Afghan women are about as competent to discuss burqas as bank hostages are competent to discuss whether bank robbers are nice guys or not. Anyone who is familiar with the Stockholm Syndrome knows that victims of traumatic kidnapping or hostage-taking are likely to have positive feelings towards their captors.

When the Taliban was in control they had to whip women to force them to wear the burqa. Now all of a sudden Afghan women want us to believe they want to have a choice in covering themselves up?

So let me answer the question: "What is the difference between forcing women to wear a burqa and forcing them not to?"

Slavery was abolished in the US almost a century and a half ago. So suppose a white man wanted to walk along the sidewalk here in America dragging a black man behind him in chains. Suppose also we were told that the white man was a Muslim Arab from Mauritania and the black man was indeed his slave. Although Mauritania outlawed slavery a few times, the practice continues ¹. Indeed the slave even admits he is a slave and accepts it. Would we allow him to be pulled in chains even if the slave insisted it was his choice to be in chains? Obviously it is against the law to keep slaves in this country no matter what Islam (Mauritania is 99.99% Muslim) says about it.

That's the answer, another question: What is the difference between forcing people to be slaves and forcing them not to be? Well, forcing people to be slaves is immoral; forcing them not to be slaves is moral. Likewise with banning the hijab with gulf-style niqab (face covering) or the Afghan Burqa. Women do not have a right in free countries to act like slaves - it is demeaning to other women and to the culture in which they reside.

And just for your information, loonwatch, other Muslim countries and even Islamic authorities consider the full face veil as backward and demeaning.

Egypt, 90% Muslim, was smart enough to ban the niqab in schools as being backward and demeaning to women ². Turkey, 99.8% Muslim, and Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, ban the wearing of the veil in their public schools.

If Muslim countries can ban the veil - why can't we?

Notes

(1):

BBC News, Slavery: Mauritania's best kept secret

After three attempts at making slavery illegal, the latest as recently as 1981, Mauritania has finally enacted a law which goes further than ever before, making slave ownership punishable with a fine or prison sentence.

But a year on, and no-one has yet been prosecuted under the new law. "We enacted it just to meet international standards," says Bamariam Koita, director of the government's Human Rights Commission.

...

In answer to the Mauritanian government's assertion that slavery no longer exists in Mauritania, Mohamed recites the names of the family members he left behind in slavery. "If I tell you their names, can you count them?" he asked shyly. "I was never taught". There are eight members of his immediate family still living as slaves, and Mohamed tells me there are many more in Mauritania.

It is difficult to know how many though. International human rights organisations such as Amnesty International are prevented from entering the country to conduct research.

...

It seems the government has little interest in really wiping out slavery. Meanwhile slavery remains Mauritania's best kept open secret.

"Everyone knew we were slaves," said Mohamed. "It's a normal thing, to have slaves in Mauritania.

(2):

Blog, Egypt purges niqab from schools and colleges

Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi was reportedly angered during a tour of a Cairo school when he saw a girl wearing a niqab, the full veil worn by some devout Muslim women which covers the entire body except for the eyes.

Sheikh Tantawi, regarded by many as Egypt's Imam and Sunni Islam's foremost spiritual authority, asked the teenage girl to remove her veil saying: "The niqab is a tradition, it has no connection with religion."

The imam instructed the girl, a pupil at a secondary school in Cairo's Madinet Nasr suburb, never to wear the niqab again and promised to issue a fatwa, or religious edict, against its use in schools.