- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmit.online
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmit.online
The Egyptian government has announced a ban on the wearing of the face-covering niqab in schools from the beginning of the next term on 30 September.
Education Minister Reda Hegazy made the announcement on Monday, adding that students would still have the right to choose whether to wear a headscarf, but insisted it must not cover their faces.
He also said that the child’s guardian should be aware of their choice, and that it must have been made without any outside pressure.
This might prevent a lot of women from going to school or work if their male guardians don’t let them step out without Niqab or Buqra (which is the real problem).
I wish people would just leave women the fuck alone when it comes to their choice of dress and put this much needed focus into ensuring that all women are able to make their own choices.
Their choice huh
You think you’ve found some logical inconsistency, but you haven’t. They’re talking about IN GENERAL, people need to stfu about women’s clothing. Including the men in an unapologetically patriarchal country.
Yeah rhis is what happens when you take phrases out of context. I meant they should have the choice to not wear it if they don’t want to. I explained a bit more about my position in other comments under this discussion.
🤣 What the hell is this comment? You honestly believe women want to wear black beekeeper suits?
I can’t believe how blind people are to the suffering and degradation of women brought on by the Muslim fate.
Imagine they required, instead of women, all black people to wear this shit? Would you be here telling people “jUsT lEt bLaCk pEoPlE wEaR wHaT tHeY wAnT!”
These outfits, and forced make guardianship are inhumane vile bullshit and needs to be eradicated.
I’m an ex Muslim and wore hijab for 5-6 years.
What were your feelings about it at the time?
At the time I wore it out of “choice” but in retrospect it’s clear that I was indoctrinated. I got religious purely from wanting to be a “good kid”, ended up hearing that women should wear hijab when they get their periods. I got it at 12 so I put it on. My dad was encouraging and to him it’s a mix of religious reasons and feeling like I look like a decent girl on a society with little respect for women, I think he was protective and worried, not religious and dominating. He didn’t have a “choice” either: you cover your women or you risk appearing as an immoral person (even if you understand that these things are not really related).
It felt bad for the first year because I was the only student in my class for a headscarf on from grade 6 to 8. In the middle east, women wearing hijab at younger ages + having darker skin is associated with poverty and ignorance, so people looked down on me but others were happy I was covered. After that it felt like shit, but I didn’t see what I could do because “god said so”. A year later I was reading the Quran and hated the verse about husbands told to beat their wives, I called a friend on the phone and cried as I talked about this. She agreed at the time and later became an atheist too. My faith started to turn into hate and resentment for god who made me “less than others”. A year after that, I discover Slayer, I’m on the internet more often, and finally decided to take the hijab off. It was not a pleasant experience.
Learn to read, my g.
I know alot of women who do love to wear it
Bullshit! In all the free countries of the world where women can dress whatever they want, you see face tattoos, extreme body modifications, hairs of every color and not once you see women actively deciding to cover their head and faces like you see in Muslim countries, so fuck you with that rhetoric that this is what “women want”
Okay, let me explain my position better since it seems like people think this was badly worded.
For me, the one thing that should be protected is the absolute choice to wear what you want as a woman, and since hijab is forced on a large number of women, be it in psychological or physical or emotional, there should be all sorts of programs and help and support they can get especially as teens or children. I don’t think banning it is helpful in this way, as in I don’t think it’s effective. The real issue is that control is being exerted on these women. Putting more control over them from the opposite direction is giving them more shit to deal with. What Egypt or France should have done was have a long conversation with the parents and girls who wear hijab and make it easy for these girls to get support to stop wearing it. That’s how you get good results. Banning a piece of clothing is often more of a political gesture.
Edit: I also want to say that that position is not what I meant to convey in the paragraph. Sorry if it was badly worded but I feel like when read alongside of the first paragraph above it, it’s more clear that what I mean is that women are forced to wear it by their guardian and parents and that this should not be the case. I didn’t think I had to explicity say “ofc many women are forced to wear it and this is wrong” because I thought that was obvious. My mistake, I guess I should be more explicit with such controversial topics.
Lemmy is filled with ADHD addled reactionary wannabe communists with critical thinking issues, trust me you have to explicitly say everything you mean or they’ll take any gap in your well meaning argument and assume you’re a racist conservative and downvote you into oblivion because thinking is too hard for them.
I’m not sure about the prevelance of ADHD on Lemmy or any such platform and don’t know how it would affect one’s ability to understand and respond. But beyond that, yeah point taken! I will make sure to do so in the future.
For reference I’m 30F and was raised and born in a Muslim family, became an atheist around 16/17, wore the headscarf for about 5/6 years and was both scrutinized for wearing it at an early age (12) and then for later taking it off in highschool, punished twice by society with my own personal choice becoming painful to take, no matter how I choose to dress.
People talked shit about me for years for taking it off, it fucking sucks, but one thing I really would have appreciated as a hijabi teen was some support to allow me to take my own choices. One adult around me who offered such a thing was my physics teacher, bless his heart, he looked at me the day I took it off and said, “You’re as old as my children, this is your choice as a grown up and I respect it.” my biology teacher, on the other hand, did not speak to me for at least a semester, and another lab assistant teacher chased me to the bathroom to guilt trip me about taking it off. It was not a fun ride. What I needed was freedom to experiment, not a ban.
Edit: added spacing between paragraph
It was more just that they can’t seem to focus on a comment long enough to engage with it and understand what someone actually trying to say. If it’s not just shitting on someone immediately people don’t know how to respond so they just assume a hostile stance and cherry pick your argument to misinterpret you into being the bad guy.
You’re correct, banning things just makes the issue societal and authoritarian which feeds into the conservative POV that “they’re trying to destroy our faith” and polarizes the problem. This makes meaningful change difficult or impossible. The truth is that even if no one would ever choose to wear a burqa on their own in an objectively neutral society, it’s still a culturally ingrained thing that has no negative value outside of the requirement that it he worn.
Saying it’s a problem is like a feminist claiming being a stay at home mom is a problem, as long as everyone in the situation is happy and not being forced to do anything, buzz off and let people live their lives.
Now of course because I have to cover my own ass cause apparently not spelling this out means I don’t understand it or I support religious fascism…
The moment that society forces a group to do something, like making women cover themselves and designing society so that they can’t function outside of marriage(servitude) and motherhood, yes that’s a problem and objectively against the freedoms of women in a systemic sense. You’ll get no argument there.
Learn to fucking read holy shit.
Agreed. I don’t understand why this is so difficult a concept for people who claim to be trying to help women. Banning certain head garments because they’re “symbolic of women’s oppression” is just another way of restricting women’s choices and doesn’t promote their independence at all. Just let women choose how to dress themselves, same as men, it’s really not that complicated.
Problem is while other hijabs might be voluntary I don’t think anyone voluntarily wears a niqab
I agree that this aspect of it makes this issue very complicated. I wore a hijab aged 12 (out of choice, but really it was religious indoctrination) and took it off at 17. Almost every other Hijabi and Niqabi I know doesn’t really want to wear it or wishes it was not part of their lives or a religious obligation. A large number of said women eventually took it off. And of course a handful wanted to wear it and enjoy the look of modesty.
However, how does banning the Niqab help any of these women? 😬
One argument my partner made while discussing this is that it could help some women forced to wear it to be able to take it off… But I doubt that is the situation in Egypt given the culture, traditions, and law.
I know several women who wear the niqab by choice, and in the face (pun not intended) of social pressure.
That completely misses the point. The issue is that women should be allowed to wear whatever they want, same as men do. Banning a garment, even when no woman elects to wear it, serves no purpose except to restrict women’s choices.
not trying to shit stir, but can men really wear balaclavas anywhere they want?
I’ve seen plenty of delivery people wearing them during the colder months in my city. Since they aren’t worn for religious reasons, I suspect most men don’t wear them indoors, but I’m unaware of any law that prohibits them from doing so. Sure, maybe there are some high-security places where you wouldn’t be allowed to wear anything that covers your face, but that applies equally to men and women.
Covering your face in public space is banned in France.
I’m not sure what your point is, as the bans in question were clearly sprung from concerns about Islamic face coverings in particular. They may have used generalized language in the laws to mask that focus, but it’s clearly there. Am I missing something here?
If their guardian decides, its not “their choice”'. How are you even agreeing with the statement above?
I’m talking about women, not their guardian. I don’t think parents should be able to force their children to wear restrictive clothing, unless there’s some sort of medical reason for it. Certainly not for religious reasons.
The statement seemed to me to say it should be their choice and not a “guardian”. How are you confused by the response above?
Exactly. No one is saying those women should be forced to wear a Niqab by society. We are actually saying the exact opposite, Egyptian women should be more free to take the hiajb or niqab off if they like, and not have to live with legal or societal consequences.
There are feminist organizations already working on that. It’s not like the only two choices are a ban or no ban.
That’s one way to solve the issue in a method that works, rather than going around to destroy all “symbols of oppression”. Like go ahead and bash at all these symbols, but make sure you don’t bash women along with it.
My understanding is that feminists themselves are split on this, sad as that is. At least with respect to the ban in France, I know some feminists have argued in favor of a ban on the hijab, exactly using the “symbol of oppression” argument. I don’t pretend to know what the divide in opinion is among feminists, percentage-wise, but clearly a significant contingent of them are supportive of this bullshit.
Again, I don’t understand why this is such a difficult concept, but it apparently is. That, or my standards for human intelligence are just too high. Probably the latter.
One reason may be that Hijab and Niqab are politicized. Culture wars are happening on the expense of these women who just want a normal life and basic human rights.
Edit: I also just read the news article on Aljazera Arabic and one thing I did like is that they emphasized that all female students are free to wear Hijab as long as it’s their choice and they are not being forced by parents, but there is a full ban on face covers for school-aged girls. This changes my view on a bit, I think up to a certain age it should not be okay to come to school with a totally covered face (unless it’s for some reason necessary). However, once you get to high school level or bans in the workplace, it gets problematic.
I would still have much rather seen schools take a bigger active role in the lives of students who wear the Niqab and discuss the issues with the parents.
This is the beauty of the French system, it’s all religious paraphernalia banned in schools.
I feel like France is whacko. Religion is a normal part of human existence. Why would I prevent children from displaying these sentiments or developing parts of their personality that have a spiritual or religious connection? What kind of jerk would I need to be? 😬
That’s like saying slavery is a normal part of human existence because we’ve been doing it for thousands of years.
Why would you want children indoctrinated into a system of beliefs that reject reality? Only a jerk would want that.
Is it really the same? Slavery vs spirituality and following a religious path? 😬 Does it cause the same type of harm? How are these comperable?
But yeah, I do agree that just because people have done soemthing for X years does not make it legitimate.
The problem isn’t any spiritual or religious connection the children form. The problem is that most monotheistic religions are very rigid in their exclusive prerogative of interpretation concerning all things fundamental and truth-related.
Having more than one exclusively-dominant religion represented in any one space must lead to unsolvable conflict. Contradicting absolutes cannot tolerate each other.
Given that a functioning state must necessarily assume the role of a sovereign, banning religion from public spaces is pretty much the only solution for preventing religious conflicts.
I agree with what you say about religion. However, I don’t agree that bans are useful or effective. Doesn’t seem to be “preventing religious conflicts” all that much imo.
It’s not about preventing religious conflicts. It’s about not giving those conflicts a forum at school, the place where children learn to be tolerant from people who aren’t their potentially fundamentally religious parents.
But that was the last sentence in your previous comment.
My previous sentence sets the principle, your answer rejects the principle on an all-or-nothing basis, my following comment clarifies the application of said principle within the comparatively narrow setting of schools.
I’m not sure what’s left unclear.
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The problem is, you know most (80-90%) of these girls are forced by their parents to wear religious clothing. Not doing so will result in beatings or, when they’re older, being kicked out of the house.
How are you, as a society, going to protect these children? Just sitting behind your keyboard philosophizing that you shouldn’t restrict their free choice does not protect them at all, as history proves.
Stop being cheeky, it’s not that cute. I am not society and it’s not my job to protect these folks. I have always been of the opinion though that Western nations should not be taking in immigrants from Islamic countries that practice these strict religious codes that are incompatible with our mores. For the families that are already there, they’ll have to deal with them via the same CPS systems they currently have in place. The parents will have to learn to assimilate and adopt Western morals surrounding child rearing or lose custody of their children. Maybe the French government could run adverts encouraging people to adopt Muslim girls so they don’t all wind up in group homes. It’s a shitty situation, born of a culture clash that could have been avoided.