I sat and watched some interview off a public German network last night.....a twenty-minute segment which dealt mostly with this French Muslim gal. In France, you see, there's this law that forbids the facial covering....the Islamic Niqab. It's a national law....with no waivers or such. The French public demanded it.....the politicians gave some simple wording into the law, and so far....no national court has prevented it's implementation.
So the video segment last night was the woeful tale of this very enthusiastic Islamic gal, who'd really like to show her determination and support of the Niqab....wearing it in public and being a full-up Muslim. To show her determination....she walked around some French street....wearing the Niqab and the French crew showed the whole thing. No cops around.....no one ran up to challenge her.....so it was part of the 'act' of the interview folks.
Then they (the interview crew) brought in this gal's sister.....who was Muslim. They didn't really make it that clear if she was heavily influenced a decade prior like her sister.....or her current interpretation of the Koran.....but the sister was now 'westernized'.
'Westernized' tends to mean that she dressed French.....showed no indication of being Muslim....and was employed. She was successful in life and enjoyed every single thing that French society had offered, including employment and a chance to be whoever she wanted to be.
They brought the two sisters together and they each discussed their direction in life. They obviously weren't going to ever agree on lifestyles ever again.
If you walk around the streets of Germany....Niqabs-clad women exist. I'd say roughly that five to ten-percent of the adult female Islamic crowd have gone this direction. From the Turkish population in Germany....it's probably almost zero-percent who go to the Niqab culture. You can go back twenty and even forty years ago....the Turkish population either went full westernized (German) or dressed by Turkish standards to be conservative in nature....maybe with a scarf over their head in a public setting. I can remember walking around Frankfurt in 1978 and the Niqab style facial covering was absolutely non-existent. Even when I returned in 1984....you could go anywhere in Frankfurt and not see facial coverings.
Somewhere in the early 1990s as I returned for the third time to Germany....I came to notice this one day when visiting the Wiesbaden central shopping district. One single woman....dressed in black and wearing a Niqab. Today, if you go to the same shopping district....on a typical afternoon, you'd probably come to notice forty to sixty such women. None....I assume....are Turkish.
German acceptance or non-acceptance goes from one extreme to another. Some Germans just stand there and stare....muttering some ultra-soft negative comment. Others just accept it and see it as part of the new German environment....the multi-culti theme in full effect.
I think somewhere down the line....as a few husbands of Niqab women have met some unfortunate accident and passed on....there will be some reality facing these unique women and a very uncertain future. In the old country.....the clan or family would have picked things up and ensured some new marriage. I'm not that sure of how it'd work in Germany, and it'd be a harsh economic situation to face as some Niqab-clad widow and showing up in the Arbeitsagetur (the work office) to find something to gain employment. Potential German employers looking at some Nigab potential employee and mostly just shake their heads. Maybe some German government operation will find some sympathy and look over the facial covering to offer a government job.
My suspicion is that election trends over the next year or two....will eventually show more German enthusiasm to counter the trend, and the French-style law might end up being applied in some German state, and being challenged in court.
The German Basic Law (their Constitution) doesn't have anything to preserve or defend such practices. You do have freedom of religion, but it's not exactly written to such an extent to say clothing or style of clothing is part of that particular freedom. You also have the freedom to find happiness, but applying it to clothing styles or facial coverings.....hasn't been done before. Jews might stand up and tell you in 1930 that they had religious freedom in Germany, and discovered two or three years later that their freedoms were non-existent.
On top of all of that....I'm also guessing that some female German comedian will eventually test the waters one day and wear some Batman-style Nigab as part of her act, and get a bunch of people all disturbed and upset. That intellectual argument involving extreme humor....might test the waters and drag this out into public debate.
So, if you were looking for a really stupid public argument to erupt and get most Germans involved in something that doesn't concern them.....this is way up on the charts.
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