Italy Prepares To Join France and Belgium In A Veil Ban

Various news outlets are reporting on this story, which is becoming a common theme in Western societies. The most telling portion of the article is that the law's sponsor is a Moroccan born lawmaker in the Italian parliament. According to this article in the Guardian:

"The Italian law was sponsored by Souad Sbai, a Moroccan-born member of Silvio Berlusconi's conservative Freedom People party who said she wanted to help Islamic women integrate more into Italian society.

"Five years ago no one wore the burqa [in Italy]. Today there is always more. We have to help women get out of this segregation ... to get out of this submission," Sbai said in a telephone interview. "I want to speak for those who don't have a voice, who don't have the strength to yell and say: 'I am not doing well.'"

This is the part that interests me, because we've seen it before in France and Belgium. The concept that women wear the veil of their own desire is not considered, Western cultures must protect women from themselves and especially from their patriarchal family members. In some respects, it is similar to colonial attitudes towards certain cultural practices viewed as barbarism particularly in relation to women. Now, all this said, there ARE women who are coerced into wearing the veil. This leads me to an elegant and rather obvious solution.

If the problem is that women are being coerced into wearing the veil, why not simply ban the coercion? The French law and this potential Italian law do give stiff penalties for male family members who force women to cover up, and I think that's immensely wise. However, what of the majority of these women who have taken to wearing the veil because they WANT to? If the issue at hand is the rights of women, they should be the ones allowed to make this decision. Banning such articles of clothing will not assist in integration, in fact, it may actually have the reverse effect. Some of these women may simply decide they cannot go outside at all, thus robbing them of their liberty entirely. 

The Muslims have a long way to go concerning the rights of women in Muslim societies and also in immigrant societies in the West. However, attitudes that they take with them from their countries of origin don't necessarily disappear overnight. Consider my wife. She's a Muslim from a staunchly conservative region of a fairly diverse Islamic country. While she has certainly warmed up to cultural norms here in America, she still has a difficult time accepting the notion that it's ok for women to remain uncovered. For example, I once told her that if my daughters wanted to not wear a headscarf, I would have no objection to it.

 She flipped out. 

"What? Don't you ever do that!" She was quite adamant about the fact that I had to enforce such a dress code on my daughters and in my household. 

"I can't make her wear any such thing. Doing so is a religious affectation, something that a person has to WANT to do. Forcing it will not make it a rigor any more acceptable to God. Muslim men are encouraged to cover their heads and maintain a beard, but no one tells Muslim men they HAVE to dress like that." was my reply, but I don't believe she's willing to budge on this issue. 

Muslim women do have to integrate, and I think they can and will... but on their own terms. Laws such as this are in the long run counterproductive.