OOH..... SCARY! SO WHAT,... EXACTLY SEEMS TO BE THE THREAT HERE????

Is it the fact that these eyes are just too provocative to be ignored, or is it just more, than any red blooded Christian can bear? Or, are we such pigs that we feel we have some unwritten right to oogle all women face to face? As a species, we probably ought to get over that.

France has just enacted a law forbidding the wearing of the Niqab and Burka with full veil. The fine for wearing this garb in public is 150 euros ($216). France has a Muslim minority of five million strong, but it is believed that fewer than 2000 actually wear the full veil.

The timing is all the more sensitive after France's ruling political party, President Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP, called a debate on the place of Islam in France, a move that some say risked stigmatising a portion of the population. (Do you think?)

Rachid Nekkaz, the man who called for the Notre Dame prayer, said in a webcast that he was putting a property worth around two million euros up for sale to help fund his campaign.
"I am calling on all free women who so wish, to wear the veil in the street and engage in civil disobedience," he said.
French police arrested 59 people on Saturday who turned up for a banned protest over the veil ban, one of them on arrival in France from Britain, according to a police spokesman.

Okay, as someone who really didn't understand the significance of the wearing of the veil, I looked at this as one extremely repressive act of the Muslim world. I saw it as an act of oppression towards women that was unfathomable in the modern world. My friends saw it as "Brain Washing" and an oppression that set us at odds with a world that had no place in the 21st century.

But, then,.... I talked to someone who actually lived in that world for almost 20 years. She was a close friend from Berkeley High School. She was married to a Saudi Arabian man, and lived in Saudi Arabia for almost 20 years. She told me that wearing a full veil was "one of the most liberating experiences of her life". She divorced her husband, but remains friends with him to this day.

Cultural differences had their effects on her marriage, but wearing the full veil wasn't one of them. She described it as an experience of "freedom". Freedom from every "Joe Dokes" making a pass at her, and hitting on her just because she was a good looking woman. She said when she was out in public and wearing the Niqab, she was treated respectfully way beyond anything she had experienced before. In her words,.. ..."It was liberating"!

So,... my question to all of you out there is,.... what is the problem with someone wanting to wear a veil? What threat does it pose to you and me? Does it really change who we are, and how we relate to each other? It was enlightening for my friend, but she found herself adapting into a different culture. So,... why do we find this such an offense? My guess is that it's social conditioning... Nothing more. It's a changing world out there, and we need to get a grip, and learn to accept the feelings of others as being as valid as our own. Learn.....