“Forced unveiling of Muslim women”

There are a lot of niqab-wearing women in London, and particularly in the area, adjacent to Hyde Park, where we’ve been staying.

I’ll be candid:  Despite all my sympathies for Islam and for Muslims, I heartily dislike the niqab, which seems to me deeply dehumanizing and alienating.

But, while I disapprove, I also believe in liberty — including the liberty, within only the very broadest of constraints or limits, to follow religious practices that I don’t endorse and don’t even like.

And, anyway, the “burkini” isn’t the niqab:

I like what Dr. Qanta Ahmed has to say here:

“Forced Unveiling of Muslim Women”

I think that the niqab is problematic.  Especially when, as has happened, some niqab-wearing women have sought to have their driver’s license and ID-photos taken while so garbed.  Sorry.  In that case, I would respond that driving, for example, is a privilege, not a right.  You choose.  Drop the face veil, or don’t drive.

But the “burkini”?

I appreciate the comments of Jonathon Van Maren, in a piece kindly brought to my attention by Bianca Lisonbee:

“What the French are doing to Muslim women is crazy”

For what it’s worth, I already briefly addressed this topic yesterday.

It seems though, now, that a French court has overturned the “burkini ban”:

“Burkini ban suspended: French court declares law forbidding swimwear worn by Muslim women ‘clearly illegal’”

But the underlying idiocy capable of thinking this measure reasonable and justified still needs to be addressed — as, frankly, does a certain French tendency toward secularist fascism.  One of the French politicians interviewed indicates that he intends to pursue this moronic and, honestly, tyrannical policy further.

Posted from London, England