Fashion, Freedom and Coercion

This is a tough issue, but I think Herb is right. If we say people should be free, I suppose that means they should be free to choose to live under a repressive ancient belief system. I understand what France is trying to do, and to some extent I sympathize with it. But I don't think outlawing religious clothing is the way to solve the problem.

The difference between Catholic nuns and Muslim women wearing burqas is that nuns can show their faces.

These criticisms seem to miss Herb's point, I think. He has not said he is in favor of burqas; what he favors is free choice. His blog starts with an acknowledgment that religion has often been used to debase women. He states that for him coercion is the dividing line - so no, he's not arguing for women to be denied education, beaten, etc. What I read from his blog is that the problem of females being oppressed is difficult to deal with when cultures have vastly differing views of freedom, and that trying to do so using legislation can have undesirable consequences for the very women the law is intended to liberate. I don't think there is a "right" answer to this complex issue -- outlawing the burqa implies that the state has the power to tell us what to wear, and to deny the use of religious symbols it disapproves of. That's a dangerous precedent. Most of us wouldn't suggest Catholic nuns should be forced to give up their garments, even though their purpose is also to suggest subservience to a male figure. Why is it OK for nuns and not Muslim women? Probably because we see nuns as having made a free choice for that lifestyle. If there are Muslim women who like the symbolism of the burqa and wear it by choice, I have no objection to their doing so, even though I don't understand it and would never make that choice for myself. We do want to protect those women who are dominated and mistreated, but in those cases the burqa is only a symptom, not the real problem. It gets back to exactly what Herb says: this is about coercion, not clothing.

Thank alot! Oh, if only YOU and all other men were compelled to wear this thing! Then, I'm sure it would be banned as inhuman...what's lawful and reasonable for one would seem entirely different if others were compelled to live with the consequences also...
What a big man from your protected ivory tower! Why not start wearing your own burka today in solidarity?

Herb Silverman's comments do not seem very humanistic to me. Or rational.

A burqa totally effaces a woman, who is not even allowed to show that she is a human being. She is simply a moving robe. The burqa wearing woman almost certainly is one of her husband's multiple wives, subject to beatings by him if she doesn't comply with his wishes, and illiterate because she has not been allowed even basic education. She has no personal rights of any consequence. Please remember who these burqa wearers really are! How can Silverman believe that this is a knowledgeable choice by a woman based on any kind of real alternatives? A religion that does not allow a woman to show her face goes too far and the state should intercede.

In answering this question another blogger, Nicholas Wright, laments what he sees as a specifically secular goal: to "push religion off the map." Ironic, then, to see secularist Herb Silverman urging caution in government restrictions on religious customs. Stereotyping the secular community isn't new, but I hope it will some day (soon?) be viewed just as disapprovingly as religious stereotypes. Government policy is unlikely to accomplish that -- it will take cultural pressure (the same ingredient needed to eradicate religious customs that degrade and debase).