19.1 C
New Delhi

Enough of your religious beliefs, national security is paramount

Date:

Share post:

Sri Lanka’s Cabinet on Tuesday approved a controversial proposal to ban all forms of face coverings in public places, citing a threat to national security and rightly so.

The move came weeks after Minister of Public Security Sarath Weerasekara signed a note in March, 2021, seeking the approval of the Cabinet to ban burqas – outer garments that cover the body and face worn by some Muslim women

In modern times, Muslims in Sri Lanka have the Muslim Religious and Cultural Affairs Department, which was established in the 1980s to prevent the continual isolation of the Muslim community from the rest of Sri Lanka. Today, about 9.7% of Sri Lankans adhere to Islam; mostly from the Moor and Malay ethnic communities on the island.

The Cabinet has decided to ban all forms of face coverings in public places, Cabinet spokesperson and information minister Keheliya Rambukwella, without specifying burqas. He said the decision was taken two years back after a wave of coordinated terror attacks on hotels and churches on Easter Sunday. “All forms of face covers are a threat to national security,” he said. However, wearing face masks to combat China Virus is allowed.

The covering of the full face will automatically include burqa, abaya and niqab. The proposal now must be approved by Parliament to become a law.

Last month, Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Ambassador Saad Khattak had criticised the proposal to ban the wearing of burqas in the country, saying such “divisive steps” in the name of security will not only hurt the sentiments of Muslims but also strengthen wider apprehensions about the fundamental human rights of minorities in the island nation.

Meanwhile, Weerasekera in a Facebook post wrote that the Cabinet has approved the proposal to ban all face coverings, including the burqa. “I requested approval to draft a law for the covering of full – face adhering to the quarantine law which means there will be no prohibition to wear face masks to prevent the China virus,” he was quoted as saying by the Daily Mirror news website.

The Buddhist – majority nation in 2019 had temporarily banned wearing of burqas under emergency regulations following the Easter Sunday attacks in which nine suicide bombers belonging to the local Islamist extremist group National Thawheed Jamaat (NTJ) carried out a series of blasts that tore through three churches and as many luxury hotels, killing 270 people, including 11 Indians, and injuring over 500.

Muslims make up about 9.7% of the 22 million people in Sri Lanka, where Buddhists account for more than 70% of the population. Ethnic minority Tamils, who are mainly Indian Hindus, comprise about 12%, while Christians account for over 7% of the population.

In 2011, France became the first country to ban all women from wearing any sort of veil, or the niqab outside their homes in any public place. The French Parliament began an initial inquiry on the issue shortly after President Nicolas Sarkozy stated in June 2009 that religious face veils were “not welcome” within France. Sarkozy had stated that the law is to protect women from being forced to cover their faces and to uphold France’s secular values.

A study published by Open Society Foundations earlier this year established that 22 out of the 28 EU states have been affected by at least an attempt to implement legislation for banning the face veil either nationally, locally or in specific institutional contexts. Following the example of France (2010), Belgium (2011), Bulgaria (2016) and Austria (2017) have until date legislated general nation-wide bans on the face veil.

In March 2010, a ban on the burqa and niqab in public places was eventually proposed in the Norwegian Parliament by the Progress Party. In 2018, the Norway parliament voted to ban the burqa in schools and universities. France, Belgium, Netherlands, Bulgaria, etc have made face coverings in public a punishable offense under law. In France and Turkey, the emphasis is on the secular nature of the state, and the symbolic nature of the Islamic dress, and bans apply at state institutions (courts, civil service) and in state-funded education (in France, while the law forbidding the veil applies to students attending publicly funded primary schools and high schools, it does not refer to universities; applicable legislation grants them Freedom of Expression as long as public order is preserved).

The Sweden Democrats are the largest party in Sweden that advocates a ban on the burqa and niqab in public places.

The niqab – a garment that is not required by Islam but is considered recommended in some interpretations – is usually worn with a loose, coat-like garment called an abaya and a hijab, or headscarf. Some women pair it with a long skirt and tunic to conceal the body shape.

Moroccan authorities have recently banned the manufacturing, marketing and sale of the burqa – an outer garment worn by some Muslim women to cover themselves in public.

It argued that wearing the burqa could help criminals and terrorists hide their identities. The Spanish resort Sa Pobla on the island of Mallorca has banned women from wearing burqas or face-covering Islamic veils in public places, even though only two women living there are known to do so.

A controversial ban on wearing face-masking garments in public, widely referred to as the ‘burqa ban’, came into effect in Denmark on August 1st last year. Since then, 23 people have been fined under the law, according to National Police figures reported by Kristeligt Dagblad.

Switzerland has banned the ‘burqa’ after a far-right proposal to ban facial coverings won a narrow victory in a binding. Morocco ‘bans the sale and production of the burka’. Research shows that the headscarf ban reduced the economic and social integration of Muslim women into French society. As of 11 April 2011, it was illegal to wear a face covering veil or other masks in public spaces. Veils, scarves and other headwear that do not cover the face are unaffected by this law.

Of late wearing of burqa in public places has become more of a resistance and proliferation of Islam in India.

A time must come when Burqa is banned in progressive countries like India as security conditions are becoming scary due to Muslim Jihad.

Rajiv Saxena
Rajiv Saxena
Rajiv Prakash Saxena is a graduate of UBC, Vancouver, Canada. He is an authority on eCommerce, eProcurement, eSign, DSCs and Internet Security. He has been a Technology Bureaucrat and Thought leader in the Government. He has 8 books and few UN assignments. He wrote IT Policies of Colombia and has implemented projects in Jordan, Rwanda, Nepal and Mauritius. Rajiv writes, speaks, mentors on technology issues in Express Computers, ET, National frontier and TV debates. He worked and guided the following divisions: Computer Aided Design (CAD), UP: MP: Maharashtra and Haryana State Coordinator to setup NICNET in their respective Districts of the State, TradeNIC, wherein a CD containing list of 1,00,000 exporters was cut with a search engine and distributed to all Indian Embassies and High Commissions way back in the year 1997 (It was an initiative between NIC and MEA Trade Division headed by Ms. Sujatha Singh, IFS, India’s Ex Foreign Secretary), Law Commission, Ministry of Law & Justice, Department of Legal Affairs, Department of Justice, Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD), Ministry of Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation (MoHUPA), National Jail Project, National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), National Commission for Minorities (NCM), National Data Centres (NDC), NIC National Infrastructure, Certifying Authority (CA) to issue Digital Signature Certificates (DSCs), eProcurement, Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs (MPA), Lok Sabha and its Secretariat (LSS) and Rajya Sabha and its Secretariat (RSS) along with their subordinate and attached offices like Directorate of Estate (DoE), Land & Development Office (L&DO), National Building Construction Corporation (NBCC), Central Public Works Department (CPWD), National Capital Regional Planning Board (NCRPB), Housing & Urban Development Corporation (HUDO), National Building Organisation (NBO), Delhi Development Authority (DDA), BMPTC and many others.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Related articles

Canadian Court steps in to protect Hindu Mandirs amid rising violent Khalistani Terrorism threats and Police inaction

In a landmark decision, the Superior Court of Ontario has issued an injunction to protect Toronto’s Lakshmi Narayan...

Radical Islamic Parties want to ban ISCKON, Dhaka High Court refused; What’s behind the growing tensions in Bangladesh?

The Dhaka high court on Thursday declined to issue a suo motu order “to ban ISKCON’s activities in...

What is the controversy around the Sambhal Mosque and Hari Har Mandir?

A petition was filed by Hari Shanker Jain and others in the court of the civil judge of...

Indian Govt trashes Canada report on Nijjar murder plot, calls it ‘ludicrous’

The government on Wednesday rubbished a Canadian newspaper report that alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was aware...