Liberty Equality Fraternity

The French are in an uproar over the wearing of burqas.  The parliament has recommended a partial ban on the garment in public buildings.  The burqa is the full islamic veil still worn by a relative handful of muslim women.  Despite the fact that France claims one of the largest muslim populations, there are an estimated 1900 women wearing the burqa.  1900 women, in a country of 65,447,374.


I am pressed to point out that the French have long prided themselves in their strong belief in individualism. The French Revolution was about choice over oppression. President Sarkozy has declared the burqa unwelcome in his country. He calls it a symbol of women's subservience. And when he calls the burqa "an affront to French values...which cannot be tolerated in a country that considers itself a human rights leader," the hair on my neck stands on end. This is a prime example of intolerance, Monsieur.


While the burqa began as a necessity, a literal veil of protection from raiding sands and men, it has become one of the most prominent symbols of oppression of our time. This has become a call to arms, and, as a woman, I am not immune to its siren cry. In Black Veil, Iram blogs that "the burqa or rather the woman in the burqa is seen as a passive, dependent and oppressed being who needs to be rescued by her more liberated and emancipated counterparts."  I too would like to free every woman who is truly being held in place by the garment.


But the issue is not black and white, and nor is the range of emotions and responses it elicits. I understand without reservation the concerns over security and safety.  It is unfortunate fallout of the world in which we live. I support without reservation those that see it as oppression of women as human beings. But, my friends, we are no longer a collective of discrete countries who happen to be co-located on this planet.  We are a community of human beings.  We are neighbors living on a single block.  We should be embracing diversity, acting with tolerance, moving closer to unity.  While it is our place to question cultural history and actions, and perhaps even to judge on occasion when human rights are in question, it is not our place to legislate what a human being chooses to wear on their body. It is in fact our responsibility to support our fellow human beings. Educate them. Help them to understand that there are a thousand other perspectives to consider, and that they have the choice to consider any of those they wish.


My belief is mine.  And although I may believe with every fiber of my being that it is right, it is still within me to permit others to choose. We teach tolerance by exhibiting tolerance.


Just a thought...

School District Rules

Today my daughter is home from school, with a sore right forearm. I don't yet know why it's sore. I know she's ten, which means that growing pains are more a rule than an exception. I know that it started after we hit some tennis balls around two nights ago - something we virtually never do - and that it's likely that she pulled, twisted, or bumped something while contorting into positions heretofore unknown in efforts to hit balls over the net. I know that she is sound in every other way and should be at school learning, interacting, and socializing.


I don't take my child to the doctor every time she has an ache or pain. I take her when pain is persistent and unrelenting. I take her when she has a high fever for several days.  I take her when congestion doesn't go away with medicine and rest. I take her for her annual checkups to make sure she is exactly as she should be.  When I was a child, I twisted a wrist badly enough that it was tender to the touch.  My mother tied a neatly cut swath of white bed sheet around my neck, nestled my mildly tormented arm inside it, and sent me off to school. No harm, no foul.  No phone calls to come and pick me up.  I was precisely where I was supposed to be - at school, learning.  I sat out PE that day, and likely recess as well.  And somehow all was well in the world.  No one fussed. No one lost.


What now begins is the search for information. It is not the first rule to stymie me in my child's six years of elementary school. It may, however, be the one that broke the camel's back. I understand that attendance is one of the district's prime directives. The annual book of student rules sent home decries absences and tardiness, threatening to brand our children as truants. Attendance is everything, for only by being present can a child learn. Yet today they sent her home, excluded her from learning, because her right arm was a little sore. I do not expect to change this rule....or any other for that matter.  I do expect that understanding them with clarity will enable me to have intelligent conversations about them.  And I fully intend to have conversations about them.  My child's education is of paramount importance to me.  So when rules prevent her from this objective, you can expect that I'll rattle a window or two.