Rashmee Roshan Lall: Lawrence Of Eurabia?
[Rashmee Roshan Lall, editor of the Sunday Times of India.]
Spain voted against banning the burqa just five days ago in poignant illustration of the appalled fascination, dilemma and doubt traditionally suffered by Europeans faced with the Muslim. Back in the early 1900s, Lawrence of Arabia would depict Muslim Arabs as stereotypical "Semites...they had a universal clearness or hardness of belief, almost mathematical in its limitation...(they had) no half-tones in their register of vision...a dogmatic people, despising doubt, our modern crown of thorns". That was Lawrence's famously wise and autobiographical Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
Nearly 100 years later, it sounds incredibly inflexible, breathtakingly self-satisfied and damningly judgemental. But by that reckoning, a Lawrence alive today should be heartened that Belgium and France first and second respectively in Europe to ban the burqa embraced the "crown of thorns".
In doing so, they are the only ones of the 27-member European Union decisively to repel a people Lawrence insisted "could not look for God within...they were too sure that they were within God". Spain still dithers about the need to ban the burqa, relegating the debate to its post-summer break parliamentary session. Italy is resolute a ban is the way forward but needs time to prepare legislation. Britain and Germany have publicly stated their unwillingness to outlaw the veil.
What value, if any, of a ban on the burqa in a European country?
Read entire article at Times of India
Spain voted against banning the burqa just five days ago in poignant illustration of the appalled fascination, dilemma and doubt traditionally suffered by Europeans faced with the Muslim. Back in the early 1900s, Lawrence of Arabia would depict Muslim Arabs as stereotypical "Semites...they had a universal clearness or hardness of belief, almost mathematical in its limitation...(they had) no half-tones in their register of vision...a dogmatic people, despising doubt, our modern crown of thorns". That was Lawrence's famously wise and autobiographical Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
Nearly 100 years later, it sounds incredibly inflexible, breathtakingly self-satisfied and damningly judgemental. But by that reckoning, a Lawrence alive today should be heartened that Belgium and France first and second respectively in Europe to ban the burqa embraced the "crown of thorns".
In doing so, they are the only ones of the 27-member European Union decisively to repel a people Lawrence insisted "could not look for God within...they were too sure that they were within God". Spain still dithers about the need to ban the burqa, relegating the debate to its post-summer break parliamentary session. Italy is resolute a ban is the way forward but needs time to prepare legislation. Britain and Germany have publicly stated their unwillingness to outlaw the veil.
What value, if any, of a ban on the burqa in a European country?