Leslie, I am not sure if I would describe your arguments as feminist or femin-nazi. It seems you are intent on imposing a certain kind of dress on women of one faith but not on women (or indeed men) of other faiths.

I may not be Jewish, but I prefer the approach of Jewish organisations in France and Australia - if you ban one set of religious symbols, you ban them all.

If today we ban hijab, then tomorrow we will ban sikh turbans and jewish yamulkes. And then we may as well ban religion from schools altogether.

enaj, off topic (again) but you had better watch out. I remember some posts where David_JS indicated that he was plotting to take over the world for the gay community, unless you form some kind of coalition you have competion.

Irfan, any thoughts on why religious symbolism should be allowed in schools and other forms of personal preference/expression not allowed.
I don't see that someones choice to believe in a particular theology should be treated by the community as more valid than another persons choices which don't have the label "religion" attached.

Once again I'm sitting on the fence on the overall topic trying to make some sense of the competing arguments. The most useful one so far was the comment about further isolating children who come from extreme families. A reason to ignore the philosophical arguments and to try and avoid these kids from becoming more marginilised.

R0bert

An excellent article, echoing my thoughts completely.

With all the religious violence around the world (do a search on violence against hindus, muslims or whatever) I have to agree that religion should be kept out of public schools altogether. France were right to ban all forms of religious dress from schools, made all the more urgent as a result of a growing muslim population.

If Australian schools were made up of 50% sikhs and 50% muslims, I'd be urging a ban on religious dress code without delay. At the moment I'm simply happy to discuss it, and so we should. Religious dress in schools is not an issue we should take lightly.

As realist said - "When in Rome, do as the Romans do...."

Good advice I think and in case many of the people here forget it, this is Australia - not Iran, Not Irak, not Lebanon, not Africa - nor any other place for that matter - it is AUSTRALIA and we do have our own customs and beliefs - well we did the last time I walked around anyway.

I do believe we started out as a "christian" country, we have made the fundamental error of allowing a multi cultural experiment to get completely out of hand - so as far as I am concerned ALL religions should be totally banned from schools - they are the scourge of mankind and the cause of 99.99% of all wars and conflicts (if you have any other data or statistics please flaunt them - but I will take a lot of convincing!)

Ban the hijab, ban the burka, ban skull caps and ban crosses from all schools and remember you have all chosen to come to A FREE AUSTRALIA - leave your problems - leave your religious bigotry - leave your hatred back in your old country and be AUSTRALIAN!!

If you do not like the way Australia is, you are very welcome to return to what you left, do not try and change me, but become like me - do not try and change me to what you left, because you left it for a reason and I just do not want to become like you were.

Here's a thought, before you go banning fabric from certain parts of the body, why not educate about patriachy, sexism and gender equality? That way, you might be able to offend misogynistic and chauvinistic muslim and non-Muslim Australians alike.

Remember, gender equality is hardly a universally accepted value for non-Muslim Australians either. I'm in favour of changing people minds, but not burning childrens' clothes.

I suspect that one reason attention is being given to the Hijab, or any symbol of Islam, is that the demographic points made by Timkins are quite accurate, and further, it is the Muslims who are themselves stating this.

So, if you can't beat-em, out breed-em. They don't even need to be radicals, all they have to do is continue having more children than non Muslims and history will take its course.

I also supsect that as population levels become closer, so also will the friction, and social unrest, and the cynicism about whatever government does "OOOh.. are they doing this for 'THEM'" ? etc....

I prefer the more responsible approach. If you can see the seeds of social meltdown in growing, make policies which will prevent this before it becomes unmanagable.

This of course has implications for 2 areas.

1/ Immigration policy
2/ Family policy.

on Family policy, we need to at LEAST meet out 2.1 criteria just to survive. For this to be workable, maybe.. just maybe :) (u watching Laurie and enaj) a few more women can be more full time mums, and open up some employment for more guys (I can see the raised eyebrows and beginning of shrieks of 'heresy':)....

We also need a predictable, enduring values framework. We need to reward strong families and avoid the apparent suicides like the 16 yr old girl we heard about in the news 2night who's parents just separated.

If not, then its "mene mene, tekel upharsin"

(Do a search to see the meaning)