An interesting slant on the wearing of a burqa.

its an interesting point there Iam. What I notice most (leaving aside a tiny number who wear the burka is that most women have been more relaxed about the headscarf especially girl children. Nowhere was it more observable on a big day out in my local park where a large group arrived on a late summer day, it's always multi cultural but this was a large observable group. Many of the younger women had no headscarf neither did the girls.

but there are groups of younger women who have started re-dressing "modest plain dressing" with headscarf,

I talked to my muslim hairdresser about it (she wears western clothes at least at work but does worship daily etc) and its a group who are re-committing to their religion like a christian nun might and dressing accordingly. (headscarves and simple bland colours

I live in a northern town like you, we seem to have slightly different experiences.

The whole thing is fraught with difficulties.

If we had a law against covering the face, just as there were those who refused to wear Covid masks for medical reasons, there will be those who insist on wearing masks “for medical reasons”. Just to prove a point.

My objection to the banning of the burka is that it s a law that controls only women and and what they can wear.

Good laws must be able to be applied without bias or inequality. Given that the application of law (Parliament, courts, policing) is predominately in the hands of men I think to give them control of what women wear and the power to criminalise women who do not obey is an incredibly dangerous step to take.

There is a massive issue here that people don’t seem to be able to grasp.

Rosie51

The virtue signalling is off the scale, and of course the 'racist' accusation always rears its ugly head, even when posters are or have family members that are ethnic minority.

Rules are apparently only for some not for all.

I shall not and never would start asking anyone who arrives in a burka to remove there face covering good for you, I fully approve, that's a private group with I assume rules that apply equally to everyone? So full face motorcycle helmets or other full face masks equally acceptable, although I doubt anyone would want to do yoga so attired. Having done yoga I'd be in awe of anyone doing it in a burqa, surely a female only enforced group where they could remove the burqa would be preferable? Will transwomen be welcome at your yoga/art group while Muslim women are present as I think that may be a problem to some Muslim women?

I totally agree👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Wyllow3

its an interesting point there Iam. What I notice most (leaving aside a tiny number who wear the burka is that most women have been more relaxed about the headscarf especially girl children. Nowhere was it more observable on a big day out in my local park where a large group arrived on a late summer day, it's always multi cultural but this was a large observable group. Many of the younger women had no headscarf neither did the girls.

but there are groups of younger women who have started re-dressing "modest plain dressing" with headscarf,

I talked to my muslim hairdresser about it (she wears western clothes at least at work but does worship daily etc) and its a group who are re-committing to their religion like a christian nun might and dressing accordingly. (headscarves and simple bland colours

I live in a northern town like you, we seem to have slightly different experiences.

Things can go backwards though. This is the worrying thing - as I made the point earlier - womens clothing has gone backwards in Iran, Afghanistan is the worst obviously, Palestinian women used to dress in a normal modern way....but many of them have gone backwards into cover-up clothing (thankfully not covering their faces) and thankfully there doesnt seem to be any pressure on single women at any rate.

Countries can go backwards.

We're lucky - we've even moved on in my lifetime (bearing in mind many of us were prevented from wearing trousers in some places well into our lifetime - eg my first job forbade it).

I don't know just how many women are modernising out of hijab, burka, etc - as it's totally impossible to tell where I live now (ie that small town in West Wales). In all the time I've been here now I've seen precisely one woman walking along in a burqa during that more than 10 years...though I do see a "count on one hand" number of women in headsquares and the "modest" end of normal Western clothing.

.....and yep.....everyone everywear should be prohibited imo from wearing any sort of face covering at all anywhere (be it burka, motorcycle helmet, mask, etc) - though I can see a problem re masks because they were "medically mandated" during Lockdown and a lot of people were wearing them then. But we could certainly forbid absolutely all face coverings of any description - with an exception made for those who choose to wear a mask if They impose a lockdown on us all ever again.

We need to be able to see peoples faces - as how can we see what they are thinking otherwise? or even who they are.

I do absolutely understand the issue if the state controlling womens dress lathyrus which is why I have reservations about a ban, however I think people on the opposite side of the debate underestimate the damage that the normalisation of a symbol of women's oppression can do to a society.

Yes I agree with you there too. I’m very uncomfortable with comments along the lines of “ Well I haven’t seen/experienced any kind of coercion/oppression, so it doesn’t happen” when there are many testimonies and indeed criminal cases to show that it does happen.

It a thorny difficult issue that isn’t helped by polarised responses.

There is no room for the burkha in western civilised society.
There is no religious calling for them to wear it, no more than it is to wear a Christian cross.
It is a divisive garment banned by many countries. We should follow suit

Countries with full or partial bans:
Europe: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Norway. Italy and Portugal have also moved to implement such bans.
Asia: China (specifically in the Xinjiang region), Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan.
Africa: Cameroon, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, and Gabon.
Reasons for bans:
Secularism and integration: Some countries, like France, frame the bans as a way to uphold secularism and promote social integration.
Security: Bans are sometimes implemented as a counter-terrorism measure, as full-face veils can be used to conceal identity or weapons.
Equality: Some proponents argue that face coverings can be a symbol of social exclusion and inequality.
Islamic veiling practices by country - Wikipedia
There are currently 16 states that have banned the burqa (not to be confused with the hijab), including Tunisia, Austria, Denmark, France, Belgium, Tajikistan, ...

Wikipedia

How many countries have banned the burqa? - The Spectator
13 Jun 2025 — How many countries have banned the burqa? At least 24 have placed some restrictions around the wearing of full-face coverings in public, although in ...

The banning of ethnic/religious style clothes in the Xinjiang region in China is part of an oppressive Chinese government campaign to destroy that culture. Children are being removed from families. Adults are being forcibly 'retrained' into becoming 'proper' Chinese citizens.
It is nothing to celebrate. It is not progress. It is an attempt to destroy the Uighur way of life.

Quite - Freya.

It's not just us having that problem.

We set the rules in our own homes....and so yep....we set the rules in our country. It's not much to ask for for the sake of integrating.

I changed my whole way of dressing in about 1 month flat when I moved to Denmark. I moved there in the British clothes of the era - maxi dresses, long-ish hair etc and took one good look around and about a month later had changed to short hair, clogs, jeans and I had to open my mouth before people realised I wasn't Danish and that's a very similar country to my own - but I'd integrated (the one thing was they never got me out of my bra and I was still wearing one of them - which was a sight more than the woman of the household I was in...whose usual garb was nothing at all - but I learnt to just say nowt and try not to look startled).

The arrogance is stunning really.

Leave people alone.

Obviously the way the Uighurs are being treated by the Chinese is appalling - in a variety of ways. I need to go off and see if that is actually a "country" and not a part of China - as I'm au fait enough to know they're being treated appallingly and they don't deserve it (whether it is a country or genuinely a region of China) -....but I do know the Chinese are busily calling Tibet a part of China (like heck it is....it's a country and it's the Tibetans who have the right to be in what the Chinese call "an autonomous region"). Yep...the country that we know is still a country and is called Tibet.

But this is a country here - or some would say "It's several countries - England, Scotland, Wales, at the moment/for however long Northern Ireland". Whatever way we regard Britain it's our country (or countries - take your pick) and we have the right to say how things are here...

Maremia - The Uighurs are indeed being oppressed by China and I couldnt really get a straight answer to whether their area is a country (like Tibet obviously is) or no. Back came "It's complicated - on the one hand this/on the other hand that". But either way and the Chinese are absolutely in the wrong and in those circumstances = the Uighurs do have their own area and, if that's their way of dressing = that's their way of dressing and the Chinese should leave them to it and not punish them/try and stop them = as they are entitled to dress that way if they wish in that context. Their particular way of dressing isn't affecting anyone else (from what I recall of it - as I don't think they go in for face covering) - even if they decide to up sticks personally and move to "indisputable China".

A man, who has been brought up in a society that equates a decent, virtuous woman with one that wears a burqa when she leaves her own home, will on moving to a society where women wear what they like, and go where they please unescorted by a male, or their mother or mother-in-law, obviously have to re-think things, or be told that women are not available , or prostitutes because they dress as we do in Europe.

My grandmothers, born around 1880 never when outside without putting on a hat - to their generation of both women and men, a bare-headed woman or girl, for that matter, was a prostitute out looking for customers.

In Denmark, due to the risk of terrorist attacks, it is illegal to wear a mask in public, so a bus driver or train ticket controller can refuse to allow a masked person, including women in burqas to enter the bus or train. Girls sitting examinations at school, or any form of further education, are likewise not permitted to be veiled, so their faces cannot be seen. I imagine that a surgeon or physician has the right to demand to see the face of the woman consulting him, so he knows that the name on the health card and the woman are one and the same.

There have been instances of immigrant women, usually unmarried girls, who suspect they are pregnant, borrowing a married cousin or sister's card when consulting a doctor or midwife, which has made the medical profession rather chary of veiled women.

Yep....Denmark has shown it's for good sound reasons they are stating this - so they know the woman is who she says she is (and we can see that - because we see their face). The terrorist attacks reason is also a valid one. The checking the womans health in case of pregnancy, etc, is one.

The Danes have made mistakes as a nation - even in my own lifetime (eg that forced and secret sterilisation of that other race nearby under their aegis - ie because they have more children than the Danes and Denmark is a welfare state and so they would be paying for those extra children). But they realised that was a mistake and amounted to "medical rape" and "sex discrimination" and stopped doing that and I don't know what they're doing now or not re that situation.

But overall - the Danes have got it right in many many respects/it's a better society than my own I feel and I was pretty impressed at a lot of what I saw whilst there. This is one of the ways the Danes have got it right - ie their decision re clothing.

Freya5

There is no room for the burkha in western civilised society.
There is no religious calling for them to wear it, no more than it is to wear a Christian cross.
It is a divisive garment banned by many countries. We should follow suit

Countries with full or partial bans:
Europe: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Norway. Italy and Portugal have also moved to implement such bans.
Asia: China (specifically in the Xinjiang region), Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan.
Africa: Cameroon, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, and Gabon.
Reasons for bans:
Secularism and integration: Some countries, like France, frame the bans as a way to uphold secularism and promote social integration.
Security: Bans are sometimes implemented as a counter-terrorism measure, as full-face veils can be used to conceal identity or weapons.
Equality: Some proponents argue that face coverings can be a symbol of social exclusion and inequality.
Islamic veiling practices by country - Wikipedia
There are currently 16 states that have banned the burqa (not to be confused with the hijab), including Tunisia, Austria, Denmark, France, Belgium, Tajikistan, ...

Wikipedia

How many countries have banned the burqa? - The Spectator
13 Jun 2025 — How many countries have banned the burqa? At least 24 have placed some restrictions around the wearing of full-face coverings in public, although in ...

There is no religious calling for them to wear it, no more than it is to wear a Christian cross.

The cross is a religious symbol.

The burqa is not, it is cultural. It is not mentioned in the Quran.

I find the coercion unacceptable.
Coercing women into wearing certain clothes, coercing women into not wearing certain clothes.
Both wrong.

France has had legislation against the wearing of face coverings and the burqa in public places since 2011 and I’m with them on that.

There is imo a very basic message here of "Women are people too" that some men/quite a few men (even in our own culture) havent absorbed yet and seeing some women "hidden away" like that is not giving any very good message to anyone to make it plain to them "People are people - and stop thinking women are lesser beings". This is what opponents of removing burqas don't seem to have clicked to - ie it's putting a nasty little subliminal message through into the consciousness of British men too - ie "Women can be hidden away - prisoners in their clothes - and men arent". I might be more amenable to this if men also wore burkas (but they don't and their clothing doesnt hamper them or anonymise them in any way.......I rest my case).

I thought I'd fought out every "I am a person - my body's sex is irrelevant" battle - but there's been a few more times where I've had to be "very firm" shall we put it with some man who has tried to treat me as a "woman (lesser being)" and I am British!! I thought that was all over - until I moved to a more old-fashioned area and there are some men who've had to have a few things made very plain to them - that they are not dealing with a "woman" when they deal with me iyswim. Most are okay - but there's a few....

....and we do still have some official legal sex discrimination going on in Britain that needs removing (any woman wondered about doing equity release on a house they own and realised she would be paid less than an exactly identical person - who was in a male body instead)? Yep...discrimination is still something that happens. There's an excuse for it and I know what the excuse is and call them on it....but I rest my case and I don't think we should be giving any sort of emotional backing (no matter how subconscious a level it's on) to anyone to treat any women worse.

^She suggests the wearing of the burqa encourages Muslim men to assume that women from other cultures are sexually available.
^

They cant and havent learnt that that is not the case??
They are not 5 years old. Or 14.
A 5 min conversation should sort that out.

I have a different slant on the wearing of burgas having lived with Muslims for a decade .
I dressed very modestly - but that's always been my habit and wore a burqa when travelling into three dangerous for women areas .
I still have many Muslim friends both male and female who are fantastic friends to me so I have a huge respect for them as they do for me .
As I write this I'm sitting in a Muslim's friend 's cafe and we've just chatted about Judaism .

It's a whole different mind set.

In Leviticus ,where the dietary and dressing modestly laws are outlined-we Christian women were supposed to adhere to a strict dress code .
I see it observed in orthodox Jewish friends .
But it's a choice usually admittedly dictated
by men .

Whether it is wrong or right-I don't think that we have the right to tell Muslims that they can't wear a burqa .
And having written that Id like to emphasise that in my opinion- no woman should be denied an education nor medical care .
But given respect.

There are Muslim women bravely fighting against covering up, in Iran a few years ago many women took to the streets ripping off their hijabs, and men protested with them, many men then taking to social media wearing a hijab in order to make a mockery of this. Of course the regime clamped down and there were imprisonments and executions.
In Saudi Muslim women again campaigned bravely to be able to drive and so now can do so.
There are also many Muslim women expressing their desire to live without patriarchal controls in literature and art.
To suppose they all kowtow to what their male relatives or communities/authorities dictate is to greatly underestimate the human need to fight back against oppression of any kind.

starnded

The arrogance is stunning really.

Leave people alone.

Yup, as individuals in our society right here right now.

Not so of course as regards where there is abuse from individuals or society as a whole.

Lots of covert racism in here, because for example some forms of Christianity and Jewish organisations have women who choose to cover their hair and wear modest or plain clothing - or are nuns, but somehow escape mention here.

On image worth many words?

Top post Esmay

Women have the right to choose what they are comfortable with, as long as it is not in an abusive set up.

Lots of covert misogyny in many posts and complete lack of understanding of oppression of women.