If you work in the public sector, you represent the agency that has hired you, on behalf of your fellow citizens. That is your job, not putting on an ostentatious display of Islamic piety — of Being Seen Being Muslim. And nothing could be more out of place in a public service job than shrouding oneself in a mark of separation and supremacism, let alone for a school teacher, as was the Muslim woman whose demands sparked this case.
Indeed, one could go on at length about the irony of the face veiling issue as a matter of “modesty,” if one takes the fundamental object of modesty to be not calling attention to oneself. There is something counterproductive about attire that says, “Hey, everybody! Look at how modest I am!” But one surmises that it is not so much about modesty in the traditional sense as throwing down a gauntlet for Sharia in the middle of a Western society.
As usual, stand by for outrage, threats, and accusations of “Islamophobia,” in this latest chapter in the jihad against Vitamin D.
“German state risks Muslim anger after becoming first in the country to ban the burka,” from the Daily Mail, February 4:
A German state yesterday became the first region in the country to ban Muslim women from wearing burkas.
The country has been gripped for several months by an angry debate on multiculturalism with many Germans voicing their concerns over immigration.
Hesse, a state run by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, has now became the first German region to ban Muslim face veils for public sector workers.
Hesse Interior Minister Boris Rheinsaid it was ‘not acceptable’ for a teacher in Frankfurt to wear a face veil because ‘public sector workers are obligated to have neutral religious and political views’.
The decision was prompted by a local teacher who had told her school she wanted to wear a burka in the classroom after returning from maternity leave. She had not previously worn one.
Debates about outlawing burkas have spread across Europe after France banned the Muslim face veils.
Only a small minority of Muslim women in Europe cover their faces, but their veils have become symbols for Europeans troubled by problems such as the economic crisis, immigration and Muslim integration.
A poll last year showed 61 percent of Germans favoured a burka ban. Ban supporters include a Catholic bishop in Bavaria, and also the country’s most prominent feminist, Alice Schwarzer.
But Germany’s interior and justice ministers have opposed a ban.
Critics of a ban suggest that Western democratic values should allow Muslims to wear veils.
Blackmail:
It is feared that such a move could cause a backlash among Germany’s 4.1 million Muslims.
Germany has the highest number of Muslims in Europe ahead of France which has around 3.5million and Britain with 2.8million, according to the The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
Chancellor Angela Merkel sparked outrage in October last year when she said that multiculturalism in Germany had ‘utterly failed‘.
Funny how “outrage” is so easy to come by as long as it has nothing to do with Muslim persecution of non-Muslims, the abuse and subjugation of women, and other practices we’re told time and again are “un-Islamic.”