Let people wear what they want. What is it hurting? I wonder what the reaction would be if Catholic were forbidden to wear crosses around their necks. I just read that Hitler was obsessed with Hasidim clothing. What if the government banned their clothing? People wear clothing or accessories to make all sorts of statements.

There may be a few cases where there is a legitimate public interest in dress codes, like disallowing nudity in most public places. Oh, and mixing plaids, which deserves lashings.

I'm all for banning them.

Hasidim clothing just looks like they are in a really bad off Broadway production about Eastern Europeans in WWI.

Cross necklaces aren't even clothing.

Peter you do understand the difference between a hijab and a burka?

My great grandma wore a chador and had to walk a few steps behind her husband.

Turkey btw bans the hijab in all public places. They are (well were) really hardcore about secularism.

I do have a problem with an outright ban, but if individual businesses want to say no face no entry, I'd be fine with that too. In some places it is illegal to go around in a mask or disguise that stops you from being identifiable, so as to stop commission of crimes.

So unless everyone would be fine with me and a bunch of friends wearing masks and wearing trench coats, hanging out in a bank or in front of a school, then there is non racial/cultural/religious reasons to not have people wearing a full burka.

We also use photo id for a lot of things a useless thing if burkas are worn. So not allowing burkas when in a situation where photo id is used/needed would be fine to me.

I have no problem with France banning it. (As someone else said, you won't see Frenchwomen able to wear bikinis in the average middle Eastern country.) I would have a problem with such a ban in the U.S. on constitutional grounds.

Yeah Astra is right. There is no need to apply American constitutional law to a foreign country.

Banning the hijab in Turkey did great things for the country but I wouldn't do it here.

Paternalism of the state vs. paternalism of religion. No winners here.

There was a cap supposedly worn in South Africa ca. 1952 as a sort of political protest. There was a story, perhaps apocryphal, that it was suggested in National Party circles to prohibit wearing this cap and that Daniel Malan's reply to his subordinates was that he was not going to make himself look ridiculous by prohibiting someone from wearing a particular type of cap.

Legislation to contain public nuisances is properly a concern of local government. France is hyper-centralized, so you get these controversies. What should not happen is that employers be prohibited from instituting dress-codes which prohibit burkas.

Please note, the burka is an odd preference in the Muslim world. Recent opinion polls a swath of muslim countries discovered that only in Saudi Arabia does the preference for burkas make it out of the single digits. In Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, a majority opted for the burka, niqab, or chador. The other surveyed countries preferred less restrictive garments to enforce modesty. Neither Pakistan nor Saudi Arabia is much of a source country for muslim immigration to continental Europe.

"Please note, the burka is an odd preference in the Muslim world. "

More's the reason to ban it in a non-Muslim country.

Just make them illegal and be done with it. No point in coddling people who move to your country and refuse to integrate with your society.

I personally hate burkas (for multiple reasons), but there is NO justification for banning them whatsoever - it's an overt violation of the rights of the individuals who choose to wear them. The only appropriate question to ask is whether it's being worn voluntarily - i.e. it should be illegal to compel someone else to wear a burka if they don't want to.

Banning bikinis in a Middle-Eastern country is equally wrong. Same principles apply.

The claim that burkas may be banned on security grounds is absurd - that would be akin to saying everyone who belongs to a group of religions can be reasonably said to be suspected of a crime - this is the same reasoning by which Americans rounded up Japanese into camps. Unless authorities have particular evidence suggesting you may be involved with a crime, they should leave you alone.

I think that small communities of landowners should be able to decide, as a condition of being on their property (since it's their property) whether particular dress codes apply - e.g. members of an HOA may impose any compulsory dress code they like as a condition of being allowed onto that private property.

There is very little justification for banning nudity in public places, but here there are various exceptions that may apply.

> I think that small communities of landowners should be able to decide

Just to clarify this, I'm saying it's ethically wrong to dictate dress codes on the level of a state / country / nation etc., but is ethically valid to do so at the level of an individual town or smaller if done on the basis of being the choice of the majority of land owners, as an extension of private property rights.

No point in coddling people who move to your country and refuse to integrate with your society.

Oh you mean like they do here in the USA?

If I had my way there would be no burkas or 'niqab' or anything of the sort anywhere on the planet - however, using force to get rid of them is just so, so wrong. I mean, we're talking about using force on women and children over a stupid piece of cloth ... sorry, but if you want to use force against someone just because a silly piece of cloth 'offends' you, that's barbaric.

"Oh you mean like they do here in the USA?"

Exactly.

Banning bikinis in a Middle-Eastern country is equally wrong. Same principles apply.

The public atmosphere is like a common property resource. It's regulation or degradation leaving everyone worse off (which is why there are laws on indecent exposure). The grey area can certainly be the subject of municipal ordinances. My grandparents came of age in an era without bikinis. Nothing wrong with that.

More's the reason to ban it in a non-Muslim country.

Not my point, really. My point was that its likely to be infrequently seen in France.

Enforce your immigration laws and jail and deport violators without compunction, limit the number of settler's visas you offer each year(85,000 to 150,000 should be about right for France), require tested and demonstrated linguistic facility for anyone over the age of 14 to receive a settler's visa, require entrants from Muslim countries to enter on group visas as married couples with minor children or as married couples well into middle age, limit access to common provision to citizens and to aliens who have worked and paid taxes for a run of years, have no open-ended cash doles for those neither elderly nor disabled, do not naturalize anyone who has not spent the majority of their natural life in the country, do not offer birthright citizenship to anyone who is not the child of a citizen nor offer birthright settler status to anyone not the child of someone with the right visa, eliminate employment discrimination law, and allow municipal government to define public nuisances.

You do these things, it's a reasonable inference that immigrant populations will get the message that they are not welcome to live in France as if they were Iraqis. No need to pass national legislation flipping the bird at them.

If I had my way there would be no burkas or 'niqab' or anything of the sort anywhere on the planet - however, using force to get rid of them is just so, so wrong. I mean, we're talking about using force on women and children over a stupid piece of cloth ...

Who's forcing whom where, Lobster? Look at the poll results. A preference for no head coverings was common only in Lebanon (with its large non-Muslim population) and in Turkey (where enforced secularization was the order of the day from 1923 to 2002). It's still a minority taste in the latter place. Read Stanley Kurtz, Daniel Pipes, and others. Canons of modesty are adjustments to city living and being around a lot of men who are not your cousins. Read Kurtz in particular on the utility and meaning of honor in societies where parallel cousin marriage is common.

There's nothing wrong with personal modesty and different societies will set the bar different places.

My bank (private property) requires me to remove my any hat and/or sunglasses before entering the building. They do this not to discriminate against those with sensitive skin, but as a security measure. Most of the security camera pictures of local bank robberies show people wearing hats and sunglasses.

I am also quite suspicious of anybody walking down the street in a balaclava, especially as I don't live in a cold environment. I will look at them, for anything that might be handy in case they are up to no good. Profiling, again.

My take is, if people want to wear that stuff, they can't whine about people staring at them, and or moving to the other side of the street out of an abundance of self-protection. And they will have to choose to frequent only businesses that are willing to have that form of dress on their property.

Lobster is right, in that the burka is abhorrent, and also that official sanctions against the women who wear it is an ineffective way to deter its use.

and also that official sanctions against the women who wear it is an ineffective way to deter its use.

They'll be effective enough if enforced.

You get tap dances like this because host societies have insufficient self-confidence to set their own standards on a mundane basis. See Sowell and Sailer on this point. The administrative class sides with the obstreperous immigrant against the vernacular culture of his own country for reasons of self-aggrandizement.

The Rabbi is a useful idiot for the Islamists. He is hoping that by showing solidarity with them, the Islamists will stop attacking French Jews. Kind of like the Jews not supporting the Dutch politician Geert Wilders.

An Article about when the muslim popluation grows.
http://www.examiner.com/article/as-muslim-population-grows-what-can-happen-to-a-society

"No need to pass national legislation flipping the bird at them."

No need to come to a modern Western country and flip the bird at your hosts, either.

Girls in bags, stonings, beheadings, Bronze Age nonsense - it's all past the sell-by date.

Hopefully we're seeing the last, violent throes of this garbage belief system.

Ban them. Harsh penalties for transgression.

Welcome to modernity, Little Sister... You came here for a reason, and we're fucking well going to make sure it works out OK.

Banning the burka, or any other extremely oppressive piece of clothing, is NOT an infringement on the individual's right to wear what they choose.

The burka, and other such extreme clothes, are meant to control women.

Comparing such a ban on the burka as a ban on wearing a cross or a Magen David on a necklace is just plain illogical. No one is oppressed by a little necklace with a religious symbol; but, women ARE oppressed by wearing a burka.

Maybe they all don't feel that way; but that is one of the reason's behind it - control who can see the women in your family and who they can interact with. No one will ever convince me there is any other reason for a woman to wear it.

Oh, and of course many women wear them in some places because they don't want to be stoned to death.

Charles' last point is the most important.

Nobody complains about Amish or Quaker dress, which is very similar as far as modesty, very different from a bikini, and similarly driven by their religion. But, the Amish don't stone their women if they flash some hair.

There is no need to ban them now. The first time that someone in a burka commits a terrorist act such as a suicide bombing, then they will be banned.

"... sorry, but if you want to use force against someone just because a silly piece of cloth 'offends' you"

My great-grandma couldn't take off her chador to see a male doctor. Well he couldn't touch her either. Actually they couldn't have any eye contact. She died from really painful brain cancer. Ooops.

But if you talked to her, or my aunt (who grew up with them) they'd tell you how beautiful the whole tradition is.

How about a nice definite no and yes.

No, I don't agree with the burqa ban in the sense that people should be allowed to wear what they want.

However, for the purposes of identifying someone, for example, to check and I.D. against a face (for alcohol and tobacco purchases and by law enforcement), the wearer should be prepared to remove the face and hair covering. And for emergency medical services, they might themselves divested of even more clothing.

So, in one respect, I agree with this ban. Modesty or religious purposes do not preclude legitimate reasons to check identification or remove clothing.

And given the way the Europe is allowing Islamic law to shape its culture, I'm actually glad that someone is taking a firm stand. In other words, "I don't give a good God damned what your culture dictates; we have legitimate reasons to require seeing someone's face and hair. Our EMS might even require male examiners to divest you of even more clothing. You don't like it, then you can go back to the stone age hellhole you came from."

Fighting barbaric culture is difficult. Just as a completely different example, consider forced marriages: Where a father tells his 13 year old daughter she'll be flying to Pakistan to be the chattel of some 40 year old dude she's never met. This is enough of a problem that Switzerland has had to pass specific legislation prohibiting it.

The families come here as refugees to get away from some horrible situation at home. Then they perpetuate horrors like this on their daughters. One really does not understand. However, experience shows that it takes a second, and sometimes a third generation for families from barbaric* cultures to integrate into Western society.

*I use the word "barbaric" deliberately. Cultures are not equal or equally civilized, and one that treats women as chattel is uncivilized by Western standards. Political correctness tries to suppress this, but cannot change the simple truth.

I don't care what France bans, as long as Switzerland doesn't follow the lead, because it would hurt tourism. We need rich Saudis to come buy our watches and jewelry and ride around on our cable cars.

I will say, I DO get annoyed when I see the women in the niqab and abayah when the men they're with are in shorts and tees. It bugs me less when the guys are wearing the long white robes and scarves, too. But whatever. Just keep giving us your oil dollars.

Fuck Europe.

Thank you for your attention to these matters.

No need to come to a modern Western country and flip the bird at your hosts, either.

Wearing modest dress does not do that (though certain sorts of modest dress interfere with customer service). Certain sorts of political agitation, gaming immigration laws, and bodacious use of welfare payments do that.

You can institute laws against sedition (especially by foreign residents), tell political agitators to buzz off, re-compose and enforce your immigration laws, prosecute people for bigamy, end open-ended cash doles for the working aged and able bodied, require immigrants work and pay taxes for a time 'ere gaining access to common provisions, sell off the public housing, end any other subsidies to mundane expenditure, and dismantle the regulatory apparatus that induces sclerosis into labor markets. A national ban on burkas is irrelevant to your real problems and quite unnecessary and insulting.

Fighting barbaric culture is difficult. Just as a completely different example, consider forced marriages: Where a father tells his 13 year old daughter she'll be flying to Pakistan to be the chattel of some 40 year old dude she's never met. This is enough of a problem that Switzerland has had to pass specific legislation prohibiting it.

There are cruelties embedded into the common life in Pakistan and other places (see the Diplomad 2.0 on how Pakistanis treat dogs). Some of these are a function of the measures people take to protect themselves against the vicissitudes of life of which the mutual aid provided by strong families is primary. Again, see Stanley Kurtz on how it is that 'honor' comes to be of such cardinal importance in a certain sort of society.

Keep in mind that you have 32 countries in the Near East, North Africa, and Central Asia, all but four of them modally Muslim. All but about a half-dozen have low homicide rates and most of those who do not are suffering from political violence or are post-Soviet republics subjected to decades of enforced secularization. It isn't the Muslim world that gave you a horror like routinized abortion (which the moderator fancies should be available at any time for any whim, no questions asked).