Prevention of Crime, Public Safety and a simple case of Common Courtesy

From Eric Dondero:

A Kettering Member of Parliament, Conservative Philip Hollobone, is refusing to hold constituent meetings with Muslim women dressed in a Hijab or Burqa. Though, he will continue to meet their concerns through the mail. The MP says he does not feel comfortable holding face-to-face meetings with a woman whose face is entirely covered. He believes it is a great hinderance to communications. He is also sponsoring a bill to ban face-covering clothing on the grounds that it presents a threat to public safety and for just plain-old common courtesy. Said Hollobone:

I just take what I regard as a common sense view. If you want to engage in normal, daily, interactive dialogue with your fellow human beings, you can only really do this properly by seeing each other’s face.
Seventy-five per cent of the usual communication between two human beings is done with personal experience. God gave us faces to be expressive. It is not just the words we utter but whether we are smiling, sad, angry or frustrated. You don’t get any of that if your face is covered.

Meanwhile, a fellow Tory is opposing Hollobone. From the BBC:

Immigration minister Damian Green has said banning the full Islamic veil in public would be "at odds with the UK's tolerant society".

The Libertarian case for Burqa Ban

Some prominent UK Libertarians are coming to Hollobone's defense.

Claire Khaw, an Ayn Randian and self-described "libertarian secularist" (source: benwoodhams.wordpress.com) of Voice of Reason blog blasts Damian Green:

Damian Green is a cowardly piece of shit, but then he is a Tory MP and we can expect no better from the likes of him... I am a Libertarian and want a ban on the grounds that it brings Islam into hatred, ridicule and contempt...

It is for the prevention of crime and the protection of the reputation of Islam that feminine neurosis should not be indulged in this way.

Respect the Host Country's Culture - "When in Rome..."

And this from Roger Helmer of (the UK) CentreRight July 29, "Why France and Philip Hollobrone are right on the Burqa ban":

As an instinctive libertarian, I must admit that my first thought was to oppose any ban on the burka. We want the government off our backs, not telling us what to wear.

But the libertarian argument works both ways. There certainly are Muslim women who choose voluntarily to wear the burka, perhaps as an expression of identity, or of faith, or perhaps out of a misplaced sense of modesty. On the other hand there is good evidence that many Muslim women wear the burka involuntarily, because of cultural, or religious, or peer pressure, or indeed because they are forced to do so by their husbands or other male relatives. So a burka ban would be an imposition on the first group, but would liberate the second.

Hollobone is not a hater of Islam. In fact, he supports Muslim modesty, but he also recognizes that immigrants should respect the values of a host country. From the FreeThinker:

When in Rome, do as the Romans do … They say that when women come to this country, they ought to adapt to our way of life. The Muslim population is growing across western Europe, as is Islamic fundamentalism. It is important to stress I am a respecter of Islam as one of the world’s great religions. I also respect the right of Muslim women to protect their modesty.