Belgium has just banned all wearing of clothing which obscures or semi-obscures the face - in a clear attempt to stop certain religious clothing most often associated with women of a certain faith - on the absurd grounds that no one should be allowed to "see but not be seen" in public. Are bans on tinted car windows and sunglasses to follow? Bans on security cameras? We in the West live in a pan-optical society, and the right to look extends far beyond the right to be seen. Otherwise x-ray specs would be enforced. We have a right, surely, to protect our dignity, modesty, person - and even privacy. More to the point, is religion such a threat to the secular powers that be (namely so-called democracy and capitalism) that it must be basically cleared from the market place and the public squares, as a contagion, like second-hand smoke? Religion threatens humanist mastery, and especially the aims of instrumentalism. It gestures to realms and spaces less visible, and less scientific - indeed, the mystical, the spiritual, perhaps the magical, and, at times, of course, the musical and artistic. At the least, the need or desire for religion is a deep and valid psychological one. Whether there is a God (and we must hope there is, or could be) there is definitely an historic belief in one, extending over thousands of years. It seems churlish and simplistic to seek to rescue these women from garments they have no wish to rend. Such laws are inhospitable and utterly infantile. True freedom would allow for each of use to choose how we wish to be arrayed and disport ourselves. Clothing makes the man. Symbols have power. Without religious symbols, religion is drained and purified, desalinated to the point of evaporation. Then again, perhaps God exists finally in the thin air the State demands he disappear into. To trouble our minds no more.
Belgium has just banned all wearing of clothing which obscures or semi-obscures the face - in a clear attempt to stop certain religious clothing most often associated with women of a certain faith - on the absurd grounds that no one should be allowed to "see but not be seen" in public. Are bans on tinted car windows and sunglasses to follow? Bans on security cameras? We in the West live in a pan-optical society, and the right to look extends far beyond the right to be seen. Otherwise x-ray specs would be enforced. We have a right, surely, to protect our dignity, modesty, person - and even privacy. More to the point, is religion such a threat to the secular powers that be (namely so-called democracy and capitalism) that it must be basically cleared from the market place and the public squares, as a contagion, like second-hand smoke? Religion threatens humanist mastery, and especially the aims of instrumentalism. It gestures to realms and spaces less visible, and less scientific - indeed, the mystical, the spiritual, perhaps the magical, and, at times, of course, the musical and artistic. At the least, the need or desire for religion is a deep and valid psychological one. Whether there is a God (and we must hope there is, or could be) there is definitely an historic belief in one, extending over thousands of years. It seems churlish and simplistic to seek to rescue these women from garments they have no wish to rend. Such laws are inhospitable and utterly infantile. True freedom would allow for each of use to choose how we wish to be arrayed and disport ourselves. Clothing makes the man. Symbols have power. Without religious symbols, religion is drained and purified, desalinated to the point of evaporation. Then again, perhaps God exists finally in the thin air the State demands he disappear into. To trouble our minds no more.
Comments
In this country, we need to ban the reading of poetry. That should make sales shoot up, albeit under the counter. Perhaps if we associated poetry with a certain kind of clothing, and then moved to Belgium ...
Completely obscuring the face is absurd. This is not our culture. If we are expected to wear veils in THEIR culture (and THERE, it's often on pain of prison, death, or maiming), why shouldn't we require our cultural normals to be respected? I don't respect liberalism's inconsistencies anymore. Not one blip, and not one iota. It seems to have taken over Britain. And it's gradually overtaking Canada. There are a lot of reasonable people who just don't like this hypocrisy. I am one of them.
very very interesting and thought provoking post, don't agree with you (or these responses) and may come back when I had had time to articulate my response better.
thanks
martine
In a small town in Québec, they wanted to have a rational discussion, with a set of guidelines to help people who enter the town understand their culture, and of their expectations. Some of us remember this episode as the Reasonable Accommodation talks. The fact that people couldn't even discuss this in their own town without being condemned (unreasonably) but supposedly "more cultured" people in big cities like Montreal made thoughtcrime illegal by default. No prison, but perhaps, at least so far, just the ones in our heads. Eventually, if we continue shutting people up this way (and I'm not saying it will or won't, but tendencies in Britain/Europe, Canada, and also gradually in the U.S. are moving in that direction.
I think there are two things you might not be considering, Todd. One is possibly gender-related. It is possible to read extreme forms of dress like niqab not only as meaning "this is the way I interpret modest dress" but as "this IS modest dress and you folk who don't wear it are, therefore, a bunch of sluts". It can be read as a criticism of the normal dress of others, in other words, which they will then resent. I must admit I'd have thought men would feel insulted too, at the suggestion that a passing glimpse of face would turn them into ravening lechers. There's also the matter of pressure. I recall that when some rather self-advertising young teen wanted to wear jilbab to school instead of the religiously perfectly acceptable hijab, it started an unseemly competition among girls' brothers, pressuring their sisters to wear it in a spirit of "my sister's more modest than yours". I can't help thinking that modesty consists more in behaviour than in dress and is seldom best achieved by wearing clothing so extreme as to amount to an advertisement of modesty - rather a contradiction in terms, no?
As for the law, I think it best kept out if possible, but it is a fact that in our culture, for some centuries covering the face (as opposed to the hair) has been a sign of criminality; where do you think highwayman's and burglars' trademark masks came from? Since it would be manners, if we were in somewhere like Saudi, to respect their dress code, ought the same not to apply in reverse?
Sorry, bad choice of word there, i meant equally in the sense of 'also', they are suggesting punishing people for their choice of dress, not that a fine is like being beheaded. I just think that this type of bill is just the wrong reaction to the situation/problem. By Sheenagh's argument anyone's choices about just about anything could potentially be an implied criticism of others, are we suddenly all so sensitive about our own decisions. I think her final comment is more telling if viewed in reverse: subconsciously we (I mean our society) think these women are criminals because they cover their faces, not that we fear they might be, we assume they are. It is totally about the fear of something people don't understand. I for one have no idea what goes on in the mind of someone who choses this form of dress but I have no wish to force them to go around in jeans and t-shirt . This is what you expect when you live in a multicultural society, people who think differently.
with respect
martine