The Egyptian government has announced a ban on the wearing of the face-covering niqab in schools from the beginning of the next term on 30 September.
Education Minister Reda Hegazy made the announcement on Monday, adding that students would still have the right to choose whether to wear a headscarf, but insisted it must not cover their faces.
He also said that the child’s guardian should be aware of their choice, and that it must have been made without any outside pressure.
Okay, let me explain my position better since it seems like people think this was badly worded.
For me, the one thing that should be protected is the absolute choice to wear what you want as a woman, and since hijab is forced on a large number of women, be it in psychological or physical or emotional, there should be all sorts of programs and help and support they can get especially as teens or children. I don’t think banning it is helpful in this way, as in I don’t think it’s effective. The real issue is that control is being exerted on these women. Putting more control over them from the opposite direction is giving them more shit to deal with. What Egypt or France should have done was have a long conversation with the parents and girls who wear hijab and make it easy for these girls to get support to stop wearing it. That’s how you get good results. Banning a piece of clothing is often more of a political gesture.
Edit: I also want to say that that position is not what I meant to convey in the paragraph. Sorry if it was badly worded but I feel like when read alongside of the first paragraph above it, it’s more clear that what I mean is that women are forced to wear it by their guardian and parents and that this should not be the case. I didn’t think I had to explicity say “ofc many women are forced to wear it and this is wrong” because I thought that was obvious. My mistake, I guess I should be more explicit with such controversial topics.
Lemmy is filled with ADHD addled reactionary wannabe communists with critical thinking issues, trust me you have to explicitly say everything you mean or they’ll take any gap in your well meaning argument and assume you’re a racist conservative and downvote you into oblivion because thinking is too hard for them.
I’m not sure about the prevelance of ADHD on Lemmy or any such platform and don’t know how it would affect one’s ability to understand and respond. But beyond that, yeah point taken! I will make sure to do so in the future.
For reference I’m 30F and was raised and born in a Muslim family, became an atheist around 16/17, wore the headscarf for about 5/6 years and was both scrutinized for wearing it at an early age (12) and then for later taking it off in highschool, punished twice by society with my own personal choice becoming painful to take, no matter how I choose to dress.
People talked shit about me for years for taking it off, it fucking sucks, but one thing I really would have appreciated as a hijabi teen was some support to allow me to take my own choices. One adult around me who offered such a thing was my physics teacher, bless his heart, he looked at me the day I took it off and said, “You’re as old as my children, this is your choice as a grown up and I respect it.” my biology teacher, on the other hand, did not speak to me for at least a semester, and another lab assistant teacher chased me to the bathroom to guilt trip me about taking it off. It was not a fun ride. What I needed was freedom to experiment, not a ban.
Edit: added spacing between paragraph
It was more just that they can’t seem to focus on a comment long enough to engage with it and understand what someone actually trying to say. If it’s not just shitting on someone immediately people don’t know how to respond so they just assume a hostile stance and cherry pick your argument to misinterpret you into being the bad guy.
You’re correct, banning things just makes the issue societal and authoritarian which feeds into the conservative POV that “they’re trying to destroy our faith” and polarizes the problem. This makes meaningful change difficult or impossible. The truth is that even if no one would ever choose to wear a burqa on their own in an objectively neutral society, it’s still a culturally ingrained thing that has no negative value outside of the requirement that it he worn.
Saying it’s a problem is like a feminist claiming being a stay at home mom is a problem, as long as everyone in the situation is happy and not being forced to do anything, buzz off and let people live their lives.
Now of course because I have to cover my own ass cause apparently not spelling this out means I don’t understand it or I support religious fascism…
The moment that society forces a group to do something, like making women cover themselves and designing society so that they can’t function outside of marriage(servitude) and motherhood, yes that’s a problem and objectively against the freedoms of women in a systemic sense. You’ll get no argument there.