To be perfectly fair it is quite possible that Kate Mead, the freelance journalist who is doing this piece for the BBC, may well be sincere and may well not understand this the same way. Its also possible that she is not setting up her social experiment the way I suspect she is. But as pretty much all the other similar articles I have read are designed to deliver the same results I figure it is probably safe to at least speculate that this BBC repetition of it will likely be set up the same, will yield the same results and for the same reasons.
Below, the contents of an email forwarded to me by someone who received it directly from Ms. Mead.
Subject: Documentary
Dear Sir or Madam
I came across your blog while researching for information about a documentary I am developing for BBC Three and I wonder whether you can help. We are in the second stage of our development for this one-off programme which will look at the Burka and whether it should be banned in the UK.
We are currently looking for young men (18-35) to take part in this project who have strong views either in favour of a ban or opposing it. The idea is that they will journey around the country speaking to various women about their experiences – positive and negative – and work with a Muslim social worker who encourages men to experiment with the experience by wearing a Burka themselves for a few days.It is meant to be an accessible look at the issue of Burkas in the UK for a young audience and we hope that our contributors will go on a journey of discovery that might change or intensify their feelings.
As we are looking for potential contributors throughout the UK, we would be really keen to hear from anyone articulate, passionate about the subject and willing to explore the issue directly. I thought that one or several of your writers might be interested in this and would welcome hearing from them. Please do forward my details and invite them to get in touch. I would be most grateful for any help you can give.
We are currently doing screen tests to take back to the channel ahead of commission. This would take about half an hour and we can travel to where they live or pay expenses.
I hope to hear from you soon and thanks in advance.
Kind regards
—
Kate Mead
(Contact info redacted)
The first problem of course is that it is a setup for tyranny either way. The question is not whether or not to ban a style of clothing. One does not guarantee personal freedom by draconian laws on women’s fashion, even if this is more than just matter of women’s fashion. The solution to the burka problem is giving back people the freedom to discriminate for their own interests and for society to discriminate based on what is in the public interest.
This translates to private store owners having the right to refuse admission to people who are wearing a disguise whether that disguise is a Nixon mask, a pig’s head or a burka and in the public sector, to refuse admittance to people wearing a disguise in public transport, in public buildings and so on. This is more than reasonable, it is actually necessary. While this looks like a nudge nudge style banning of the burka it is not. If women want to wear fundamentalist islamic garb good. Then let them. That way we can know who they are, as the degree of threat they represent to liberal democracy is directly proportional to the degree of religiosity they display. But wearing a disguise in public should be illegal and in many cases already is, and exceptions are made for muslims. So once again, the real solution is not a new law, but to stop making exceptions for the existing ones. Just try and walk into a bank with a motorcycle helmet and a tinted visor and see how long you stay in line.
Now on to what I suspect is a public sympathy scam for the BBC:
Imagine you took a class of grade 7 kids who had not learned any 20th century history at all, and not even having even heard of, let alone played Wolfenstein 3D, had no idea who the Nazis were. Now tell them that you were doing an experiment to show them how racist people are towards certain groups and you were going to dress them up as members of a group and they are to report how they are treated over a week of wearing these costumes so they could understand it from the minority’s point of view.
Now imagine you see all kinds of 12 year olds walking downtown in Waffen SS uniforms heiling and goose stepping with total absence of conscience about what it is they represent. How do you think they will adjust their sympathies? Frankly I am surprised the Neo-Nazis haven’t thought of this yet. I suppose they don’t have enough control over schools or the media to get away with it.
Of the several similar experiments of this nature I have seen, this is how it generally works out. The people wear a burka, are treated in a somewhat cold and occasionally even hostile manner, and then the subject develops empathy towards the wearers of the burka, even as the kids would almost certainly feel that racist co-residents of their city have an irrational hatred of Nazis just because they wear a different kind of suit and hat.
It should be normal to show contempt to burka wearers when they expect to interact with the public 100% on their own terms, where they are invulnerable to you because you cannot tell who they are as well as that the burka is the uniform of a culture and legal system utterly bent on the destruction of our entire being and history.
Personally it shocks me that people can walk around in a burka and not be treated exactly as people wearing Nazi uniforms, the white sheets of the KKK or a full on Mao suit should be treated in a public street, which is with scorn and contempt and most importantly, defiance. And why? Because ethically, politically, and in outcome, they all represent pretty much exactly the same thing to freedom loving and classically liberal people.
Eeyore for Vlad.
“Just try and walk into a bank with a motorcycle helmet and a tinted visor and see how long you stay in line”
Hey! That is my religion! Do not touch this… 😉
already done save the license payers money , at an anti islam demo a few months ago in the uk, male protesters were wearing the burka ,they were ordered by the police to remove them ,they refused and got arrested for public order crimes [ ed uk ] I think it was the edl or Britan first
We saw a video of that here.
Excellant analysis.I used to think a nice big cheesy smile was best but I now just totally ignore them and do not give them any eye contact. If you dont want me to see you then dont expect me to talk to you.
The burka is not about women’s clothing or modesty or getting closer to a higher power. The burka is a clever little gambit which the Muslims are trying to use as a way of getting under our skin and pushing their religion into our faces. Here’s how it goes. When the burka percentage gets to about 10%, non-Muslim women will start noticing that they are being harassed by Muslim males, especially when they walk through Muslim areas wearing sexy clothes. Then, as that reality grows and the streets get more and more dangerous, they will start to figure out that the best way to stop the harassment is to wear a burka themselves just to be on the safe side, and voila, everybody is wearing a burka. It’s intimidation, folks. Don’t be fooled. What the Muslims are doing in effect is telling our daughters, sisters, wives, and co-workers that they had better submit to Islam or they will be raped like the whores that they are. Yeah…they’re saying that to your mother…
No, my Muslima (ex) friend says they are forced by their men to wear this in Europe even if they didn’t have to in their arabic country for two reasons. Women are their weak point. They don’t want their women to interact with infidels cos they could learn about their new society and rights. Then they can apply home land’s rules and laws also in England.
They regard their women as property and need to subjugate them.
When Morsi came to power (and the Muslim Brotherhood) the dress code for women became more strict. But that didn’t stop Cairos men from raping and sexual harassing their girls and women.
Australia teenager behind Iraq blast (BBC, July 21, 2014)
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-28397536
“Australia says a man who killed himself and several other people in a suicide attack in Iraq last week was an 18-year-old from Melbourne. The attack took place in a market near a Baghdad mosque on Thursday.
The man detonated explosives in a suicide vest, killing at least three other people and injuring dozens more. The Islamic State (Isis) militant group, in an affiliated Twitter feed, said it was behind the attack and named the man as Abu Bakr al-Australi.
Australia’s Attorney-General George Brandis, in a statement, said the news was a “disturbing development”.
“The government deplores the violent actions being undertaken by ISIL (Isis) and other extremist groups in Iraq and Syria, and is deeply concerned about the involvement of Australians in these activities.”
The involvement of Australians posed “a significant domestic security threat to Australia when those involved return home and seek to pursue violence here”. The man was the second Australian suicide bomber in the Iraq and Syria conflicts, the statement added.
Late last week, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said the government was working hard to stop young Australians becoming radicalised….”
“The solution to the burka problem is giving back people the freedom to discriminate for their own interests and for society to discriminate based on what is in the public interest.”
BINGO! Freedom of Association was destroyed and it needs to be re-instituted, immediately.
Totally agree with you, Eeyore.
Someone needs to tell Kate Mead that while Burka, the earthquake-prone zone in Afghanistan, takes a capital, burka, the Arabized version of Persian purda, does not.
But when has the BBC ever cared about correct use of woggy languages? ‘Beizhing’ for ‘Beijing’ is one that sets my teeth on edge.
Me too.
97% of communication is non verbal,the facial expressions tell us much more than we realise,if one is denied this means of communication,hostility results,so now that we have facial recognition programmes attached to the thousands of times we the indigenous population are spied upon in our daily lives by illegaly intrusive cameras,why are the wogs allowed another exemption to their already burgeoning privileges.
This is Standard Operating Procedure for the BBC’s brainwashing programme.
They did it last week with a 2-part programme called “Immigration: Pain or Gain”, where a group of working-class white people were paired up with immigrants for a week, then asked a week later to state to the face of the paired immigrant, on national TV, that they thought the immigrant was a drain on society.
Of course, they didn’t pair them up with immigrants with criminal records, who don’t speak English (after living here for decades), or immigrants with in-bred children, or immigrants who haven’t worked for 10 or 20 years. All the immigrants chosen were either businessmen or managers of some public-sector organisation.
The idea is clear: get the working class white people to identify with the hostile white person at the start and the end of the programme. It is blatant propagandising. The experts on the programme were careful to provide misleading answers that made immigration seem entirely beneficial.
I agree we need to return the right of freedom of association to the people in the Western nations, the left has worked real hard to remove all of our rights, we must fight to regain all of them.
I’ve never given it much thought. Maybe the tardish population is still too low for it to be an issue in these parts.
True but it is an issue in the Western nations if you don’t want to associate with some member of a leftist protected group you are called racist, many kids end up associating with people they don’t like to avoid the name racist.