http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7591141.html
Yeah perhaps it was a publicity stunt. Although she does claim in the video that she met with the highest sunni authority in the world and wasn't required to cover up.
As to your point about politeness. Sure, perhaps she should have allowed the Allan fella to rape her too? That would have been the culturally sensitive thing to do.
Yes, to a degree, I think she should have. The point is that when you choose to visit someone's country, you play by their rules, don't you? If you don't like their rules, don't go. :shrug: If you really don't like their rules, you have the option of campaigning for regime change and so on, but going, and then refusing to play by your host's rules, is rude.
Not really, there are rather a lot of Muslim women who don't cover up in any way, Monty. I would expect that in the UK the majority don't although I might be wrong.
If a Muslim woman in the UK is uncomfortable with covering up I think she has plenty of examples she could follow to not do so, I doubt she will know or care what Marie Le Pen does. In more conservative Islamic countries where virtually all women cover up I doubt many see it as oppressive and if they did they would look for leadership within their own community, not from a right wing, Christian politician in France.
But I haven't suggested kowtowing in any way. I'm suggesting that if you don't like a country's customs and culture and/or are prepared to abide by same, don't go. As a politician you have a further option: gather your military strength and change the regime, cultures and customs to something more suitable to the 21st century :shrug:
But we live in a political era in which such barbaric practices are actively endorsed and promoted by liberal democracies. Do you not consider it important that there are high-profile politicians and public figures helping to kick back against this trend?
Of course, there will be some Muslims who consider it further proof that the West hates muslims. But I do not believe the answer is to indulge this fantasy.
Well I don't agree. I think a gay politician should visit Lebanon, attempt to engage with them, and if they cart him off to jail it would simply shine a light on their barbarity and perhaps even knock some sense of reality and urgency into the west's assorted apologists.
Just as the Allan fella insisting on Le Pen wearing a headscarf shined a light on his barbarity.
I don't understand what you mean by 'cultural submission'. If you mean respecting local custom, I don't really know why you choose such an emotive term.
Would you visit a Muslim country during ramadan and drink water from a bottle in public during the day? To do so would be offensive to local people. If you were determined so to do, you would be visiting a foreign country intent on causing offence. This seems to me odd.
On the other hand, if you truly believe that everyone should be able to drink during daylight hours, nuke the fúckers. That's not rude, that's Realpolitik.
So not wearing a headscarf is rude, but regime change, which invariably means destroying the country, unleashing chaos and extremism worse than the regime being changed, up to hundreds of thousands of deaths plus millions of refugees is ok?
Regime change policy in Iraq, Libya and Syria has been catastrophic in every case.
"First remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother's eye."
No, I think there is a reasonable halfway house whereby we are given a pass by virtue of the fact that we are not of the culture or the religion and therefore should - within reason - have some of our cultural norms tolerated (not adopted or assimilated, but tolerated) accordingly. I don't think that is an unreasonable suggestion, not least because it is what we do when people from those cultures visit us.
Yes, that is what we do, and that is what they don't do for us. Big News! Western liberal democracy is more polite, well mannered and far less barbaric than benighted Islamic ****holes! SOMEONE INFORM THE BBC!
We are better than them. Demanding that they play to the same standards is, well, a little rude. Best just to avoid them, really.