How do Catholics feel about whether countries should ban Niqab/Burka (full face covering) or not?

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PetraG said:
The problem is that allowing people to move about in public while fully obscuring their identity can be a considerable security risk. Generally speaking, religious freedoms do sometimes have to be balanced with public welfare and the need for one religious group to live with another and with non-religious people on some sort of common ground. There is modesty and then there is moving freely about while maintaining total anonymity. It isn’t reasonable to expect total strangers to be OK with you moving about in public with your identity so obscured that you could never be connected to any wrong-doing that you do. In that case, religious codes are at odds with reasonable societal expectations.
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You have a valid point there.
 
I do not understand why there is a need to cover one’s person. What does this have to do with glorifying and giving praise to God?
 
YourNameHere said:
I do not understand why there is a need to cover one’s person. What does this have to do with glorifying and giving praise to God?
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That is for them to discern. The question is the degree of protection we believe a just society needs to give to its citizens’ personal senses of religious duty, whether we agree with some particular sense of duty or not. We certainly do not want to have to convince society as a whole of our own sense of religious duty in order to gain legal protection for it, even if we do recognize there are going to be limits to what accomodation to our sense of duty we can claim we are entitled to have from those outside our faith.
 
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So, if a person’s religious belief is that it is okay to strike their spouse or children in public for some reason, we just stand there and allow it to happen?
 
YourNameHere said:
So, if a person’s religious belief is that it is okay to strike their spouse or children in public for some reason, we just stand there and allow it to happen?
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As I said:
PetraG said:
…we do recognize there are going to be limits to what accomodation to our sense of duty we can claim we are entitled to have from those outside our faith.
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I was only saying that it is not for us to decide that covering one’s person has nothing to do with glorifying and giving praise to God. I don’t want anyone telling me that I cannot choose what I believe is modest clothing. Unless there is a compelling need for them to limit my range of choices, they need to butt out on whether or not my reasons are good enough. Instead, they need to give a reason that the overall good of society requires a more narrow range of options.
I don’t think that questioning religous reasoning is a reason to narrow those options. I do think that a demonstrable problem with security having to do with anonymous assailants who commit their crimes with their faces covered or perhaps criminals who elude the police by covering their faces in public is a valid reason to put boundaries on modesty in clothing.
 
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I’m not @Salibi, but just my two cents.

In Indonesia and Malaysia, both Islamic countries, women are not required to wear full face covering. According to Muslims I know who are from there, a full face covering is not required in Islam. This face covering is what is called “Arabization “. This means that it is part of Arabic culture but is not a part of Islam.
 
Is it a overall good for society if it creates a “fractured society” where some people are too insular and retain certain mentalities that may not be compatible with the “host country”?
This “next level version” of modesty,in my view,is counterproductive.
It doesn’t cause men to view you as a “whole person” as opposed to with lust (as moderate modesty does).
Instead it in a way seems to keep them in their lust mentalities,just by women becoming hidden and taboo it’s helps make it easier for them then not act upon it.

Male and female contact is limited which is unhelpful for socialization and at odds with the mentality of most of the people in the country they live in (when living in Europe or Aus etc).

Sure,there are “sleazy” guys in every nationality,but can it be denied that there is a big issue with this with a lot of men from Middle East or African Muslim backgrounds?

If their version of modesty system was really so right and effective,you would expect that men from the Middle East would be the most respectful and least lust/pervey yet that isn’t the case…🤔

(I’m speaking in generalizations for the discussions sake so am sorry if any posters are from these regions.I don’t wish to offend anyone and there are many great men from Middle east too but we also have to deal with reality).
 
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Rozellelily said:
big issue with this with a lot of men from Middle East or African Muslim backgrounds?
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No.
Rozellelily said:
you would expect that men from the Middle East would be the most respectful and least lust/pervey yet that isn’t the case…🤔
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Excuse me? How many Middle Eastern men do you personally know?
Rozellelily said:
I’m speaking in generalizations
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Indeed you are. And what’s more, your generalisations are based on your fantastical, false notion of Arab and Mid-Eastern people.
 
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@Salibi

I don’t want it to be a negative/argument but sorry it’s not.
I don’t come from America where some people might only know what’s “fed to them by the media” so it’s not based off fantasy.
Maybe you have dealt with this in the past but that is not where I’m coming from.

I personally know heaps of middle eastern background guys-both “very good and bad” and mostly very good.
I have middle eastern next door neighbors,middle eastern friends,I work with Muslim guys from Middle East and South Asian countries,I have dated Lebanese guys,I know a lot of middle eastern guys from when going to nightclubs and so on…

Everyday I am interacting with men from Middle East in some form or another.
Most are super great people but some are not and have “certain mentalities”.

If you think it’s not a reality that a woman doesn’t feel as comfortable wearing a short skirt to Lakemba at evening as she does to Bondi then I’m sorry,that is the fantasy.

Of course not all Middle East guys are like that,the majority don’t hang around in Maccas carparks standing on cars,showing off and harassing us girls (as in my area) but unfortunately in reality there definitely is an issue in some of them which can be seen by just looking on Instagram comments towards girls and trying to get girls to meet up for “casual encounters” etc…To deny that is living in a fantasy and putting head in the sand.

Many women in Egypt have stated they have been sexually harassed in street so how can you be in denial and suggest their isn’t cultural problems?
Even if the statistics are overblown there is still an issue.

Anyway,my point was not to suggest that all Middle East Muslim men are sleazy,but to suggest that the wearing of Niqab or other face covering has not increased internal virtue.


 
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Rozellelily said:
It doesn’t cause men to view you as a “whole person” as opposed to with lust (as moderate modesty does).
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Why “moderate modesty”?

I think this is the version of modesty that suits a Christian woman, if we’re being honest (albeit straying off thread a bit): Your adornment should not be an external one: braiding the hair, wearing gold jewelry, or dressing in fine clothes, but rather the hidden character of the heart, expressed in the imperishable beauty of a gentle and calm disposition, which is precious in the sight of God. (1 Pet 3:3)
In other words, dressing to make it clear you are not looking to have anyone covet you or what you have is about a lot more than how much skin is showing. That is what modesty aims to accomplish. When an advertiser promises to make us the envy of our friends and neighbors, shouldn’t we be running the other way?

As for the thread topic, I’d say most citizens do not want the government dictating how much or how little clothing they can wear except when there is a compelling reason. Unfortunately, there is a compelling reason to disallow citizens from moving about in public dressed to achieve total anonymity.
 
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Whether it is Islamic or Arabisation it is spreading. It is mandated in Iran and they are definitely not Arabs. Where I live the Muslims primarily come from South Asia and women covering their faces is most definitely on the increase.
 
This is why a lot of Muslims I know resent what they call the “creeping Arabization” that they see in the requirement of wearing face covering among non Arab nations.

To them the burka was not meant to be a requirement of Islam but a cultural practice from Saudi Arabia.

Most of the Muslims I know are from Iran, India, and Indonesia.
 
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Sarcelle said:
To them the burka was not meant to be a requirement of Islam but a cultural practice from Saudi Arabia.
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In the US, I’d say most citizens put the burden of proof on the government when it comes to clothing regulations for any reason, religious or not. Having said that, a long-established religious practice from Saudi Arabia wouldn’t be less religious because other Muslims from other countries or other sects don’t practice that way. (Look at the spectrum of practice in Judaism, and you’ll get my point.)
 
I didn’t say the burqa is less religious.

I said that the burqa is not a requirement of Islam. The requirement of Islam is modest dress. Saudi Arabia’s answer to Islam’s requirement for modest dress is the burqa but it should not be the standard of modest dress for Indonesia nor for the rest of the Islamic world.

It’s like saying that the mantilla is the only version of head covering for Catholic women ignoring headscarves and hats.

Are the Catholic women who wear mantillas more devout than those who wear hats or headscarves?
 
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I am going to be totally honest. I support religious freedom and also that people should feel free to veil their whole body, except their face. I am talking as someone who lives in a western nation so I am referring to western nations.

This is because culturally we show our faces to each other and covering our faces prevents us from connecting on a basic human level. It is very difficult to connect and relate to someone if you cannot see their eyes and facial expressions.

My point of view may not be logical, I don’t know. Also I have known women from different religious cultures and none who have been oppressed by the men in their lives, and I don’t feel comfortable with the idea that women could be moving among us completely veiled and we have absolutely no way of knowing if it is voluntary or not.
 
Sarcelle said:
Are the Catholic women who wear mantillas more devout than those who wear hats or headscarves?
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Do we want the government forbidding wearing a mantilla on the grounds that it cannot be religious because not all Catholic women wear one?
joyfulandactive said:
This is because culturally we show our faces to each other and covering our faces prevents us from connecting on a basic human level. It is very difficult to connect and relate to someone if you cannot see their eyes and facial expressions.
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OK, but we also like our freedom of association. Not everybody wants to connect or relate with any total strangers. We could say “how do I connect with you, if you won’t tell me your name…I think you ought to have to tell me your name.” That would be nice if people would, but that is different than forbidding them from concealing one’s name when there is no compelling reason to give it.

It is all about balancing the breadth of choices citizens want with the needs of society to put limits on them.
 
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Our culture and society would feel very different if we all had our faces covered. Of course it would just be women with their faces covered. It’s just the obvious isolation this produces. I grew up in a very multicultural city. I went to school with kids who were Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, atheist, (Christians were pretty thin on the ground). In the 1970s and 1980s the Muslim girls I knew didn’t cover their hair until puberty. I knew Muslims who were Turkish and Bosnian background who didn’t cover their hair at all. We were all able to socialize and befriend each other easily and communicate in the streets.

Now with entire body coverings it is isolating for the women and alienating to the society around them. It creates a serious atmosphere when a woman is completely covered.
 
Will these women who wear burqua, would choose to wear it if only they can choose any pretty clothes? Would they still choose to wear burqua if only they knew that burqua deprive them equal opportunity? Would their choice be the same knowing that clothes is powerless when it is regarding inner & true holiness?

it’s about establishing the right for women to choose their clothes (and their believe expressions too) as how men has the right to choose theirs . This is about establishing the most basic human right for women.

A woman who dress immodestly according to the local culture will receive unpleasant stare or even displeased expressions from people around her.

However, on the other hand, the law should make sure that it states that any sex crime is punishable regardless what the woman wear. Otherwise, if at the level of the law, women is not free to choose her clothes, then clothes is used to blame sex crime on her. This law actually suggestively give permission for crime against women with whatever excuse about her clothes.
 
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Personal choice (assuming it’s their own choice) has to balanced though with collective society (of that countries) culture and rights.
For example a woman can’t walk around naked in public if she chooses,because of the impact it can have on society (others).
Small children might be negatively affected and maybe the same can be said for Niqab/face cover in public if the children live in a society where they are not accustomed to seeing mums dressed in this way…?
 
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