On Monday, Julia Klöckner, deputy chief of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Rhineland-Palatinate, spoke in favor of banning the burka, a head-to-toe veil worn by women in some Islamic cultures that covers the whole body other than the eyes.
She told the German newspaper Rheinische Post that, for her, burkas "did not stand for religious diversity, but for a degrading image of women." She said that the German constitution emphasized that women and men were of equal value and that "looking at people's faces" also belonged to the culture of an open society.
According to Klöckner, burkas suggest that women needed to be under the veil because they would otherwise cause offense. Klöckner asserted that the "male observer" was the problem in this case and not the woman. [Deutsche Welle] Read more
