Bal Thackeray wants burqa banned

[rubyjackass]

as for banning burqa for minors well in islam minors don't need to wear burqa so ban it or not no problem with that!!!

By minors I mean till the age of 18, till they get voting rights. So girls below 18 do not wear burqa? I dont think this is true.

 

[Durran3]

why I as a British muslim want want burkha banned.........

Why I, as a British Muslim woman, want the burkha banned from our streets | Mail Online

Shopping in Harrods last week, I came across a group of women wearing black burkhas, browsing the latest designs in the fashion department.
The irony of the situation was almost laughable. Here was a group of affluent women window shopping for designs that they would never once be able to wear in public.
Yet it's a sight that's becoming more and more commonplace. In hardline Muslim communities right across Britain, the burkha and hijab - the Muslim headscarf - are becoming the norm.

Saira Khan, runner up in the first series of The Apprentice, believes the burkha is an oppressive tool and says it is time to ban it from the streets of Britain

In the predominantly Muslim enclaves of Derby near my childhood home, you now see women hidden behind the full-length robe, their faces completely shielded from view. In London, I see an increasing number of young girls, aged four and five, being made to wear the hijab to school.
Shockingly, the Dickensian bone disease rickets has reemerged in the British Muslim community because women are not getting enough vital vitamin D from sunlight because they are being consigned to life under a shroud.
Thanks to fundamentalist Muslims and 'hate' preachers working in Britain, the veiling of women is suddenly all-pervasive and promoted as a basic religious right. We are led to believe that we must live with this in the name of 'tolerance'.
'The veil is a tool of oppression used to alienate and control women under the guise of religious freedom'

And yet, as a British Muslim woman, I abhor the practice and am calling on the Government to follow the lead of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and ban the burkha in our country.
The veil is simply a tool of oppression which is being used to alienate and control women under the guise of religious freedom.
My parents moved here from Kashmir in the 1960s. They brought with them their faith and their traditions - but they also understood that they were starting a new life in a country where Islam was not the main religion.
My mother has always worn traditional Kashmiri clothes - the salwar kameez, a long tunic worn over trousers, and the chador, which is like a pashmina worn around the neck or over the hair.
When she found work in England, she adapted her dress without making a fuss. She is still very much a traditional Muslim woman, but she swims in a normal swimming costume and jogs in a tracksuit.
I was born in this country, and my parents' greatest desire for me was that I would integrate and take advantage of the British education system.
They wanted me to make friends at school, and be able to take part in PE lessons - not feel alienated and cut off from my peers. So at home, I wore the salwar kameez, while at school I wore a wore a typical English school uniform.
Now, to some fundamentalists, that made us not proper Muslims. Really?
I have read the Koran. Nowhere in the Koran does it state that a woman's face and body must be covered in a layer of heavy black cloth. Instead, Muslim women should dress modestly, covering their arms and legs.
Many of my adult British Muslim friends cover their heads with a headscarf - and I have no problem with that.
The burkha is an entirely different matter. It is an imported Saudi Arabian tradition, and the growing number of women veiling their faces in Britain is a sign of creeping radicalisation, which is not just regressive, it is oppressive and downright dangerous.
The burkha is an extreme practice. It is never right for a woman to hide behind a veil and shut herself off from people in the community. But it is particularly wrong in Britain, where it is alien to the mainstream culture for someone to walk around wearing a mask.
'Nowhere in the Koran does it state that a woman's face and body must be covered in a layer of heavy black cloth'
The veil restricts women. It stops them achieving their full potential in all areas of their life, and it stops them communicating. It sends out a clear message: 'I do not want to be part of your society.'
Every time the burkha is debated, Muslim fundamentalists bring out all these women who say: 'It's my choice to wear this.'
Perhaps so - but what pressures have been brought to bear on them? The reality, surely, is that a lot of women are not free to choose.
Girls as young as four are wearing the hijab to school: that is not a freely made choice. It stops them taking part in education and reaching their potential, and the idea that tiny children need to protect their modesty is abhorrent.
And behind the closed doors of some Muslim houses, countless young women are told to wear the hijab and the veil. These are the girls who are hidden away, they are not allowed to go to university or choose who they marry. In many cases, they are kept down by the threat of violence.
The burkha is the ultimate visual symbol of female oppression. It is the weapon of radical Muslim men who want to see Sharia law on Britain's streets, and would love women to be hidden, unseen and unheard. It is totally out of place in a civilised country.
Precisely because it is impossible to distinguish between the woman who is choosing to wear a burkha and the girl who has been forced to cover herself and live behind a veil, I believe it should be banned.

French President Sarkozy has backed moves to outlaw burkhas in France

President Sarkozy is absolutely right to say: 'If you want to live here, live like us.'
He went on to say that the burkha is not a religious sign, 'it's a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement... In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity.'
So what should we do in Britain? For decades, Muslim fundamentalists, using the human rights laws, have been allowed to get their own way.
It is time for ministers and ordinary British Muslims to say, 'Enough is enough'. For the sake of women and children, the Government must ban the wearing of the hijab in school and the burkha in public places.
To do so is not racist, as extremists would have us believe. After all, when I go to Pakistan or Middle Eastern countries, I respect the way they live.
Two years ago, I wore a burkha for the first time for a television programme. It was the most horrid experience. It restricted the way I walked, what I saw, and how I interacted with the world.
It took away my personality. I felt alienated and like a freak. It was hot and uncomfortable, and I was unable to see behind me, exchange a smile with people, or shake hands.
If I had been forced to wear a veil, I would certainly not be free to write this article. Nor would I have run a marathon, become an aerobics teacher or set up a business.
We must unite against the radical Muslim men who love to control women.
My message to those Muslims who want to live in a Talibanised society, and turn their face against Britain, is this: 'If you don't like living here and don't want to integrate, then what the hell are you doing here? Why don't you just go and live in an Islamic country?'

This here is a wonderful piece.. thanks for sharing... i think more people should read this

 

[third eye]

correct THIRD eye...but the only difference is that we know we are doing something wrong...we should respect someone who is doing something right that we aren't.....i might be the WORSE muslim & a human being on this planet but....

i will never ever pass a judgment against who is trying to do some right... i will encourage him/her respect him/her.....

so if someone wears a burqa good very good they are sticking to something they see as correct and right....if they discard it still there own choice....

I think this is the right approach.

troubles start only when we start imposing our will on others.

 

[khanz]

This here is a wonderful piece.. thanks for sharing... i think more people should read this

no prob here is yet another muslim woman calling for burqa ban......

Ban the Burqa

By MONA ELTAHAWY

Published: July 2, 2009

NEW YORK — I am a Muslim, I am a feminist and I detest the full-body veil, known as a niqab or burqa. It erases women from society and has nothing to do with Islam but everything to do with the hatred for women at the heart of the extremist ideology that preaches it.

We must not sacrifice women at the altar of political correctness or in the name of fighting a growingly powerful right wing that Muslims face in countries where they live as a minority.

As disagreeable as I often find French President Nicolas Sarkozy, he was right when he said recently, “The burqa is not a religious sign, it is a sign of the subjugation, of the submission of women. I want to say solemnly that it will not be welcome on our territory.” It should not be welcome anywhere, I would add.

Yet his words have inspired attempts to defend the indefensible — the erasure of women.

Some have argued that Sarkozy’s right-leaning, anti-Muslim bias was behind his opposition to the burqa. But I would remind them of comments in 2006 by the then-British House of Commons leader Jack Straw, who said the burqa prevents communication. He was right, and he was hardly a right-winger — and yet he too was attacked for daring to speak out against the burqa.

The racism and discrimination that Muslim minorities face in many countries — such as France, which has the largest Muslim community in Europe, and Britain, where two members of the xenophobic British National Party were shamefully elected to the European Parliament — are very real.

But the best way to support Muslim women would be to say we oppose both racist Islamophobes and the burqa. We’ve been silent on too many things out of fear we’ll arm the right wing.

The best way to debunk the burqa as an expression of Muslim faith is to listen to Muslims who oppose it. At the time of Mr. Straw’s comments, a controversy erupted when a university dean in Egypt warned students they would not be able to stay at college dorms unless they removed their burqa. The dean cited security grounds, saying that men disguised as women in burqa could slip into the female dorms.

Soad Saleh, a professor of Islamic law and former dean of the women’s faculty of Islamic studies at Al-Azhar University — hardly a liberal, said the burqa had nothing to do with Islam. It was but an old Bedouin tradition.

It is sad to see a strange ambivalence toward the burqa from many of my fellow Muslims and others who claim to support us. They will take on everything — the right wing, Islamophobia, Mr. Straw, Mr. Sarkozy — rather than come out and plainly state that the burqa is an affront to Muslim women.

I blame such reluctance on the success of the ultra-conservative Salafi ideology — practiced most famously in Saudi Arabia — in leaving its imprimatur on Islam globally by persuading too many Muslims that it is the purest and highest form of our faith.

It’s one thing to argue about the burqa in a country like Saudi Arabia — where I lived for six years and where women are treated like children — but it is utterly dispiriting to have those same arguments in a country where women’s rights have long been enshrined. When I first saw a woman in a burqa in Copenhagen I was horrified.

I wore a headscarf for nine years. An argument I had on the Cairo subway with a woman who wore a burqa helped seal for good my refusal to defend it. Dressed in black from head to toe, the woman asked me why I did not wear the burqa. I pointed to my headscarf and asked her “Is this not enough?”

“If you wanted a piece of candy, would you choose an unwrapped piece or one that came in a wrapper?” she asked.

“I am not candy,” I answered. “Women are not candy.”

I have since heard arguments made for the burqa in which the woman is portrayed as a diamond ring or a precious stone that needs to be hidden to prove her “worth.” Unless we challenge it, the burqa — and by extension the erasure of women — becomes the pinnacle of piety.

It is not about comparing burqas to bikinis, as some claim. I used to compare my headscarf to a miniskirt, the two being essentially two sides to the same coin of a woman’s body. The burqa is something else altogether: A woman who wears it is erased.

A bizarre political correctness has tied the tongues of those who would normally rally to women’s rights. One blogger, a woman, lamented that “Sarkozy’s anti-burqa stance deprives women of identity.” It’s precisely the opposite: It’s the burqa that deprives a woman of identity.

Why do women in Muslim-minority communities wear the burqa? Sarkozy touched on one reason when he admitted his country’s integration model wasn’t working any more because it doesn’t give immigrants and their French-born children a fair chance.

But the Muslim community must ask itself the same question: Why the silence as some of our women fade into black either as a form of identity politics, a protest against the state or out of acquiescence to Salafism?

As a Muslim woman and a feminist I would ban the burqa.

Mona Eltahawy is an Egyptian-born commentator on Arab and Muslim issues.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/op...deltahawy.html

 

[moha199]

Well you have ur views & I hav mine.

I do not like to wait for god to do things for me I rather do them myself & involve him only to scrutinise my deeds & seek guidance from.

Somewhere we should stop living in the past & take a call on the present which will shape our future.

No idea on the highlighted part..

That is your belife against mine, By the way when you find out about the high lighted part that will be too fun..... Se we Muslims has bad things and good things in us, Bad are that we don't get together all the times or help eachothers on larger view etc, Good things that we get together on small numbers against enemies fight gurrilla war very well, " not the terrorist war crap lol" lastly we all get together on Gazwaz Mashah Allah

 

[Zob]

ok THIRD EYE!! let me tell you something.... BURQA is necessary in ISLAM...now the issue of TYPE OF BURQA is debatable...as in should the face be covered or not....but you can't force a woman to remove it...so whoever claims to be a muslim and OBJECTS to the concept of burqa is automatically objecting to islam....so burqa is not debatable but type of is....


so instead of people getting carried away everyone should be actually arguing on the type instead of if the thing is TOTALLY wrong....

 

[Comet]

I would rather say 'a piece of cloth' instead of Burqah. As already said, Burqah is not a dress given by Sharia't but adopted for the ease of use. Pardah is the right word and should be done no matter with or without the help of Burqah.

 

[Lockheed F-16]

Burqa losing favour among Afghan women


HERAT: Burqas were the mandatory attire for women during the austere rule of the Islamist Taliban. Nehmatullah Yusefy's burqa sales have dropped 50 per cent since the Taliban were toppled in 2001 and he says he will soon need to start stocking other styles of Islamic dress to make up for lost profits.

Yusefy has sold the powder blue garb, which covers women from head to foot, for the past ten years, but he has done so reluctantly.

‘I think, God willing, the sales of burqas will decrease, then I will sell chador namaz and even maybe mantau chalvar,’ said Yusefy, standing behind the counter of his small outlet on a strip of burqa shops in the main market of Herat city.

The chador namaz is a long, billowing dress in black or sombre-patterned fabric which is widely worn in Iran. It exposes the woman's face but covers the rest of her head and body until her ankles.

Mantau chalvar, on the other hand, is a long coat worn over trousers and it is popular with women in the capital Kabul, who are relatively free to dress as they choose. It is always worn with a scarf covering the head that is tied firmly under the chin.

Last week French President Nicholas Sarkozy condemned the burqa, saying it was not welcome in France because it was a symbol of subjugation of women.

‘We cannot accept that some women in our country are prisoners behind a grille, cut off from social life, deprived of their identity,’ he said amid calls by some lawmakers to ban the burqa in France. The chador namaz, which is open at the face, with its edges loosely hanging down the centre of the body, may be more welcome on the boulevards of Paris.

‘I hope, God willing, that things in Afghanistan will progress more, that people will be more open-minded and more sensible, so that a woman, a sister, a mother, can go about the market freely,’ Yusefy said, adding that he has never demanded that his own wife and two daughters wear the burqa.

The chador namaz is worn by about half of Herat's women. While no one in Kabul would bat an eyelid at the sight of mantau chalvar, in Herat it still turns heads. For many, even the chador namaz is seen as pushing the envelope.

When asked, 18-year-old Amirejan said, ‘When I wear a burqa it gives me a really bad feeling. I don't like to wear it. My family is not really happy with me wearing a chador namaz, they tell me to always wear a burqa. But I don't like it, it upsets me, I can't breathe properly’.

Margol, who is in her early 20s, said that she is used to the burqa now, having worn it since she was about 15. ‘My family says I have to wear it, they say the chador namaz is bad. You understand that if you don't wear a burqa and your face is open, people will just gossip about you,’ she said, giggling. ‘But it does give me bad headaches, it puts a lot of pressure on my head, especially if it's sewn too tightly,’ she added.

Her cousin Amirejan said she would rather wear a mantau chalvar and discard her chador namaz if it was left up to her. ‘They say that Afghanistan is free and women should be able to breathe more, but your mother and family still tell you that you have to wear the burqa: I just don't like it. I want to be free, not under a burqa.’

Back at his shop, Yusefy considered the idea that wandering male eyes might be the reason why women feel compelled to wear the burqa. He says ‘If a woman comes to the market without covering up about a hundred eyes will be watching her... because that's the climate here. And you can't stop them. Men are always going to stare. It is the culture; it’s different in every country.’
-Reuters

 

[EyelessInGaza]

Burqa losing favour among Afghan women

...............................Back at his shop, Yusefy considered the idea that wandering male eyes might be the reason why women feel compelled to wear the burqa. He says ‘If a woman comes to the market without covering up about a hundred eyes will be watching her... because that's the climate here. And you can't stop them. Men are always going to stare. It is the culture; it’s different in every country.’
-Reuters

Yeah the culture in Indian, North India at least, and no presumably Pakistan and Bangladesh as well.

Wonder why no religious leader in this part of the world tries to actively put moral or other restraints on men? How about a head restraint for men to keep their eyes from 'staring'?

South Asian men - standing proud and tall as a 24/ 7 sex obsessed yet unctuously moralizing bunch of hypocrites on the world stage.

Let's all take a bow, gentlemen.

 

[EyelessInGaza]

I would like to see indian hindus try to ban the burqa. We shall eliminate all their naked gods sitting in unholy mandir in our country as it's anti Islamic to the core. While we at it, perhaps doti and red dot on the forhead should also be ban.........

Getting tired of them copycat moran...........

Perhaps if you respected the religion of others, you might be able to better defend the presumed disrepect to yours?

 

[garibnawaz]

We should put burqua on him and tie stone to his feet and drown him into the Arabian sea.

Please mind your words. When Zaheer and Irafan were touring Pakistan as a part of Indian team, even Zaheer spoke respectfuly about Bal Thackrey in front of Pakistani Media.

No matter how he is, he is a respected Politician and a very old man.

Even if you hate him I would expect some respect about him while you write on this forum.

Dont forget he is your fellow countryman.

 

[Zob]

ok this thread i dunno where it has gone from discussing burqa to loving BAL THACKREY.....!!!!

 

[Uchiha]

Now, Bal Thackeray wants burqa banned

Kiran Tare / DNATuesday,
June 30, 2009 1:16

Mumbai: Taking his cue from Nicolas Sarkozy, Bal Thackeray has demanded a ban on the burqa. In a strongly-worded editorial in Monday's edition of party mouthpiece Saamana, the Shiv Sena patriarch praises the French president, deprecates the attitude of India's "thakela-pakela (tired and bored)" rulers and warns against "the dangers of Islam".

"I congratulate Sarkozy. He is an ideal ruler. Their (French) rulers never appease the Muslims for vote-bank politics," Thackeray writes in the editorial, asking"our rulers to ban the burqa and implement the uniform civil code."

"Sarkozy is a strong man, not a thakela-pakela leader like ours. Half the leaders running our country need to look for places for their funeral," Thackeray writes.

Bal Thackeray has also taken a potshot at a senior BJP leader from Maharashtra, without naming him. Sarkozy kisses his wife Carla Bruni in public, unlikepoliticians such as "former Haryana deputy CM Chand Mohammad and a similar one from Maharashtra", who do it in secret, he has written.

Why Bal Thackeray alway looking for some thing controvercial to spread in the media. There few people in india who are real embarasement for them and he is one of them.

Even I as a muslim want burkha banned, I want all my sisters and daughters to be FREE like men.