Remember the bubbles coming out of the mouth of Naomi Wolf on the subject of the liberating effect of wearing shapeless clothes?

President Sarkozy sets the rest of the ‘West’ a magnificent example in calling the burka what it is: a sign of subservience:

In a major policy speech, he said the burka – a garment covering women from head to toe – reduced them to servitude and undermined their dignity.

Mr Sarkozy also gave his backing to the establishment of a parliamentary commission to look at whether to ban the wearing of burkas in public…

"We cannot accept to have in our country women who are prisoners behind netting, cut off from all social life, deprived of identity," Mr Sarkozy told a special session of parliament in Versailles.

As I said before, it makes no sense to take at face value a woman appearing on TV and making the case for her ‘choosing’ this sort of clothing, without looking hard and deep and above all honestly at the likely nasty consequences for her (expliicit or implicit) if she chooses not to do so.

We hooted with derision at the leaders of South Africa’s apartheid ‘homelands’ solemnly arguing that ‘separate development’ was in the Africans’ own interests.

We should do the same when anyone tries to claim that women disappearing under these burkas, walking dutifully behind their husbands, are in any sense that matters really free to choose to do so.

Freedom to choose to be subservient is not freedom.

Is this an ‘anti-Muslim’ point of view? No.

Plenty of women in the world are Muslims and dress in a way compatible with  a certain faith-inspired modesty but also minimal human dignity, just as do many Catholic and Orthodox women.but also

It is an anti-Islamicised-aggressive-male-chauvinism point of view.

D’accord?