Aislin/Montreal Gazette

A cartoon referred to as “controversial”, and the Islamic faith, are both back in the news together today, after the Montreal Gazette ran an editorial cartoon on the Muslim woman expelled from school for refusing to remove her niqab in class.

The cartoonist, Terry Mosher, who draws under the name Aislin, crafted a picture of a common niqab, but with prison bars and lock where the eyes would go. As far as cartoons go, it’s not particularly original, or offensive. A simple google images search for the word “burqa” turns up the niqab instead, with a digitally edited photograph of a woman looking through a veil of prison bars. The photo was commissioned by the International Society for Human Rights, which opposes third world gender apartheid for women.

The Egyptian-born immigrant, Naïma Atef Amed, has now twice been removed from provincially funded French language and integration classes for new immigrants after refusing to remove her niqab. The province has backed the wishes of school instructors who said that the niqab was making interaction impractical.

Ms.Amed has since spawned the obligatory provincial human rights complaint with the Quebec Human Rights Commission, an ironic move not lost on many women who say that religious freedom should not be used as an excuse to wear the symbols of gender oppression.

Several Islamic lobby groups and organizations expressed disapproval of the political cartoon today, saying that many women wear the Niqab because they believe it to be the truest expression of their faith. Islamic scholar and author, Tarek Fatah, is not convinced.

“You are free to support these ninjas and I will continue to expose this hideous symbol of Islamofascism,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

“The niqab is a symbol of the Muslim Brotherhood doctrine best expressed by the Saudis where an entire population is identified by their attire just as the red guards were under Mao’s China.”

Many people, like Mr.Fatah, believe that the burqa and niqab aren’t expressions of religiosity, but rather political symbols of political Islam. Indeed, he has written that the burqa is an imported and modern compulsion of Saudi Arabia’s strict Wahabbist interpretation of Islam. It is an interpretation that has been widely condemned by human rights observers the world over.

There’s nothing wrong with the editorial cartoon, which accurately symbolizes the voluntary imprisonment of individuality behind a black curtain of religious dogma. But if I were Mr.Mosher, I would purchase a panic room forthwith.

There are precious few real feminists left in the western world. Fereshta, an Afghan-Canadian who lives in Vancouver, is one of them. She argues not just for the liberties and rights of women in the west, nor does she ignore the shamefully relativist apologism for gender apartheid in her country of birth. Rather she attacks the mentality of the Taliban unflinchingly, and declares them to be a poison that can be found anywhere in the world:

The Taliban are a state of mind. Taliban can be and are found anywhere in the world, anywhere where the ideology of misogyny spreads its seeds uninhibited. Being a Talib demands adherence to no particular faith, no ethnicity, no nationality.

When I was studying in a university outside of Afghanistan, I had a law professor who issued a statement decreeing that female students would not be allowed to join the Afghan Student’s Council because they cause immorality among the male students. For me, this professor was a Taliban.

The anti-interventionists argue that the Taliban are merely a domestic ethnic group in Afghanistan. Some even accept the Taliban and their way of thinking as endemic to the “culture” of the country. But the Taliban are neither unique to Afghanistan, nor are they an acceptable form of cultural diversity within the global multicultural mosaic.

The mentality of the gender segregationists can be found anywhere in the world, among any people, any faith, and any nationality. Canada prides itself as having been near the forefront of the western feminist push for women’s liberation, and the advancement of the female gender to full and equal status in all aspects of law, speech, and freedoms. Yet even among our people, we have those who view the Taliban as being acceptable partners in governance, even if not entirely endorsed or ideal.

As “Fereshta” writes, even some born in Canada are somehow able to think that the “abuse of women and a fundamentalist view of the world, are acceptable among Afghans, and so no intervention is required.” By even entertaining the prospect of a sharing of power with the misogynist, brutally repressive Taliban, we are complicit in the continued subjugation of women.

It’s as simple as A-B-C.

A. Labour deliberately opened mass immigration in 2000′s to “force” multiculturalism on Britain.
B. Islamic radicals have infiltrated Britain’s Labour Party.
C. Britain declared greatest al-Qaeda threat to the United States.

And some people wonder why Britain has a politician like Nick Griffin in office.

France has recently taken the bold step of cracking down on hardline Islam by proposing a $1,150 fine for women who wear the burqa in public, an Islamic dress comprised of the full veil and hijab. That penalty would be doubled for any men who force their wives or other female relatives to dress this way.

The proposed fine aims at protecting the dignity and security of women, and would apply to all people on the public street whose face is entirely covered, including public buildings. This follows recent comments by French president Nicolas Sarkozy that the veils are “not welcome” in secular countries such as France because it causes cultural isolation and alienation. President Sarkozy said the Burqa is a “sign of subservience and debasement that imprison women”.

The aim of the legislation is admirable, even if not entirely likely to succeed. And it has certainly generated a good deal of debate in other countries, including our own. The National Post editorial board recently ran a piece entitled Don’t ban the burka, arguing that banning the clothing would restrict the free will of women in our society, which goes against the foundations of our liberal country.

It’s true that the Burqa has no traditional basis in Islam, as noted by Islamic scholar Tarek Fatah. It is a recent importation of radical Wahhabist Islam from Saudi Arabia, the spread of which has traversed the Middle East, from Yemen and Egypt to Iran and Afghanistan, and in the past decade has even begun to infiltrate western nations.

It isn’t that I don’t support a ban on the burqa simply because of free will; after all, we restrict free will all the time, when that will is considered to be in contravention to the basic liberties of others. No, I don’t support a ban on the burqa because our society is not prepared for the full and inevitable confrontation with the ignorant and regressive doctrines of radical Islam that are sure to ensue.

Religious freedom is protected strongly in Canada under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. There are cases in Canada routinely involving the Sikh religion, and often their firm beliefs supersede any regulations by safety authorities or legislation. If we were to impose a ban on the burqa, there would be immediate challenges in court that would take years, if not decades, to all sort out.

It is ironic to imagine Muslims using the free expressions protected in our society in order to wear a garment that symbolizes gender apartheid and slavery, but you have to expect that inevitability. Part of the reason the terrorists who infiltrate North America are able to succeed is that we are generous in our liberties and tolerance for various beliefs.

There’s also the problem of “official multiculturalism” in Canada, which protects the idea of diversity by law, and allows immigrants to shape Canada into their vision of what it should be, rather than the other way around. We don’t have any assimilation or conformity structures in Canada that even begins to challenge Muslims for wearing burqas, so how would one even begin to hand out fines for something entirely unenforceable?

No, banning the burqa is putting the cart before the horse. The first thing that western liberal nations must do is identify the strains of radicalization in Islam, which includes the burqa, and then create constitutional amendments which abolish radical forms of religion as not being in the spirit of religious freedom. The concept of a ban of the burqa, after all, isn’t going to affect us. It’s a means of saving Muslims from their own indoctrination, just as the state would intervene to protect someone who fell under the influence of a dangerous cult, or a person who decided to start wearing Nazi symbols in public.

You can’t just ban the symbols of hatred. You have to go to the root and sever the connection before it can grow.

I don’t know if this is something that particularly appeals to those with a conservative mindset, but scanning 10 pages of this website produced no articles about rape, and only two about Iraq, but those pertained to the “occupation” and it’s “Shocking Human Toll”. Speaking of shocking human tolls, it’s surprising we don’t hear more condemnation of this abhorrent act committed by the radical Islamists in Iraq: Samira Jassam, 51, an Iraqi woman, has been arrested and charged with orchestrating the rape of 80 other women in the country in order to better prepare them for “martyrdom”. Because Islamic women are stigmatized by rape, they are more prone to suicide, and so radicals have abused this in order to use them as suicide bombers for their Jihadi cause:

In a video confession, she explained how she had mentally prepared the women for martyrdom operations, passed them on to terrorists who provided explosives, and then took the bombers to their targets.

“We arrested Samira Jassim, known as ‘Um al-Mumenin’, the mother of the believers, who was responsible for recruiting 80 women”, Major General Qassim Atta said.

“She confessed her responsibility for these actions, and she confirmed that 28 attempts had been made in one of the terrorists’ strongholds,” he said.

Samira Jassim was arrested on January 21. She is allegedly linked to the Ansar al-Sunnah insurgent group.