I agree with Terry, in that this proposal wasn’t meant to be taken literally. However, the idea of outlawing certain ways of dress (niqab, burkha, etc) that are clearly meant to subjugate women is something to be considered. A burkha is a human rights violation. No woman wears this shroud except out of fear, of her husband, family or culture. The woman who would argue differently has, in my opinion, simply internalized that fear to convince herself otherwise.
I believe that, just as Phyllis Chesler has pointed out elsewhere, where the burkha is found you will, in nearly all cases, also find anti-semitism, hatred for all things not Islamic, and an acceptance of violent jihad. I propose that if just the burkha were outlawed here (I am an American diplomat posted to London) and in other European countries that are being slowly colonized by Islam, a major development would occur. That is, many, if not most, of the violent and/or violence-supporting fundamentalists would leave Europe, unwilling to stay in such a place that will not allow them to subjugate women in the name of their 7th century ideology. It would be interesting to discover, should the Western European states do something like this, whether or not the women would stay while their men fled. It’s worth finding out. My only fear is that America and Canada would open their doors to the fleeing psychopaths.
