Celivia, "In comparison, I don’t think it would cause much inconvenience for teachers or be costly for burqa-clad mums to quickly check the face inside a vacant room if there is no other person to pick up her child."

Ruling out male teachers and administrative staff, which causes more staffing problems and is discriminatory.

However having worked on school councils and P&Cs I would also say that it is really not on to have veiled people entering the school grounds in the first place. Children have been kidnapped and taken overseas.

The policy should be to drop the veil at the gate please.

Celivia

Thank you for your very lengthy response to my post but please advise the reason for ignoring this very relevant question?:

‘Islam is irrelevant since perhaps more than 95% of the Muslim community in Australia do not wear the burqa yet you accuse me of discrimination. Nice try Celivia but against which religion/race do I discriminate?’

Do you also perceive a racial discriminatory motive against the German people by those who denounce Hitler and his henchmen?

Now you suggest that we must deny the unphotographed burqa-clad the right to a driver’s licence but we can issue a passport on 'proof' of ID if relevant agencies go to the expense of providing a private room and additional staff to have a squiz at a few dozen citizens who will then reveal their face to the agency’s employee? But what if employees are only male? And what about the passport photograph Celivia? There isn't one? Is that not discriminatory? Can I travel overseas without a passport photograph?

Therefore, this mandate of yours must ensure that at all times (just in case of a burqa rocking up) a female employee must be present since the entire reason for wearing the burqa is to conceal the face from the lascivious male.

And by the way, voice identification is not foolproof either and I sincerely trust that the hairdresser to whom you refer, is female? I wonder too how our male employees will react to your mandate in the event of an elevation of burqa-wearers when the male employees are advised of potentially 'lesser' duties in areas of teaching, hairdressing, administration, law enforcement etc, etc? “Discrimination?”

No I think society will sort this out after all plus Immigration Departments around the world may diplomatically choose to be more prudent in its selection of Muslim applicants by granting permanent residency to those good people who do not cover their faces and who are more than happy to merge into Western societies without the desire to incite cultural polemics.

My dear Severin - I cannot see where Celivia has referred to me as a ‘bigot’ therefore, could you allow others to speak for themselves? Several Islamic leaders here and overseas, fail to see any societal benefit in the wearing of the burqa either, therefore, these Islamic leaders must also be ‘bigots?’

Those who call others bigots are the worst of all bigots. An example of this extreme hypocrisy is set by CJ Morgan, self-professed ‘working scientist’ where all who oppose his point of view are, and I quote: ‘bigots, racists, homophobes, Islamophobes, xenophobes, sock puppet trolls, bigoted prats' etc - the list is endless.

I once worked for the Jewish community and though I am a ‘devout’ atheist, I also worked for the Christian clergy for more than ten years. Many (not everyone) of these clergy are the most altruistic and tolerant people I have known, but you will be hard pressed to find my participation in theological debate – if at all.

Would be, Islamic Rottweiler, CJ Morgan, driven by a fanatical hatred of religion (except Islam), lurks on religious threads, resorting to personal attacks and abusing Christians (and anyone else who differs in opinion), precisely that of which he accuses others. He will dirty things up to attack these "forces of darkness” (except those dark forces lurking in Islam) as one can see on his bigoted attack on Anglican Deacon, Peter Selleck:

“While it suits your project to equate mythic activities with history on the basis that some deluded neolithic goat-herders told some stories about a guy who probably existed, to someone else who wrote them down, they have no more truth value than do the writings of Brigham Young, nor the voluminous ramblings of Roswell freaks etc.”

This is a ‘working scientist’ who spends his working hours on OLO, stigmatising those he perceives as "freaks and fanatics” and stigmatising anyone who raises current issues of concern on cultural practices. Alas, his only achievement to date has been the ‘goat-herding’ of the sycophantic ‘freaks and fanatics’ who slavishly support him.

Hi Protagoras - nice little personal attack there, with absolutely nothing to do with the topic of the burqa in Australia. I'm not a "working scientist", I'm a semi-retired anthropologist and small businessman.

You did get one thing right though - I do take some pleasure in exposing bigotry, such as that which you've displayed in this discussion and others. One thing I've noticed is that bigots rarely appreciate their exposure and often get quite nasty as a result, as in your case.

As an atheist, I have little time for any religion - but I do acknowledge the right of people to adhere to whatever nonsense they like as long as it doesn't detract from the rights of others. I have no idea what relevance you think my comment about Sellick's interminable dribbling have to a discussion about burqas, but thanks for digging it out anyway.

It does encapsulate my attitude to the "truths" claimed by religious nutters very well :)

C J Morgan - If the bigot's hat fits, wear it and my provision of the Selleck taunt was merely a grab sample of the abuse you spread on this forum. I am more than happy to provide a myriad of other abusive comments you have perpetrated on this forum, at your request.

And I note that you have gone from your claim of a working scientist to a retiree blah blah. For the sake of credibility, please be more consistent or better still, practise your memory pegs.

Protagoras, you have made comments in this discussion that are nothing short of Islamophobic vilification. You seek to disguise them by directing irrelevant personal insults at me and quoting me out of context.

Of course, there's more than a hint here of the pot calling the kettle black. Under your previous pseudonym of "dickie", you were pretty handy at dishing it out, as I recall.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/user.asp?id=24850

Did you ever bother to read that article by Sara Haghdoosti?