The Netherlands' Burka Ban

This week the Dutch parliament voted to ban the wearing of the burka, a traditional Muslim garb worn by women which covers everything but their eyes, outside of the home. Geert Wilders is the Dutch MP who first suggested the idea. He claims the ban is necessary for two reasons: integration and security. While I am sure Wilders has good intentions, his reasons for this ban are incredulous. The ban is a blatant attack on religious liberty and should be revoked.

Wilders’ first contention that the burka impedes the integration of Muslim communities in to mainstream Holland would be sound if massive amounts of women were wearing the garment and refused to ever take it off. However, this is not the case. According to the BBC, a mere fifty Muslim women wear the burka in Holland, a country of millions of people. If these fifty women are seriously disrupting the cultural integration of Holland then it would appear that country has some very deep problems.

Famala Aslam, a Muslim attorney in Holland, makes the point that many moderate Muslim women, who do not necessarily wear the burka, may start doing so as the result of a perceived attack on their faith. If this is true, the ban would ultimately have the reverse effects it was intended to. Rather than integrate Muslim women in to society, it will create a larger population of burka wearing women who wish to make a political statement.

As to Wilders’ security contention, there seems little true reason within his point, especially considering the amount of women who wear the burka. If these women are going to strap a suicide belt to themselves, they are probably going to detonate it somewhere that security won’t be able to search them. In this case, whether or not they wear a burka is irrelevant. They could wear baggy clothes or even large jackets. They know their chances of smuggling something on to a plane in this post 9-11 world are essentially non-existent. This ban does little to nothing to decrease this likelihood nor does it make any other venue safer.

Wilders’ reasons for this law may be flawed, but there are other serious implications that need to be taken in to account as well. Most notably, this ban is a serious infringement on religious freedom. The burka is very much a religious symbol. It is a visible profession of a woman’s inner faith. While it may seem foreign to many westerners, it is no different than wearing a cross around your neck or wearing a yarmulke, other than the fact that most people in Western culture don’t wear burkas.

If the Dutch government were to ban Christians from wearing crosses on their necks or Jews from wearing skull caps, people would be rioting in the streets and yelling “Fascist! Fascist!” Oddly enough, Geert Wilders is able to say about the burka, “It’s a medieval symbol...” Could you imagine how offended you would be not only as a Muslim, but as any person of minority status if a religious or social practice of yours was referred to as “medieval” by an upper member of government and then outlawed?

If the Dutch government is able to ban burkas, we must wonder what will be next. Will they ban mosques, because these too are medieval? Will they extend bans to target other minorities as well? Interestingly, we need only look a few countries over to see how far European nations are willing to go in their knee jerk reaction to large levels of immigration. In Belgium, not only is the burka banned, but so is the niqab, another traditional form of Muslim dress that only covers the head with a scarf. In 2004, the French government enacted a ban in all of its public schools that bars religious clothing and symbolism of all kinds, including traditional Christian and Jewish crosses and yarmulkes.

Unfortunately, it does not seem that true religious freedom will come back to Europe anytime soon. There was little disagreement over this Dutch ban and even less outrage. We must all keep in mind that while this ban may not affect a large population, it is just as terrible that it affects a small one. It sets a precedent in Holland that if your beliefs and practices clash with the established majority’s, your beliefs and practices will likely not be tolerated. This burka ban does nothing to increase security, does less to promote integration and is a terrible trampling of religious rights. It should be lifted immediately.

The Patriot Act and Our Civil Liberties

In a letter to Senators Leahy and Specter of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales disclosed this week that the Bush Administration will cease its practice of using warrantless wiretaps on the communications of people expected of ties to Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. Instead, the Administration will go through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was created in 1970 to review requests for warrants to conduct surveillance inside the United States.

Although surprising, this change in Administration policy is a welcomed and necessary shift. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush secretly approved the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP), which allowed law enforcement officials to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists and terrorist associates without court order or review. Instead, the President himself reviewed the cases every forty-five days. Although this act was created with the best of intentions (as many controversial programs after large national tragedies seem to be), it was flawed in a number of respects.

First of all, it increased the power of law enforcement and thusly the Executive Branch when it did not need to be increased. The ability to eavesdrop on suspected terrorist communications in our country quickly has been available since at least 1970, when the FISA Court was established. There is no recorded (or at least public) instance where the FBI or any other federal agency lost valuable information or an actual attack happened as the result of the FISA Court either not being quick enough or denying a request for a warrant. The difference between the FISA Court and the TSP is that the former offers oversight as well as checks and balances while the latter does not.

This leads in to a second and perhaps the most important flaw of the TSP: the opportunity for abuses of power and infringement on civil liberties is too great to let stand. While it may not be the intention of the Bush Administration and Federal Agencies to walk over our civil liberties, good intentions are not sound enough assurance of their protection. We should not expect to give up certain rights either temporarily or in permanence in order to be safe. Fortunately, safety can be attained as we simultaneously enjoy the rights that we have been doing so up to September 11, 2001.

Unfortunately, however, the Bush Administration does not seem to believe this. They have persisted in creating programs and practices which have run ruff shod over numerous civil liberties. Their main avenue for such abuses has been the Patriot Act, specifically section 215. This section allows investigators to peer in to the reading and internet habits of suspected terrorists in public libraries. While this may not seem to be as large an offense as warrantless wiretapping, it is none the less warrantless and much more so an invasion of privacy.

Supporters of the program will often say that they do not care if the government sees what they have been reading or looking at on the internet, but I will offer a “what if situation” in response. What if the FBI suspected terrorists were planning an underwater attack on a port or harbor on the West Coast, and so decided to obtain the names and addresses of anyone who had taken out books on diving from public libraries in California? Perhaps this does not sound too egregious, but what if the Government then went one step further and sought the names and addresses of everyone in a particular area who had taken diving lessons or bought scuba gear from local scuba shops? Now the government is not only looking at the records of public institutions but those of private enterprises. Unfortunately this situation is not far fetched, as a very similar one is occurring in California at the moment.

But these particular civil liberty abuses are not the worst of all in comparison to what Vice President Dick Cheney discussed on Fox News Sunday. Cheney attempted to defend the idea that the Pentagon and CIA are not violating people’s rights as they examine the banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and other suspects. He said, “The Defense Department gets involved because we’ve got hundreds of bases inside the United States that are potential terrorist targets.” If worrying about the NSA, FBI and other traditional law enforcement groups spying on us was not enough, we can now add to the list the Defense Department (which traditionally fights Nazis and other foreign armies) and the CIA (which traditionally spies on and disrupts our enemies’ activities overseas).

As it becomes more apparent every week that our government is actively and unapologetically spying on an untold number of loyal and patriotic Americans, it becomes difficult not to feel a great sense of unease about living our daily lives- not in fear of Al Qaeda killing us, but our own government keeping tabs on us. We must accept an unwanted fact if we are to recover our civil liberties unabridged: terrorism will never, ever be exterminated. Bush is wrong when he says the war on terrorism will be a long war- it will be a war that outlasts anyone who is reading this editorial. Terrorism will never disappear because there will always be people who hate America enough to hurt her and her people. If terrorism will never be completely defeated, are we to live under the ominous shroud of our government forever? We should keep in mind Ben Franklin’s saying, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”