Freedom to practice your religion the way the mullahs say you should? Or freedom to feel the sun on your face and the breeze on your body? It's a tricky one, isn't it?No it isn't. There are plenty enough countries in the world where medieval attitudes persist, and folk who want to emigrate there can go right ahead. Western Europe has its liberties to protect, and when the waters are muddied by the age-old religious freedoms debate, it is ALWAYS right to come down on the side of the individual rather than an institution or group.
Sarkozy is right to ban the burqa, and James Delingpole is right to compare Sarkozy's attitude to the wishy washy liberal guff of Obama. Delingpole fires from the hip:
Almost every idea that ever came out of France has been bad for America, from the structuralist philosophical gibberish which has poisoned US academe to the grotesquely over-regulated tax and spend socialism which is now ruining the US economy. But if there’s one area where the French do get it SO right it’s in their uncompromising approach to Islam.
President Sarkozy once again showed the way yesterday when in a presidential address to France’s two houses of parliament, he said the burqa is not welcome in his country and should be banned.
As he rightly went on to say the full-body garment which makes women in Afghanistan look like a cross between a prison cell and a walking tent is “not a sign of religion” but a “sign of subservience.” He added: “We cannot have in our country women who are prisoners behind netting, cut off from all social ife, deprived of identity.”
Compare and contrast, the appalling cultural appeasement of President Obama’s speech in Cairo on June 4 when he boasted that the United States prized freedom of religion and would not “tell people what to wear.” And there was I thinking it was the French who were supposed to be the surrender monkeys, not the Americans.
Was there ever greater proof that, where the great clash of civilisations is concerned, President Obama is turning out to be the Islamists’ useful idiot par excellence?
Does Barack Hussein Obama really not understand that supposed “freedom” he is granting US Muslim women to wear the veil is in fact the most surefire way of guaranteeing their continued subservience to their men folk and their failure to integrate with the broader society?
13 comments:
Well said, Idle, and three cheers for Sarky for opening this particular can of worms. Grandad and I worked in Islamic countries for a while so we do have personal experience of the travails of the fairer sex. It was quite eye opening on journeys in and out to see the ladies on the plane. When they boarded they were all wrapped up, but as soon as we were airborne there was a queue for the little rooms so they could all change into jeans and blouses and other "normal" gear. On the way back it was just the reverse, so when they landed they were all black tents again.
Despite all the other peace loving religion stuff, Islam has always been about repressing/oppressing women, from what they wear and how, whether they can drive or not, multi-wives (but not multi-husbands), the law of rape (four male witnessses to testify), males being allowed to beat (or worse) family females, to how the family assets are unfairly divided up when the oldies die etc.
All power to the Iranian and (to a lesser extent so far) the Saudi women, who are at last beginning to wake up to the way their overwhelmingly male dominated authorities and menfolk (mis)treat them. Recent innovations such as satellite tv and the internet have finally opened many eyes and doors. Long may it continue.
One further point, in the UK it is necessary to stem the creeping introduction of Sharia courts. If the Moslems do not like UK laws which cover family matters they know where to go.
As he rightly went on to say the full-body garment which makes women in Afghanistan look like a cross between a prison cell and a walking tent is “not a sign of religion” but a “sign of subservience.” He added: “We cannot have in our country women who are prisoners behind netting, cut off from all social ife, deprived of identity.”
True. And the French and Spanish backed their fishing industry and fought for fishing rights in er.. our waters. Our government? gave in.
GG I would agree with you about family courts but I'm totally against our modern closed 'court' of a bunch of social workers blackmailing primary carers then removing children from the home with no possible chance of return in law.
No-one laughed at my Obamaman post. I was most disappointed.
Eloquently put, idle. Freedom not to be beaten in the face by your partner is thus a restriction of the rights of the bludgeoner-husband, according to Barack's rather peculiar logic.
Now, if one of the ladies pictured was Mrs idle, how woudl you tell whether she was on the the left, or the right?
There is some discussion that sly Nicky is just stirring up trouble for France's many hard left socialists.
On the one hand they love all religions, multiculturalism, freedom to worship and seek to encourage diversity and immigration. On the other hand equality for women is a major theme. Women's rights, equal pay, and end to job discrimination for women, freedom of choice, and end to male dominance, Husband's abuse of wives, domestic violence...
Sarky wants to tie them up in knots trying to square their difficult ideological circle, hopefully creating a few good all lefty splits and fractures while he simply says "NON"
The burqua is not religious but biological.
It's hard for a man to be sure that the children of his wife are actually his own - a surprising number are not: around 10% in the UK I think.
However, if you keep the women as virtual prisoners, prevent them from socialising, - especially with other men - even prevent them being seen, then there is a much better chance that you are not wasting your resources (in biological terms) by bringing up another man's offspring.
As so often, religion is simply a convenient lever used to reinforce the secular (in this case masculine) power.
Too easy, Tuscan - Mrs Idle always dresses to the right.
Well my good friends, the Good Old Grateful Dead, particularly their esteemed lyricist, Robert Hunter, as fine as lyrical port as the boy Dylan, to my mind, has this to say on the matter of "Freedom", referring of course to those whose notion of "Freedom" is not all it might seem to be. Think on Brown's speech last year on the matter of Liberty, which was in fact about how he intended to diminish ours.
Love the chorus of this song ..
Saw a bird with a tear in his eye
Walking to New Orleans my oh my
Hey, now, Bird, wouldn't you rather die
Than walk this world when you're born to fly?
If I was the sun, I'd look for shade
If I was a bed, I would stay unmade
If I was a river I'd run uphill
If you call me you know I will
If you call me you know I will
Ooo, freedom
Ooo, liberty
Ooo, leave me alone
To find my own way home
To find my own way home
Say what I mean and I don't give a damn
I do believe and I am who I am
Hey now Mama come and take my hand
Whole lotta shakin' all over this land
If I was an eagle I'd dress like a duck
Crawl like a lizard and honk like a truck
If I get a notion I'll climb this tree
or chop it down and you can't stop me
Chop it down and you can't stop me
Ooo, freedom
Ooo, liberty
Ooo, leave me alone
To find my own way home
To find my own way home
Went to the well but the water was dry
Dipped my bucket in the clear blue sky
Looked in the bottom and what did I see?
The whole damned world looking back at me
If I was a bottle I'd spill for love
Sake of mercy I'd kill for love
If I was a liar I'd lie for love
Sake of my baby I'd die for love
Sake of my baby I'd die for love
Ooo, freedom
Ooo, liberty
Ooo, leave me alone
To find my own way home
To find my own way home
I'm gonna find my own way home
You've got the words - now sing along with Jerry :-)
Islam is very big on the freedom to murder those who you don't like, seems to me. OH has a great post on the disaster that is the Islamic state. Poor bastards are still in the middle ages really.
Oddly, the media here has started to resemble that in the Middle East. My brother worked in Saudi and elsewhere in the area for some 15 years. Way back, he said all you got on the TV news was some Royal this or some Royal that, landing somewhere and saying something. Similarly, that lump of shit Brown is always in the media, has a headline every day, and has as much respect for democracy as those arseholes.
It is at this point in the affairs of our country that I wish we had a history of assassinating our leaders. And cunts like Mandy - it is now clear that he came back on the behest of the EU, NOT Brown and the Labour Party, simply to prop up Brown until the Irish vote says Aye to the EU - as I fear it will.
Bastards all.
lyrical port - lyrical poet.
Elby - superb stuff, thank you. That has all been stolen and squirrelled away for a karaoke spectacular later this summer.
Oho.. better watch out folks. According to my paper today those great intellectual unbiased guardians of democracy and freedom, the self appointed Muslim Council of Great Britain (who as far as I can tell seem to represent nobody but themselves) have now jumped on the bandwagon and attacked Sarky. Vive la revolution!! Garlic sticks at ten paces?
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