There’s been a bit of a push in Europe lately to ban the burqa. France’s deliberation on the ban has been the most vocal and discussed;

FRANCE’S top administrative body has advised the government against slapping a complete ban on the full Islamic veil but says outlawing the burqa in some places was justified for security reasons.


Last week Belgium became the first European country to ban the burqa;

“We’re the first country to spring the locks that have made a good number of women slaves, and we hope to be followed by France, Switzerland, Italy, and the Netherlands; countries that think,” said Liberal Deputy Denis Ducarme.

In the lower house of the federal parliament yesterday, 136 deputies supported a nationwide ban on clothes or veils that do not allow the wearer to be fully identified, including the full-face niqab and burqa.


And Italy has seemingly had a burqa ban since 1975;

ITALIAN police have fined a woman 500 euros ($A712) for wearing a full Islamic veil.

While there is no specific legislation on the burqa, covering the face in public – even with a motorcycle helmet – has been banned in Italy since 1975.


It’s worth noting that in each of these cases the main reason cited for the banning the burqa are related to security and identification. Critics of burqa bans will almost inadvertently revert to protesting against the infringement of their religious  beliefs.

After all, prove an action has religious significance and all of a sudden the religious vilification defense overshadows anything else.

Personally I don’t see the burqa as a religious artifact. From my understanding the Quran urges Islamic followers to dress modestly, it mentions nothing about running around covered from head to toe and completely obliterating any sense of personal identity in public.

However this is largely put down to interpretation and translation differences. Still it’s enough for Muslims who endorse the burqa to cry religious vilification and label anyone who supports a burqa ban as attacking Islam and religious freedom.

What about the arguments for a burqa ban that have nothing to do with religion though? I’m strongly opposed to the wearing of the burqa in public and it’s got nothing to do with religion.

Here’s 5 reasons I believe the burqa should not only be banned in Europe but in any country that isn’t ruled by Islamic fundamentalist crazies.



1. Eye Contact

One of the strongest tenants of personal intracommunication between humans is eye contact. The Burqa by nature obscures this.

When I’m talking to someone primarily I’m looking into their eyes and secondarily I’m reading their face. This isn’t something that happens consciously, it’s a subconscious element to human interaction.

Mind you it’s not limited to humans either, my pet cats were able to tell what mood I was in off my facial expressions alone. If they were doing something they shouldn’t be often a frown and ‘angry eyes’ was all it took for them to have second thoughts.

The absence of these secondary forms of communication (the primary being speech) are definitely noticeable when absent. Try have a conversation with someone who completely covers their face, for me it’s extremely frustrating. I want to read their reactions to what I’m saying and gauge how the conversation is going.

There’s a lot more to communication then simply hearing a voice. Talking to an emotionless brick wall is largely unsatisfying and downright frustrating at times. If you’re wearing a burqa (or any other type of face covering clothing) I don’t want to talk to you.

In my personal life this is fine enough but it’s caused me problems in previous jobs where I’ve had to interact with burqa clad women. The frustration was even more compounded here as often English wasn’t a strong point. This in itself wasn’t a negative but often I had no way of gauging if I was being understood or not.

If you’re explaining something to someone and they don’t understand you can usually tell by their facial expression. Here I found myself dealing with a blank slate. Directly asking if they understood often led to silence or a slow ‘not-quite-sure’ nod. In these situations I just had to hope for the best.



2. Burqas make me feel like a predator

The whole concept of being modest in Islam appears to be to remove all physical temptation, from men.

If Islam attracts guys who can’t keep it in their pants then fair enough, but what about the rest of us?

Every time I see a burqa I’m subconsciously reminded that the reason she’s dressed like that is so that I don’t instantly turn into a slobbering uncontrollable animal and try to mate with her.

I mean that’s what it comes down to doesn’t it?

How about taking back the notion of self control and placing the burden of responsibility where it belongs, on the potential offender – not the potential victim.



3. I can’t hear you

This one probably again relates to my interactions with women wearing burqas. Not all women who wear a burqa are softly spoken but a hell of a lot of them are.

I’d have trouble understanding these women without a burqa, wearing one just makes me want to go bang my head against a wall.

Not because the women are softly spoken but because there’s no viable solution. Some random guy asking a woman to remove a burqa is punishable by beheading, or I won’t get into virgin heaven… or something.

‘mfphhhfphhhmmm’.

‘Hi there , sorry I can’t hear you. Can you speak up?’

‘MFPHHFPHHMMM!’

‘Hmm, yeah this isn’t really working. I’ll be right back.’

At this point I’d go and disappear for a half hour or so until they’d hopefully gone. Admittedly this didn’t happen often but when it did, after the first few games of me asking them to speak louder and getting nowhere, I really didn’t know what to do.

In any other circumstance I’d just ask them to remove whatever was making them difficult to hear. But it’s the almighty burqa and we can’t ask that.



4. Body Odor

For anyone who thought Indians smelt bad, wait until you’re in the vicinity of a burqa clad women in summer. I’ve read that deodorant and Islam might come into opposition due to the alcohol content of some deodorants but by and large I believe it’s just laziness.

I mean if you’re going to run around invisible all day who cares what people think about your smell or looks.

For the rest of the us this is a nightmare. Australian summers aren’t cold and dressing head to toe in black cannot by any stretch of the imagination be comfortable. Hell even if you wore deodorant, five minutes outside and you’d still be wading through your very own swimming pool.

Sorry but I don’t want to smell your body odor because you choose to wear climatalogically inappropriate clothing.



5. woman’s rights

Now this is a tricky one. There’s plenty of women out there who will go on about how it’s a personal choice and they like wearing a burqa.

To this I say fair enough. You were born into this culture and have had it repeatedly re-enforced throughout your life. Nothing is going to change that. In most middle eastern and African countries were the burqa is prevalent often it’s not even a choice, the laws of the land forbid you from not wearing a burqa in public.

Now it’s certainly not up to me to tell women what they can and can’t wear but I believe the choice to wear or not wear one is important. Of course this contradicts my support for banning the burqa but I’m struggling with that.

I believe the choice to wear a burqa or not is important for future generations. The problem with the west is with immigration we’re getting immigrants from hardline Muslim countries where there is no choice.

This generation of women are mostly a lost cause, it’s become a way of life for them. I see the next generation of immigrant female children as being hard pressed to burqa up, infact I just don’t see it happening as a majority at all. Not if they’ve grown up in western society.

I guess what it comes down to is if we can wait that long. My own prejudices against communicating with someone who masks their identity aren’t going to change anytime soon. I’ll forever see restricting the basic tenants of communication as a sign of disrespect, dishonesty and just being downright rude.


On one hand I’d love to see the burqa banned but the issue of personal freedoms is quite a strong argument. Then again, it’s not like we don’t already ban some forms of clothing, or lack thereof. Try walking down the street in some budgie smugglers, or wearing a motorcycle helmet into a bank, or wearing shorts and a tshirt into a club and see what happens.

If as a society we’ve already content to have the above examples of clothing restrictions in place, is it really that much of a big step to legislate it?



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