Sophie Morris: Sarkozy's right: the burqa is a tool of repression

[IndianaGreen]

Sophie Morris: Sarkozy's right: the burqa is a tool of repression

Wednesday, 24 June 2009

As I was pushing my way down a busy high street on Sunday afternoon, I got stuck in one of those awkward crowds at the corner of another large road. There's no real pedestrian right of way in these circumstances, so we all set to the mannered side-stepping and edging forwards required to get through the jam.

I was stuck in the slow lane behind a pram when I noticed a woman coming in the opposite direction, who was getting absolutely nowhere, shoved to the back not just by the onwards traffic but by those coming from behind her and from all sides too. I remember her because she was wearing a burqa.

She wasn't getting anywhere because, if anyone had noticed her, they weren't treating her as part of the scrum. Pushing your way through a crowd requires a degree of engagement with those you're pushing against – impossible if you cannot make eye contact. As her skirt was so long and roomy, who knew whether she had one foot in front of the other, a stance that signals you're about to start moving, or not?

How rubbish it must be to be stuck inside such heavy black clothing on one of Britain's few sunny days, with the world swirling around you as if you were a lamppost, for that's about the level of interaction she could have with passers-by without engaging them in conversation.

I also felt depressed – depressed that here was a woman entirely shrouding her identity in public. Depressed that she was denied even that most basic social interaction with strangers that comes with walking down a busy street. Most of all it depressed me off because it reminded me of what no one – Muslim, misguided liberal or anyone else – can dissuade me of, which is that the burqa is a tool of oppression.

On Monday, President Sarkozy took issue with the proliferation of women wearing the burqa in France, weighing into the debate on whether, as a secular country, the French Republic might outlaw the veiling of one's body from head to toe in public. "The burqa is not a religious sign," he said.

"It is a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement... in our country we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity."

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/sophie-morris-sarkozys-right-the-burqa-is-a-tool-of-repression-1715937.html

[jobycom]

1. I wonder what he thinks of bikinis and high heels and beauty pagents.

They may express different cultural attitudes, but they all still express the male vision of the ideal female image.

[ccharles000]

2. it is a tool of repression but the government should not ban what you can wear

[Chef Eric]

4. Doesn't Germany have the right to ban the wearing of swastikas?

Doesn't a state need to place some limits on personal "freedoms" when those "freedoms" are associated with the elimination of freedom?

[The Wizard]

3. They work well

for bank robberies, muggings and other crimes.