The 'burka' is the same as the KKK men in white sheets! It's a psychological 
entrapment of women. Scares the hell out of children. It's covering up 'female 
insecurity and ignorance'. This woman blasting her nonsense just is another 
'religion salesman' with a gift of gab that feeds her ego and silences the 
other women of abeyance. They are just decades behind the Western world in the 
rights of women. Always it's the 'big mouth' who has a gift for controlling 
others that fuels the stupidity.
Women are FREE not puppets on a string!

by Maryam Namazie
These handful of burka-clad women “respond” to the debate on the burka-ban on 
behalf of “Muslim women.”
Listen to their vile rhetoric.
They do not represent Muslim women” but Islamism.The burka symbolises 
everything Islamism wants at the expense of countless human beings, many of 
them Muslim.
Oh sorry I forgot, it’s a “right” and a “choice” – things that are non-existent 
when Islamism takes power.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgMr6KjHCnI



I won’t cover my hair
Politics
by Maryam Namazie
Amira Osman Hamed says:
I’m Sudanese. I’m Muslim, and I’m not going to cover my head.
Today, 19 September, she faces trial in the Sudan for refusing to wear the 
hijab and will be flogged if convicted.
She says she’s prepared to be flogged to defend the right to leave her hair 
uncovered in defiance of a “Taliban”-like law.
It would be good if secularists could take some time out of their busy schedule 
defending the veil and burqa to defend the likes of Amira.
Here’s a petition you can sign (thanks to Jane J for forwarding it to me).
Also Tweet: Save Amira Osman Hamed from flogging in Sudan. #Amira #Sudan 
#flogging. Do it now please.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/maryamnamazie/2013/09/19/to-ban-or-not-to-ban-the-burka/



To ban or not to ban the burka
Politics
by Maryam Namazie
Again the “veil controversy”. And as usual full of misinformation and deception.
Let me clear a few things up:
First off, no one is calling for an all-out ban on the veil though proponents 
often give this impression. Even the French ban is not an all-out ban; it 
merely bans all “conspicuous religious symbols” – not just the hejab but also 
the cross and skullcap – in public schools. The burqa ban too is a ban on face 
covering not an all-out veil ban.
Secondly, supporting a burka ban is not racist or discriminatory in and of 
itself. Proponents deceptively imply that the “authentic” Muslim woman is one 
who supports the veil, the niqab and burka and any opposition is an attack on 
“Muslim women”. But there is no homogeneous “Muslim community” anywhere. In 
fact, many women, including “Muslim women,” vehemently oppose the burqa and 
niqab and even the veil itself. Today, one of them – Amira Osman Hamed – is 
being tried in Sudan for refusing to wear the hejab (head covering).
Even the highest Islamic institution of Egypt, Al Azhar, obliges women to show 
their faces in court via a decree issued in 1880. And numerous Islamic scholars 
oppose the niqab or face covering and consider it un-Islamic.
Moreover, as Algerian secularist Marieme Helie Lucas says, the rights of the 
unveiled are just as implicated as those who are veiled. The “right to veil” 
rapidly becomes the right to beat up those who do not. Yes, certainly there are 
women who freely choose to wear the niqab or burqa but on a mass social scale, 
they are impositions.
Thirdly, whilst the niqab or burka are often framed within the context of “a 
woman’s right to choose”, it has to do with much more than mere religious 
identity and religious beliefs. Apart from the fact that it is a symbol of 
women’s subordination, it is also a tool of Islamism. The increase in the burka 
and niqab are a direct result of the rise of the far-Right political Islamic 
movement and part of that movement’s broader agenda to segregate society and 
impose sex apartheid.
To ban or not to ban the burka? Ban it, of course.
And not merely because of security matters or for purposes of identification 
and communication as is often stated but in order to protect and promote the 
rights of women and girls – all of them – and not just the few who wear the 
burka and niqab…
Frankly, I think every secularist and women’s rights defender should support a 
burka/niqab ban. That they don’t shows a lack of moral courage and clarity in 
the face of the religious Right’s barbarity and misogyny.
For me personally, nothing better portrays the outrage of the burqa and niqab 
than the below photo of an Afghan woman who is hardly discernible sitting 
amongst rubbish bags. The burqa and niqab dehumanises and relegates real live 
human beings – many of them children – to a life in a mobile prison, straight 
jacket – to a life within a rubbish bag.
How can anyone defend it or worse refuse to call for a ban?
 
 
 
If you are still unsure, here are a few must read articles: 
Secularism vs communalism: learning from the ban on full face covering veil in 
France by Marieme Helie Lucas
The Law of Brothers versus the Law of the Republic by Karima Bennoune
The burka empowering? I think not! by Maryam Namazie
Read them and let sanity prevail.
 

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