[x42bn6]

Or something to that quote.

Too difficult to do my usual embedding of news articles, but try this:

http://news.google.co.uk/news?oe=UTF...LIMS.xml&hl=en

My argument is this: Islam is different. Being different shouldn't make communal relations difficult if two people understand that they are different and accept those differences.

If, say, you are celibate and you carry some sort of token to signify it, it could be offensive if you were asked to take it off. It might be offensive to tell a Christian to remove his cross because you don't believe in Christianity. It could be offensive to tell a married person to remove his or her ring because your own marriage ended in four young children and HIV.

Women who choose the burqa and choose to allow it to cover their faces are accepting a way of Islam that deems it so. Nobody has the right to remove the burqa unwillingly, just as Confucius said that a promise made under a threat is something heaven would not approve of.

It is amazing that so many have agreed with Jack Straw over this, too. Don't get me wrong: why a woman would want to wear a burqa, in, say, a hot country, to me (an athelist), is bewildering, but to put in the comment that it makes things easier is absurd. Some women, if asked to do so, would balk at the fact and may end up being ashamed or, at the least, more shy. This is not the effect that helps communal relations either!

The burqa can be taken as a religious symbol; one of choice. To suggest that it makes it easier without it is a direct attack on the religion.*