Hitchens: Lets ban the burka

Christopher Hitchens believes its time to drop the veil – as as matter of law.

Western masochism about other people’s “culture” often obscures this obvious fact. Think of the things that we all have to do now, like submitting to humiliating searches at airports, or showing our ID to people who have no “probable cause” for demanding it. Can we turn up at airport security wearing a bag over our heads? Can we produce a photograph that shows only our eyes through a slit? Of course not. Nor can anyone in a Muslim country (though of course in Saudi Arabia an unchaperoned women cannot turn up at the airport anyway).

Maybe a bit off the point, but I liked this shot:

One reason we have to undergo such indignities is because of faith-based suicide attacks on our civil aviation, and so far the perpetrators of this nightmare have not been caught wearing crucifixes or Stars of David around their necks.

But there is a problem. Religion and public life is a different in whole in American than in France.

In France, the government already says that when you are in school you leave your religious identity behind. Many young Muslim women support this ban because it gives them legal protection against cruel and illegal pressure to wear items of dress that they have not chosen.

Which may be true, by why subjugate yourself in the first place? It’s easy, if you don’t want to wear the veil, don’t be a Muslim. If you live in fear, go to the cops. Leave. Essentially, it’s that battered woman question creeping up again.

Religious life in America is different than France. You can carry your religion with you, be it in public or at school, at least in theory (don’t get me started on speech codes and the like). And given in theory were supposed to be living in a nation with a limited government, whose to stop anyone from doing so?

The consequences of banning any religious garment are profound. Once the veil is banned, how long before some enterprising atheist goes after Priests or those in Hasidic dress? I can see Little Green Footballs firing up on that one already.

I have no problem with making everyone show their face in a bank or on a driver’s license. It’s pure common sense. That said, if a woman wants to subjugate herself, she has the right to. Doesn’t make it any more or less right, but it does make it law.

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