Harry’s Place debates the ‘burka ban’

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We’ve rather given up responding to the appalling Harry’s Place over the past couple of years, mainly because keeping up with the Islamophobic posts on that particular blog would be a full-time job in itself.

However, if anyone needs convincing of the culture of anti-Muslim bigotry that pervades that obnoxious site, it’s worth scrolling through the comments on their recent “Berks and Burqas” thread.

Here are some typical observations by Harry’s Place readers on the subject of the veil:

“… it must be intended to convey a message. For me, that message is that the wearer and her family support terrorism and those forces against which our soldiers are fighting, and so are going to get no sympathy from me.”

“Women who wear burquas and similar garments do so either because they’ve been forced to, or because they masochistically subscribe to an interpretation of a religion which thinks they’re obscene and second-class.”

“It’s perfectly rational to ban the burqa…. it should be perfectly acceptable for someone to refused entry to a shop, employment, public transport etc.”

“I think there is an argument for banning the Burkah in public places but it is the same argument for banning the display of Swastikas.”

“The Burqua is more a political statement when worn in the West; it should be reviled for what it symbolises and critiqued and stigmatised as the abomination that it is. It’s every bit as bad as a swastika armband and worse than a BNP badge.”

“You are a mentally deluded simple-minded cretin if you get your mores and values from … a paedophile pig-fucking gangster and warlord who died 1300 years ago.”

“We are fighting a war against the Taliban…. These people are killing our soldiers and vice versa. So wearing Taliban uniform is not just like going around wearing swastikas, but like going round wearing swastikas in 1940.”

“… it is a symbol of a specific totalitarian movement that has a clear intention of destroying our democracy and making of all us who refuse to follow the movement second class citizens. It is in other words a mortal threat. On those grounds a ban on the Burqa as an act of self-defence is fully justified in my view.”

“… the burqa and the niqab should definitely be banned, along with the KKK hoods and the rest of that anti-social garbage.”

“Burkaphobia: a feeling of impotent rage on seeing this ghastly garment, wiyh all its implications, in a free society.”

“In the UK, which, let’s not forget, has been the target of Islamist attacks on ordinary people going about their lives, the burqa is as much an issue of security as any pretence at religious observance.”

“It’s been used by thieves of either gender to commit crimes.”