Belgian province to implement headscarf ban targeting mostly muslim girls : worldnews

[-] SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml 30 points 3 weeks ago

World news might be a bit out there but couldn't find a better place to post.

Basically the province of Eastern Flanders is implementing a ban that would see headscarves be illegal on schools. This will mostly target muslim girls as they are the ones wearing it of course. They will do it to encourage 'neutrality' and some people see it as a feminist act.

Now of course none of these wankers has actually talked to, you know, a muslim woman because they will soon find out that a lot of them actually want to wear headscarves. Or at least have the option to choose.

'We shall prevent policing how you dress by policing how you will dress! We are feminists!'

I used to be in favor of this myself until I actually met muslim women who were against it and their logic is sound: let women decide. Can't argue against that. Simple as.

[+] yet_another_commie@lemmygrad.ml -9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

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[-] ComandanteCapybara@lemmygrad.ml 24 points 3 weeks ago

Most women don't want to wear headscarves, and a few people who do that willingly don't justify allowing religious symbols

I'm sorry but this seems just so wrong to me.

Isn't the ban just about headscarves? A piece of cloth is not a religious symbol and policing women about their fashion choices is an awful idea.

It seems specifically worded to hide behind (white) feminism while just being another bigoted law that specifically targets Muslim people in Europe to scare them and to send them a message.

And I would like to know on what you are basing this idea that "most women don't want to wear headscarves". Maybe most white Western women don't?

Because from my personal life and experiences I can tell you that I've met plenty of both Muslim women and also black women who not only preferred wearing a headscarf, but actually felt more empowered precisely because they could control who gets to see what of themselves.

And don't even get me started on the weird obsession that white people have for black people's hair. So wearing a headscarf can also helps to have healthier hair... In addition to literally stopping white people from randomly touching your hair just because "they're so different!"

[-] SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

The ban is made for hijab but I forgot the word so I used a more literal translation for the Dutch word which is headscarves. Though headscarves probably fall under the new measure as hijab wearing people would otherwise be able to say it's just a regular headscarf.

[-] Horse@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

if a white woman wears a headscarf of any kind, she would probably be able to pass it off as a secular one, even if she is muslim
if a woman of color tries, she would probably not get away with it even if she is not muslim
this is essentially a ban on brown women wearing a headscarf, so your title isn't incorrect

[-] ComandanteCapybara@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 3 weeks ago

Thank you for the clarification then!

[-] yet_another_commie@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 3 weeks ago

Your point is definitely convincing.

A piece of cloth is not a religious symbol I agree. Head coverings in Islam are normally monotone and don't have any obviously religious symbols unless it's a hijab/niqab. So by my logic anyone can just claim it's secular, so this can't be forbidden

Maybe most white Western women don’t? I am from the Global South. Some people are really negative about involving children in religion

actually felt more empowered precisely because they could control who gets to see what of themselves Very good point. Yes, in this case covering your head is totally legit

In addition to literally stopping white people from randomly touching your hair just because “they’re so different!” Omg, I never knew people can be that creepy. Ahh, the West...

[-] ComandanteCapybara@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 3 weeks ago

Some people are really negative about involving children in religion

Yeah I fear that's probably similar to what lawmakers are trying to harness with this law (OP then wrote that the law is actually specifically targeting hijabs and they wrote headscarf for the translation).

I personally think this could be a much longer conversation about clothing, racism, states' policing and religion. For example, even European fashion used to have far more hats and head covering in it before it became associated with Islam and deemed as "scary/dangerous" in the West.

But because nowadays white Western European fashion has mostly moved away from that specific style, and also because Europe has become less religious, they slowly kind of collectively agreed that 'covering your hair=bad'.

Pair this with their negative views of immigrants and Muslim people and you can see how some lawmakers are hiding behind things like "feminism" or "schools should be neutral" to target minorities and make them feel not welcomed in Europe.

Omg, I never knew people can be that creepy. Ahh, the West...

They can be far creepier than that unfortunately. And it falls again in that realm of "we don't want you to feel at home here. You either conform to European whiteness or you're already going against the law from when you are a child"

[-] SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml 18 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

But that's not the point. The point is that under the guise of neutrality and feminism the choice of these women gets suppressed. I'm all for empowering women and especially teaching young girls at school that they have authority over their bodies and choices but this is not it. You don't do that by banning things but by educating.

This whole thing is distraction, creating problems that aren't there. In my countries some kids are unable to get, for example, math classes for months due to no teachers being available. School results are dramatically decreasing. The teachers that are there are overworked and are constantly attacked by the government. There are actual muslim women not allowed to work only because they want to be able to decide whether or not they wear a headscarve.

All this will do is pushing more muslim girls away from schools like this only to fall into the hands of even more conservative schools where headscarves are allowed. All the while the actual important stuff, like quality of education and teachers' rights, are plummeting. It's a distraction.

And there is no true neutrality in these schools. In a dominantly christian, capitalist and liberal country the education system is a direct result of these ideologies. I was spoonfed anticommunism, liberalism, capitalism, christianity and even white supremacy through this very same school system, despite it claiming to be 'neutral'.

[-] ksynwa@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 3 weeks ago

The problem is that under the guise of feminism you are just advocating for women to be oppressed on two fronts. What good is this going to do when muslims communities are ghettofied and remain at a socioeconomic disadvantage?

[-] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I think it depends on the broader social and historical circumstances. Policies can't be analyzed in a vacuum, they have to be looked at in context. I am not against the idea of school dress codes, but in general there should definitely be no such restrictions in the broader public, i think we can agree on that.

However, even in schools, in this case i don't think it's a good idea, because this is not rooted in a desire to help women and advance secularism, it's rooted simply in Islamophobia, which in Europe is essentially a form of racism. In different historical and cultural circumstances such a ban might possibly be justified, but not in a European country where Muslim people already face prejudice, othering, hate, suspicion and discrimination.

If we were talking about this policy in the context of, say, early 20th century Atatürk's Turkey, then i can see this argument being valid that this is a way to have schools encourage secularism and combat the entrenched religious conservatism in society, but this is not remotely the case for Belgium. What needs combatting in Belgium is not religious conservatism, that is not a major social contradiction in this society, rather it's bigotry, racism and Euro-chauvinism.

[-] Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net 23 points 3 weeks ago

It feels like we're going back to the early 2000s with all this Islamophobia

[-] SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml 29 points 3 weeks ago

It's because we are going back. Muslims are the scapegoat of the current times, viewed by the whities as the untermenschen. My country is heavily segregated and in this city you can painfully see that. Entire neighborhoods full of white people with almost no migrants and entire neighborhoods full of migrants, muslims, non white people. They rarely come in contact with eachother. The only information these white people get is through the news of through fear mongering politicians. You see it in the vote results.

The area I work in, a heavily migrant area, is a huge marxist party voting area. The area I live in, a mainly white people area, is a heavily anti migrant voting area, despite not even experiencing the perceived 'trouble' these migrant are said to cause (spoiler: it's not that bad duh).

And thus you get entire groups of white people making decisions like the one in the article, not even really including muslim women in their decision making. They make a decision through their white supremacist view and think they are empowering women. The racist idea that muslim women are incapable of making their own decisions and thinking you're doing them a favor by even further policing them is insane.

[-] huf@hexbear.net 16 points 3 weeks ago

europe is going back to the 1920s except this time with muslims instead of jews.

[-] Palacegalleryratio@hexbear.net 15 points 3 weeks ago

Not content with simply watching amerikkka and the ukkk competing to be shittiest, Belgium decided to loudly proclaim that it is, in fact, also very shitty.

[-] bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 3 weeks ago

Gotta love the Free West™

[-] bunitor@lemmy.eco.br 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

if you don't see the problem, think of it like this: how would you like it if your country made it illegal for women and girls to cover their breasts?

[+] Finiteacorn@lemmygrad.ml -8 points 3 weeks ago

Why do we care about this again? like actually think about this again why would we care about symbols for a destructive right wing ideology being banned, think about this in literally any other context, u have a symbol for an incredibly fucked up right wing ideology that has at every turn in history been used to justify oppression, slavery, and war and it is being banned from public schools, the only people being "oppressed" are those who refuse to give up this terrible ideology, so again why should any decent person care. I swear whenever religion comes into the picture its like peoples brains just fucking melt and they loose the ability to think things thru.

[-] SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 3 weeks ago

Do you, like, read any of the other replies here or are you just here to rant?

[-] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 3 weeks ago

On what grounds do you claim that a head scarf is a universal symbol of destruction? Don't answer that, you don't have grounds and you'd just give an Islamophobic spew if you tried.

Could you imagine if Belgium was like "we're banning cowboy hats because they're associated with Yankees and the Yankees have been historical terrorists." That'd at least make more sense than this because the terror done by the US is much more real than any terror ascribed to modern Islam - and in fact some of the actual terror coming from Muslims in recent history is fomented by the US in the first place. But somehow I doubt you'd think it's reasonable, regardless.

When you put this in context, yeah, that thing you were being rude about others supposedly not doing, it's just white supremacy vilifying the non-white person again, under the guise of the non-white person ascribing to a "bad ideology", while ignoring the fundamentally oppressive power dynamic and the galling hypocrisy of pretending to care about "extremism" while the institution of white supremacy continues to treat the world like a punching bag, coin purse, and beachfront property.

[-] Finiteacorn@lemmygrad.ml -3 points 2 weeks ago

there is well over a 1000 years of history that proof what islam and most organized religions are and have always been and what they do you would have to be deliberately blind to not see it. as for banning cowboys boots i would mostly think its funny but if there is a difference between those 2 is that banning cowboys boots targets a culture where as banning religious symbols targets an ideology a more accurate comparison would be banning american flags and i would think thats based as fuck.

as for so much of the terror and cruelty and oppression today coming from islam being the fault of america ofcourse it is, islam is a tool of oppression it has been used by every empire that could before and so it is used by the latest one you are arguing my point for me.

[-] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 2 weeks ago

you are arguing my point for me.

Except I'm not. Belgium isn't banning American flags here, nor tackling their own systemic problems of white supremacy and support for imperialism with a rule like this. They are reinforcing the position of white chauvinist moral authority over non-white people. It is precisely part of the colonial and imperial dynamic that says "this group over here is savages and is incapable of self-determining as a people how to behave."

As for your attempt to distinguish culture and ideology, they are often intertwined and it's not so simple in practice that you can just target the one without targeting the other. I'm quite sure you haven't talked to the Muslims in that area and found out the reasons they wear a head scarf. As far as I can tell, your line of reasoning goes something like: "Religion always bad -> This is 100% a symbol of participation in organized religion and can't mean anything else, or beyond that -> Therefore, banning it cannot be anything but good." This is nonsense though. I am not personally a fan of organized religion, but when I came to understand views about imperialism and communism and so on, it became important for me to look at it with a broader lens. Take the Palestinian cause, for example. It would be tantamount to siding with zionists to focus on Hamas not being secular while they are sacrificing their lives trying to survive a genocide and to side with colonizer talking points against Hamas because of any religiosity they have. Palestinians who are directly involved in the struggle can contend with that, but as an outsiders, it is foolish for us to try to judge from an ivory tower.

This kind of ivory tower judging is how people arrive at "ultra-left" stances that are inadvertently aligned with the western empire, instead of in opposition to it. You don't have to like Islam to understand that Belgium is a part of the white supremacist, imperialist order and that when they target Muslims in a way like this, it has nothing to do with liberating people from an oppressive ideology and everything to do with treating them as lesser and exercising control over them as a people. They aren't saving women, they are subverting self-determination.

[-] starkillerfish@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago

you're a racist Islamophobic piece of shit. get lost

[-] mao@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Yeah you're right, while we're at it we should also ban dying your hair, or piercings, because they come from the "woke" ideology, which is synonymous with nazism. Actually, all women should be required to maintain long hair and not cut it short. It should also be dyed blonde if not naturally blonde. Oh and blue colored eyes. We need to fight the right-wing authoritarian ideology of woke genderism, cuz things like dyed hair and piercings and tattoos are what the nazi-left uses to "oppress" women.

I am very smart.

[-] Finiteacorn@lemmygrad.ml -2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

well fuck you too i guess dont come here insulting me by putting words in my mouth i clearly disagree with, literally nothing i said has anything to do with any of the garbage u just put in my mouth if u are going to argue with someone atleast talk to what they said instead of making up shit. Actual fucking clown behavior.

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