@Skeptic: Surely you will agree that we must ban all opaque bags and backpacks from public places? A face covering can hide facial expressions but a bag can hide explosives and weapons, and for all your conviction that expressions and body language are important it turns out that behavioural profiling is pretty ineffective (in this case it was a total fucking failure and not for the first time). You can tell an awful lot more about someone with much more confidence by the possessions they carry.
Hiding your belongings is an antisocial act, and allowing it to become normalised behaviour in public places has made us all less safe. Right?
A agree there’s some unfair ad hominem being directed at you, but your argument does not need much reductio to get to absurdum.
Sure. Let me put it this way: If a white dude was tackled running wearing bag over his head with eye holes we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
So, why is this case special? Because of race? No. Because of her full-face covering religious/cultural clothing. This thread isn’t about race but rather the false conflation of religion as race, and the privileging of religion, and specifically a religion that many liberals (and I include myself as a liberal) perceive as an oppressed minority, in spite of being over a billion strong.
I’m a big fan of consistency. I think that it is entirely reasonable for it to be legal to ban full face coverings in business and transit systems. I also think that we have a law enforcement system that is rife with abuse. So I don’t dismiss the possibility of police overreach out of hand. What I do reject, however, is the idea that religious full face coverings must be privileged and given more respect than those used for secular purposes. I reject any and all attempts to normalize the privileging of religion, which I believe many of the posts in this thread are attempting to do.
Now, the posts about other full face coverings are legitimate to bring up, from germ masks to motorcycle helmets. I think it is entirely reasonable to ban the wearing of full face covering helmets on a transit system, and to find someone wearing one rushing towards a train with a backpack clutched to their chest potentially suspicious. Again, race doesn’t enter into it under such circumstances. As to germ masks, that’s harder to draw a bright line on. They typically aren’t worn in conjunction with the same full head and body covering donned by fundamentalist Muslims, so more facial expressions are exposed, and they, in Japan at least, are worn for the pro-social reason of preventing spreading germs, rather than to prevent catching germs. So, yes, partial face masks can have pro-social motivations.
In the end, though, I see full face and body covering’s as problematic if given special privilege that must not be questioned for reasons of political correctness.
Perhaps we should ban acting as a profession too. I mean, those people are actually trained to fake their face and body language. And even what they say! They might sound nice but actually be dangerous! For the children, etc.
But all racial issues are about the perception of race, about the conflation of non-scientific criteria (including religion, skin color, et al.) with an arbitrary categorization of human beings into disparate groups called races. So religion becomes a racial issue. Most people who see a woman wearing a hijab and niqab will assume that the woman is middle eastern in ethnicity and/or national origin. But it doesn’t matter either way because racial and religious profiling are unconstitutional so the semantics are irrelevant.
You speak about the privileging of religion but religion is a right, not a privilege. And as long as a religious practice doesn’t conflict with the rights of others, it’s legal. Unless you can cite a law (rather than some made up social convention argument), you can’t legitimately claim that it’s somehow unfair to allow a Muslim woman to cover her face in public. Or even a transgender Muslim who was born with male genitalia. It’s no more suspicious or privileged for a Muslim woman to wear a niqab than for a Jewish man to wear a kippah.
It is an ad hominem because he used it in lieu of a sound counter argumet. I didn’t specicially call his post a formal logical fallacy, though. Ad hominem means to the person, and that’s just what he was doing, he was attacking me personally and falsely rather than making any sound counter arguments.
Or, in this case, someone briskly walking out of a subway (the way many women do, to avoid harassment), with their backpack across their chest the way many people wear it on public transport (so it’s harder for people to pickpocket it). Gosh, doing something that’s normal behavior - but while wearing a niqab. Golly, how suspiciously Muslim of her. Oh, but that’s totally not what you’re getting at, is it?
Really? When I say that the analysis of behavior and the reaction to it should apply equally to someone wearing a full face motorcycle helmet and someone wraring full face religious masks, that’s what you get out of it? Really?
Seriously, I have numerous and drastic problems with religion, but the niqab is a very low priority. Let people wear what they want. Everyone, without privilege. Face covering or no.
I’m much more concerned with real problems from religion. Like FGM, endless scamming, and religiously motivated violence.
Yeah, because that’s a totally different situation, obviously. On the other hand, if the guy was wearing a crucifix - an image of gory torture and murder, well - that’s pretty fucking anti-social!
No, when you point at someone behaving in a totally normal way, and you single out the Muslim garb as a “behavioral” justification for how she was treated, then yeah, you’re pretty explicitly using her Muslim faith as the justification for arresting her. Trying to pretend otherwise is hilariously disingenuous of you.
I agree that the motorcycle helmet wearing person and the Muslim woman wearing the niqab should be treated with the same amount of suspicion - none, to be specific. People wear niqabs and motorcycle helmets in public. Get over it. It’s not suspicious by itself. It’s also not suspicious if they’re leaving a subway station at a brisk pace. Or wearing a backpack.
Do you call 911 fifty times on Halloween because of all of the masked people you see?
The problem here that I don’t think you’re getting is that some white dude in a motorcycle helmet and leathers isn’t going to be harassed by the cops. Because the cops are looking specifically for muslim-looking people. It’s very much about privilege. As in, we wouldn’t really ever expect cops to harass and assault some white dude walking around minding his own business. But apparently the cops feel extremely threatened by a musilm woman who is covered and has her face obscured to a similar extent. Because the cops are bigots.
And your concern about everyone else’s attire shows a profound lack of insight to the nature of this problem.
Cute, but I do think it actually is interesting how many professions consist of professional liars, that is, their job is to make untrue things seem true as entertainment. Novelists, actors, magicians, FOX News hosts - all professional liars for pay.
I was all psyched to find the romanized Arabic phrase for ‘no one is great’, assuming it would have some syntactic similarity to ‘Allahu akbar’ which, as everyone knows by now, means ‘God is great[est]’.
Problem #1: The Google translated + transliterated output is ‘lys hnạk mn hw kbyr’. Good luck with that.
Problem #2: The etymology and syntax of ‘Allahu akbar’ is somewhat unique, which shouldn’t be too surprising seeing as it’s a phrase that invokes the Almighty, a concept that tends to be granted linguistic exceptions in a heavily literalist and religious culture whose beliefs contend that holy scripture is the literal word of the Almighty. In short: the Almighty can say things however the Almighty wants and translators that have a problem with this can go choke on a piece of bread and halvah.
All of which helps explain problem #1 which, in retrospect, probably should’ve been considered problem #2.
Why are you getting your knickers in a twist? She’s alive and not breathing through a tube - her treatment was laudable compared to usual US police modus operandi:
Stop Police! BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG stop resisting BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG motherfucker’s still moving BANG BANG reload BANG BANG
[quote]BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG stop resisting BANG BANG BANG
BANG BANG motherfucker’s still moving BANG BANG reload BANG BANG Stop Police![/quote]
FTFY
