Could this be National Review's last article critical of the creeping Islamization of Europe? "Wrong from Head to Toe: A ridiculous and ominous decision in Britain," by Theodore Dalrymple in the March 28 issue of NR, via The Manhattan Institute, with thanks to EPG:
In the long annals of judicial stupidity, there can rarely have been a more idiotic judgment than that recently given by Lord Justice Brooke of the British Court of Appeal. It reads like the suicide note not of a country alone, but of an entire civilization.A young Muslim girl, Shabina Begum, who attended a state school in Luton, England, four-fifths of whose pupils were Muslim, started a legal battle when she was 13 to be allowed the jilbab, a form of dress that leaves only her face and hands exposed. She was almost certainly put up to this by her older brother, a supporter of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a Muslim party that seeks to establish a Muslim world state, that believes democracy is blasphemy, and that denies that the Western citizenship of Muslims is real or meaningful, or confers any privileges or imposes any duties.
The school in question had, in fact, worked out a dress code for Muslim girls that satisfied almost everyone. It was extremely accommodating: Various forms of modest dress were allowed, including certain types of scarf. But, after two years of accepting the dress code, Shabina Begum suddenly started to appear in her jilbab. The school demanded that she go home and change into a costume that accorded with the dress code, but she refused. Eventually she brought a case, supported and possibly funded by the Hizb ut-Tahrir, under the U.K.'s Human Rights Act. She claimed that the school was denying her right to an education.
She lost the case, and also an appeal, but won at the last hurdle. The Guardian reported that after her victory, she said she "could scream with happiness."
When they heard of her victory, many Muslim women around the country must have wanted to scream with quite different emotions, despair and rage prominent among them. For Lord Justice Brooke's ruling, that Shabina Begum's human rights had been denied, and that she had been discriminated against illegally on religious grounds, displayed a complete and invincible ignorance of the social context of the case. Lord Justice Brooke saw no evil, heard no evil, and felt no evil. In effect, therefore, he was giving succor to those Muslim men who still abuse women in a medieval fashion.
Regardless of whether Shabina Begum acted in this case without duress and of her own free will, which seems to me highly unlikely given that the traditional place of Muslim women is not the public spotlight, the fact is that substantial numbers of young Muslim women are virtually enslaved in Britain; they grow up in what can only be called a totalitarian environment. I know this from what my patients have told me. They are not allowed out of the house except under escort, and sometimes not even then; they are allowed no mail or use of the telephone; they are not allowed to contradict a male member of the household, and are automatically subject to his wishes; it is regarded as quite legitimate to beat them if they disobey in the slightest. Their brothers are often quite willing to attack anyone who speaks to the women in any informal context. They are forced to wear modes of dress that they do not wish to wear. Their schooling is quite often deliberately interrupted, so that they are not infected by Western ideas of personal liberty; ambitious for a career, they are kept at home as prisoners and domestic slaves.
Worst of all are the forced marriages to which they are subjected. They are taken by their parents, often at a young age, "back" to Pakistan, where they are told that they are getting married, often to a first cousin. Their fathers regard their British passports with all the respect Hitler accorded to treaties. The young women have possession of their passports only fleetingly, as they pass through immigration. Thereafter, they are confiscated by the father and held as ransom against their good behavior, which in this, as in every other, instance means doing as they are told.
If by any chance they should object to their marriage, they are mercilessly beaten and in some cases killed. All the young women who are taken to Pakistan are aware of such cases: Like the shooting of Admiral Byng, such cases are committed pour encourager les autres. Very occasionally, the parents do not even transport the recalcitrant girls to Pakistan to kill them: They do it in England. Recently in the prison in which I work, I met a young man of Pakistani origin who was afraid of the other young men of Pakistani origin in the prison. Why? Because he had previously given important evidence in court in a case in which a girl who had refused to marry the husband selected for her by her parents was murdered by her father and brothers. The other young men of Pakistani origin thought the man who had testified was a traitor to their religion and culture; for in fact it is a religion and culture very convenient to the young men, whom it supplies with a domestic slave and mother of children while they can entertain themselves elsewhere. The whole evil system would break down if any of the young women were allowed their freedom, which is why the men must stick together. Like any form of totalitarianism, it is strong but brittle.
I have spoken to Muslims about this, and they tell me that what I am
describing is customary or cultural practice, not a religious requirement. I am not scholar enough to know whether they are right, but it is certainly customary practice over a large area of the earth's surface. And so long as this practice, be it religious or customary, is widespread, the word of no Muslim girl who claims to want to wear increasingly "modest" dress can be taken at her word, any more than a public figure in the USSR could have been taken as expressing his own personal opinion. If the judge was aware of this, he took no notice of it....
Read it all.
If I were the judge, I would have required the young girl to cover her hands and face as well.
"In for a penny, in for a pound" as the old English expression has it. Why should the rest of the students have to be subjected to any part of the flesh of a creature so militantly modest?
As Christ tried to implode the moral codes of the extremists in his own time by flagrant exaggeration ("if they ask for your shirt, give them your cloak as well"; "turn the other cheek", etc.), let's go overboard in "helping" those women in 'traditional Islamic cultures' to follow their codes.
And NO eyeholes in the veils, either. Britain can distribute seeing-eye dogs.
Ah, but the dog is an unclean animal...! Drat!
Okay. Let's just force their male family members to HAVE TO lead them everywhere, to read streetsigns, menus, and classroom blackboards FOR them, and thereby allow the girls to be like caterpillars who never ever turn into butterflies.
The secret mission of Islam.
Dalrymple's many articles in NR and City Journal are worth reading as he chronicles the abject failures of the British criminal class, which includes a huge number of Britain's muslims. He is particularly scathing in his criticism of prison, police, schools and other authorities who have repeatedly ignored these muslim cases for fear of stirring up the hornet's nest.
My barrister friend tells me that if the school were to appeal to the House of Lords, this decision (made on appeal) would be reversed. But that costs money, and the school won't get legal aid, unlike this parasite.
Suppose this stupid girl gets her sack caught in the Bunsen burner flame. Well, that would raise the school's average IQ by a good 20 points. She's a moron, pushed into this by her brother, himself a stooge of Hizb ut Tahrir.
Theodore Dalrymple, AKA Anthony Daniels is a regular contibutor to The Spectator, an excellent journal.
The standard uniform agreed by the school with the local imans (I keep wanting to make the plural imen?) is the shalwar kameeze with or without matching hijab.
I have heard it said that one of the reasons she rejected that outfit is because it is also traditional among Hindu and Sikh girls.
Here is some excellent background material on this case:
http://quidnimis.squarespace.com/journal/2005/3/3/fashion-politics-and-the-death-of-europe.html
BTW - did you know that Miss Begum was represented by none other than the Prime Minister's wife Cherie Blair? WTF is going on?
Another quote from The Telegraph
"But Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, the leader of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, said: "This may be a victory for human rights but it is also a victory for fundamentalism."
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/03/03/njilb03.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/03/03/ixportaltop.html)
Granny Weatherwax
[[I have heard it said that one of the reasons she rejected that outfit is because it is also traditional among Hindu and Sikh girls]]
People dont really understand the extent to which Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims in Britain are fired up and motivated in their piety by their hatred of Sikhs and Hindus. It is a mental torment to them that they should be associated with infidel pagans because of the colour of their skin and certain cultural similarities like clothes and language. Hence their extremnism. It pains them to see how Hindus especially are fairly well integrated and succesful in the UK.
It is a shame that most of the mainstream dont distinguish between Muslim and non Muslim Asians. In my experience there is a huge difference between them.
Zico
We found ourselves in agreement on this point earlier this week did we not, on the "Makeshift Hindu temple razed, three worshippers deported" thread.
John B asks: "BTW - did you know that Miss Begum was represented by none other than the Prime Minister's wife Cherie Blair? WTF is going on?"
Simple, money,votes and blackmail. That's what's going on. Blair and his party are bending over backwards to prove that their support of Bush's invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with Islam,merely terrorism (which is the same song being sung by Rove, Bush, Cheney and even Wolfowitz, who eulogized the assassinated Ayatollah al Hakim as an Abraham Lincoln of Iraq.
You see it is only "conservatives" who insert the word Islamic or Islamofascism, between the words War and Terrorism.
I perceive a more ominous portend though. Islam is the perfect social control ideology, perfect for a world in which there is a geometrically exploding population and a consequential geometrically depletiion of resources (including water and clean air).
It would take armies of policemen to maintain order, in such a dark future, but as Islam has proven the job can be done for them, by handfuls of mujtahids, mullahs and Imams.
Iran is experiencing dissatisaction with it's youth, that's true, perhaps because of Irans on particular history and culture, but the rest of the Muslim world is not only drifting towards, but demanding more strict adherence to Shari'a.
I never thought I would say this, but I'll be 66 in a few days, and it is a blessing that I won't live forever and have to endure that which is to most certainly come.
There is an upside to this, the more "victories" the Muslims claim and proclaim, the more arrogant they become and eventually the population will have to see what's happening in front of their eyes, and the reaction will set in.
I'm on a forum with Brits, those who live in towns and Shires that haven't had to deal with the Pakistanis and Muslims and thus have a "liberal"or benign attitude towards them,and those that do (such as my friend who lives in Leeds), thus there are two different experiences of Brits with Muslims. Those who experience and are aware, and those that aren't and are ignorant.
As the muslims experience victories, then the populace will most certainly have to confront that which is in their face.
As an aside, the blacks in Britain are drifting into the British Nationalist Party (formally considered fascist or neo NAZI), because of all the populations in Britain the Blacks get it worse from the Muslims, not only called names, but gang beat and murdered by gangs of Muslim thugs, whereas white girls are gang raped.
In a strange twist, the BNP apparently is published by The Saudis
This must be a tactical move on the part of the Saudis, they need a vocal and virulent opposition, to prove they are in danger and oppressed.
Which is an old game played by Muslims, Jews and Christians alike.
Giaour:
Nice post - my question was more rhetorical but I enjoyed your expanding upon the topic, particularly the British situation. You are years ahead of Canada (unfortunately) so we are watching you - and Holland, Denmark etc.
Regarding your statement: "Islam is the perfect social control ideology, perfect for a world in which there is a geometrically exploding population and a consequential geometrically depletiion of resources (including water and clean air)."
It's ironic that it's mainly Islamic nations that are going backwards (along with sub-Saharan Africa). What non oil exporting Muslim country has a growing economy - Malaysia perhaps but how much of their economy is due to it's Chinese and Hindu minority.