Bill Oddie on the Burka - a must read!

Now this will throw you! I mean Bill Oddie the Catholic Herald journalist (not the grumpy and eccentric birdwatcher, despite my last post) and blogger who has an excellent piece on why we SHOULD ban the burka. His post contains reference to an article that appeared in The Daily Telegraph last week by Allison Pearson and she has some very poignant observations to make.
As I am steering clear of controversy all I shall do is point you towards Mr Oddie's blog.

Modesty does not require a mask!

                    

Modesty does not require a Burka!

 

H/T to http://www.catholiceducation.org/ for this brief analysis of modesty.

The Virtue of Modesty

DONALD DEMARCO

One of the most basic and vexing problems in moral education is how to make virtue more attractive than vice. In this regard, modesty plays a key role.

Goodness should not be invisible. It should not be colorless. On the other hand, it should not dazzle or overpower. It should compel, not impel; attract, not attack.

Modesty is the virtue that presents goodness in its proper color: one of elegance rather than affluence, economy rather than extravagance, naturalness rather than ostentation. “What a power has white simplicity,” as Keats has aptly remarked. Modesty is the virtue that allows one to focus on what is good without being distracted by irrelevant superficialities.

And more on the Burka!

This time it is an excellent article by William Langley in The Daily Telegraph, extracts below.

Of course, it is always  comforting when someone else upholds the same view as your own but I am sure there are many articles out there with oppsite views.
In the interest of fairness and balance I shall not link to them :)

"Despite some high-profile protests, France’s banning of the burka is enormously popular with the public. Unfortunately, as in Britain, almost anything politicians do that the voters approve of tends to be denounced as populisme – a particularly dread charge among the over-earnest French political class – and instead of enjoying the deserved benefits, President Nicolas Sarkozy has found himself on the defensive.

Sarko’s modest measure (the burka is forbidden only in public places, the fines are piffling and the enforcement procedures incomprehensible) has led to much talk of sledgehammers and nuts, warnings of an apocalyptic Muslim backlash and claims that the Republican tradition of liberté is being compromised in a seedy ploy to combat the resurgence of the hard-Right Front National under its new leader Marine Le Pen......

...... Approval runs right across the spectrum, with Fadela Amara, the Algerian-born former housing minister in Sarkozy’s government, calling the burka “a kind of tomb, a horror for those trapped within it”, and André Gerin, the Communist MP who headed the commission investigating the grounds for a ban, describing it as “the tip of an iceberg of oppression”.

So what do we get in Britain? Theresa May, the Home Secretary, rules out a ban because “it would be out of keeping with our nation’s longstanding record of tolerance”, while the Leftist commentariat continues – with apparent seriousness – to suggest that the face veil is a “lifestyle choice” and essentially no different from a balaclavas worn by middle-class types on the ski slopes of Courcheval. I suspect this thinking is going to have to change".