Why shouldn’t Australia ban the burqa? Hardly anyone who’s not a Muslim, after all, actually defends these ghastly, mediaeval oppression-tents. Even Muslim defenders of the ghastly things are clearly a little bit embarrassed, given the vehemence with which they try to deny that it’s even Islamic.
Instead, defenders of the burqa try an unconvincing ‘b-b-but muh human rights!’ argument. Maybe the hardcore Libertarians have the defence of at least being consistently idiotic – hardcore Libertarians, after all, being only just behind student socialists when it comes to airheaded theorising, if infinitely less likely to murder tens of millions of people in the process. Theirs is, though, a classic case of Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance: by endlessly pandering to the drooling troglodytes of Islam, they’re enabling the wholesale destruction of tolerant Western culture.
But almost all of the mealy mouthed burqa-defenders are quite happy to kiss the slipper of Big Nanny when it comes to just about anything else, from vapes, to sugar, to social media bans, so excuse me if I don’t listen to their special pleading for an instant.
Not to mention the glaring hypocrisy. The same hypocrisy of the senators who refused to even debate Pauline Hanson’s motion to ban the burqa – yet banned her from wearing a burqa in the Senate chamber.
“Long cool woman in a black dress” was a smash US hit for the Hollies back in 1972, and a No 2 hit in Australia, although it didn’t do as well in the UK. Still, it was hard not to be reminded of the song as Senator Pauline Hanson this week strode into the red chamber wearing a short skirt and a long black burqa, all the better to protest the Senate’s refusal to even debate her motion to introduce a federal ban on the burqa.
There was of course much howling and screeching from the miserable cohort of female senators who quite happily don a keffiyeh or prance around in possum cloaks as part of their own parliamentary pantomimes. Hyprocrisy and humbug are alive and well in the Canberra bubble.
If the burqa is too offensive for the elites of the Senate to have to see, then why is it acceptable for the rest of us to have to see it? Not in the rarified atmosphere of the Senate chamber, but in the street, in the bank (where the rest of us have to show our faces) and even on the beaches?
One of their weirdest defences, as it happens, is ‘when do you ever see a burqa, anyway?’ Far too often. Even in Tasmania, where just 0.9 per cent of the population is Muslim, burqas can be seen on the streets. In heavily Muslim areas of Sydney, burqas, chadors and other fully covering Islamic repression tents are a far-too common sight.
What’s really driving their demented defence of the burqa, we can be forgiven for suspecting, is a blind refusal to admit what it symbolises: the utter failure of the lunatic policy of capital-M Multiculturalism.
The burqa is both literally and metaphorically the ultimate symbol of the failed policy of multiculturalism without assimilation; a medieval garment devoid of style or beauty that is primarily used as a tool of female oppression. As with other even less savoury cultural practices, it serves to deny a woman agency of her own looks and sexuality, reducing her instead to a form of chattel. On top of which the burqa alienates the immigrant woman from any hope of successfully intergrating fully into our Australian way of life.
As for the ‘religious freedom’ angle: spare me. Of the 23 countries which completely ban the burqa and other face-covering clothing, nine are Muslim. Several more are either majority Muslim or close to. Several Islamic countries ban not only face coverings like the burqa, but hijab completely. European countries with significant Muslim majorities have also banned such Islamic clothing, including some of the left’s beloved Scandinavian countries.
So, I ask again: why shouldn’t Australia ban the burqa?
