Gender apartheid ?

Progressive Party proposal to ban Hijab in schools in Norway is dismissed by all other political parties.

Today a muslim group comes out in support of a ban, saying th hijab is not just an innocent headscarf as some suggest. The purpose with dressing girls in hijab is to control their behavior and not least their participation in society. It's use represents repression of children and must be stopped, the leader of LIM Tina Shagufta Kornmo says today in the Norwegian daily VG. LIM stands for Equality, Integration and Pluralism, a Norwegian muslim liberal network.

The Progressive Party thinks when children are forced to wear hijab they are instructed in a system of gender apartheid where women are inferior.

Well, the tendency to compare everything to apartheid is not helping the argument against hijab. Clearly hijab will increase segretation of some sort and it should be banned in certain public arenas, like in schools. We do not need to have a comparative debate. The Progressive Party has a very good cause and did not need to employ scare tactics.

Norwegian schools should seek to assimilate children from foreign countries not to placate the patriarchy. To see social progressives rally to protect a social system in which the male as the primary authority figure and central to social organization is first laughable, then just sad and disturbing.

"Progressives" and "liberals" scramble to the protection of the bearded patriarchs is beyond understanding. Only a few decades ago the liberal left made its career attacking Norwegian rural religious conservative values in particular for its views on women and sex. Now they make their career protecting religious conservaties from rural Pakistan.

Opponents of a ban cites tolerance and pragmatism. And much of what they say makes sense if seen in isolation. But the fact is that many ordinary people probably see the bigger picture (while the political class is obsessed with feel good formalism) where they see their own ways of life being fundamentally challenged in arenas that if not private are integrated place between shared culture and private sphere; the school is public, but it is close to home and a back bone of national culture and society. Many see hijab as part of a comprehensive struggle for our culture, they see Norwegian society and culture facing massive transformations with at best unknown consequences, an islamist revival supported by demographics and one which in its totality is contrary to important values of freedom and tolerance.

The decision to be made is when to abandon tolerance and put down some markers to the muslim community. The argument against a ban makes sense if that would protect a tolerant and pragmatic, even liberal pluralism. But it doesn't. It will maintain and promote gender segregation, it will promote islamist influence in our schools and society.
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Fr VG idag:
- Hijaben er ikke et uskyldig skaut, som noen vil ha det til å være. Hensikten med å ikle jenter hijab er å kontrollere atferden deres, og ikke minst begrense deres utfoldelse i samfunnet. Det er en klar barneundertrykkende praksis som må motarbeides, sier LIM-leder Tina Shagufta Kornmo.

"Frp mener at barn som blir tvunget til å bruke hijab, blir lært opp i et kjønnsapartheid der kvinner er mindreverdige"