OPINION:
Burqa and hijab subjugation of any Muslim woman in Western-society Australia is a form of apartheid. In Australia, nobody has the right to approach a service station or supermarket cashier with his face masked, nor is anyone allowed to approach a bank teller or security guard with his face covered. Why should anyone be allowed to wear a face and head covering when approaching schools or playgrounds?
We cannot become “multitribal,” having one law for only some and another law for the vast majority. This is not acceptable in any democracy, especially when it goes against everything our forebears (of all origins) have fought for in Australia; namely, a free and open society.
Women who insist on or are forced into hiding their faces in “open-faced” Australia are not free. It is not our Australian culture. The “First Australians” generally do not hide their very proud Aboriginal identities, and neither should the rest of us.
Furthermore, the type of men subjugating women by demanding that women in their society be masked and closed off from Western societies are not wanted in this free and “open-faced” Australian society. Let such men go live elsewhere in the world.
HOWARD HUTCHINS
Queensland, Australia
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