Veil ban

It's not often I have anything nice to say about the French what with the they way they've always put me in jail whenever I go there and how they don't have proper toilets still, but today is one of those rare occasions.

The French Government's ban on wearing the veil or Burkha begins today. I think it's daft how some sections of the media describe this as "imposing a ban" on the veil. They're not imposing a ban, they're attempting to lift one.

They're attempting to liberate women from the oppressive obligations of the Muslim faith. A faith that teaches them from birth they are inferior to men and essentially everything they do must be at the behest of the male members of their family or some lunatic cleric who gets to use Islam as a means of imposing his creepy and violent misogyny on the women in his community.

Religious beliefs can never be imposed on people in the same way that Governments impose laws. Everyone in France is equal before the law. The Islamic faith is asking France to ignore a centuries old tradition to accommodate the misogyny of one faith. That of course is utter bullshit.

Women do not wear burkha's or veils voluntarily. If they did women of other faiths would wear them. The extreme modesty that causes women to supposedly wear these things "voluntarily" comes from being taught from birth they are inferior. A woman not raised in a Muslim community simply would not have that mindset. This is not the same modesty that causes larger ladies to refrain from wearing stripes.

It's regrettable that a Government has to intervene in this way, but in the interests of liberty and transparency it has become necessary. If religions didn't make demands of people in this way, with such medieval punishments for non-compliance, this intervention would not be necessary, but it is. Laws of this ilk are quite literally the lesser of two evils.