"There are a thousand ways of being a Muslim in every day life, just the same as there are for being a Christian or an Atheist."
One way of being an atheist is to deny the existence of a god. What are some of the thousands of other ways?

A good article that I predict will make no difference at all to the bigots who'd like to ban the burqa. Legislating what people are allowed to wear is not the path to a free society.

GlenC - my way of being an atheist is not to deny the existence of a god, but rather to be unconvinced on the basis of all the evidence for the existence of one. Some atheists write books about their atheism and go on TV and speaking tours to promote them, while others keep their atheism to themselves. Some atheists adopt a live and let live approach to religions, while others campaign against them. Etc etc.

That's just off the top of my head, but I think that's the kind of thing that Elizabeth Lakey was getting at.

cj "Legislating what people are allowed to wear is not the path to a free society"

But legislating what people can and can't do with energy, whether they can use whatever power source they want, with committees on carbon taxes .. is a path to a free society?

Funny how you demand a free society when it suits you and no choice whatever when your political party insists there be no debate, no slackers, no sceptics on a committee with the prerequisite is being already convinced of the outcome.

How typical of a greenie totalitarian .. you're all for free society, if it's the one you want, but have zero tolerance for anyone else's free society.
I want legislation against forcing women to wear what the medieval thinking remnant of failed societies insist. Protect these women, except we won't because we all have to tolerate intolerance in our society, and that's what is used against us constantly, it degrades our modern society to have to pander to the PC correctness of a few.

The burqa is a symbol of intolerance, it is the islamic intolerance of a free society for women, by insisting women wear the veil, burqa whatever, is not free will - they do it because their menfolk are completely intolerant and they are taught from an early age this is how their society is, or else!

I believe wearing the full burqa is an abomination on all women who wear it. Why would any human being want to be covered from head to toe, passing through life like a ghost, with the only people allowed to see her are her partner and close family members. It must be unhealthy to always be covered up, your body never feeling the sun or any kind of weather for that matter.
What power a man must feel, to control a woman this way.
You only have to watch burqa clad females in the shops to know how they really feel when their men are not around.
Intelligent debate will never be possible whilst men have this kind of total control over their female family members.

I second that MAREELORRAINE.

But the fight is against ALL religious control of ANYONE not just the few forced into wearing a bag over their head.

CJM: My question was of little significance to the author's topic and asking it was probably naughty. The thought behind it was that there is a difference between how you qualify to be a Muslim, Christian or atheist on the one hand and how you give expression to your “Muslimness”, Christianity or atheism on the other. I'm not sure about being a Muslim but I would have thought that the (only) way to be a Christian would be to accept the (assumed) teachings of Christ but that, having done that, there were many ways open to you to express your Christianity — probably thousands going by the number of Christian churches in the USA. And that the only way to be an atheist would be to deny the existence of a god but that, having done that, you could be as active or passive a denier as you liked. We could probably argue (but won’t) about whether what you define as atheism is merely what I think of as agnosticism. I think that to be an atheist you have to go beyond merely noting the lack of evidence for a god; you have to say that there is enough evidence to conclude that there is no god, albeit only on the basis of strong probability. I can only plead to having spent too many years trying to get examination committees to write their questions so that the candidates would think that they meant what the committees assumed they did. I will try to keep my irrelevant interventions to myself in future, especially in cases like this where the dilemma raised in the article is too hard for me to resolve.