Back in November 2010, a Muslim woman in Sydney was sentenced to six months in prison for falsely accusing a police officer of forcibly trying to remove her burqa. Later, her sentence was quashed after a magistrate said that he was unsure if the convict was indeed Carnita Matthews because police officers were unable to see her face. The incident expectedly snowballed into a significant legal debate over whether or not security personnel had the right to ask veiled Muslim women or any other person whose face was covered to remove their face-covering so as to allow the officer-in-charge to identify them for law and order purposes. Now, the State Government of Victoria has determined that current Australian laws already allow for policemen to remove any kind of face-mask for the sole purpose of identification of an accused. Before the Left-liberal intelligentsia pounces on this ruling as one that violates the religious 'rights' and 'freedom' of Muslim women and condemn it as unbecoming of a mature democracy like Australia, it must be mentioned that first and foremost this ruling is not specific to Muslim women. It is applicable to any accused who has his or her face hidden. Moreover, the person will only be required to remove the face-covering for as long as it takes for the police to complete the identification process; after that, they can put it right back on.
The Victoria Government's ruling, which came on the heels of a similar ruling in the province of New South Wales, has once again put the spotlight on the larger issue of where ends an individual's rights in a democratic country and where begins the state's right to impose rules that are necessary for the peaceful functioning of society. No doubt, there is a thin line that divides the two areas and the exact place where that line is drawn is bound to differ depending on an individual country's socio-legal space. For example, Belgium and France have wholly banned women from wearing a full-face covering veil. French President Nicholas Sarkozy particularly has attributed his Government's decision to more than just security reasons. He believes that the burqa is a "sign of subservience, a sign of debasement" for women, which it is. The tradition of women covering their heads or faces with a veil originated at a different time in a different era for different reasons. This is the post-modern era; today, our social concerns are very different and communities across the world must evolve in keeping with the changing times. All women must be encouraged to give up the veil, more so the burqa. Much of Hindu, Christian and Jewish social reform has revolved around liberating women from traditions that fly in the face of modernity. The world has moved on, we need not bother about obscurantists.
