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.

This is another good example of why you should not be able to cover your faces when in public. The police are having difficulty finding these wretched low-life thugs due to tinted visors. I don’t have much info on this but I am told it is widely represented on US news. It is also a good reason for the 2nd amendment.

Thanks Sandbox Story here

The rule should always be that you turn a book into a movie and never the other way around. So I tried to avoid putting as much text as I actually wanted to in this video. So I’ll put it here instead.

The fact is, ‘multiculturalism’ or ‘multi-faith’ and whatever other euphemisms are commonly used, is an oxymoron. In some ways, they are like a grandfather paradox in time travel discussions. They simply cannot be. You cannot have more than one set of basic values in operation at one time in one area for disparate sets of people. This leads to an intolerable situation which sooner or later leads to the break down of a civilization or society, if for no other reason than because one loses all respect for the authority of the state, as you know that you are selected for unfair treatment compared to members of another group.

In sharia societies, they encode the idea that non-muslims are second class citizens. So at it is actually more sustainable than what we are doing when we pretend that all people are equal before the law, and yet are not.

Either you can wear a disguise in public or you cannot. But when you allow one group to do so, and especially for irrational reasons like, in the case of Islam, religion who’s regulations are arbitrary and even occasionally somewhat whimsical, holding only one thing in common.

What allows them the advantage.

(Richard sent in this related link on UK law and sharia in this instance)