My Pet-Wiebe

Burqa as weapon

PARIS — President Nicolas Sarkozy declared Monday that the Islamic burqa is not welcome in France, branding the face-covering, body-length gown as a symbol of subservience that suppresses women's identities and turns them into "prisoners behind a screen." I have no problem with such a ban since each country has its own rules on which it tries to create a common basis where ethnic groups may interface with the rest: culture of the host country is to absorb the minorities and not other way round.
Think of nation as a family each member being part of the whole and with duties and rights. Most important is that each works for the common good. If we are visiting a family we don't arm-twist our hosts to serve our whims and fancies. Politeness is the duty of a guest that he doesn’t throw the routine of the family for his indulgence but conform to the general since he is there at the permission of the host. If religion has not taught him to simple courtesies of human beings he had better migrate to some wilderness and learn from the beasts. Perhaps he may improve and so will his religion in practice. Animals kill for their food and not for a dry as dust idea.
France has a long tradition and their culture is second to none. They cannot dilute their values for the few. How minorities may want to practice their own identities in the privacy of their homes is largely left to each.
Culture is not imposed from outside but subject to natural processes evolved over centuries. Strength of France derives from that.

Of course French are not angels or supernatural beings.
Islam has glorious Koran given to them, so the Moslems pride themselves. Islam however glorious cannot replace what was true to the French soil on which it grew as natural. Remember religion of the Semitic races, Judaism and Islam are given from above by an outside agency, and not something natural . So any nation being not supernatural but only subject to weak natures of humans would wish to keep its culture natural it is its rightful privilege.

When some cry intolerance and Islamophobia are the Islamic countries free from what they accuse others of? In case of UAE will they allow other religions freely practice their faith or carry visible symbols of faith as freely as Moslems are allowed in most parts of Europe?
2.
The number of churches being torched over a silly controversy in Malaysia is not as innocuous as it seems.
In Modern Turkey secularism is established by the constitution but the present trend of women to express their religious identity aggressively cannot be by some curious accident. There is a groundswell of radicalization in which some misguided imams from pulpits of the mosque are playing into the hands of terrorists who shall test the will and resolve of the secular government.

3.

I suspect that there is an insidious move to wear out the Western ideals by imposing some primitive aspects of Sharia law.If a believer,because religion has taken over his body, mind and soul,cannot think of his world or enjoy the natural pleasures that such a world and its uses provide it is like playing one stringed music. It numbs the senses and wearies others.

One who cannot be human because some dogma has got into his eyes like a splinter, he is blind: he sees nothing but the splinter. He like Don Quixote sees a windmill of one who doesn't pray as he does; and mistakes him for Iblis. Poor deluded creature! He needs cure. With such a mindset he sees his arid soul and thinks it is paradise.

World is not uniform anymore than human being are. For one who believes God as the creator of peoples and the earth such a variety should mean something. Of course desert has its beauty but to deny the lush verdure of one part the globe or craggy mountains and majestic peaks of another would mean one hasn't grown enough to see it all as blessings that are only given to the living. This is what excess religion robs one. The west lived somewhat similar in the Middle Ages. There were rascals who were mistaken for saints and who, their filth and grime they extolled as fitting tribute to God. There are still some vestiges of these in the Church of Rome. Thank God the west, majority of the believers have awakened from their drowsiness. If they do not share the craze of a Moslem believer for religion he ought not hasten damn them to perdition.

4.

In Islam it is forbidden for men or women wear the dress of opposite sex. Yet such a garb is one means adopted by terrorists to commit acts of terrorism. As long as Islam as a religion has not effectively prevented its followers from such acts in Europe especially in France the moral authority of Islam over secular non-believing countries must be considered as null and void.
Ok. One might say such misuse of burqa are isolated cases and not to be treated as general. Think of a plane as a metaphor for nation. Passengers are citizens,migrant workers,aliens, believers and non believers. One underwear bomber or a shoe bomber could put the whole plane in jeopardy. If one shot could kill the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria and start WWI so shall an isolated incident work far greater misery for all who trust in the nation. WWI didn't end with one war. Nation's future is not to be left to chance or to inherent lapses in security. If a government allows these breaches in national security to be left for nation's enemies to do their dastardly crimes as they will, such government is enemy to its citizens.

benny

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