Senator Cory Bernardi’s call to ban the burqa is more sinister than many other similar calls around the world. Senator Bernardi, by associating this Islamic head dress with criminality, has gone a step further than those politicians who have called for its ban in countries like France, Belgium and the US. The question is, do Senator Bernardi’s comments amount to religious vilification?
Senator Bernardi argued yesterday that the “burqa is no longer simply the symbol of female repression and Islamic culture, it is now emerging as a disguise of bandits and n’er do wells.” Bernardi seized upon an alleged crime in Sydney where police say a man wearing a burqa and sunglasses robbed another man in a Sydney carpark on Wednesday this week.
Bernardi also trots out all the usual right of centre arguments for banning the burqa. It’s un-Australian, it’s a symbol of oppression of females and the like. These are common arguments used by French, American and Belgian legislators to enable them to ban burqas in those countries.
But to associate persons wearing a burqa with criminal conduct is taking an already extreme argument to a new level, and one that should cause law enforcement agencies and governments around Australia to examine carefully what Senator Bernardi is saying.
There are laws in Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania which make religious vilification illegal. Senator Bernardi’s comments have been published in each of these jurisdictions and so attract the operation of those laws.
A defence to most of these laws is that the person making the statement did so reasonably and in good faith for academic, artistic, scientific or research purposes, and in the public interest. It is hard on any measure to see that Senator Bernardi could justify his linking of wearing a Burqa to criminal activity on one of these grounds.
But are Senator Bernadi’s statements linking the burqa with criminality offending these laws? Possibly so, and particularly in Victoria. That state’s Racial and Religious Tolerance Act introduced in 2000, outlaws religious vilification, and makes serious vilification a criminal offence that attracts a $6000 fine or six months imprisonment.
The Victorian law provides that a person must not, on the ground of the religious belief or activity of another person or class of persons, engage in conduct that incites hatred against, serious contempt for, or revulsion or severe ridicule of, that other person or class of persons. And the law also makes it a criminal offence to, “on the ground of the race of another person or class of persons, intentionally engage in conduct that the offender knows is likely to incite serious contempt for, or revulsion or severe ridicule of, that other person or class of persons.”
Senator Bernardi’s comments could certainly be said to amount to religious vilification and by arguing that a person wearing a burqa might be a criminal it is certainly arguable that he is inciting serious contempt or revulsion of Muslim women.
It is one thing to argue for a ban on burqas on societal cohesion grounds, but quite another to do what Senator Bernardi did yesterday. This is why religious vilification laws are important.
“. It’s un-Australian ” – exactly how do you define Australian, given the variety of races, cultures etc that make Australia what it is.
Personally I find the Burqa a bit off putting, but why should others be condemned because their dress appears strange to the average citizen, God knows there other strange forms of dress that don’t arouse much comment.
The only problem that I see with the burqa is that it keeps the wearer from activities that require visual identification, such as driver’s licenses and presumably passports. Or is there some legal way around this problem?
I see Greg has his lawyer’s hat (or Burqa?) firmly on today. I really don’t like Senator Bernardi. As a South Australian Senator, his comments seem quite out of place given that I live in Adelaide and the only place I’ve ever seen a Burqa is on tv. They just don’t seem to feature here and Bernardi would know this well.
But I disagree that his comments amount to religious vilification. Dog whistling, sure. But dog whistling is not actually vilification. It’s more like thought-crime, which is a difficult thing to legislate and in fact is best not legislated. My basis for this is that it does appear that the crime by the (presumably non-Muslim) Burqa clad crim did occur. Just as wearing a motorcycle helmet into a bank (or even, in fact, while filling up the petrol tank on your motorbike) is likely to cause alarm and a requirement that you remove said helmet, the suggestion that Burqas may assist criminals to do their work appears to be the basis for Bernardi’s claim. He’s not asserting that Muslims are criminals. He’s not asserting that the Sydney incident was carried out by a Muslim. The link to religious vilification is at best tenuous, but hey, that’s what lawyers jump on when they’ve got nothing else to do.
Bernardi can’t help himself. In the Senate he is rude, offensive and more than once has been pulled up for offensive remarks about women Senators. He shoots from the hip, loves the sound of his voice and apart from a crude boisterous attitude, I have heard him contribute little of substance in Senate debates. This latest effort, an attack on Burqa clad individuals, merely draws attention to the shallow person he really is. But he will have a few beers tonight, proclaim what a clever bugger he is for stirring up the media and the Muslim community and carry on to his next big mouthed non event. Sth Australia is welcome to call him their own, doubt anyone else wants him.
It’s nothing about religion it’s about walking about in public in clothing that completely disguises your face, even your sex.
They look like something out of star wars, I don’t care what religion they are you can’t allow people to dress in public in a manner that shields their entire identity, even their sex.
And don’t give me any of that BS about helmets, people don’t wear those in supermarkets or on public transport.
Greg Barnes says “all the usual right of centre arguments for banning the burqa” and “These are common arguments used by French, ”
Well, no. The french argument is the strongest and revolves around their constitutional guarantee of egality and human rights. It could be, but I don’t believe it is, cynical. The french do have a strong record on this, even if on other things racial they are not perfect. So the argument is more about the relatively small sub-group of muslims in France which are still strongly paternalistic–a soft description of neo-feudal brutal male oppression of females. (To be fair to Greg Barnes, he also states that fact.) The banning of Islamic headwear in schools is a very justifiable move, in my opinion. The contrary case is usually stated as: why shouldn’t a young woman wear it if she wishes?.
Well, the point is that in those part of Islam that still practice such vile habits (Iran, Saudia Arabia, Taliban), those young girls are forced to wear it, even if they often will claim they are doing so by choice. Since it also goes with suppression of girl’s education it is even less valid to claim “by their own wishes”. I say, let that “right” be restricted at least to when they attain majority (which is post-school age).
If I had my preference all children would be forbidden, in our secular society, to be inducted into any cult (Catholic, Methodist, Scientology, etc) until they attained the age of majority when they had true free choice. Why on earth should parents be given the right to brainwash their children this way? (Wouldn’t it be an act of kindness to rescue Steve Fielding’s children? I rest my case.)
Last week ABC’s Emma Alberici reported on this from France and it was curious that the french burqa-wearing woman they interviewed was ethnically caucasian (and French born) who had converted to Islam after being brutally raped as a child and being unable to cope with men’s intrusive staring (which is possibly even worse among Islamic north-africans in Europe, maybe just the same–it is pretty bad in the Latin world). She was obviously quite disturbed and in no way representative of either young women in general and certainly not Islamic women. Nevertheless her French-caucasian origins is probably why she was the only burqa-wearing woman permitted by her husband to appear on camera; most husbands are the cause of the burqa wearing and forbid media contact. As odd as it was, it still showed a convincing reason why the burqa is pretty evil.
The other interesting thing from the ABC program, and obvious to anyone who has lived in France or visited there much, the vast majority of the 14% of the population who are notionally Islamic (a lot of them drinking in bars around the 19th and 20th arrondissements!) do not embrace those extreme forms of Islam, and they don’t like the burqa either.
The security angle may in some cases be valid but it is a distraction–as is now happening on talk radio in Australia, as all the neanderthals are embracing this as THE reason for banning it.