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The government of Switzerland is having a plan to ban full face covering in public places which includes burqa and hijabs. What are your thoughts on this?
Though I am totally against hijab or purdah, and find it very oppressive, I do not support banning it.
For me hijab puts the sole burden of modesty on women and is a very visual representation of plenty of rights and oppertunities which has been taken away from women. Many might argue that it could be a matter of choice as well. Well, for me I do not believe a sane human being can make the choice of covering up their face or head all the time, unless there is a indoctrination in place. Furthermore in non islamic countries, I find it more of a political statement.
That being said, I think the right way is to support anti hijab activists and encouraging people to come out of burqa/hijab rather than legally forcing them.
Let me explain why I think that.
Lets imagine a girl raised in a very conservative hindu family. Since she was 14, she was not allowed to wear skirts. She is used to have her legs covered all the time when she is public. She does good in school and then joins a multinational corporate. One fine day the corporate puts in a strict dress code and that includes formal business skirts for women.
The girl is not comfortable and feels naked going out with her legs exposed. Why? Because she has been conditioned like that since childhood. She has spent a long time making sure her legs are always covered. And now she is being forced to wear something which makes her very uncomfortable. Do you think its fair on her? She was made to bear the burden of modesty by her family and she shaped up like this. And now she is the person who is kind of being punished for it.
For me banning hijab/burqa means putting too many women in a very uncomfortable position. Though it is highly regressive, thats the way they have gotten used to over the years. Imagine a old women in her 60s forced to change the way she had been living her whole life. I find it brutal. That is why I believe that people should be encouraged to take off their hijabs themselves. We must stop glorifying hijabs as a symbol of choice and encourage anti hijab voices and, ban it just in schools where kids are in their formative years.
There can be hundreds of reasons to ban this thing but I would highlight my perspective in terms of my experience in day to day life. Now, when a patient comes to a doctor, they have to examine him/her thoroughly. Ideally, we should ask the patient to take off his clothes so that we get ‘clear examination findings’, that’s written in the books and trust me they fail us in MBBS/MD exams if we don’t do so. It’s a little different in routine practice. We don’t ask all the patients to remove the clothes because most of them are wearing simple, thin, clothes which are acceptable. And we don’t do it for female patients at all. We try to hear from the stethoscope with lot of concentration after placing it on the thick saree or blouse, our ears are becoming finer day by day. They don’t even take off that piece of cloth from their mouth while speaking to me. I don’t see whom I am taking to. And what do I ask her? Take off your burqa!Seriously? I don’t know how many layers of clothes inside that!
They get offended very easily, so I don’t ask such them questions them. I can’t even hear proper heart sounds from over such clothes, forget about respiratory movements, liver palpation, etc. Why the lack of common sense? If you are going to see a doctor, you have to dress that way so that doctor can do your proper examination. You can’t come wearing this black thing to me. Sorry, I may not recognise you, I can’t check you properly, I don’t know who I am prescribing medicines, seems like what I am doing to whom? I have seen some of them refusing to wear OT dress as well. Excuse me! You expect a doctor to operate on you from your burqa? I am totally in support of the vote.