Denmark passed a law banning the burka. The tent-like garment is a form of mobile purdah, or segregation, that covers the entire body.
Denmark joined some other European countries in deciding Thursday to ban garments that cover the face, including Islamic veils such as the niqab or burqa.
In a 75-30 vote with 74 absentees, Danish lawmakers approved the law presented by the center-right governing coalition. The government says that it is not aimed at any religions and does not ban headscarves, turbans or the traditional Jewish skull cap.
However, the law is popularly known as the “Burqa Ban” and is mostly seen as being directed at the dress worn by some conservative Muslim women. Few Muslim women in Denmark wear full-face veils.
Austria, France and Belgium have similar laws.
However Amnesty International, an organization that started based on a hoax and which was employed in intelligence operations at one point, is most unhappy. Segregating women violates women’s rights.
Following today’s vote by Denmark’s parliament to ban the wearing of face coverings in public, Amnesty International’s Europe Director Gauri van Gulik said:
“All women should be free to dress as they please and to wear clothing that expresses their identity or beliefs. This ban will have a particularly negative impact on Muslim women who choose to wear the niqab or burqa.
Do women choose to wear the burka? No doubt some do. Others don’t. The burka cuts off women from the world and makes it easier for them to be coerced and abused.
But let’s begin with what the burka is.
The burka is different than the hijab which Muslim women wear to distinguish themselves from non-Muslim women, alerting Muslim men that they cannot be molested, but that non-Muslim women can
“O Prophet! Tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks (veils) all over their bodies that they may thus be distinguished and not molested.” (Koran 33:59)
One Koranic commentary is quite explicit. “It is more likely that this way they may be recognized (as pious, free women), and may not be hurt (considered by mistake as roving slave girls.)” The Yazidi girls captured and raped by ISIS are an example of “roving slave girls” who can be assaulted by Muslim men.
A French survey found that 77 percent of girls wore the hijab because of threats of Islamist violence. It’s numbers like these that have led to the French ban of the burka and now of the burkini.
Burka means purdah. The purdah is the certain behind which women are segregated in the home. A woman wearing the burka is being segregated in public. She’s wearing a curtain so that she can be allowed to move among men.
This is what Amnesty International is defending. ISIS would approve.
Leave a Reply