Saturday, August 07, 2010
Gillard says burquas should be removed in court
Prime Minister said she thought it was one of the "limited" instances when it should be removed. "I worked as a lawyer for eight years, I ran a lot of cases, I interviewed a lot of clients, having done that it can be very difficult to tell whether or not people are telling you the truth," she said. "The essence of giving witness evidence is the court is making a determination over whether or not someone is telling the truth, that is always hard to do, I think it would be impossible to do if you couldn't see someone's face."
Abbott also finds burqua "confronting" - and would very much wish that fewer Australians would choose it.
France's lower house voted overwhelmingly to ban the wearing of face-covering veils in public.
IMO: I do not know yet whether mirror neurons and such like will help in legal decisions, but suspect Gillard is wrong. France, reasonably, has long and often bad memories of Islam and indeed of Rome. Sticking a bag over a woman's head because of some religious policy seems plain sick to me in the 21st century, and it was long rumoured than many who do so, are plain old or ugly, or have financial motives. Really it seems a pity that Western nations should need to kowtow to such old principles, far from universal even in Islam or Catholicism, and certainly centuries away from modern realities of life.
Abbott also finds burqua "confronting" - and would very much wish that fewer Australians would choose it.
France's lower house voted overwhelmingly to ban the wearing of face-covering veils in public.
IMO: I do not know yet whether mirror neurons and such like will help in legal decisions, but suspect Gillard is wrong. France, reasonably, has long and often bad memories of Islam and indeed of Rome. Sticking a bag over a woman's head because of some religious policy seems plain sick to me in the 21st century, and it was long rumoured than many who do so, are plain old or ugly, or have financial motives. Really it seems a pity that Western nations should need to kowtow to such old principles, far from universal even in Islam or Catholicism, and certainly centuries away from modern realities of life.
# posted by uv : 12:46 PM
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