I was just getting my coffee at Starbuck’s in Downtown L.A. when the picture of a woman with her face fully covered (except for her eyes) caught my attention on the front page of the newspaper on the stand at the coffee shop. That did not make me buy the paper. It just made me edgy inside.
Later on that day, at my bank, there was the newspaper again with that woman looking at me, daring me to pick-up that newspaper and read the article. I did better than this. I talked to my banker about what I came in for and then asked him if I could keep the section of the paper to which he agreed.
Better yet, I did not read it the same day. I decided to wait for the right timing, one where I’d be calm and as open-minded as I can be. It finally came yesterday just before I started to prepare dinner.
First, I’d like to say that the title is one of the most wrongful parts of the article. Why? A lot of people only read titles from the newspapers and remain with ideas that can be completely wrong; ideas that they wouldn’t have if they had read the full article. In this particular case, the title leads readers to think that Europeans have grown intolerants and it make it seems like they asked themselves, before becoming so, as few questions as before deciding to buy shoes.
Wow! How misleading can that be! For someone that has never been to Europe, especially in France, this can create real confusion as to who these people are and what kind of cultural beliefs they entertain!
Let’s settle a few facts here about Europe’s reality while we also compare and remind readers that, on top of religious rights there is always Complete Freedom of Choice which should never be placed second to any movement that can deprive any individual of it’s CFC such as religion.
‘’…Muslims in Europe feel that they are not welcome’’
says French political sociologist Jocelyne Cesari…
They say, we are French, we are German, but no one sees us that way…’’
Let’s agree first that all Muslims just like all Catholics or Jews are not extremists. But the truth is, a lot of Muslims move to other countries and do not respect the cultural values of their new host.
In occidental countries such as France, Switzerland and Belgium BUT also like Canada and the US, we have fought many battles for the individual freedom; for women, for gays and children to name a few.
The Muslims women that come to these new countries and that are unwilling to do as other women do are guilty of committing a crime against the freedom of choice of their new country of adoption.
You lose your individual right to freedom of choice when you decide to act in such way that it affects other’s global freedom. We have fought so long for women’s right that it is not acceptable for us to have them veiled. And here are a few reasons why:
• The veil represents submission. Not only to God but to the man the woman is married to. I have been on a beach in Mauritius Island where Muslim woman wore a black veil from head to toe to go in the sea while her husband was wearing shorts by Nike and a t-shirt from Reebok. This is not equality of the sex. To show that image to little girls can create very negative and harmful thoughts in them. And I am not even talking about what men could think! It is not that long ago that in our world women didn’t have that many rights and men ruled them!
• Not only do Muslims do not wish to act accordingly to their new country’s cultural foundations but on top of that, they criticize it. They give themselves the right to claim that women in occidental countries are whores, because of the way they dress. They call us infidels even as they are living and enjoying life in our cities. And if we happen to say ‘’Please, could you try to respect our way of life’’ then they call us racist and intolerant.
• It is a hazard, in today’s world to have people moving about with their face hidden, a danger that our society can not accept after all the terrorism that we have had to live throughout the last decade. A problem that mostly Muslims have created for us on top of that! And now they want us to accept blindly that they can walk along our streets, hidden from our view?
I find it strange that a newspaper like the USA Today could print an article so tendentious. I understand that the US has not yet been as affected by the Muslim immigration as to other countries, especially Europe. But they are coming to the US too and they won’t want to change their way of life when they get there either.
In Montreal, Canada, there are neighbourhoods where only ten years ago you could have never imagined seeing a woman veiled. Today, often times on a street corner, waiting for the bus, one out of five women you will see will be veiled. They do not care what we think or feel. They do not care about our Complete Freedom of Choice. They have something we have lost: the will to fight for their beliefs. And that, my friends, is very bad news for us.
If we can not fight to keep our Complete Freedom of Choice, our culture will disappear (at least for a few hundred centuries). History has shown us that our world can go from left to right and from white to black when civilizations fall asleep. But we have come so far in our fight to individual’s Complete Freedom of Choice, we can not sit back today and let things happen.
We too often think that democracy and right to freedom of speech is binding us to stay down. That is not true. Not everything should be accepted from others. And what should not be accepted is anything that comes between us (individuals) and our Complete Freedom of Choice.
Our right to CFC vs the right to religious freedom is a non-battle. The first one wants to enable the individual to live as the individual wants to and the other wants individuals to live as they (the religious group, whatever it may be) have decided they should. And to do so, they preach and try to convert you.
Do I really have to add anything to that?
‘’…grow fashionable…’’ Wow…
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