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| Great White North |
| Canadian Muslim group calls for burka ban |
| 2009-10-09 |
| A Canadian Muslim group is calling on Ottawa to ban the wearing of the burka in public, the group's founder told Al Arabiya on Thursday. Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC), told Al Arabiya that there were many reasons to ask for this ban including security. "A bank was robbed by people wearing burqas. It is a real risk." The burka, Fatah added, stems from extremists and does not represent Islam's true meaning. "The Quran teaches modesty, however it does not have one word about covering the face. It is a tribal custom that is promoted by extremists such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban." Fatah added that surprisingly, it is women raised in Canada that are the majority of burka wearers. "They are mostly second generation Pakistani or Bangladeshi." Fatah, originally from Pakistan himself, added that the burka harms women by decreasing their chances of getting employment and encouraging a distorted practice of Islam where women's rights are undermined. In August of 2009 Muslim French minister Fadela Amara called for a ban on the burka calling it the "cancer" of radical Islam in an interview with the Financial Times newspaper. "Those who have struggled for women's rights back home in their own countries, I'm thinking particularly of Algeria, we know what it represents and what the obscurantist political project is that lies behind it, to confiscate the most fundamental of liberties," said Amara. On Tuesday, Egypt's top Islamic school al-Azhar's Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, banned women from wearing the burka or face veil inside all its affiliate schools inciting students to stage demonstrations. Controversy arose in Quebec in 2007, when an election official said veiled Muslim women would have to take off their veil if they wanted to vote. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #4 Don't sneer at this. Tarek Fatah is one of the really good guys and deserves all the support that we Canucks can give him. He's one of the very few who has gone public with his anti-extremism message. He has had all the usual death threats, scowls, grimaces, etc. and has ignored them and continued to press his views. |
| Posted by: Canuckistan sniper 2009-10-09 15:14 |
| #3 Problem is, Oregon, the old bastards back in the hood won't pay attention to any "banning" and any woman who chooses not to wear the thing will be in trouble. Then the Muslim vs. Infidel thing will kick in and the cops would never hear of it. If it's the law, the old bastards back in the hood have a harder time with it. I think that was Ataturk's thinking when he banned women's headgear. Can't convince those old !@#$%^&*() goat-humping misogynists back in the hood to leave the women alone...government has to do it. I don't like it, either, but simply having the local moderate Muslims talk against it--they can't "ban" it--won't work, and their imams are funded by SA, so they can't be convinced. |
| Posted by: Richard Aubrey 2009-10-09 15:08 |
| #2 I'll believe that this is something of significance when Islamic communities in US and European states ban it themselves. They don't need the government to enforce change in a religious practice. |
| Posted by: Richard of Oregon 2009-10-09 13:30 |
| #1 Don't think of that initiative as reform. During the Cold War, the Soviets retreated from strict Marxism in their agricultural policies, under the slogan, "one step backward; two steps forward." The aggressive muslim horde has always been passive when tactics warrant same, and aggressive when jihad is unobstructed. |
| Posted by: Ulineper Scourge of the Veal Cutlets9295 2009-10-09 10:08 |