Anchorage Daily News

Nicholas Sarkozy, president of France, recently announced his opposition to the burqa, the body-covering style of dress common in Muslim countries. I've noticed that certain conservative commentators here in Anchorage support Sarkozy, presumably because he's fighting the good fight against those evil fundamentalist Muslims, but I think this support reveals some inconsistent thought related to our local debate over the sexual orientation non-discrimination ordinance.

It is true that burqas have become symbolic of the repression and subjugation of women under Islamic law, but I think it's questionable whether governments should ever become involved in banning any type of clothing. If a woman freely wants to wear a burqa, then fine. It's when a government or a mullah forces her to wear one that it's wrong.

But Sarkozy is having a laugh when he says it's "not a religious issue."

The Koran doesn't mention burqas specifically, but it discusses in detail the hijab, the dress code for both men and women that requires believing Muslims to practice modesty in public. It's the fundamentalist adherence to the hijab that drives some governments, most notably in Saudi Arabia, to mandate burqa-wearing, and that leads the Taliban to beat women who don't conform. So please ... of course it's a religious issue.

What I don't understand is why conservatives, religious conservatives in particular, aren't up in arms about Sarkozy repressing the rights of people to practice their faith and their religion as they see fit. How come it's OK to restrict religious freedom by banning burqas in France but not OK to restrict religious freedom by banning discrimination against homosexuals here in Anchorage?

When it comes down to it, the fundamentalist Islamic belief in the sin of immodesty is no different from the fundamentalist Christian belief in the sin of homosexuality. Both sets of fundamentalists would happily give offenders a good stoning, and both rail against society's attempts to moderate their views. (You don't have to look further than the Loussac Library most Tuesday evenings to know this.)

It is wrong, they say. This is the TRUTH. It says so in my book.

In reality, the Islamic fundamentalists need to get with the program and realize that the Koran doesn't specifically require anything close to burqa-style modesty, and that, in today's world, that kind of dress standard is much more about the repression of women than it is about religious adherence.

And inevitably, the Christian fundamentalists need to undergo a similar kind of attitude shift as well, here at home. Demanding the religious freedom to discriminate in every way against homosexuals because the Bible says it's God's will is not OK. Not in an educated, understanding and tolerant society.

No more OK, in fact, than requiring that women wear burqas.

Ivan Moore is a pollster and political consultant in Anchorage.

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