijab made its first appearance in Iran in 1977 as a symbol of Islamist-Marxist opposition to the Shah's regime. When the mullahs seized power in Tehran in 1979, the number of women wearing the hijab exploded into tens of thousands.

The most striking thing about the fashion of banning headscarfs (why does France always lead the fashions?) is that it is based on ignorance of Islam and also an apparent inability to follow the most elementary path of policy decision making. This path is: (1) Indentify the problem. (2) Analyse its nature. (3) Come up with a course of action that actually improves the situation without creating bigger problems.

On second thoughts, the FrP probably has followed this policy-making path. Problem: Lack of votes. Analysis: There are very few Muslims, but a very large number of non-Muslims who are intimidated by the increased visibility of Islam. Course of Action: Attack the most visible symbol of Islam. This may be counter-productive in terms of the problem it _claims_ to address but after all, the real problem is how to get more votes.

Covering the 'awra' (areas that should not be seen by non-relatives, such as the hair) is mandatory in Islam, and this rule does appear in the Quran (eg 33:59) and the ahadith. It is also the ijma (consensus) of scholars, which is one of the four usul al-fiqh (sources of religious ruling).

On the other hand, Islam does not mandate sending one's daughter to a foreign country to be married off to an old man she has never met. Wouldn't it be better to restrict those truly objectionable practices, rather than the more visible but harmless headscarf?

I subscribe to a question and answer group for Hanafi Traditionalist rulings (though I am not a Muslim) and the ruling as I understand it is that beyond the requirement for modesty and covering the awra, Muslim women are expected to fit in with the normal appearance of their secular community.

Muslim women are wearing veils more often because they feel set upon, and alienated, by the non-Muslim community. Banning the hajib will not address that problem, but will exacerbate it. If a lady feels that her dress is too revealing at a dinner party, and dons a coat, will she feel more comfortable if forced to remove the coat? Will she then 'integrate' with the other guests? You are correct to observe, Bjorn, that the ban on headscarves will drive Muslims into segregated schools (even those who didn't want to wear the hajib but feel their faith is no longer welcome), and will probably increase the wearing of the headscarf in areas where it is not banned.

In 2002 I co-hosted a talk by Mila Dvorakova, an important figure in the 'dissident' movement in Czechoslovakia, particularly its religious side. Religion and its outward symbols were banned in Czechoslovakia but an underground church fought hard to keep the teachings alive, despite, or rather because of, the repression. As Mila Dvorakova pointed out, there were more trained nuns, monks and priests at the time Communism fell than before it came to power!

[ I believe that conservative Christanity is often harmful, for instance, but I'm also aware that it is far more compatible with liberal democracy than conservative Islam ]

I find this a really surprising statement. What is harmful about conservative christianity? And what exactly is conservative Islam? The worrying strands of Islam are radical, not conservative, in my view. The Salafis began as Islamic Modernists, attempting to reconcile politicised Islam with Western modernist forms, including participatory democracy (they have since given up on this). The traditionalists, on the other hand, downplay the political nature of Islam, and stress that the pious should respect civil authority; they can refuse to obey it insofar as it denies their religious duties, but in all other things it deserves respect.

The outcome of the ban on headscarves will be to make the Salafi claims that Western modernism is incompatible with politicised, holistic Islam seem more attractive than the traditionalist view. Banning the hijab will not integrate those women whose families expect them to be modest. Rather, those women will be under increased pressure to stay in the home, to leave school early, and not to associate with non-Muslims who for some inexplicable reason refuse to allow them to cover those areas that they consider it modest to cover.

I do find some elements of Islamic teachings on women to be highly unpleasant. However, women wearing a particular kind of headwear, or men wearing a beard and dress for that matter, is not unpleasant. It is just different. Those who want to ban the headscarf are quite literally not seeing further than appearances in their cursory glance at the "Muslim Problem".

If Scandinavian countries can not tolerate different traditions and appearances, they should not open their doors to foreigners. Guests should be treated with tolerance.

Fnyser:
Your sources are incorrect. Muslim women's headcovering goes back much further than thirty years. Various different versions have emerged at different times, but the act of covering up goes back centuries.

Your analogy between the KKK and Islam fall down partly because KKK is a group which has some Christian symbolism, whereas Islam is a whole religion. What is the problem with the KKK; the group's radical ideology, its headgear, or the religion (Christianity) in whose name it _claims_ to act? Should we ban white sheets, Christianity or simply the KKK itself? In the same sense, should we ban the headscarf, Islam in toto, or simply those political groups that commit violent attacks in the name of Islam? In each case, I think the third answer is correct.

"33.59":    O Prophet! say to your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers that they let down upon them their over-garments; this will be more proper, that they may be known, and thus they will not be given trouble; and Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

I would think this means don't get nekkid. I'm pretty sure there's a bunch of muslims that never have worn such things, and others that have always had something (just NOT the hijab for sure).

Anyway, I don't give a rip if they wear them or not. I don't like the idea of the government having a say but that's what you get with public school then, eh? I would also hate the government telling me as a private employer that I must allow my employees to wear some damn thing or another - EVERYONE gets the goofy McDonalds cap 'cause that's the way I the owner want it!

Leif: "Who decides that the hijab discriminates against women? What supports this supposition? The purpose of the headcovering is to promote modesty, a value that we implicitly embrace in Christian and secular culture as well. We're not going to force women to wear miniskirts because we figure it's oppressive to women to cover their knees - how can we say that covering your hair and neck is different?"

It's a matter of degree, I guess. You can't argue that just because a lot of something is ridiculous, a little of it is as well. We know there is a connection between how much clothing women are required to wear and how unequal women are to men. And these extra clothes are usually designed to hide female beauty, because this is threatening to religious puritanism. There's nothing discriminatory as such about wearing a piece of cloth on your head, but all the signs are there. 1) It hides female beauty (but not male). 2) It was thought up by religious puritans in patriarchal societies. 3) It also seems to spread _within_ this culture, not outside it. 4) It's largely mandatory (socially or religiously).

"And I would argue that working isn't voluntary. People have a right to make a living and should be allowed to wear anything that doesn't interfere with their productivity or their safety."

Work isn't voluntary, but working in a particular function at a particular company is. Every company should have the right to choose how to present itself. If that involves a certain dress code or a way of speaking, employees should accept or quit. It's not like this shuts hijab wearers out of the job market, or even whole segments of it.

"Forced marriages should be illegal because they are *forced*."

Yes - and they are. The problem is that the law doesn't work. The border between forced and arranged marriages is fuzzy. If you kidnap the bride and ship her out of the country it's a forced marriage, but what if she's threatened with expulsion from the family? What if she knows that by refusing her parents' reputation will be damaged? That's why Denmark has devised the 24-year rule - no family reunions below the age of 24. This works because parents would rather marry their kids within the immigrant community than late. The marriages may still be forced, but at least the kids get to marry someone with a comparable background, not some illiterate from the homeland. So the harm done is smaller, and the flow of disintegration is reversed. It's an undemocratic measure, but I think it's right.

John Anderson: "Hijab, chador, whatever: such coverings have been around a lot longer than Islam and evolved from merely practical garments into having religious meaning in some sects."

Dress codes have been around for a while. So has patriarchalism, prejudice, ignorance and superstition. When these codes survive in a culture they usually reflect a particular aspect of that culture. The Western suit reflected the values of the professional middle class, and its decline in some professions reflects the partial replacement of some of those values by others. The hijab reflects a desire to hide female beauty. Ask yourself: Why the hair? Why not, say, the hands? Because hair is sexier than hands. It _could_ be accidental, but considering that the people who invented it were religious puritans I don't think that's the case.

Fnyser: "The headgear in question has nothing to do with Islam as a religion. It is not sanctioned anywhere in the Koran, the fundamental text of Islam, or the hadith (traditions) attributed to the Prophet."

It's not for you to say that. Whatever calls itself Islam _is_ Islam. Consider the consequences if it weren't so, if non-believers began to argue theology with Muslims and Christians. How much Christian theology is unambigously warranted by the Bible? Much, but not all. Some directly contradict it, and in other cases the Bible contradicts itself and Christians simply choose to believe one thing or the other. There's been a lot of historical research about who wrote which parts of the Bible, when, why, and what they most likely meant. Imagine if an atheist Bible scholar were to give theological advice based on that. "No you can't believe that, because what Jesus _actually_ meant was .."

It's been said pretty often that radical Islam isn't _really_ Islam, because of course Muhammed never told anyone to go forth and blow up enemy civilians. That may be wise from a propaganda viewpoint, because that's what we _want_ Muslims to start believing, but we must be careful not to be fooled by our own propaganda. Radical Islam is Islam because it calls itself so. It's not a very common form of Islam, but it exists. So does the form of Islam that requires hijabs of women - whether Muhammed said so or not.

Trevor: "On second thoughts, the FrP probably has followed this policy-making path. Problem: Lack of votes. Analysis: There are very few Muslims, but a very large number of non-Muslims who are intimidated by the increased visibility of Islam. Course of Action: Attack the most visible symbol of Islam. This may be counter-productive in terms of the problem it _claims_ to address but after all, the real problem is how to get more votes."

I don't think that's the case here, or at least not primarily. The burden of evidence is heavy: Either show that no reasonable people believe that hijabs should be banned in school (leaving only racists and populists), or that in this particular case FrP says one thing but believes another. The first is obviously wrong. The second could be right, but equally so for any proposal ever made by a politician. I agree that it's more likely coming from a populist party, but my impression is that FrP are not cynical bastards who would deliberately harm a religious minority for a gain in the poll. They may be overly suspicious of foreign cultures, but an irrational belief that banning hijabs would help fight a dangerous cultural trait is _not_ an intent to harm Muslim women.

I'm not even sure they will gain on this. Multiculturalism is strong here, and I don't believe there are many people who associate hijabs with something really dangerous. Even those who agree that integration hasn't worked may wonder how banning hijabs will help.

We can't ever know what intentions a politician has in making a proposal, but in lack of evidence (clear evidence of fraud, political inconsistency, a track record of fraud) I believe we must take their arguments as they are presented. A bad idea falls by itself - there's no need to attack the people who holds it, no matter their motives.

"I find this a really surprising statement. What is harmful about conservative christianity? And what exactly is conservative Islam?"

Conservative Islam was a bad choice of words. I believe I mean strict or puritan Islam, in the un-liberal, un-Western meaning of the words. Conservative Christianity is a better term, but too broad. Let me be specific: I believe that discriminating against women and gays is harmful. I believe that creationism and all other forms of scientific ignorance Christians make up to preserve their beliefs - including faith healing - are harmful. I believe painting sex as dirty, or redefining it in theologically acceptable (ie. angelic) terms, is harmful. I believe defining fun as sin is harmful. None of this is as harmful as locking your women up at home and treating their whole bodies as unclean, but I have no doubt it's a good thing when Christians move away from these things, and a bad thing when they move towards them. Few Christians today would define fun in general as sinful, as many did as recently as a century ago, but many - particularly Americans - embrace Creationism and promote it at the expense of real science, doing real damage to all of us. Another example is gay marriage. There may be secular arguments against it, but those are not usually the ones I hear from the US. Or how about the Pope's position on condoms? In Norway we have more of a problem with Christians uniting with leftists to ban, restrict or tax sinful practices such as smoking, drinking and watching pornography. The puritanism involved is either Christian or a Christian survivor of secularization. These practices are harmful. They may or may not be "truly Christian", but they're harmful.

Bjørn Stærk:
"It's not for you to say that."

Well, It was Amir Taheri that said that, but at any rate...

We're not dealing with some ancient practice, just a piece of headgear thats got a 30-some year history - objective fact. The justifications are new - reinterpretations of text. I think it would be analogous to a Rabbi saying "Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard" ACTUALLY means "the hair must be burned off with very hot fire"

I guess if the Rabbi wants to foreward that interpretation, whatever. I don't have to agree with it and I shouldn't have to remain quiet because I do not belong to his sect.

What else is forbidden for outsiders to comment on? Catholics cannot argue against protestantism? Capitalists cannot argue against communism? Non-military personell cannot comment on military operations? I can't comment on the Koran if I'm not Muslim? That's like saying I can't write a book report on Huck Finn because I'm not in the play.

fnyser: You're misunderstanding me. You can argue _against_ hijabs as much as you like. You can say that it's an evil patriarchal practice typical of religious puritans. But you can't say that it isn't _genuine_ Islam to believe that women should wear hijabs. Because genuinity, when it comes to religion, is purely a matter of belief, (and when it comes to ideology, it's a matter of conviction). Unless you claim to share those convictions or beliefs, you're simply not telling the truth, because the statement "Islam is _really_ about .." can only be spoken by a Muslim. Or in what sense can a non-believer claim that one form of Islam is more genuine than another, if he believes that neither of them are truthful? What does "genuine Islam"/"true Islam" mean, really, if not "closer to the Truth than other forms"?

As I wrote above there are two ways non-believers can speak about this. One is to say that a particular practice is right or wrong. Another is to say that it is rare or common. That's the sense most people would mean a statement like "Islam is really about .." Ie. "In the numerically dominant forms of Islam it is widely believed that .." It's sloppy, but it's okay as long as the practice really is a dominant part of Islam. But you can't make that claim about hijabs not being part of Islam, because there really are a lot of Muslims who believe that it is. Enough that "hijabs aren't really part of Islam", when uttered by a non-believer, is a falsehood. (When uttered by a believer it's a theological dispute.)

Bjørn - interesting discussion unfolding here - thanks for hosting it.

A couple of points.

You write:
"1) It hides female beauty (but not male). 2) It was thought up by religious puritans in patriarchal societies. 3) It also seems to spread _within_ this culture, not outside it. 4) It's largely mandatory (socially or religiously)."

This is similar to what you'd find in any selection of religious communities. All religions that I'm aware of make a distinction between modesty and exhibitionism, and the focal point for this always has to do with the female sexual allure. This may have its roots in evolutionary psychology - men are more likely to be visually stimulated than women, and there's also evidence that men are more easily distracted by sexual impulses. If someone said that this is making the women bear the burden of male weaknesses, they'd be right. My point is only that religions and cultures deal with this problem in different ways. To the extent that the solutions proposed address issues rooted in human nature, I'm hard pressed to see how they're automatically misogynistic.

"If you kidnap the bride and ship her out of the country it's a forced marriage, but what if she's threatened with expulsion from the family? What if she knows that by refusing her parents' reputation will be damaged? "

The sanctions you outline here are not unique to one culture or another - they're universal. Parents disown or ostracize their children all the time for doing they disapprove of. We can see an example of this in today's newspaper, where princess Ragnhild Mrs. Lorentzen sees fit to lambast the Royal family for their choices. Just what is acceptable "pressure" is not an easy answer, but I think coercive measures such as no family reunions before a certain age are unfair.

Could write more about this, but I gotta run. ttfn

Leif: "To the extent that the solutions proposed address issues rooted in human nature, I'm hard pressed to see how they're automatically misogynistic."

Rape is also a solution to a problem rooted in human nature. So is monopolizing your women by locking them up so other men can't seduce them. So is going to war with your neighbours, slaughter their men and steal their women for wifes, (a practice that's not only natural but Biblical.) Nature's not on our side here. It's misogynistic and cruel when it wants to be, and it's our responsibility to rise above that.

"The sanctions you outline here are not unique to one culture or another - they're universal. Parents disown or ostracize their children all the time for doing they disapprove of."

Yes - and like all tools, ostracism can be used for good and evil. Using it to force your kids to marry some stranger to benefit your own reputation is, I believe, evil. It may be a necessary arrangement under some conditions, where ties of marriage between families, villages and clans hold together a fragile social fabric. Those conditions do not exist here, now, so the practice should end.

A government can ban the wearing or display of religious symbols, at least in certain situations.

Should it? Well, I think to a certain point (eg, government buildings) it should. Short-term, it causes problems, some of them large, but in the long term it can be hoped that greater freedom will come of it as people accept display of their religious affiliation as an option rather than being forced to do so. Wearing a cross is completely up to the individual. Wearing a wig or yarmulke is regarded as a religious obligation, but in the face of secular ban can be foregone. Wearing a hijab is currently backed by force: this is what I think should be changed, and a government ban indirectly confronts that force with a greater one. This has been done by at least one Middle Eastern country (I believe Turkey, but possibly Egypt - or both) with some benefit.

I don't like the idea of the government getting into such aspects of life, such things should be left as much as possible to the individual. But in some cases, as with the hijab, the individual is not being given the freedom of a choice now, and the government can help to open up the possibility. Still, the government is by nature clumsy and over-bearing, so I hope there is provision for looking at things like this ban every few years in the light of experience.

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A couple of related but slightly off-topic points.

The Q'ran does mention modest covering. But during the time of Mohammed (PBU) this usually menat covering the pubic area. It is not known whether this is what he meant, but the evidence of the way his wives were allowed to act on their own and attend and speak at political gatherings argues that he would not have insisted on the top-of-the-head-to-the-floor covering specified later. The equivalent of modern Western business attire, probably.

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Some may point to the "ban" of a display of the Ten Commandments in our courtrooms as equivalent. Certainly a number of people in the US are against such a "ban". But it is not as total as claimed. Display is permitted, as long as it is not the only or arrogantly prominent display. For example, our national Supreme Court building has displays, but balanced - indeed, overwhelmed - by others of ancient GecoRoman gods and quotations of a number of religions, eg Hindu.

I can get many arab satellite channels on my TV.
On some women seem never to appear, on others they are veiled, some show them without veils and dressed as you might find on any western channel.
There does not appear to be any general dress code common to the arab states.

Here in the West is it a matter of personal choice? I don't know- my liberal instincts tell me it should be- but women in arab societies are often treated as second class citizens or chattels. Do we want to encourage this here?

As far as France is concerned the law may be passed but the government will never have the bottle to enforce it!

Bjørn

Gotta disagree. If I start my sect and say Moses told us to wear tinfoil hats, and start making assertions that tinfoil hats have always been essential part of Judeo-Christian life, I would, of course, be full of shit. If the practice catches on and the Pope starts wearing a big tinfoil thingy and all conservative Jews swap their kippot for 8" X 8" squares of Reynolds.... does that suddenly change the few millennia of history (we ALWAYS WORE THEM and can't stop now)? If I admit I made up the tinfoil hat requirement because I thought the government was going to use their space based mind control weapons but people keep wearing them..... I think a third party pointing out the recent and non-religious origins of the tin foil yarmulke would be OK.

Say I start my own Church of Hayek and come to the conclusion that the Great Hayek clearly stated that big government must equalize all wealth, money should be banned in place of a barter system, and that the primary purpose of government is to insure that parents are raising children obedient to the state. Hey, it's my religion man so you cannot speak of objective truth anymore it's just true and even though you may be a student of Hayek you are not a believer so you will never understand the religious meaning of his words!

Doesn't fly.

I don't think the hijab is anywhere near a dominant part of Islam as it is - more of a regional phenomenon. We can say the practice of wearing them is growing. We can say that wearing them seems to be important to a bunch of people. But just because it is a religious practice does not mean that we also can't say that from the forth century until the late 1970's the justification and the practice simply did not exist.

I didn't mean to say they were not essential to some Muslims - just pointing out that they got along without them for 1600 years and that the very recent justification for wearing them had nothing to do with the Koran.

What we shouldn't (and don't) do is find some passage in the Bible to justify our wearing of cotton-polyester blends instead of being honest and saying, yeah, we just don't follow that old mixed fiber rule anymore.

Bjorn, you wrote:

"Rape is also a solution to a problem rooted in human nature. So is monopolizing your women by locking them up so other men can't seduce them. So is going to war with your neighbours, slaughter their men and steal their women for wifes, (a practice that's not only natural but Biblical.) Nature's not on our side here. It's misogynistic and cruel when it wants to be, and it's our responsibility to rise above that."

Well, the purpose of all cultural constructs is to rein in rather than free up our primitive impulses. There are myriad cultural customs that serve to regulate our behavior, and a head covering is one. The key distinction we have to make is whether we should make it illegal to force women to cover their hair (which I think we should) or making it illegal to do it, even for women who *want* to cover their hair.

The state victimizes people who want to wear a headcovering by prohibiting them from doing it in exactly the same way it victimizes people by forcing them to wear a head covering.

"Yes - and like all tools, ostracism can be used for good and evil. Using it to force your kids to marry some stranger to benefit your own reputation is, I believe, evil. It may be a necessary arrangement under some conditions, where ties of marriage between families, villages and clans hold together a fragile social fabric. Those conditions do not exist here, now, so the practice should end. "

I agree. But the government shouldn't be in the business of trying to regulate *all* undesirable behaviors. It's a judgment call where to draw the line (in formynderstaten Norway it gets drawn a little too close to people's personal lives), but just because we don't like something doesn't give us the right to pass a law to regulate it. At a minimum, we should see if laws concerning abuse, kidnapping, slavery, etc., would suffice to prevent what bothers us.

Fnyser: "Gotta disagree. If I start my sect and say Moses told us to wear tinfoil hats, and start making assertions that tinfoil hats have always been essential part of Judeo-Christian life, I would, of course, be full of shit."

You would, and from my point of view as an unbeliever, all Christianity is full of shit, ie. it's not true, and much of it ridiculous. Some forms of it are more common than the others, that's all.

"If the practice catches on and the Pope starts wearing a big tinfoil thingy and all conservative Jews swap their kippot for 8" X 8" squares of Reynolds.... does that suddenly change the few millennia of history (we ALWAYS WORE THEM and can't stop now)?"

No it would not. Neither does the history of the universe change when a Creationist says it was all created 6000 years ago. Neither does ancient human history change when a Christian claims that the rest of the Bible was literally or close to literally true as well, where a real historian would look at both internal inconsistencies and how various styles of writing point to human writers at specific times of Jewish history, having specific religious agendas. But believers claim these things anyway. Can we say they're wrong? Absolutely. Can we say they're not really Christians, because they're so obviously wrong? Try explaining that to a Creationist.

"I didn't mean to say they were not essential to some Muslims - just pointing out that they got along without them for 1600 years and that the very recent justification for wearing them had nothing to do with the Koran."

That may be so. But the Koran is not the whole of Islam. The Koran is a particular book, and everyone can check what's in it. There are issues of interpretation, but they're relatively small compared to what _Islam_ is. "Islam" covers a whole range of beliefs of which all hold the Koran in high esteem, but all of which are far more than the text itself. They're the traditions that have grown out of it, the books written about it, the collective history of all Muslims or some Muslims, the political history of certain countries, - and in some places Islam even incorporates animistic beliefs. All of these call themselves Islam. On what grounds can you say that any of these are theologically wrong in doing that?

So again, we as outsiders can at most say that one Islamic tradition is so-and-so common, and began in year x, and is clearly nuts. But we can't say that it isn't really Islam, just because the Koran doesn't explicitly order it, like we can't say that Creationists aren't Christian, or Catholics aren't Christians. A debate about a religious tradition must either be theological, ethical or statistical/historical. Theology is reserved for believers, the other fields are open for everyone. If a Muslim says Muhammed proscribed hijabs, I'd say he's historically false, but on what grounds could I call it theologically false?

Leif: "Well, the purpose of all cultural constructs is to rein in rather than free up our primitive impulses."

Hm - no. Many are. But the purpose is rather to make society stable. Any tradition will do if it can be repeated in the next generation, (or generate a tradition in the next generation that can be repeated, etc.) Stability is the key. Some of these constructs (like near-monogamy) are so based in biology it may be difficult or foolish to take them apart, others just ideas someone thought of at some point, and which we are better without. Slavery is a good example. It didn't wreck society, it even helped it in some ways. So the tradition survived, until people got it in their heads that slavery was wrong.

Oppression of women is also an old tradition, to judge from history, stable even in some very nasty forms. There's no ethical lesson in that. All the fact that a tradition is very old tells us is that a stable society can be built on it. Nothing more.

"At a minimum, we should see if laws concerning abuse, kidnapping, slavery, etc., would suffice to prevent what bothers us."

I don't think they do, not when force in a family context is so hard to define in legal terms.

Leif: "Well, the purpose of all cultural constructs is to rein in rather than free up our primitive impulses."

"Hm - no. Many are. But the purpose is rather to make society stable. "

Exactly the same thing, if you give it some thought. To be sure, stability doesn't always mean "good," but the point is to regulate behavior.

But let's be clear that what you're proposing is to *ban* a form of cultural expression, because - to your eyes - this particular expression discriminates against women because it conceals their beauty. You present absolutely no basis for this opinion except that it seems that way to you.

Now, if I were to land from Mars and figure out what practices and norms discriminate against women, I don't think that a woman who chooses to cover her hair would be the first thing I noticed. More likely, I'd be concerned about a media picture that promotes an emaciated look, puts women in high heels, and makes them want to undergo surgery to change their looks.

I also wrote:
"At a minimum, we should see if laws concerning abuse, kidnapping, slavery, etc., would suffice to prevent what bothers us."

To which you responded:
"I don't think they do, not when force in a family context is so hard to define in legal terms. "

Well, if we can't define it in legal terms, how can we possibly make legislation work? The Danish law is a typical example of knee-jerk Scandinavian reactions that throw out all civil liberties without considering alternatives.

We define the age of legal maturity at 18, but we actually want to prevent people under 24 to visit with their families?

Leif: "But let's be clear that what you're proposing is to *ban* a form of cultural expression, .."

Well, I'm still against the hijab ban. All I'm saying is that the hijab probably _is_ a reflection of patriarchal society. For Muslim women who want equal rights to men, I believe the hijab will be one of the first things they'll fight. But that too would be a reflection of a deeper cultural change - hijab, on or off, is a reflection of culture, not the other way around. A causes B, but B does not cause A. So banning hijabs in school does not (at least directly) encourage equal rights for women.

"Well, if we can't define it in legal terms, how can we possibly make legislation work?"

By making a particular kind of immigration, one that is primarily used in cases of forced/arranged marriage, very difficult. Family reunion is a large source of immigration, and it's used deliberately to bring over friends and family one at a time through arranged marriages. It's also used - below the age of 24 - by the rare person who finds love abroad and _must_ marry at once. There's a cost to those few of having to wait a few years, (or perhaps living in the spouse's country), but there's a huge benefit to the immigrant children who are part of this trade. And remember the cost of not doing anything - a permanent brake on integration. Whenever a girl gets it in her head that she's an individual with rights, some illiterate is dragged in from home to teach her otherwise, beat it into her if necessary (or not). She may have to quit school to provide the income the law requires for a reunion. With a 24-year ban, she has an excuse to study, and there's a better chance of her or her parents finding a man in the local immigrant community, who won't be illiterate, and may even respect her as a human being.

Germany's on board w/the hijab - it's a political expression.

...The conservative Christian Democrats' leader in the state legislature, Franz-Josef Jung, argued that the headscarf is a political rather than a religious statement and a symbol of repression. The party, which has a majority in Hesse, hopes to push its so-called "bill to secure state neutrality" through by the summer....

... Although the court stated that any new laws must treat all religions equally, many in Germany argue, like Jung, that the headscarf is a political symbol. Crosses would be excluded from the proposed Hesse ban, which calls for authorities to take account of “Christian and humanist Western tradition.”...

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For those not of faint heart, Little Green Footballs has the story.

It's a little ironic that Europeans - who so often complain about American "cultural imperialism" - are discussing measures that wouldn't fly for a nanosecond in the U.S. Whether or not wearing a head covering is a religious, political, or artistic expression, it still falls under the category of free speech and freedom of conscience.

Whether or not the hijab discriminates against women deserves a lot more and better informed research than I've seen anywhere (including here). The reason I'm harping on it is because I know that in traditional Jewish communities, women do cover their hair, and you'd lose an argument with these women if you told them they were discriminated against.

To me, the whole discussion (here, in France, or in Germany) seems to be based on our discomfort being close to people who seem so alien. And as you can see from jokes in LGF, the psychological subtext is that we don't like women to be so reserved - precisely the effect, many might say, that is intended.

I also have to take issue with the virtue of "integration," mostly because few bother to explain what they mean by that. People can play a productive part in society without blending in with their environment, something I see every day - or rather every second - in New York City.

There is no question that there are disturbing trends in Moslem societies, whether they relate to gender relations, human rights, and religious and cultural diversity.

But if we really want to perpetuate the all-too-common Muslim self-image as a victim of Western belligerency, we should definitely forge ahead with blanket bans of hijabs, etc. This kind of thing plays right into Said's construct of Orientalism and will surely backfire.

Young Muslim women are strongly encouraged to wear head scarves for modesty's sake.

Muslim women judged unchaste have been beheaded legally.

The scarves are the initiation.

Leif, in the US "Whether or not wearing a head covering is a religious, political, or artistic expression, it still falls under the category of free speech and freedom of conscience" is mostly true, but as with the French ban (schools and other government installations) there are exceptions - if you want a driver's license in Florida, take off the veil and hijab for the photo on the license, remember that case? But you can still wear them in public.

Not saying the ban is the correct thing to do, but French law since at least the early Twentieth Century goes beyond US Federal Constitution by barring any political-religious connection at all - the display of Greco-Roman gods in our national Supreme Court building technically would not be allowed in French court buildings [Marianne is not a godess...].

Here in Australia many kindergartens and preschools down in Victoria (and a myriad of shopping centres) have stopped celebrating traditional [pagan] christian such as Chritsmas, Easter etc.. because ethnic minorities with an Islamic faith might (and have been) offended, by such activities being thrust in front of their childrens faces.

I believe that any genuinely non-theocratic state should have no pretensions of forcing people to believe, or take part in any religious activity. Equality of religious freedom should be the standard that prevails across the board. If one article of religious faith is banned (such as a head scarf, or a religious festival), than all religous articles most be regarded equally with crosses, equivilent religous activities within school also being banned.

Although personally I'd rather allow for all individuals to be able to freely choose their atire regardless of religous or political connotations, naturally within the framework of what's accetable at work or school.

David Elson.

PS: However; wearing a giant turban to work could conflict with a banking firms conservative image, or wearing a large sack that could constrict movement at school and result in an inability to take part in mandatory PE activities, and can thus be justifiably repressed.

Thanks for that insightful comment! It makes interesting reading, especially when I need a payday loan.

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