As well as being persecuted, the Jewish religion also has fundamentalists in its ranks and Christians and Muslims certainly don't have a monopoly in that area.

I remember when some Jewish Orthodox fundamentalists on a train were abusing girls for reading books or dressing "immodestly" but as well as some who would line up at school gates scream at girls and literally throw their own crap at some of them.

If your religion finds you squatting over a bucket in order to terrorise pre-teens then perhaps you should be examining your own life-choices.

ttbn,
Let us not lower ourselves to just voters. But elevate to civilised human beings! Australians like you should develop a broader mindset. Please understand that the welfare and even survival of people of one country depend on other countries' contributions. Australians cannot shut their eyes to what happens in other parts of the world. World is described as a global village!

Rache,

"I remember when some Jewish Orthodox fundamentalists on a train were abusing girls for reading books or dressing "immodestly" but as well as some who would line up at school gates scream at girls and literally throw their own crap at some of them."

I'm sorry but I'm sure that you are making this up.

"Ordering women to wear a kind of dress, probably against their wish, is certainly a human rights violation."

Yeah probably.

Personally I think that if you don't like the hijab, then don't wear it, it's certainly never was a part of Australian culture to force others to wear one.
We did have a law once that prevented people swimming at the beach, or women showing much skin, that might have been a breach of human rights and potentially unhealthy too.
In regards to religion, I think your religion is a matter for an individual and their god and no-one else.
Above the level of religion, I believe everybody has a right to live however they choose so long as it doesn't harm others.
No one has a right to force their religious beliefs on others especially kids.
Forcing religious beliefs on children should be banned.
There should be an agreed age where kids should be free from this kind of conditioning until they are old enough to choose for themselves.
Women shouldn't be forced to dress a certain way because men might lust after them and have feelings of wanting to have sex with them.
That's essentially making women suffer for men's problems.

Hi AC,

I have to agree, religion for the religious, and everyone else is free to pursue whatever turns them on, providing there're not harming others.

Just on this; "I think that if you don't like the hijab, then don't wear it," True, but for oppressed women in certain countries, not wearing the hijab might get one "stoned to death", that tends to put the kibosh on free choice. The vast majority of women wearing such garb have been conditioned from a young age to do so, and they know nothing else.

AC

Everybody (boys, girls, men and women) should dress decently. Public decency demands that. What you have said as men's problems is actually a problem of society. Men and women coexist. The dress was invented to cover one's physical body and protect it from nature's vagaries and other harms. Can we ask men and women to shut their eyes when the opposite sex is provocatively dressed?
Wearing clothes decently, at least in public places, is a requisite of a civilised society. I feel that modern-day dress culture has been greatly influenced by cinema scenes deliberately shown, to attract the youth, with huge money collections in mind. Of course, the hijab does not fall into this category.