Senator Pauline Hanson donned a burqa and walked on to the floor of the Senate in November in an attempt to draw attention to the major parties teaming up to prevent her from tabling a bill that would have prohibited the wearing of a burqa and other face coverings in public.
For those unfamiliar, a burqa is a full covering worn by women, with mesh or some other fabric covering the eyes. They are uncommon in Australia, but anyone who lives in western Sydney would have encountered them.
It’s not the first time Senator Hanson has worn a burqa in parliament, but this instance saw her banned from parliament for a week, the first senator to be banned for a period that long since the 1970s.
Far from having the effect of disciplining Senator Hanson, the ban seems to have emboldened her, as she did the media rounds and garnered support from certain commentators and many in the general public who also want to see the burqa outlawed.
I would have liked to see the bill tabled, because we should not be afraid of debating ideas and contentious issues, particularly when they go to our common values.
But while I would have liked to hear the debate, I am yet to be persuaded by arguments in favour of banning the burqa.
One argument put forward is that there are more than 20 countries around the world, including China, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Portugal that have outlawed the burqa, and that we should follow suit.
But the fact that other countries have imposed a ban does not necessarily mean it is the right thing to do.
Surely no one wants to follow China when it comes to human rights, and Australia has imported some disastrous laws from some of the other countries (euthanasia regimes in Belgium and The Netherlands for instance.)
Furthermore, the opposite argument can be made more persuasively, that is, that there are more than 100 countries that permit the burqa to be worn in public.
The next argument in favour of a ban is security; that it is important to see people’s faces for security reasons. This is probably the most persuasive of all arguments, but if we are going to allow the state to interfere into the right of a person to express their religious faith in public through dress, there needs to be evidence of a security threat that is more than theoretical.
I don’t know about you, but I haven’t heard that there is an issue with crimes being committed by people wearing burqas.
The next reason given goes to the oppression of women; that the burqa is a regressive form of control imposed upon women by clerics and fathers and husbands and so should not be tolerated.
While I agree for the most part (I don’t think we can exclude the possibility that some women are making a free choice, however misguided we might consider it to be), I think a ban will be counterproductive.
If the burqa is outlawed, these women will not be more free, they will simply remain in their homes and lose the already limited social interaction they currently enjoy. It would hardly be liberating.
I suggest our coercive control laws, rather than the banning of religious dress, are a better way to go about ensuring any woman who is forced to dress in this way outdoors is protected by law.
And finally, there is the argument about social cohesion; that seeing a person’s face assists in unified community. I don’t doubt that’s true, but dark sunglasses, Airpods and faces buried in smartphones also damage social cohesion, and no one is banning these.
On the other hand, I find the singular argument for permitting the burqa to be incredibly persuasive: the government should not interfere with the public expression of religious faith unless there is a very good reason to do so, such as the actual (and not merely theoretical) safety of others.
Allowing the state to prohibit certain expressions of religious expression because it considers that expression to be oppressive and not in accordance with human freedom sets a very, very dangerous precedent.
I may not like the burqa, but I certainly don’t want it banned.