Originally Posted by Pussycat Catnap

I have such mixed feelings about this one, it drives me up the wall...

One the one hand, people expressing their religion or culture without harming others or themselves is nobody's business to legislate.

Then again, when that expression involves using something iconic of oppression to others in your society, it gets complicated.

On the other hand, what right does A have getting offended over what B does to herself?

On the other hand, every society establishes certain basic rules of public conduct; I can't go outside nude - and actually, as an Amazon indian, that -IS- a tradition of my cultural heritage. Likewise, I can't marry more than one person, and that's even a tradition of many global societies, including at least 1 major religion in my country...

Now, I see that keeping them out of burqas is designed to keep them from being oppressed, but how to then keep them from getting locked away in private homes? That happens even in the USA - witness those ultra-traditional mormon sects. My sister married into a family that came from a segment of Gautemalan society that kept women locked away; and we spent a few years fighting with their family over it until she divorced...
- So I do understand that these things will happen if you ban the Burqa...

I frankly don't like any of the options on the table on this one.

I can see that the French want to have an open liberal secular society, and they are facing a cultural war with conservative islam. That is in part their own failing though: they went for an assimilationist model: act like us or stay out of society. That's a failing strategy, people will not give up everything about who and what they are. You need multi-culturalism or you end up in cultural warfare.

Multi-culturalism is a simple concept: Take a little of the mainstream, and a little of the old country, and be your ethnicity within the framework of a larger society, as we all take and give pieces over time. The French didn't want it; they pushed the immigrants out into housing projects on the fringes of society - unless they became French enough.
- Now they face the ultimate mess of that. In an all or nothing solution, people will choose nothing: they will live outside your culture, even while in your country.

But their goal: an open liberal secular society... is a very noble one. They just went about achieving it the wrong way, and left too many of their newer members behind in the process.

Now, they have no easy way out of their mess...

Ban the Burqa, or don't - I don't like either answer...