I’ve spent my entire life opposing religious oppression, insidious and overt, and I’m embarrassed for anyone who would stop their opposition because of the skin colour of their opponents.
And to be clear, the opponent isn’t a woman wearing a Burqa – it’s the culture that coerces her into “choosing” to wear it.
So let’s get started and get the obvious stuff out of the way. Let’s look passed that for not wearing it a woman might be beaten or have acid thrown in her face, even if that weren’t true, it’s still oppression to raise a child – to indoctrinate someone from birth – in a culture that tells a woman her body is sinful and that she’s responsible for managing the lust of men or she’ll go to hell. That’s straight up psychological abuse. And the wave of sexual assault across Europe right now is because men from that culture have been taught a woman not dressing “modestly” is loose and it’s okay to treat her like an object.
And people will say that this is okay because they are uncomfortable with the notion someone might call them a racist.
“Other religions have dress codes too”
I hate this argument because it’s mostly a distraction tactic. But of course I have 2 answers anyway. One, all religions are wrong. Show me petition to ban nun’s habit and I’d sign that too. But Islam is objectively worse because it’s dress code is entirely a matter of sexist oppression. In the other sects I can think of “modest” dress works both ways.
In Islam men can dress anyway they want and woman have been forced to cover up more and more over the last thirty years.
The burqa’s increased use is a sign of Islam moving away from the modern secular values its had in the past in favour of an increasingly drastic interpretation. It’s a canary in the coal mine telling us the problem of religious oppression is getting worse.
The fact is you cannot honestly say you’re for freedom of religion and woman’s rights, freedom of religion and gay rights, freedom of religion and freedom of speech. Because the freedom that religion actually wants is the freedom to take all those things away. All the modern moderate religious practitioners you can point to are that way because their idiocy has been dulled against the rock of unwavering secularism intelligent people have been fighting for.
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