Last Thursday the lower house of the Belgian parliament passed a law banning the burka. It does not seem likely that this law will pass the Senate any time soon, but that did not prevent politicians elsewhere in Europe from calling for a continent-wide ban. [Islam in Europe] Read more
What's threatening about European attacks on Muslim veils BELGIUM'S PARLIAMENT is so polarized along linguistic lines that it has been unable to agree on a government for much of the past three years. At the moment it is ruled by a caretaker coalition. But the deputies managed to achieve near-unanimity this week on one pressing issue: discriminating against Muslims. A law passed by the lower house would ban the wearing of full Islamic face veils in any public place -- and exacerbate what is becoming an ugly European trend. [The Washington Post] Read more
MEP Koch-Mehrin calls for Europe-wide burka ban After Belgium's parliament voted to ban Islamic full-face veils, the German vice-president of the European Parliament has called for a ban of the burka throughout Europe. Silvana Koch-Mehrin called the full-body veil an attack on the rights of women in a guest editorial in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
"I would like to see all forms of the burka banned in Germany and in all of Europe," wrote the politician, a member of Germany's pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP). [The Local Europe] Read more [via Islamophobia Watch]
Belgium bans burkas: Women who refuse to show faces to be jailed for a week under draft law Belgium became the first European country to impose a full ban on wearing a burka last night. Its parliament approved a draft law which states women can be jailed for hiding their faces in public. The bill - which must be rubber-stamped by the Belgian senate - is set to become law by July. [MailOnline] Read more
Rejecting the burka In Britain, for instance, this total lack of willingness to integrate on the part of some Muslims has become an obstacle to the formal learning of English, has heightened inter-communal tensions, and has reinforced the ghettoization of Asian Muslims into separate enclaves with high unemployment and increased social alienation.
.... Those who support such legislation realize that an easygoing multiculturalism works only when there are basic shared values and a willingness to integrate. But European multiculturalism has deteriorated into rudderless moral relativism and a pusillanimous reluctance to criticize radical Islamic customs for fear of being branded an Islamophobe. [The Jerusalem Post] Read more
