Originally published via Armageddon Prose Substack:
Via The Guardian (emphasis added):
“Australian boxer Tina Rahimi has hit out at France’s hijab ban, which prevents French athletes participating in certain sports at the Olympics from wearing religious head scarfs.
‘Women have the right to choose how they want to dress,’ Rahimi, who took part in the Paris 2024 opening ceremony on Friday, wrote in a post on Instagram. ‘With or without hijab. I choose to wear the hijab as a part of my religion and I am proud to do so.’…
France has a long history of seeking to regulate or ban the wearing of religious items, politically justified in the name of laïcité (secularism).
Rahimi will make her Olympic debut on Friday in the women’s featherweight division. She won bronze for Australia at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, and is the reigning Pacific Games champion.”
Should France be banning articles of clothing that cover the face (outside of contexts like courts of law or other places where revealing identities is crucial)? Probably not, in my view — it’s a slippery slope once the state gets involved in fashion (recall mask mandates).
Douglas Murray perhaps disagrees with me on this policy prescription, as he views the hijab as a public nuisance that threatens Western culture.
Regardless of whatever outsiders think, anyway, France has been militantly secular for a very long time — at least since the French Revolution. It’s what they do; so who is this lady to tell them otherwise? Do the French have jurisdiction over France or do they not?
If Frenchmen were flying to Riyadh to protest Shariah law, would they be equally celebrated for their stunning act of bravery by The Guardian, or would they be excoriated as modern-day colonizers?
The demands for “tolerance” and “diversity” only ever extend in one direction. When I lived (ever so briefly) in Saudi Arabia, upon arrival in customs, the officers checked my bags for Christian paraphernalia on the suspicion that I might be in the proselytizing business; I never saw a single woman’s face the entire duration of my stay; they floated here and there — the ones whose husbands allowed them outside, that is — like anonymous black bobs of non-humanness, ethereal spirits in the desert.
All of this I found unbecoming, but never once did I protest any of it, not merely because I knew what would happen to me if I did, but also, even if I were free to do so with impunity, because Saudi Arabia is not my country and I do not imagine that I have any claim to engineer their culture to my satisfaction. Furthermore, even if I felt the moral justification to do that, I don’t want Riyadh to look like London or Atlanta any more than I want the inverse.
Is this lady, who markets herself as a champion of freedom of expression and human rights, going to speak out about compulsory hijabbing of women in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere?
Let’s not be naïve; she only takes brave stands in places where she’ll be protected and celebrated for her bravery, which actually takes no real bravery at all.
Related: Did Globalization Drive Far-Right Electoral Success in European States From 1990-2020?
In related news, I’m very glad to be back on the continent of my ancestors for a spell, where the trains run on time and the women not only show their faces in public but don’t wear bras in summer.
Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
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