No, not particularly. Certainly, there is a religious element, here. However, the larger issue at work here is cultural, of which religion is but a portion.

Most of us "normal" people react to foreign cultures, when abroad, as Applebaum describes. But we have our own fanatics, missionaries, who go to foreign countries and act far more aggresively than do these burqa-ed women in England. They actively try to persuade, cajole, and pressure the "natives" to give up their own religion and culture and to conform to western Christian culture.

To focus the critique on Islam is really to miss the target. Criticize Islamic zealots yes, but go after all religous zealots who try to impose their cultural norms on others.

It could be that the one issue that will bring the simmering West-Muslim clash to a head will not be riots in France, Moslem sympathy for terrorists in England, the Moslem reaction to the Denmark cartoons, or to Pope Benedict's speech. No, instead it ...

However, I don’t think there needs to be a rule or law about this. Instead, employers who genuinely can make the case that report is an essential feature of the job can simply factor that into their hiring decisions.

The inherrent problem with this is that nature hates a vaccum. In the abesense of a law, it will be such factoring wll be considered profiling in short order, upon which there WILL be a law, moving in the oppoiste direction.

Our multi-cultural push the last few decades along with our over-dependance on the law, has brought us to this pass where we can no longer make those kind of culturally based assumptions within the law.

Muslims who do not see the possibility of compromise may need to reconsider taking that school teacher position. They need to either convince the majority that the new ideas they bring are superior to the ideas currently held, compromise with the current ideas at odds with their own or go where others agree with their ideas.

1. The middle eastern Muslims only seem to where the hijab (headscarves). Whenever I see someone in a full burqa, it's always an African American Muslim. That may be different in other areas, but that seems the pattern in my area.

2. The one that really irks me, is that whenever I see a woman in a burqa, the man she's with is inevitably dressed like an extra from a rap video. My personal feeling is, that if you're making your woman dress like that, you better be in a coat and tie.

Doesn't it depend on time, place, and manner though? Applebaum is talking about rules for schoolteachers and civil servants dealing with the public. Doesn't the public right to be comfortable when dealing with their government trump the individual right of a prospective employee to do as they please? I'd say it does. And, surely, that's even more true in the case of grade school teachers. Building raport with the kids is the sine qua non of teaching at that level.

Applebaum is ultimately right: It is the domestic culture that should prevail. If it is common decency to respect local sensibilities when traveling, it is all the more true for those who have decided to make their home outside their native land. When in Rome and all that.

(Emph is mine.)

Precisely. This is an argument I've raised several times. And even from a practical level, the arguments are overwhelming. Allow me to draw a parallel to demonstrate:

FoxNews, I think it was, recently ran a story out of San Francisco, where the story focused on ‘Liberal flight”… the concentration of liberals in the city is dropping, because of the numbers of them that are leaving for the more conservative areas of the state. Why are they leaving? Lower taxes, lower crime rates and generally, a better quality of life.

Now, they tend, according to the story, to bring their liberal voting patterns with them. What the story didn’t say or imply, was a point that stuck out at me like an elephant in a room full of mice: Are not the higher crime, the higher taxes and the other problems a direct result of the chosen political leanings of the area they left?

And so the question, in that case, becomes: If they bring their voting patterns with them, will they not destroy the very thing that caused them to choose this new area to live in? They’ll simply turn their rural area into more of the same area they LEFT.

By the same token, then, comes the issue of allowing our western culture to change and bend at every opposition… do we not lose the very thing that attracted people to us in the first place?

During the immigration push of the early part of the last century, people came here not just for the economic opportunity. They came here because they saw clearly that one major reason for the success of this relatively new nation, was it's culture. To a large extent, these new immigrants chose to allow themselves to become immersed in AMERICAN culture, and AMERICAN ideals, leaving their old world... and it's culture, behind. They saw that the reason for the failures in the place they left, were culturally based,a nd if they were to have a hope of chaning that situation for themselves, they must remove themselves from their old culture.

Our western culture must be the one to dominate. And we as a people, must force that issue. even assuming we're not talking about a hostile takeover of our culture, if we,out of a false 'respect' cease to be who we are, what has either culture gained? Since we ARE talking about a hostile take-over of our country... well, you get the idea.

This meshes rather well with the write-up I did several years ago as regards the original purpose of government, which I have always held to be to support, nurture, and if possible, expand the infleunce of the culture that gave it life.

I tell you: If we fail in that task, we fail, period.