Ban the Veil

[Lord J Esq]

Yes, the veil is evil. ... However...[c]hange is one of those things that's very difficult. ... This is why we ease ourselves into things. ... Therefore, I propose a steady dip into banning the veil, and include references to other religious paraphernalia as you step in. This way, people will be more able to adapt and we help others out, not just people wearing veils.

That may very well be a legitimate strategy. I don't presently have enough mastery of the social engineering particulars at issue here to offer an opinion or an endorsement. I know in a more general sense that people are sometimes very receptive to rapid, major change, just as they are sometimes very receptive to gradual, controlled change, and likewise just as they are sometimes very unreceptive to one or the other, or both. My overarching strategic view is that religion is not a trustworthy ally in the fight against religious radicalism or religion at large, and that using religion to manipulate the religious is rarely if ever appropriate as a tool for social progress.

~~~

I'm going to sound like some kind of dictator here, but sometimes, rapid, fast change is good. The Industrial Revolution rippled through the world and dramatically improved the standard of life all across the western world, which had existed in squalor for centuries. The printing press drove a rapid stake through the church's hold on intelligence and literacy, as another example. Farther back, we can see that principalities conquered by the Roman Empire were often left with a legacy of Roman civil law or traditions, advanced beyond the local civilization at the time (and providing a useful framework for future development in the medieval and modern eras). Sometimes it's simply too important on a humanistic level to wait for change to make it easier.

My personal sympathies definitely lie on the side of rapid change, not just with secularization but with most things generally, because of the costs to present-day individuals of moving slowly. I wish I had a better understanding of why people sometimes acquiesce to rapid change imposed upon them and sometimes rebel against it passionately. That's the key to determining when slower reform is necessary. However, whenever rapid reform is feasible, I don't mind inconveniencing people. It may even be enriching. We are, after all, an adaptable bunch.

I love J's idea of a true Enlightened Imperium and city on the hill that acts as a shining beacon for humanity and can conquer other states for the sake of humanity, without any of the historical baggage of ills (like racism or wild resource exploitation) that came with imperialism. It's sad living in a world where no such city yet exists; where no imperial influence can yet be trusted; and where even the beautiful example of America has been tarnished with decades of subterfuge and questionable acts. I wish that Imperium existed, and we could have rapid, good change.

As THE EMPIRE implores we of good conscience to create it, so too may we be worthy to fulfill it. I am persuaded that our democracy is a pale imitation of what we could achieve if political power were determined on the humanistic merit of ideas rather than by guns, money, or indoctrination.

I've often thought that the worst victims of the destruction of religion will be those, perhaps in their 40s, 50s, and beyond, who have spent entire lives living in those religions and building their systems of meaning around them. One of my most poignant experiences was going with a missionary to a home where an elderly woman was taken with cancer and was awaiting death in a matter of days. We prayed for her as she lay there, almost unconscious. The rapid destruction of religion would deprive these people of their coping mechanisms and might violently shatter their existential bubbles. But it has to go at some point. As rapidly as possible.

Yes, it is almost inevitable that we must do some "grandfathering" in order to spare established individuals the suffering that would result by this personal destruction of their worldview. However, this raises the key issue of how to deprive these people of the control over their younger charges and wards by which religious ideas are perpetuated intergenerationally. Frankly I do not see a solution which preserves the family unit as we know it.

~~~

Yes. I have listened to liberals defend female genital mutilation with vigor, and the series of events that have lead to an ardent, compassionate White person defending FGM is just breathtakingly screwed up.

Aye. It is important to remember that, while anyone is welcome to identify as a liberal, the actual progression of liberal goals is something at which many if not most liberals are incompetent. I posted the same essay that you read here on the website Daily Kos, and was met with mostly criticism. The people who make those criticisms are at best naively ignorant; more often they are domestic threats to progress. Much of mainstream liberal orthodoxy is wrong, plain and simple, and plenty of the people who proclaim to be progressive are anything but. The human mind is easily shrunk to the pettiest of dimensions by those who fear or disdain bold thinking.

Another way to put it is this: A person can wreck their integrity solely by the labels they choose for themselves, but the reverse is not true. A person can never establish their integrity solely by labels. Nurture the intelligence to recognize when your traditional ideological allies are wrong and you are right, and nurture the confidence to retain your integrity on those occasions.

Now, Whites with any kind of decency and sense of history are shadowed by colonialism and that topic must be revisited, and constantly.

Race is bogus. One of the left's biggest mistakes is to get so caught up in counter-racism. There's nothing wrong with "Whites" any more than with anyone else. The colonialist atrocities committed on behalf of white supremacy say as much about you and me as my math grades back in my school days say about the mathematical competencies of all malekind. Most of those atrocities were committed by or on the orders of the wealthy upper class, with whom we may share a skin color but share precious little of sociocultural value.

That said, you're right that the lessons of colonialism must be revisited often. You don't know much about me. I am an imperialist. I have, over the course of more than ten years, put together a philosophy which calls for fundamental reform in the political order of the world. The word I have chosen to associate myself with, "imperial," bears a lot of negative baggage--none of which I endorse. I have learned about, or witnessed, so many rotten empires and rotten imperials that I understand as well as anybody and better than nigh everybody the dangers of playing with imperial "fire," so to say. Colonialism was a terrible perversion of imperialism, as has been any imperialistic model which existed to enrich the imperial center at the expense of its suzerainties.

The only defensible imperial models are those which assert control to export wealth and opportunity. It is a lesson well-implied by colonial history.

The West's approach to cultures other than its own is a writhing mass of dysfunctions and it's to be questioned-- at every turn.

Yes. I do not know of an existing country I would endorse at present to dominate an imperial world government. The people who have built power bases for themselves in Western nations only occasionally have humanistic motives at their center. I have been so thoroughly disillusioned by my survey of the workings of American government that I would never trust this country with more than a limited mission of intervention in other countries. I went so far as to support the Iraq War in 2003, and I was terribly humbled and greatly educated by what came after the invasion.

I am aware of, and sensitive to, the flaws of cultural intervention by this country or others that I know anything about.

~~~

(Zeality, I think your idea of an "Enlightened Imperium" is a bold one, but Edward Said would strike you down with proverbial lightening if he read what you just wrote. And for decent enough reason. We can't escape history that easily.)

Edward Said can direct his lightning at me if he so desires. It's my concept and I understand every detail of it. Just as Force Lightning had no power over Yoda, who understood its nature, the fears and complaints of established authorities are meaningless to me. What occasional valuable criticisms they may offer pass effortlessly into my imperial model. All else is repulsed.

In whatever extent I should ultimately fall short of my ideals, may I always have a mind so supple and an ego so wise as to lend my enthusiasm and perspective to the good ideas of those who come after me...rather than retreating as most authorities do when they fail to achieve what they set out to do. But first let's see what I actually accomplish.

But the idea of human rights can be reconciled with colonialism, through hard work and careful thinking. We need to be courageous and disciplined enough to do that work.

I disagree. Colonialism is not only ethically unsalvageable; it is conceptually unworthy of rehabilitation. My goal is never to supersede foreign cultures with our own, but to integrate all.

Hmm. Religion as you are framing it is Abrahamic in nature; which is understandable, given that Abrahamic religions are the ones with power and influence on a massive scale. Don't confuse Abrahamic dominance with other purposes religion has served throughout history.

Religion--all religion--serves five essential purposes:

1) Operational control over or influence upon society to promote social order favorable to the perpetuation of the religion itself;
2) Relief from, and often justification of, human apprehensions and suffering through consoling storytelling made possible by faith;
3) Community and family unity (see #1);
4) Satisfaction (or repression) of the will's desire for relevance and meaningfulness (see #2, 3);
5) Conceptualization of indifferent natural phenomena, for meaningfulness (see #4) but also in itself to address human curiosity.

Abrahamic religions are notable for their aggressiveness (i.e., their conquest of other cultures), their isolation (i.e., the resistance to cultural integration which they have not conquered), and their remarkable survival power (which is a product of the first two). But these methodological or perhaps one might say "stylistic" considerations are independent of the underlying purposes of Abrahamic religions, which are in common with all other religions.

(Note that the manipulation of religion for ideological gain is not an inherent purpose of religion, but rather a use of religion. In any case it is irrelevant here; I mention it only as an aside.)

Personally, I think that breaking the hold of the dominant monotheisms in our culture, and seeing religion on a larger and more inclusive scale -- with the Abrahamics as one option of many, in other words -- will create a much more fertile environment for humanism to flourish.

The world will definitely be better off when free from the incredible virulence of Abrahamic dominance over the globe. I doubt another religion could defeat these three without somehow coopting it. However, history tells more tales of malignant religions than benign ones. The religions which preceded Abrahamic monotheism were not oriented toward humanistic ideals. All of them were, first and foremost, vehicles of control. The farther back in time you go, the more primitive and barbaric the religions become. Even those which plentifully celebrated life were bringers of senseless death and torture. That is the nature of rule by force and by fear.

As Christianity wanes in the West and other religions fill the void (excepting those people who transition into secularism), other religions will demonstrate their dangerousness as their popularity and political power grow. The cutest and most benign religions of the moment will not remain so cuddly when they become serious shapers of society. No religion could, because for religion to become incorruptible it would have to nullify itself by releasing people from the intellectual chains of faith.

I am interested to see the outcome of religions which have grown so far away from religion that they are more like social movements with religious symbolism and figureheads. Reform Judaism and Unitarianism, for example. These may provide us with an integral blueprint for future secularization initiatives.

~~~

But religion does not necessarily involve erroneous beliefs about the nature of the universe and the idea of the supernatural. The work that was done in 19th century philosophy, literature, and psychology salvaged much that was good and meaningful and useful of religion, and provided methods to work within those paradigms that do not impede human progress, scientific rigor, or critical analysis.

I think you and I generally agree here, although we use different conceptual framework. My view is that religion is superfluous; even its best functions are more effective in other institutions, whereas religion introduces many evils you will find no where else, and justifies still more evils so very well.

It's really just that the population at large and their religious-institution overlords haven't caught up to that and continue to think of religion in backward, concretist terms.

This stuff is far more generationally-based than it seems. America's present problems with fundamentalism stem back to its puritanical beginnings and the cultural stuffs of the northern British people who settled in the American South. (Scotland's greatest embarrassment, no doubt.)

That seems like such an incredible waste of centuries worth of work when the same could easily be achieved by working within a religious paradigm but thinking of it in literary or metaphorical terms... to say nothing that a lot of that bathwater has to do with the surrounding culture, symbology, and aesthetics of a religion, which are not to be diminished or underestimated. They are powerful tools and can be used for human fulfillment and betterment.

I hope you will think I am not being thoughtless here with my forthcoming blunt analogy. Rather, I simply find it ideal to point out that effective tools are not necessarily worth using. We must consider more than their functional effectiveness. At what cost do we use them? What danger do they post to us? And, at an altogether higher level of abstraction, are the things they build going to enrich us?

Religion is intertwined with much of that which is relevant, useful, and desirable in our civilization. It would be enormously expensive from a reformatory viewpoint to disentangle religion from our future when we could simply "bring it along for the ride" as it were. The question of which option to choose is a matter of the highest philosophical order: What do we want humanity to become? It also causes a much more practical problem: At what expense do we embrace our own imperfections because we have decided it would be too difficult to change them?

Tradition is absolutely not beyond reproach, but there are things that the weight of tradition can accomplish.

Tradition and religion are very different things.

~~~

I don't remember if she was going on about some crazy people back in Pakistan or how they might get shot for not wearing the veil, but she mentioned being shot at. ...[T]hat's just... not right, you know?

I know. =(

~~~

Maybe your friend is worried about how the official ban(s?) interact with a more general atmosphere of Islamophobia? That, too, would be a question worth fleshing out further.

I will address this in a later post. Indeed, all posts from this point in the thread onward will I address later, since they represent a shift in the topic back onto the issue of the veil.

~~~
Edited for quote attribution errors. I think I still have some of yours improperly stamped, Syna. Drat!

[Manly Man]

The more that I've thought about this and what I said, the more I thought of ways to settle this without doing something as blatant as passing a ban. All that would do is make the U.S. look even more phobic of Islam than it already is. What I propose should be done is to do something more subtle than outright making it law. Make infomercials or flyers that talk about self-expression, to show who you really are, using metaphors about taking off one's mask. Perhaps using computer graphics to make the display be an entire street of people walking about faceless,and when one of them begins to get their face back, that person begins to 'look at things in a new light.' They then spread the idea of being 'you,' of having your own identity, rather than giving a social anonymity that restricts and prevents them from showing how they really are and how they really feel.

I am still against the idea of going and banning the veil, because all it would do is make us seem even more forceful, even if it's for the good of the people, and therefore such an idea being presented would end up getting more flak than if it were introduced a bit more passively, making it have more of a look and feel for choice. Just remind them that this is their life, they are their own person, and therefore they have their own choices to make. Making it illegal to don the veil has a feeling similar to if it was that we told them it was illegal to do the opposite and not wear it. Presenting something in a light that promotes freedom of choice looks all the more pleasing than basically saying, "You'll show your faces, and  to do otherwise will get you arrested." It has a bit of a ring to it that makes it seem an idea to fear than one to support.

[Syna]

Feel free to skip this post, as it is all about the religion tangent. I realize this is derailing Lord J's major topic and is a bit of a behemoth, so I won't be terribly upset if this is totally ignored! (I also performed a bit of archeology and unearthed some of the long tradition of religious debates at the Compendium before I wrote this: yikes. Little did I know what I'd gotten myself into when I posted in this thread, ha.)

My points can be summarized as:
1) Religion's problems often begin where culture and politics introduce them, and we can create a system that discourages and even disables that by shifting the focus of spiritual life to the experiential.
and, more importantly,
2) Humanity needs social methods to deal with what I call hierophanies (by way of Mircea Eliade). Religion can provide these methods.

All quotes are by Lord J because it's easier that way. And so, on we go to point 1:

1) Operational control over or influence upon society to promote social order favorable to the perpetuation of the religion itself;

You're giving religion a bit too much credit, I think. Religious justification should not be mistaken for religious impetus, and I'd say the former is far more common than the latter. Even the Spanish Inquisition was strongly motivated by politics; the religious thrust made it more vicious and menacing, and I would argue that the literalistic, exclusivist religious climate made the culture dangerously intolerant, but it was the breeding ground tilled by politics, culture, and religion working in tandem that made the Inquisition possible. The true problem is this: the dogmatic streaks in certain religions enable political and cultural concerns to be taken to violent extremes.

That tendency is considerably less potent when you aren't dealing with an evangelistic faith. Let's take Egyptian and Roman societies, for instance. Both societies strongly emphasized loyalty to the state and considered religion absolutely essential to the perpetuation of the kingdom. The concern was not for the perpetuation of religion -- that idea would have been quite alien to them -- but for the political regime. And when a war was waged, one might invoke Sekhmet or Mars, but one did not wage war in the name of those deities, and CERTAINLY not under the sanctimonious pretense that other cultures needed to be 'converted' to their worship! There have been no wars waged at all, to my knowledge, in the name of a polytheistic god. This differs quite significantly from a worldview that cultivates an idea like "we must fight  to save the Holy Land from the infidels." (Any religion with animism would be dumbfounded by that idea. The Holy Land? Isn't there a land wight in my backyard?)

Such anxieties over the perpetuation of a religion are only really present in religions that have reason to maintain such anxieties. The transience of life, including the death of deities, is a matter that is considered over and over again in myth. There are religions where no fear exists that people halfway across the world are going to hell (which leads to a convenient validation for European racism and colonialist impulses) or that a 'false' religion will overtake the one, specific, immutable location that your religion calls 'holy'. In short, the polytheistic religions I'm familiar with accepted that all is mutable. This makes quite a difference!

(a disclaimer: I have my clear bias, but I recognize I'm glossing over a lot.  Although I will defend the point that monotheism as you see it in the Abrahamics has certain scripturally-based tendencies toward intolerance and absolutism, I could never call the religions that produced Rudolf Otto, Kierkegaard, Averroes, and Sufism completely debased and corrupt. Any Abrahamic readers are assured that I am just using monotheism as a convenient whipping boy to make the point that religions can take very different forms My personal beliefs are certainly more nuanced than "polytheism good, monotheism bad." Especially considering that Abrahamics are not the only monotheists on the block.)

But these methodological or perhaps one might say "stylistic" considerations are independent of the underlying purposes of Abrahamic religions, which are in common with all other religions.

They certainly have commonalities, but differences in framework cannot be underestimated. The viral concept of Heresy, for instance, is not (to my knowledge) found in any identifiable form within polytheism and animism. The closest analogs I can think of are the ideas of 'purity' and 'impurity' in terms of ritual preparedness, which do not really imply heresy at all (and certain chthonic rituals actually welcomed 'impurity'). There's also the idea of treason, which is explicitly political and framed in a different way. One could make the argument that Heresy is just the idea of the Profane taken to an extreme, but I would argue that this is an extremism made possible by absolutist inclinations, and, as we've seen, not all religions possess this.

.. history tells more tales of malignant religions than benign ones. The religions which preceded Abrahamic monotheism were not oriented toward humanistic ideals. All of them were, first and foremost, vehicles of control. The farther back in time you go, the more primitive and barbaric the religions become.

A few points. I'm making some assumptions about your underlying premises, but I think my impressions may be worth addressing. Apologies if I mistook you.
- You seem to have a Hobbesian "nasty, brutish and short" view of primitive cultures. That view has been dismantled, with many pains, by anthropology. I can provide plenty of sources for this, but one has only to look at a modern example of a healthy primitive society, like the animistic Kalash people, to see that it isn't so simple.
     I believe in human progress -- I truly do -- but we cannot believe the lie that progress is a straight line towards happiness and decency. Agriculture was a landmark in human progress, but many agricultural societies were far less egalitarian and fulfilled than many hunter-gatherer societies.
- You owe your humanistic ideals to the Greeks, J. Their society was incredibly flawed, but there is no doubt soever that they made humanism the paradigm possible, and the great engine of that humanistic power was their myths. (And some philosophers, but Plato was no humanist.) Personally, I consider many myths to be undeniably humanistic; certainly plenty were invoked by the great founders of humanism in its modern form.
     Humanism hardly arose out of a religious vacuum in the Enlightenment, as the 19th century philosophers who began the "war" between science and religion would have it! And make no mistake about it: the "war" between religion and science was begun by specific people with a specific, highly revisionist agenda. (You may know this already, but I feel it should be common knowledge, hence my ostentatious bolding. )
- I'm trying to respond to your characterization of religions as malignant and benign. I think this may be easier to do if you provide me with some examples. What did you have in mind when you said that?

Tradition and religion are very different things.

 I was actually referring to Zeality's use of the word tradition, which I read in the context of his larger point about religion. But I would also assert that they are not "very different." Tradition is a concept that incorporates plenty of what we ascribe to religion, so at points they are indistinguishable. It's true that tradition encompasses far more than religious history, though.  

And now to point 2:

2) Relief from, and often justification of, human apprehensions and suffering through consoling storytelling made possible by faith;

4) Satisfaction (or repression) of the will's desire for relevance and meaningfulness (see #2, 3);

5) Conceptualization of indifferent natural phenomena, for meaningfulness (see #4) but also in itself to address human curiosity.

We can agree on 4. I don't disagree with 2 or 5, per se, but if I understand them correctly, they are incomplete assessments.

Myth's functions extend to far more than just consolation and anthropomorphization. It's pretty common to characterize myth some kind of flimsy causal theory or as an opiate-for-the-masses, and to do so is to ignore the many myths which are disturbing, insightful, paradoxical, mysterious, and downright arresting. In the past two centuries the movement toward seeing myth in terms of an expression of fundamental human experiences has gained some prominence, and I'm a wholehearted proponent of this view.

Which leads me to my ultimate point. What you seem to be missing here -- though you may be alluding to it somehow in 4#? -- is Mircea Eliade's hierophany, the experience of the ineffable, what is clumsily described as  "the sacred." Religion is, ideally, a way of understanding and cultivating personal hierophanic experiences. It is valuable because of the symbolism it has developed, through the rituals and iconography and vocabulary, to work with hierophanies.

These experiences are non-negotiable. Humans are simply going to have them and going to have to make sense of them, and science and reason will not service (metaphor and subjectivity being largely, though not entirely, out of their sphere of influence). A paradigm shift, one which respects these experiences and has methods by which to stave off the influence of powermongerers, and which encourages complexity and depth and creative fertility, could transform religion to a state where it maintains its uses to humanity and reduces them to politicians (because of the emphasis on the personal). The key to this is a return to true experiential mysticism, as I mentioned before. This requires much more of an emphasis on the individual than one currently finds, but as the needs of certain spiritual people must be met by formal, communal paradigms (which entails organization on a larger scale), I tend to think religion should stay, albeit in an altered and more localized form. Put simply, not everyone is cut out for the discipline of forming a spiritual framework all on their own-- they need resources, and religion can provide them.

However, as I mentioned, I think religion needs to transform itself to achieve this. I have some reason to think this is happening-- there are scientists, theologians, philosophers, mystics, and artists all heading in this direction, in what I believe may be the initial stirrings of a zeitgeist. We shall see.

And now the "is religion worth it" question.  

My view is that religion is superfluous; even its best functions are more effective in other institutions, whereas religion introduces many evils you will find no where else, and justifies still more evils so very well.

Rather, I simply find it ideal to point out that effective tools are not necessarily worth using. We must consider more than their functional effectiveness. At what cost do we use them? What danger do they post to us? And, at an altogether higher level of abstraction, are the things they build going to enrich us?

I certainly agree with this second statement, and have sympathy for the first. You are correct, we do need to assess the effectiveness of religion versus the potentially disastrous downsides. At the moment, I think my proposed solution would work; if I'm wrong about that, well... I don't know. This is an excellent point.

For the record I am personally amenable to a transformation that would make Protestant Reformation look like Risk, and yes, I may even be amenable to the idea of outsourcing hierophantic functions to other institutions. (My personal vision for a more individualistic and pluralistic religious atmosphere includes stronger ties between art and religion, anyhow. I definitely think it is very healthy to think of religion in terms of art, as well as vice-versa. I'm biased, though. For me they are very much the same thing. There are a lot of people who would disagree with me quite strongly on that point.) It's a matter of how effective they would be and, since I am less pessimistic about religion than you are, I tip toward the 'keep religion' end of things.

What my defense amounts to is this: I want those who have some difficulty experiencing hierophanies, and interpreting their lives in a meaningful way, to have the framework which will serve their needs. If other institutions can do this, I am open to their absorption of religion, even though the loss of the beautiful aspects of religion would be a very, very tragic event. So although I see some missteps in your assessment of religious history and religious function in society, J, I also don't know what your proposed plans for religion are (if indeed you've gone that far in fleshing out your ideas at this point), and I may well find them compelling. As you said, we're coming at this from pretty different conceptualizations.

[Bard_of_Time]

I talked again with my Muslim friend today. She was showing me pictures from her aunt's wedding. Beautiful pictures, really. Lovely dresses, and she talked about how people back home would lighten up their skin to look more beautiful, and we talked about the nature of skin tone and how it reflects based on the time period.

At some point, she slipped in that she would have to get married one day. Everyone would. Why? She was female. All girls have to get married. She couldn't see herself getting married though.

Now, I dunno about you, but I feel like that's just... wrong. A girl doesn't HAVE to get married. You wanna get married? Sure! Go for it! Have a wonderful life, have kids if you want, grow old, all that jazz. You don't wanna get married? That's cool, too! Be a solitary woman, your own person. Have kids if you want, because you don't need to be married to have kids. Grow old, die your own person, not Mrs. Yourhusbandsnamehere.

Forcing people to do something they don't want to do is not right. My friend seems to have accepted it, though. She HAS to get married, and I personally am not going to tell her otherwise, else I risk our friendship. She's a sweet girl, loves to write, loves to draw, too.

[Thought]

I am currently reading Nirenberg's "Communities of Violence" (one of the "big" books of Medieval Spanish historical scholarship) and it had an interesting take on this topic. Specifically, his conclusion is that Muslims in Spain in the Middle ages after the (Re)Conquest controlled female sexuality (which the veil is a part of) not because they were interested in that sexuality, but rather it was seen as currency in an honor economy. This brings up the possibility, then, that in order to actually succeed in removing the type of action  that the veil represents, one actually needs to remove the honor economy from Muslim society. Not so much part of the current discussion, as an interesting thought related to the topic.

[Lord J Esq]

@Syna: I just wanted to note that I will eventually reply to your post!

[Syna]

Oh take your time! I look forward to it, but I certainly understand having more pressing matters to attend to (and chances are my answer will take ages anyway).

Thought, that's certainly an interesting take and resonates with what I know about the honor currency in Muslim countries, but the idea that there is no interest in female sexuality per se... well, it reminds me a bit of that typical feminist stance on rape that insists that sexual assault is all about power, not sex. That is, I find Nirenberg's idea insightful and compelling and probably a facet to what's going on -- perhaps, I would grant, the most important facet-- but something about it smells of missing the obvious, messy, and uncomfortable in favor of a clinical theory. A question I would ask is why female sexuality has become honor currency, opposed to, I don't know, material resources. The answer to that, I suspect, has to do with an interest in female sexuality.

I don't know how to prove this because I'm not a student of Muslim culture, so I'll resort to literary criticism. The Quran itself, by my analysis, definitely betrays an inherent preoccupation with female sexuality and how it is controlled (yea though the verses themselves are usually tame compared to fundamentalist cultural mores). I'm no imam, but if it walks like a duck...

[Lord J Esq]

Maybe your friend is worried about how the official ban(s?) interact with a more general atmosphere of Islamophobia? That, too, would be a question worth fleshing out further.

This is a big problem, which I spent some time addressing in the original post. The right is sucking up a lot of the oxygen for combating Islamic radicalism by going at it from the position of religious tribalism, xenophobia, and racism. Alas, any grander intention I had in mind to reply to your comment has been lost to the sands of time at this point.

~~~ ~~~

Laws have a very hard time influencing who people are. Laws used in this manner can produce results, but they are vulgar, although sometimes even the pittance of the change they can produce is worth it.

If you want to create a real change, if you want a society in which laws like this won’t have to be issued again and again for want of anyone paying attention to them, then the society itself has to change, not the laws that govern it. Make western culture something that people want to "convert" to.

That is, unfortunately, a slow process. So banning the veil might be a decent short-term measure. It wont solve the problem, but it might save a few people. However, banning the veil isn't the goal, it isn't even desirable, it is just less undesirable than the status quo. Don't focus on the veil, focus on conversion. Wearing a veil or not won’t make a woman free or a slave, but being free will cause them to not wear the veil.

Thus to bring us back to my first point, I agree that veils are something that need to be tossed aside. I disagree as to who should be the one doing the tossing, and therefore disagree as to where our efforts should be directed.

I tend to agree that forcing cultural changes by power of law is crude, and so you make a worthwhile point by suggesting we focus on cultural change through other means. I am certainly not suggesting we focus solely on legal remedies. My support for a prohibition on the veil (the face-covering veil, just to remind everybody) does not preclude my support for any other action. The issue has drawn a lot of attention to itself, but in the grander scheme of things I consider laws banning the veil in public to be a minor part of the overall strategy. Thus your point is well-taken but only marginally relevant. The more relevant issue is what the law will actually achieve, how effectively it will do so, and, also, whether or not we are ethically obliged to pass such laws even if they will likely not be effective (as surely as evangelicals oblige themselves to preach to even the most defiant nonbelievers). To that end I quote the earlier portion of your post:

Thus, allow me to ask a question: if one wants to eliminate veils-as-a-means-of-suppressing-women, will a law against them accomplish the goal?

I don't really need to wait for you to answer that, Josh, since we both know that the answer is no (at least in the short term).

I acknowledge the point you are trying to make; this is not a panacea. However, you underestimate the likely short-term consequences of the law. Every time a law is passed which forces changes in people’s daily behavior, the affected people’s lives change. In France there are enough people who dress this way in public that the law will definitely have ramifications (or, by this point, has already begun to reveal those ramifications).

Let’s consider what some of these changes should entail. Foremost is those who doff the veil will now be perceived differently by other members of the public. No longer will they be hidden inhuman piles of fabric radically dedicated to the Islamic faith; they will be modestly dressed Muslims. They will be treated differently, and in some cases they will no longer be mistreated by bigots who resent the veil for less than humanistic reasons.

(I should state outright that fighting bigotry by forbidding the behavior which bigots resent is rarely if ever justifiable, and is usually loathsome. I accept the outcome of reduced mistreatment as a collateral benefit of the ban, and would never support it as a primary justification for passing the ban in the first place. Nevertheless, by removing some of that harassment, there is an immediate and positive effect on the people who formerly wore the veil, one of several positive effects which collectively make more of a difference than you have acknowledged.)

On the other hand, these females will incur more mistreatment by Islamic bigots who hold them personally responsible for appearing in public with an inadequate level of modesty, or who curtail or forbid their excursions into the public. I want to point out the fallacy in using this likelihood to argue against the ban. If somebody is telling another person “You cannot go out without the veil,” then it is that oppression which is the source of her suffering. If a law constrains people to behave more justly by banning the veil, and she is cooped up at home because she is not allowed to go out without the veil, then it is her oppressor, not the law, which has exacerbated her plight, as surely as she was already suffering a plight in the first place before the law ever came about.

What it means is that veil bans—like any legislation which brings pressure onto the victims of injustice—need to be joined with strong corresponding legislation to seek out and punish the people who would punish females for being forced into a state of greater civil liberty.

My preferred analogy (for this and many other problems) is that of sexual violence in the military. People argue against females integrating into the ranks because of all the alleged sexual problems that result. Well! If there are sexual problems, then discharge the people causing them. Don't exclude a class of people from service. So it is with the veil ban: If banning the veil would bring hardship upon those who cannot go out in public if they do not wear the veil, then punish those who create that ultimatum. Don't rescind the law protecting their right to engage in the public sphere.

That's one of the fundamental sources of tension in a democracy. Sometimes you have to force freedoms and prohibitions upon people who don't want these for themselves or upon people who suffer under others who don't want them to have said freedoms and prohibitions. In America that was done at gunpoint to integrate blacks into Southern schools. Time and perspective justify such radical action, but do not mistake that it was very radical.

I think the sexism behind the veil culture is very bad to begin with, and those who will suffer by its public banning (such as by being forced to stay home) were already in worser straits than we realized—in the form of particularly abusive domestic guardians.

Secondly, the lack of an immediate material source of seclusion and repression will naturally empower females to interact more in public. They will have more conversations, meet more people, learn more and experience more. Some of this is an end in itself. Some of it is an end to further enrichment down the road. Those who are truly scared out of their shells may simply reinforce their isolation by spurning social interaction, but at least they will have to maintain the effort to do so, rather than having it forced upon them by a piece of cloth. Those who will not maintain the effort, meanwhile, will have a different and richer public experience.

Thirdly, the public disruptions which result from an untouchable class of pariahs dwelling among ordinary people will be reduced, making public life that much smoother.

Fourthly, these females will lose the ability in most cases to wear the veil. That particular outcome is obvious, but the resulting effects are important. I know that some people wear the veil freely as a gesture of religious devotion. I think these people are committing acts of self-destruction, whether or not they are aware of it. And I am aware of how presumptuous it is for me to say that, but it's all right there in the underlying rationale for the veil. It is inherently sexist that the sexes would be universally segregated in their social lives. The veil isn't a “scarf”; I don't oppose scarf bans. The veil in the sense we are talking about here is a face mask. It erases a person's face. And it's not for the purpose of hygiene, or playing a role. It's for the purpose of setting females apart from the public sphere of our civilization. The only reason that my opposition to the ban afflicts females exclusively is that males are not required to wear it. Wearing a device intended to deprive a social creature of social engagement, on the basis of sex alone, is appalling.

Few people wear the veil freely. These are mostly in Western countries where to do so is often intended as an act of growing religious roots and connecting with Islam, or an act of opposing prevailing anti-Islamic social attitudes in the West by flouting religious observance. Many of these people, though not all, are not aware of the consequences of their choices—they do not realize the “veil culture” that it perpetuates around the world, especially where it grants many liberals (Western or not) the view that the veil is fine because some people knowledgeably choose to wear it.

The greater majority of people who wear the veil, whether voluntarily or under duress, do so because the costs of not doing so would be high, such as shunning or even violence. Another way to interpret this is to say that the act of wearing the veil brings social acceptance and a moral aura of righteousness. A choice made on that basis, even when freely made, is not truly an independent choice. It is a conditioned choice, dependent upon prevailing social conditions rather than philosophical assertiveness.

There are exceptions to these people, even outside the West, but they are vanishingly rare because they require levels of awareness and intelligence that, when available, seldom lead people to make the choice to destroy a part of themselves.

How do I know this without going around and surveying everybody? Because in cultures and subcultures where people are free to make choices independently and are afforded the opportunity to do so with a modicum of education, the veil is almost unheard of. Females, it seems, do not actually prefer to be inhuman objects when they go out in public. That's a powerful proof.

I wouldn't support the ban if everyone who wore the veil did so with a real awareness of their choice. I am broadly accepting of people's right to commit partial self-destruction. Each person has one life that is their very own, to do with as they please, and I only advocate narrowing people's rights in extreme cases. The veil, to me, is such a case, because, like rape, its legality dooms some people to dehumanization and creates an attitude among others that this is okay.

I am sympathetic to the right of those people to express themselves according to their will. My support for the anti-veil law supersedes their right to self-expression on the basis that enshrining universal access to an identity is even more important.

Fifthly and lastly, but certainly not least, these people will now have faces in public. They will be instantly recognized as human beings. Do not underestimate the value of that, both for them and the humans who look upon them.

It isn't the veil that is oppressing women; they wear it because they are oppressed.

Both are true. They wear it because they are oppressed, but the veil is also a physical instrument of oppression that contributes to the oppression directly. To ban it is practical, more so than banning much of the sentiment that goes into it. This is why, for example, we have laws banning the operation of a motor vehicle above the speed limit, rather than laws banning wrecks caused by excessive speed.

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@ Syna: My reply to your thoughtful post is coming up next. It was actually the inspiration for the post you have just read; I only remembered that I needed to reply to you, and instead upon reviewing the thread I found that I had others to reply to as well.

That reply is well under construction but probably won’t be along for a few weeks. Unfortunately the more thought I want to put into a reply, the longer it takes. Funny how that works.