PERICLES <Being a public nuisance covers a wide range of behaviours, I doubt you would consider a veiled woman a public nuisance per se would you . On what grounds?

The fact that we have never ending debates on this subject already shows that there is quite a lot of public unease when confronted by women wearing the burqa. I was asking what is the difference between this sort of unease and the unease caused by people dressed in white Klu Klux Klan robes wandering around in public places or sitting drinking coffee in cafes etc. they really are not being a public nuisance if they are just dressed inappropriately and not causing any harm. However the law would be used to stop them if they persisted.

Considering we are at war with countries and people that wear this uniform(costume)after our major allies were attacked with vicious force
on home soil ,I cannot see the difference in the unease felt about people wearing swastikas and white KKK robes in our public places and the unease surrounding the wearing of the Burqa.

@CORNFLOWER - For god's sake read! I may not like your choice of clothes, but I have no right to dictate what you wear! It's not rocket science! If you're a woman, it was feminists who helped give you the life you're living now, but there are plenty of women in the world who aren't so lucky - they're either in a war zone, such as Iraq or Afghanistan; are one of 20 million slaves; or one of women who walk 200 million miles each day in order to have water, or are forced to be prostitutes; have babies, have terminations, are raped and/or murdered, or are forced to sell their kids due to poverty, and are one of the millions who live on less than $2 a day.
The struggle is not over yet, in fact, it hasn't really begun!
The women in Afghanistan will not be freed if they're not forced to wear the burqa - that would only be the beginning!
Depleted uranium bombs, land mines, cluster and phosphorus bombs are far more important an issue than the .01% of women who wear the burqa in Australia.

liz45

I agree with you that the crimes and atrocities against women around the world are many and seemingly insurmountable. That must change for a start if we want any kind of lack of poverty, less depletion of the environment, or numerous wars to become much less.

As it has been observed when you only educate boys in society nothing changes for the better, but when you educate girls the whole of society changes for the better.

It must also be observed that whenever or wherever in history women have been forced to wear cumberson garments to cover up their femaleness they have had very little equality or rights. By comparison in the West where they don't hide their femaleness they have more equality and protection from the law than anywhere else on earth. There would seem to be some correlation between the two.

You speak of the hardships faced by women in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is true, but the war in Iraq would have been over years ago if not for the murderous tribal warfare going on between the different groups over there and also the Al Qaeda operatives who don't want to see peace succeed in that country and so regularly blow up waterpipes and electricity lines thus causing so much of the hardship.

America also insisted on the women being allowed to vote in the elections in Iraq although a lot of the men still insisted that their wives had to vote the same way they did.

Western countries have many failings but they are still streets ahead in their model of laws and freedoms for women. By no means perfect, but still pretty great.

I saw an interesting BBC debate a few months ago when overseas.
The debate was about France's proposed anti-burqua laws.

What was interesting was that of all the Muslim women in France, only a few hundred of them wear the burqua.

Of those, 85% were recent converts to Islam and therefore adopted the practice voluntarily.

Therefore, the new laws were targetted at a very tiny percentage of the population -hardly a social crisis - and only in response to contrived media hysteria and a grab for Conservative political populism.

Meanwhile, it's perfectly legal for me to wear a wig, a hat, a false beard and dark glasses whenever I am in public - without fear of any form of prosecution - and hey, what's really under those bulky Santa suits anyway?

That is simply illogical, CHERFUL.

>>The fact that we have never ending debates on this subject already shows that there is quite a lot of public unease when confronted by women wearing the burqa.<<

One person can hold up one end of a "debate" for ever and a day, if they choose to stand their ground. That does not indicate anything more than there is one person with determination to hold onto a point of view - it is certainly not an indication of "quite a lot of public unease".

>>what is the difference between this sort of unease and the unease caused by people dressed in white Klu Klux Klan robes wandering around in public place<<

The KKK has a history of violence against black people. Veiled Muslim women do not have a similar history. Therefore the only possible reason for your unease is that you suspect they may be terrorists in disguise, would that be right?

Ask yourself, is this a valid reason to pass a law that further restricts our individual freedoms? Given the thousands of other opportunities that potential terrorists have to effect a disguise, you have to ask yourself "where will it end?"

And you are still refusing to address the underlying legal issue:

>>However the law would be used to stop them if they persisted<<

Which law?

There isn't a law that bans dressing up in Ku Klux Klan outfits, or wearing of SS uniform, or appearing in public as a Black-and-White Minstrel. So why make a specific crime out of the wearing of the burqa? In what way is it so substantially more offensive than wearing white robes and a pointy white hood with eyeholes?

In so far as someone is moving around in public wearing an impenetrable disguise that disturbs others and makes them feel uneasy and unsafe, burqua wearing in my view represents not only a public nuisance but a malicious attempt to disguise themselves and incite unrest.

Interested about the remarks about the 85% in France being recent converts. This is the sense I had - having seen various women locally in this garb who appeared to be Westerners. Clearly cultural beliefs and practice deeply imbued from childhood are not at play here. Rather these appear to be trouble makers who choose to exist on the fringes of society for whatever bizarre personal and political reasons. I feel that given a choice most women from this cultural background, unless deeply oppressed by men in her extended family, would not wear the damn things.

There are complex issues here, where the oppressed often appear complicit with the perpetrators (as with hostages) however these actions are not by their own free will, rather a desperate strategy to ensure their own personal and physical saftey from perpetrators of oppression.