Muslim-majority Algeria bans Islamic face veils for its public sector workers to improve 'security and communication'

One for the Left to ponderr

Algerian authorities has banned banned female public sector employees from wearing full-face veils, or niqabs, at work.

Prime Minister Ahmed Ouayhia publicized the decision in a letter to ministers and regional governors in the Muslim-majority country last Thursday.

Civil servants, he wrote, need to 'observe the rules and requirements of security and communication within their department'.

He said public sector workers needed to be able to be 'physically identifiable' while in the workplace.

The ban has been met with both positive and negative reactions on social media, with some hailing it as progressive while others called it an attempt to control women and what they choose to wear.

According to Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, the ban was blasted by an Islamist MP as a 'declared war on Islam'.

However, another MP named Adda Fellahi declared his support for the new law, saying the niqab is 'a social and jurisprudence issue and has nothing to do with decency and chastity,' according to Asharq Al-Awsat.

Algeria has been split between moderate and more radical forms of Islam since it was plunged into years of civil war in 1992, when a military-backed government cancelled elections that an Islamist party was poised to win.

Most Algerian women do not wear the niqab, a custom imported from more traditionally conservative Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, but the decision is likely to be criticized by Algeria's Salafists minority.

The Salafists endorse Saudi's strict Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam and oppose the more mainstream Sufi Islam that dominates Algeria and other North African countries.

Violence has dramatically diminished since the war petered out around the turn of the millennium, but a hardcore of armed jihadist groups continue to launch attacks, mainly in remote areas.

SOURCE





Bakers Fined $135K Over Wedding Cake Appeal to Supreme Court

The former owners of an Oregon bakery, ordered to pay $135,000 in damages for declining to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, are appealing their case to the Supreme Court.

Lawyers for Aaron and Melissa Klein filed a petition Monday asking the Supreme Court to reverse an earlier decision handed down by the state that forced them to shut down their family bakery.

“Freedom of speech has always included the freedom not to speak the government’s message,” said Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of First Liberty, a nonprofit legal organization representing the Kleins. “This case can clarify whether speech is truly free if it is government mandated.”

An administrative judge for the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries ruled in July 2015 that the Kleins had discriminated against a lesbian couple, Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, on the basis of their sexual orientation. The judge ordered the Kleins to pay the $135,000 for physical, emotional, and mental damages.

The Kleins appealed that ruling to the Oregon Court of Appeals in April 2016, and that court upheld the state agency’s decision.

Under Oregon law, it is illegal for businesses to refuse service based on a customer’s sexual orientation, as well as race, gender, and other characteristics.

The Kleins maintained that they did not discriminate, but only declined to make the cake because of their religious beliefs about marriage. Designing and baking a custom cake for a same-sex wedding, they said, would violate their Christian faith.

In June, the Supreme Court ruled on a similar case in favor of Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop outside Denver, Colorado.

In that case, Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the court ruled that government officials cannot be hostile to the free exercise of religious beliefs. But the high court did not rule specifically on the underlying question of the case: Whether government may compel citizens to create messages that violate their deeply held religious beliefs.

The Kleins’ petition asks the Supreme Court to address the unanswered question left over from the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.

In June, the Kleins wrote a piece for The Daily Signal explaining what the Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling means for their case. They wrote that they were “thrilled for our friend,” because like Phillips, “we know what it is like to be treated unfairly by a state agency and mocked, threatened, and abused by critics.”

The couple added:

At the same time we wonder what the future holds for our case, our lost business, and our family. Ours may be, as Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, the case that allows ‘further elaboration in the courts.’ And we are encouraged to know that seven justices of the Supreme Court agree that a state’s hostility to the religious beliefs of its citizens will not be tolerated under the First Amendment.

Kennedy was known on the Supreme Court for being a crucial swing vote. Since the court’s ruling on the Masterpiece case, Kennedy has retired and this month was succeeded by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative. Kavanaugh’s addition to the court has led some to theorize that if the court were to take the Kleins’ case or a similar one, the decision could fall in their favor.

The $135,000 the Kleins were ordered to pay sits in escrow pending the final outcome of the case. The couple’s attorneys say they are are hopeful the high court will respond to their petition within the next three months.

SOURCE






Our Modern World’s Inability to Understand Fairy Tales

"It’s not fair"

This refrain—so quick to be invoked by young children, who seem to develop a thirst for justice very young indeed—may seem like a curious place to begin in defense of fairy tales. But let me explain.

But to backtrack a little further first—well, the latest salvo against fairy tales comes from two Hollywood actresses, Kristen Bell (“Frozen,” “The Good Place”) and Keira Knightley (“Pirates of the Caribbean,” roughly 10,000 period dramas).

Bell told Parents magazine that when she watches fairy tale movies with her young daughters, she make remarks such as, “”Don’t you think that it’s weird that the prince kisses Snow White without her permission? Because you cannot kiss someone if they’re sleeping!”

Knightley takes it one step further, telling talk show host Ellen DeGeneres she has banned her toddler daughter from watching films like “Little Mermaid” and “Cinderella.”

Why? Well, on “Cinderella”: “Because, you know, she waits around for a rich guy to rescue her. Don’t! Rescue yourself, obviously.” And on “Little Mermaid”: “The songs are great, but do not give your voice up for a man. Hello?!”

I’m reminded of journalist Salena Zito’s invocation to take President Donald Trump’s more colorful remarks seriously—but not literally.

Searching my own childhood memories, I’m hard-pressed to recall any sense of thinking that kissing sleeping people was great, waiting for a man to rescue me wise, or giving up my voice a valid life choice—despite my repeat viewings of these Disney films.

Just like I knew “Aladdin” wasn’t proof that I could hop on a carpet and fly or “101 Dalmations” a realistic take on the interior intellectual life of the high-strung Dalmation next door, I seem to recall that the worlds of Snow White and Ariel and Cinderella—worlds complete with half-people living underwater, dwarves in forests, and pumpkins molded into carriages—were hardly the stuff that provided practical rules of living for my gravity-bound, sadly unmagical world.

And yet these tales did provide valuable lessons.

It is tough to be a little child. Everything is new; you have no experience to fall back on. You are learning, being stretched constantly, and you are encountering—for the first time!—the bitter realities of the world.

You don’t have to possess an evil stepmother or wicked stepsisters—any selfish child on the playground who grabs your toy and isn’t caught will suffice—to understand that not everyone plays by the rules, or that the good are not always rewarded.

You don’t need to prick a spinning wheel or eat an apple to begin to awaken to the knowledge that you can be hurt by evil, and even engage in it. You don’t need to lose your voice to realize that forays into bigger, wider worlds beyond your parents’ arms and the comforting nooks of your home can shake you into a quiet stupor as you struggle to comprehend.

But maybe, as you toddle into preschool and watch Brittany tell the teacher she had the doll first and realize that the second serving of the candy your mom told you not to eat any more of gave you a stomachache—maybe you might need something else.

You might need to remember when all seemed lost, a fairy godmother whisked in and helped Cinderella. You might need to recall that Snow White was saved because she was loved, was rescued because someone else cared. And maybe as you eye Brittany, triumphantly playing with the doll you had grabbed right at the beginning of recess, you will remember how under the warmth and kindness of Belle, the Beast was able to become an OK guy.

As my mom told us: Life isn’t fair.

That’s one of those tough realities fairy tales grapple with, along with death and suffering. And then, too, there are beautiful realities whose mysteries they gently probe: the fact that love can change a person, that sometimes we’re helped unexpectedly, that our thirst for justice will be rewarded in the end.

These are not concepts that lend themselves to being told of, or probed, outside fiction. They must be experienced, not defined or explained.

After all, how does a child really learn what love is—by learning the dictionary definition or seeing the look on his mom’s face when he comes in the bedroom, terrified by a nightmare? But fairy tales, like the best stories, enlarge our world, take us to places and sentiments where perhaps our own relationships cannot yet bring us.

“It is the business of fiction to embody mystery through manners,” wrote American novelist Flannery O’Connor, and while that’s quite a burden to place on movies known for chattering mice and singing teapots, they manage to do so.

The world of fiction, particularly children’s fiction, is jammed with make-believe—Peter Pan flying; Harry Potter casting magic spells; Lucy, Edmund, Peter, and Susan entering a world through a wardrobe; and yes, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty being rescued with a kiss.

Often those flights of fancy—absurd when taken literally—enlarge our imagination so we can grasp something we could not comprehend, highlight to us a truth hidden among the humdrum of our own world.

At the end of the day, you can face down evil without a single spell; you can encounter the vividness of your life’s calling without creeping amid the discarded coats festering in a wardrobe.

And plus, as any toddler who’s tearfully presented a boo-boo to Mom knows, sometimes a kiss can save.

In our world—so focused on science and data, on math and the measurable—it’s easy to look only at the literal in fairy tales. But depriving our children of the beautiful mysteries they introduce would only ultimately impoverish us, and make us less human.

SOURCE





Tasmania on verge of removing gender from birth certificates

Tasmania is set to become the first state to remove the sex of a child from birth certificates, in a major win for transgender people that has been attacked by critics as “abolishing gender”.

A vote is expected in Tasmania’s lower house next month, as amendments to a bill ending the need for trans people to divorce before they can change their gender on official documents.

While the bill’s central aim has tripartite support, the Liberal government, Christian groups and feminists fear it has been “hijacked” by the transgender lobby via a series of Labor and Greens amendments.

The Hodgman government relies on the casting vote of Liberal Speaker Sue Hickey, who was elected to the position with Greens and Labor support and votes as an independent.

Labor and the Greens both plan amendments to remove gender from birth certificates, while also backing changes to remove the need for trans people to have sex change surgery before switching gender on official documents.

Ms Hickey, a Liberal moderate, said as a matter of policy she did not declare her voting intentions until debate concluded.

She said she was broadly supportive of measures to end discrimination against trans people. “I’ll be listening to every word possible,’’ Ms Hickey said.

“I do think the world is changing and we need to be open to considering things that might discriminate or harm somebody. I’m very open.”

Transgender activist Martine Delaney said removing gender from birth certificates would be a significant win that would harm no one. “It would be the first in this country, although not the first in the world, and an excellent statement by Tasmania to say ‘We have the need to do this and we will not wait for other states to lead’,” Ms Delaney said.

“It is not doing away with gender. That information would still be recorded by the registrar and medical records in the hospital. It just simply wouldn’t be displayed on the birth certificate.”

She said removing sex from birth certificates would negate the need for transgender people to “out themselves” every time they applied for work or sought to prove their identity.

The Australian Christian Lobby said the reforms essentially abolished gender, further “homogenised humanity” and “greatly diminished” the significance of birth certificates.

ACL state director Mark Brown said the changes threatened to destroy the sanctity of women’s “safe places”, from refuges to sports teams. “If you are ­legally a transgender woman, even if you have a penis you can go wherever you want in terms of women’s safe spaces,” he said.

This concern is shared by feminist group Women Speak Tasmania. “If you have birth certificates issued with no sex marker on them, how then are ­female-only services and spaces — like girls’ schools, or the girl guides, women’s domestic violence shelters — able to maintain the female-only integrity of their service?” spokeswoman Bronwyn Williams said.

“It puts female-only organisations and services at risk of breaching anti-discrimination law if they say ‘No, you can’t become a member’.”

Greens leader Cassy O’Connor, whose child, born as a girl called Mara Lees, is now a 20-year-old man, Jasper, said the changes would end discrimin­ation and make a real difference to lives.

“The flow-on effects of being able to have your birth certificate either gender neutral or changed to your correct gender are profoundly life-changing,” Ms O’Connor said.

“At the moment in Tasmania, if Jasper wants to have his birth certificate changed he will need to have a hysterectomy, and that is cruel and unnecessary.”

SOURCE 

*************************

Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

***************************