European Human Rights Court Upholds France's Burqa Ban - But This News Might Not Be As Good As It Sounds

Sounds like good news, but I'm not so sure. Check it out.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday upheld France's ban on wearing full-face veils in public, rejecting arguments that the ban undermines freedoms of religion and expression. 

The decision is a victory for the governments of France and Belgium, which have passed laws prohibiting veils and other garments that conceal the entire face, and gives other European governments broader discretion to enact similar bans. 

The French government said the three-year ban helped to protect public safety, as well as women forced to wear face-covering garments, but opponents have criticized it as anti-Muslim and discriminating against religious minorities. 

The French ban had been challenged by a young Muslim woman who said she sometimes chooses to wear a niqab—a veil that leaves only her eyes visible—or a burqa—a loose garment that covers her entire body with only a mesh over her eyes. 

The woman, who was born in France in 1990 and identified only as S.A.S. in court documents, said that she wore the veils voluntarily, without any pressure from her husband and family, and that they allowed her to manifest her faith. 

She argued the French ban violated her religious freedom and put her at risk of discrimination and harassment. France passed a law against concealing one's face in public spaces in 2010 and it came into effect the following spring. 

A few months later, a similar prohibition came into force in Belgium. Citizens of the Ticino canton in Switzerland voted in favor of such a ban in late 2013. 

France argues that the veils are a security risk, since they conceal a person's identity. In its arguments to the European court, the French government also said that showing one's face in public was one of the "minimum requirements of life in society." 

The Strasbourg-based court ruled the general ban imposed by the government wasn't justified on public-safety grounds, or to protect women's rights. But it said France's aim of improving social cohesion through the ban was legitimate. 

"The court was…able to accept that the barrier raised against others by a veil concealing the face was perceived by the respondent state as breaching the right of others to live in a space of socialization which made living together easier," it said.

So, the European Human Rights Court is not so concerned with the oppression (really the enslavement) of women under Islam.

Instead, they are concerned with Social Cohesion.

Social Cohesion is the result of Human Rights, not the progenitor of Human Rights. In other words, having mere Social Cohesion does not bring about a Just and Good Society.

In fact, Evil Societies sometimes have great Social Cohesion. For instance, Germans got along on a grand scale during the Nazi years, as did the Japanese during those very same years.

And yet they committed horrible atrocities against their fellow humans.

Again we see Europe has not learned the lessons of World War II.

If they want to avoid doing the same thing again, they need to learn to flatly condemn evil, not merely to get along.

Islam is not worth getting along with, as long as Islam is oppressing women, and murdering Infidels, Jews, gays, and apostates.

That is not the kind of Social Cohesion we need.