Rita Panahi: The standard of debate has sunk to new lows when the notion of banning the burqa is seen as more extreme than the garment itself
The reaction to Pauline Hanson wearing a burqa on the floor of the Senate is further proof that Australia’s media and political class is captured by an outdated, cowardly brand of political correctness.
Australia is becoming a political outlier on multiple fronts.
While much of the advanced world is deliberating the merits of issues from trans ideology to mass immigration, we continue to avoid uncomfortable truths and debates.
The hysterical response to Pauline Hanson donning a burqa on the floor of the Senate is further proof that Australia’s media and political class is captured by an outdated, cowardly brand of political correctness.
The Queensland senator’s protest came after her efforts to introduce a Bill to ban full face coverings was rejected.
Reaction to the One Nation leader’s burqa stunt ranged from Penny Wong’s earnest but intellectually vacuous scolding to the more screechy members of the upper house, from all sides of the political divide, who appear to have developed an unhealthy respect for Muslim garb that is used to subjugate millions of women around the world.
To see so-called “feminists” defend and even celebrate the burqa, a symbol of oppression, is astonishing.
The very women who see sexism and misogyny everywhere, who complain endlessly about microaggressions, turn a blind eye to the plight of the most oppressed women in the world – those living under sharia law in Muslim-majority countries.
Increasingly, there are also scores of Muslim women living in the West as second class citizens in their own homes and communities; obliged to cover up in dehumanising full face coverings or face being disowned or worse by their family.
Instead of railing against the gender apartheid that modesty culture represents, the Left has formed an unholy alliance with Islamists. So while so-called progressives are outraged by “slut-shaming”, they celebrate the Islamism that requires girls and women to hide themselves away from the world.
While women in countries like Iran risk their life and liberty to fight against compulsory hijab laws, we have feminists in this country donning the garments as some sort of celebration of diversity.
It’d be darkly amusing if it wasn’t so pathetically weak and unprincipled.
Hanson has stated that she wants to ban the burqa on national security and social cohesion grounds, calling the garments “oppressive, radical and non-religious” and at odds with Australian “culture and way of life”.
But her colleagues in the Australian Senate would not even entertain her Bill being introduced.
One knows the standard of debate has sunk to new lows in this country when the notion of banning the burqa is seen as more extreme than the garment itself.
More than 20 countries around the world have bans on full face coverings like the burqa and niqab including France, Belgium and Denmark.
These are hardly countries ruled by far-Right extremism.
France’s burqa ban was challenged by a devout Muslim in 2014, who argued the law was discriminatory and violated her freedom of religion.
But the European Court of Human Rights upheld the ban and found the laws were justified on the grounds of social cohesion, the judges noting that “the face played a significant role in social interaction”.
But in Australia our politicians are too terrified to even discuss the issue.
The Greens’ Larissa Waters was aghast that Hanson would dare wear a burqa to make a political point.
“Clearly, what has happened today is not a genuine demonstration of faith,” she said. “In fact is the middle finger to people of faith. It is extremely racist and unsafe.”
Other senators including the Greens’ Mehreen Faruqi also shrieked about “racism” rather than forming coherent arguments.
“This is a racist senator, displaying blatant racism,” she said. “You just want to talk about respecting each other. Well, this is where respecting each other and just talking the talk has got us, this parliament drips now in racism, because for decades – for decades – politicians and both major parties, can I say, let it happen.”
Labor-turned-independent senator Fatima Payman called Hanson’s burqa stunt “disgraceful”, but it’s difficult to take her seriously when she was praising the Iranian regime’s treatment of women earlier this year.
In the end Hanson copped a one-week suspension, the first imposed in decades, with the overwhelming majority of senators finding she “intended to vilify and mock people on the basis of their religion” and her actions were “disrespectful to Muslim Australians”.
It’s clear the “diversity is our strength” crowd don’t want to discuss the economic and cultural cost of mass migration from certain parts of the world.
Not all cultures are equal and pretending otherwise is dangerously delusional.
