Aftenposten had a good editorial by Zakaria Saaliti about double-standards in the current debate about whether or not women in the police force should be allowed to wear the hijab. For those who don’t read Norwegian, the main points were:

1. Those against allowing police to wear the hijab claim that the hijab is a tool for repression. If Norwegian society forbids the hijab in the police force, then it’s Norwegian society, rather than Muslim men, that is repressing Muslim women.
2. Those against allowing police to wear the hijab claim that this could lead to violence. This is analogous to the argument that women who wear provocative clothing are responsible for any sexual harassment or violence they experience. Based on this argumentation, the caricatures of Mohammed that caused such an uproar in 2006 should never have been printed for fear of how Muslims would react.
3. Society looks to examples from other countries only when those examples support its views, in this case ignoring the examples set by Swedish, British, Australian, and American society. Women have likewise had the right to wear the hijab in the military in Norway for two decades with no negative results.
4. Norwegian society ostensibly wants its police force to mirror its population, yet excludes a large demographic by forbidding the use of the hijab by its police force. This is especially ridiculous given that the police have long had problems with recruiting immigrants, and female immigrants in particular.

Another paradoxical argument I’d personally like to illuminate is that the hijab will prevent women from performing the duties required of a police officer, for example potentially making it difficult for them to enter mosques. While it’s possible that this is the case, I’d say that the potential negatives are far outweighed by the potential positives, not the least of which is that Muslim women would feel much more comfortable asking a hijab-clad police officer for help than they would any other officer. Given that this is a group particularly at risk for violence, that’s a benefit society should be loath to dismiss.

They both look friendly to me, but if you were a muslima who had need of a police officer, who would you feel most comfortable dealing with?

Saaliti concludes his editorial by stating that the signal Norwegian society sends to immigrants is that if we want to participate in Norwegian society, we have to look like Norwegians, think like Norwegians, and act like Norwegians–Norwegian society’s claim that it is pro-integration is in reality only lip service. Even though I primarily get a pass on these issues given that I don’t look so different from ethnic Norwegians and come from another Western country, I frequently experience the feeling that Norwegian society’s self-proclaimed goal of integration is merely dissemblance. I can’t imagine how infuriating it must be for hijabis, the very women who are informed by seemingly well-intentioned Norwegians that they are subjugated by Muslim men and Muslim society, to experience an analogous form of subjugation at the hands of their would-be liberators. I’m far from a moral relativist, but this kind of self-righteous paternalism perpetrated by Norwegian society towards groups they perceive to be less morally enlightened than themselves has got to stop.

I submitted some pics of Ada to the lol Builder on the Cheezburger network. Some of the results were really clever—this one actually got chosen to appear on their site. I’ll post more of the results here over time.

Some Norwegian authors have signed a statement against allowing police to wear the hijab.

Fucking idiots! This really makes me mad. Norway is hardly the most equal land in the world if it refuses to allow women to wear a headscarf on the job. And this is so typical for what passes for equal rights in Norway–everyone must be the same in order to be allowed to have those equal rights. That attitude is, in fact, incredibly discriminatory. It’s discriminatory towards everyone who doesn’t easily fit into Norwegian society’s idea of what a person “should” be like–the very people who most need to have their right to equality protected by the law!

And I am so sick of people in one group (e.g. self-righteous ethnic Norwegians) telling the people of another group (e.g. Muslim women) what their actions and symbols mean (e.g. that the hijab is a symbol of subjugation). I am so sick of the unquestioned Norwegian attitude that their way is best, that assimilation is the only option for people who are different. If hijabis can do the damned job, then they should be allowed to do it!

This reminds me a lot of another issue that got my hackles up recently: some people want to git rid of homework because it supposedly reinforces differences among students (the comments there are particularly interesting). Some in Norwegian society are so afraid of the idea that people are different, and especially that some people can be better at something than others, that they want to prevent smart kids from excelling. (Of course, this attitude doesn’t apply to sports.) When will people learn that ideology removed from reality never leads to good things?

People are different, period. To deny that fact implies that you believe that people who are different are somehow less valuable as human beings. In reality, the fact that people are different is a wonderful, wonderful thing! We do everyone in a society a service if we celebrate those differences rather than suppress them.