A debate is erupting around Islamic face coverings in Finland’s educational institutions.
Archived version: https://archive.is/20250813123725/https://yle.fi/a/74-20177195
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The minister is a bigot and racist.
Your profile says “religion is cancer” yet you seem fine with forcing women to cover their faces because their religion mandates it and their father/husband doesn’t want other men seeing them.
I disagree with religion but I still think people should have the freedom to follow one.
No one’s trying to ban religions here - you just don’t get a free pass for barbaric behavior because of it.
Barbaric behavior like… not showing one’s hair?
This isn’t about hijabs - it’s about burkas and niqabs. One covers everything except the eyes, and the other covers those too.
What makes it barbaric isn’t the desire to be covered, but the fact that it’s not the woman’s choice. Nobody dresses up in a bag willingly.
It isn’t forced in Finland
It is by choice
I thought burka referred to something else so my bad there. In that case I think the whole affair is pretty weird myself, but the original point still stands: Women wearing these things is up to them, and whether parents raise their children to wear these things is up to them. When talking about parenting the whole concept of consent gets pretty dubious, but that’s the case for everything. Society generally recognizes that parents have great leeway in raising their kids, so I expect more than vibes as a reason to infringe on that.
Lost your horse somewhere, white knight? You’ll need a source to back that up.
I’ll quote my other comment:
I’m not saying that literally nobody wears burka or niqab willingly but I think we have enough examples of it being forced upon them that it doesn’t seem like a huge stretch for me to generalize that it’s the rule rather than exception.
That is extremely fallacious logic. First, only one of these is about niqab, the rest are hijab which is outside the scope of this conversation. Second, it’s easy to have enough examples of it being forced when your example is the country on earth where it’s imposed by law. Your average woman most likely isn’t wearing a burka willingly in Afghanistan, but what evidence do you have that this holds in other societies where niqab is much, much rarer? The condition that makes the assumption hold in Afghanistan is clearly lacking in other societies.
Who said I’m fine forcing women to do anything? Some women make the choice to wear religious clothing. I’m for the individual choice to do whatever you want with your own body as long as it doesn’t directly affect someone else’s.
Okay imagine you move somewhere where all the guys go outside with their dicks out, but you don’t want to because you were raised to think your dick should be covered. Even without somebody explicitly forcing you to cover your dick, you’ll still instinctively want to do it because it’s a deeply held cultural taboo to go outside with your dick out, especially if you’re part of an immigrant community that still covers their dicks. Now imagine that your school says you have to go to school with your dick out even if you feel uncomfortable with it.
Yes, the requirement for Muslim women to cover their hair is rooted in and perpetuated by misogyny, but ideas about modesty and decency don’t just disappear overnight and it’s kind of unfair for western societies to put girls in ththat position.
Would you make the same argument for genital mutilation or arranged marriages too? This isn’t about fashion choises. It’s about oppression. Not everything should be exported to other cultures.