You knew the angst would start immediately, and so it has. Dealing from the victim deck again, Muslims in Australia condemn the new veil law, accusing the government of being insensitive to Muslim cultural norms. The worst kind of insult is to tell Muslims they must conform to the non-Muslim norms of the country of their choice, instead of just looking the other way.
Is it cultural insensitivity for Muslims to demand special accommodations? Is it cultural insensitivity for Islam to demand sharia law replace common civil law? These questions are never addressed, as that would be Islamophobic.
From The Examiner July 10 by Rod McGuirk
New Australian law to make Muslims lift veils
Muslim women would have to remove veils and show their faces to police on request or risk a prison sentence under proposed new laws in Australia's most populous state that have drawn criticism as culturally insensitive.
A vigorous debate that the proposal has triggered reflects the cultural clashes being ignited by the growing influx of Muslim immigrants and the unease that visible symbols of Islam are causing in predominantly white Christian Australia since 1973 when the government relaxed its immigration policy.
Under the law proposed by the government of New South Wales, which includes Sydney, a woman who defies police by refusing to remove her face veil could be sentenced to a year in prison and fined 5,500 Australian dollars ($5,900).
The bill — to be voted on by the state parliament in August — has been condemned by civil libertarians and many Muslims as an overreaction to a traffic offense case involving a Muslim woman driver in a "niqab," or a veil that reveals only the eyes.
The government says the law would require motorists and criminal suspects to remove any head coverings so that police can identify them.
Critics say the bill smacks of anti-Muslim bias given how few women in Australia wear burqas. In a population of 23 million, only about 400,000 Australians are Muslim. Community advocates estimate that fewer than 2,000 women wear face veils, and it is likely that even a smaller percentage drives.
Irrelevant numbers considering it takes only one veiled person to blow up a large group of innocents. Why do they point out that only a tiny percent of Muslim women in Australia drive with no supporting context as to why this is so? Readers would like to know that he reason for this is that Islam forbids women from doing things outside the home without a related male escort, which means driving is right out. So much for the equality of the sexes.
"It does seem to be very heavy handed, and there doesn't seem to be a need," said Australian Council for Civil Liberties spokesman David Bernie. "It shows some cultural insensitivity."
No, of course not David, there is no need to identify people for national security reasons, or to find out if they are wanted, or have warrants, or are using fake ID, or any of the other myriad reasons we want to put a face with a name.
The controversy over the veils is similar to the debate in other Western countries over whether Muslim women should be allowed to wear garments that hide their faces in public. France and Belgium have banned face-covering veils in public. Typical arguments are that there is a need to prevent women from being forced into wearing veils by their families or that public security requires people to be identifiable.
Bernie noted that while a bandit disguised with a veil and sunglasses robbed a Sydney convenience store last year, there were no Australian crime trends involving Muslim women's clothing.
"It is a religious issue here," said Mouna Unnjinal, a mother of five who has been driving in Sydney in a niqab for 18 years and has never been booked for a traffic offense.
"We're going to feel very intimidated and our privacy is being invaded," she added.
Hiding behind the veil is so much more important than, oh, I don't know...national security.
Unnjinal said she would not hesitate to show her face to a policewoman. But she fears male police officers might misuse the law to deliberately intimidate Muslim women.
Set up the straw man for a future knock-down.
"If I'm pulled over by a policeman, I might say I want to see a female police lady and he says, 'No, I want to see your face,'" Unnjinal said. "Where does that leave me? Do I get penalized 5,000 dollars and sent to jail for 12 months because I wouldn't?"
Uh, yeah, you do. Time to put on the big girl panties and join the human race, Unnjinal, or is that too far out of yourMuslim comfort zone?
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