i wear an open face helmet, which i am required to by law, when riding my motorcycle

but i have to remove my m/c helmet when entering any bank/post office/shopping centre etc
if i have to comply with the law then people wearing face coverings of any kind should/will have to comply with the law …

+1

+1 and religious beliefs are definitely not acceptable. Even Jedi's have to take off the robe if it covers their head.

+1

Burkas have nothing to do with religion. It's folklore from a few middle east country that men decided to impose on their wives to keep them in control

Hey don't tarnish folklore with religion!

The same applies to the depiction of Mohammed, it is not in the Koran.

It's often quite hard to separate 'culture' from 'religion' because they influence each other so much. And just because something is different should not open it to ridicule. I have to say though I have always found the explanation of why Muslim women wish to wear the nijab or burka to be rather nonsensical and it seems to me that if you are in a country with existing laws and customs you abide by those laws and customs. It is not a European norm for women (or indeed anyone) to go covered to that degree - we, culturally, regard it as suspicious. If the njiab or burka are banned it is simply an expression of that cultural norm. It's no more a sign of prejudice than the street signs in France being in French.

I think the best sign is that tunisia and turkey already had banned the burka for a long time. Why would they if it was required by islam?

Yes but Turkey had secular laws which are slowly getting eroded by the islamic parties now.

That's why I can't decide if i agree with the entry of turkey in Europe. I can't decide if it would help turkey preserve its secular laws or put a massive strain on Europe...

I think that the entry of Turkey will not be a good thing. The entry of millions of muslims will cause a lot of problems as they will migrate en masse to Western Europe. Germany already has a problem with the numbers of turks already there. It has lead to a resurgence of hate crimes and the rise of right wing parties. Turkey could be given trade privileges without full membership.

It is not up to you or I to decide what somebody else's religious opinion should be, nor how they should interpret the instruction - which is in the Koran - that women should dress modestly. If we favour religious freedom, and I hope we all do, then we favour the right of others to believe their thing in their way.

If it's really impossible to allow the veil to be worn in banks and post offices, then so be it. It will just become part of some people's religion that they don't go to these places. If that's not an acceptable outcome, then we are showing bad faith towards our principle of religious freedom, and should be more honest about our fascist little desire to make people live their religious lives in a way that suits our purposes.

The entire concept of "cultural preservation" is inherently prejudice. Many cultures hold opposing views which are innately incompatible, and neither innately "correct" by any absolute measure.

The question is should such cultures be kept segregated or should they be broken down and diluted until they "fit"? That is to say, subjugate all cultural differences to some kind of lowest denominator?

Even "multiculturalism" relies on a form of segregation, whereby the various cultures attempt to coexist within common borders while turning a blind eye to the "sins" of those with different beliefs. To be truly multicultural, those "sins" must include the laws of the land. That is to say, the law does not apply to all people equally. There are different laws for different people.

Neither segregation nor subjugation are truly tenable long term options, although the latter usually results in more stable periods of history with relatively moderate bloodshed as opposed to brief periods of "enlightenment" followed by massive bloodshed.

If everyone was a true hippy then everything would be fine. However, that ideal would require mass subjugation or genocide to achieve. Do the ends justify the means...?