LONDON, England -- A senior British Cabinet minister has sparked fury by saying that Muslim women who wore full veils made community relations more difficult. Jack Straw wrote in a newspaper that a veil was "a visible statement of separation and difference" and that he was more comfortable dealing with female visitors to his local political office with their faces uncovered. http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/10/06/uk.straw/ Comments:-
and all the sign in banks and post offices saying please remove your motorcycle helmet before entering? i see no diffrence. it's a personal choice, that he would sooner talk to someone he can see.
What's so ignorant about it? People know each other by their faces. We use facial expressions when we talk... nevermind. Now I understand why he's "ignorant." Jack Straw should know that if he wants to get to know the Muslim community he needs to talk to the men. He shouldn't be talking to the women. Especially alone. It could get them killed.
Its that little something called "religious freedom" which I believe is now non-existent in the West. - MENJ
And all this time I wondered why we couldn't get a Southern Baptist Church in Mecca. How about it menji, a nice Jewish bistro in Mecca for the hajj? That would be tolerance, wouldn't it?
If you're not a Muslim and you die while working in Saudi Arabia -- they kick your corpse out of the country. That's how tolerant Muslims are of people from other religions. Menji wants to kill anyone who expresses their religion freedom by choosing to leave Islam, but he thinks that it's rude for people to be asked to identify themselves in public. Male Islamist terrorists in Bangkok reportedly hid from police by wearing hijab's and pretending to be female. The Islamists want our help in keeping their women subjugated. Is this something that we as a social good?
Why the F should there be a "Southern Baptist Church" in the most holiest city in the Muslim world? You don't see a mosque in front of St. Peter's Cathedral in the Vatican either! - MENJ
You work in Saudi, play by their rules. You don't like it, then don't work there! Oh please, the topic of the thread has nothing to do with apostasy. What a strawman Its either you allow Muslim women their choice of wearing the niqab, or you do not. And if you don't, it means that you are forcing them to do what you want, not what they want. By the way, in Malaysia we don't have any problems with women wearing the niqab. I've seen some sisters from Saudi wearing the niqab here. - MENJ
OK knot-head, the corresponding rule is that if you live in the civlized world, you give up that crazy barabaric 14th century religion and you show your face in public! And you also "don't have any problems" with murdering people for choosing to abandon Islam, or for being homosexual, or for saying bad things about Muhammad, or ... well, I think everyone gets the point. You don't have any problems with anything -- except things which are not approved by fundamentalist Islam. Then, it's back to murdering people.
Says which God? Strawman, red herring and attempting to poison the well. You seem to have committed a string of fallacies of logic here. - MENJ
Menji, if you are going to reply, then reply, don't just spew out random words which have nothing at all to do with anything. How long were you in the dar al-harb before your parents sent you back to dar al-islam? It seems that you weren't here long enough to learn either manners or English.
Yeah sure, how long are you going to keep up with your red herring? Let us recall what you wrote. You said: You called me: 1. A knot-head. Not sure what that means, but it sure as hell does not have anything to do with the disparagement of niqab-wearing sisters. Red herring and strawman. 2. If you live in the civilised world (implying that I don't). Eh, hello, I have a PC running on AMD Sempron 1.3GHz, a 1Mbps broadband line and I drive a Proton. That civilised enough to you? 3. "Give up that crazy barabaric [sic] 14th century religion". Christianity is much much older: so is Judaism and Hinduism and Buddhism. I don't see you telling the Jews, Christians, Hindus and Buddhists to give up their religion, do you? Conclusion: You are a secular bigot, you discriminate against people of other faiths, most especially Muslims, and you have no respect for other peoples' religious beliefs. Hence that makes you a denier of religious freedom and practise. - MENJ
The term homophobe never made sense to me. I don't have an irrational fear of homosexuals harming me. But Islamophobe makes sense only in the sense that although the fear is obviously real, the odds of being on the wrong plane, subway, or building at the wrong time is quite low. Thanks for the term any way, Menj.
Let me try to drag Mr. Taqiyya back on track yet one more time... After that, Menj just sort of wandered off into mysterious babbling. Menj, are you there? Can you hear me? Can you read this? Can you respond? Should we call a paramedic? Try to focus. Try to stay on track. I'll help. The discussion is about having a set of rules for the two cultures which are roughly fair and equivalent. OK, now you type.
Last I recall, I was. You just tried to sideline the topic by calling me "barabaric" [sic] and "knot-head". Now lets go back to the issue of niqab. The wearing of niqab is not neccessary in Islam, but some sisters do choose to wear it to emulate the Prophet's wives, and that is their choice. Who are you to stop them? - MENJ