From: Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk)
Date: Mon 18 Oct 2004 - 22:50:29 GMT
Funny how often those who would lay claim to a liberal democratic
viewpoint are so intolerant and dismissive of what they perceive as
illiberalism. Maybe M. Dewael would benefit from asking some of his
'free' burka-wearing citizens how they feel about it? What about
balaclavas -- are they next? Bikinis all round? Maybe it's security
paranoia; "Butt naked and free -- no bombs on me see!" :)
Liberte, egalite, caffe latte.
Chris.
Van oost Kenneth wrote:
> _ After his call to ban all religious inspired kerchiefs from public places
> and houses, P. Dewael, Minister of Home Affairs, again tackles some
> Islamitic customs. Without mentioning Islam as such, he says " that all
> people are equal, but not all cultures. "
>
> As the liberal he is, he is not keen on the fact that women are due to
> cover all of their body with for example the burka.
> He can 't bear the fact that women are kept indoors and aren 't allowed
> to follow language- and other courses in order to finally fit in. And he
> don 't
> accepts a religion that don 't recognises that there must be a seperation of
> Church and State. He claims to belief in diversity, but retains the notion
> that ' foreigners ' should know where their bounderies are.
>
> " That is something we should be clear about, and it is far more important
> than just knowing our language ."
> Dewael says, that the question should be raised again of how tolerant our
> society should be for lines of conduct of other cultures. Some of those
> practices, boil down the overall level of Western society.
> " That [ they] acknowledge no seperation between Church and State is
> really inconsistent with their stay in our mids. That they still work with
> forced marriages and with depriciations of liberty, can 't no longer be
> tolerated."
>
> Some comments,
>
> " It hurts that still people see adepts of the Islam as fundamentalists !
> I am too against the oppression of women and I know there is still a lot
> to be done to reverse such a view, but that ain 't much to do with Islam.
> We have to search for the deep rooted misconceptions of such things,
> of one is in fact that people were total ignorant dropped into a far indus-
> trialised society ! " says Cemal Caudarli.
>
> Sami Emmni argues that " all cultures are indeed equal, but are on the
> other hand " different '.
>
> For Nahima Lanjri, involves the fact that our society isn 't that keen on
> open up its doors for immigrants and specially Islamitic ones, more than
> a bias of truth. Immigrants don 't have and aren't giving eqaul chances.
>
> << For me, however, all of this will not meet the point.
> The ' truth ' idiom is inwritten down into our Western/ Flemish history,
> we are the third most racistic region in Europe, which is a fact of
> political instigation of which active and passive subjects are recog-
> nisable as our own far more than those things which only can be
> appreciated and / or accepted ( tolerated), like the colour of the skin,
> language, religious practices, dialects, surnames, etc...
>
> What we in a certain way apply to, to get our society going can be
> pointed as universal_ of which the subjects aren 't direct recognisable
> as socialists, democrats, ecologists, etc but of which the values we
> hold can and could be of a greater value for all of us.
> We can only hope that one day all people will meet those values, like
> liberty, equality,etc_ we hope that once the Islamitic world will hold
> itself against those, although they have to and must understand that
> not all people can and will be ( want to be) someday a proven Muslim.
>
> But neither must we _ seen from our own democratic point of view_
> disregard the fact that societies can and will be different.
>
> Regards,
>
> Kenneth
>
>
-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chris Taylor (christ@ebi.ac.uk) HUPO PSI: GPS -- psidev.sf.net ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ =============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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