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Comment by wombatmobile | Hacker News Reader

Switzerland has an awesome electoral system [1]. Instead of being ruled by a president or a prime minister who can be polarising, divisive, or selective, Switzerland has an Executive Council.

The 7 member Executive Council is composed of the top 7 candidates from each election. The chairperson of the executive council rotates each year, so that the top 4 vote winners each get a turn at being chairperson.

This means that different social and political priorities get implemented in turn. It also means the way the government works is more cooperative, because each council member, including the chairperson, knows there will be a new chairperson next year.

So, if a pro-business candidate places 1st, and an environment candidate 2nd, and a social welfare candidate 3rd, and a libertarian candidate 4th, it is in all their interests to cooperate and create legislation that serves all of their interests as much as possible. Instead of disregarding the environment, the pro-business council member is encouraged to develop green business initiatives that will be supported for the full 4 year term under the different chairs.

The system creates a leadership team that looks for win-win, rather than a sole victor who can abuse majority rule.

[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Council_(Switzerland)

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i disagree wholeheartedly in that it is more cooperative. Switzerland is anything but cooperative.

But that's what makes this country so great. We take our divisions, within cantons, and leverage them for positive externalities to (accidentally) benefit the greater good.

In CH, every very canton sets their own citizenship policy. Its not a coincidence. Did you hear about the woman that's been living in Zug, and been denied citizenship for years? Why? Because she's annoying. She doesn't respect her neighbor's customs. That's literally why. Yes! Our canton can't even agree between about who can be a citizen, and who may not! But we argue far more... and it won't make the papers. We argue about the standard size of doors, whether we can vote electronically, whether a free trade agreement with andorra should be allowed. Etc etc

This means, big project ambitions get cut down to size, and few grand things if any, get done at the federal level. But this is glorious: it is very hard for regulations to become calcified within the state apparatus.

So, while spain sends soldiers to die in Afghanistan, or the UK wastes decades of development on a grand EU project, or US citizens get spied on by their own govt via Patriot Act.... CH is just sitting pretty, doing its thing. Arguing about every little detail to exhaustion.

The best thing that could happen to us, is to remain just as we are. I welcome the next 800 years of peace and economic development.

> This means, big project ambitions get cut down to size, and few grand things if any, get done at the federal level. But this is glorious: it is very hard for regulations to become calcified within the state apparatus.

And yet, Switzerland's nationalised train network is one of the most extensive and effective in the world.

How did that happen?

I will bite, although this moves away from the news that Switzerland votes against the electronic ID system.

> How did that happen?

Two hypothesis:

a) The railroad net in Switzerland is fairly small when compared to Germany.

b) The numbers in the punctuality statistics are skewed. For example, once a train from Germany is late and wants to cross the border to Switzerland (e.g. Freiburg-Basel crossing), it is put on hold and has to wait until it falls into the next swiss train slot, entering Switzerland "on time". In Germany, this would be counted as a delay.

Source: Lived in Switzerland for a while.

The rail network was mostly built by private enterprise prior to 1898 when it was nationalised and has been run in a pretty conservative way since.

>While European rail operators such as French SNCF and Spanish Renfe have emphasised the building of high-speed rail, SBB has invested in the reliability and quality of service of its conventional rail network.

As a Brit I'd probably prefer that to £100bn on HS2 and god knows what on the proposed Boris Burrow.

This reminds me of how elephants don't suffer from cancer, because of their size their tumors get tumors and die off before doing damage to the animal. The best bureaucracy is not an efficient one, but one so inefficient that it can't do harm.

One important thing that was not argued well in my opinion is that the Swiss National Bank pegged its Swiss franc to the euro on Sept. 6, 2011. I lost a lot of money on that day, because I had all my net worth in CHF, as I trusted it to keep its value and not be devalued fast.

The good thing that came out from it is that I realized that even Switzerland's central bank cannot be trusted, and moved to Bitcoin. I never looked back.

The tiny swiss were the last to delink its currency to gold. They tried really hard, under enormous pressure, but finally relented in 2000 with the new constitution, where the delink was tied to a bunch of other constitutional directives..

So in summary - The country can only do so much before the big guns aimed at it take their pound of flesh.

I am not sure the central bank is faultless in the example you cite, however, appreciate that we live in a world where other powerful people are not interested in the well being of swiss banking customers.

I understand the pressure that Switzerland was in, and I don’t really care as I got back the money I lost on that day by many times.

At the same time I was used to the trains and trams being precise by the second in Zurich (I loved taking the train to work every day), and everything being predictable, that’s why it was a wake-up call for me.

The central bank's priority is probably stability and the well being of Swiss people using SFR for wages and mortgages rather than maximising the profits of currency speculators. If you want the latter then indeed bitcoin is no doubt a better match.

I too still dont really understand why they did that. I mean sure i get it, but it seems so counter intuitive especially now where we can expect the usd and eur to devalue even more

>So, while spain sends soldiers to die in Afghanistan, or the UK wastes decades of development on a grand EU project, or US citizens get spied on by their own govt via Patriot Act.... CH is just sitting pretty, doing its thing. Arguing about every little detail to exhaustion.

Switzerland can afford to do this because it's surrounded by countries that protect it from the real world. It doesn't have a real foreign policy because it doesn't have to.

>The best thing that could happen to us, is to remain just as we are. I welcome the next 800 years of peace and economic development.

That's not up to you. As I've said earlier, you're lucky to be surrounded by countries with bigger fish to fry as long as Switzerland toes the line.

I am not sure what dangers you imply here.

America to the West, Africa to the South, Russia and China to the East. Constant tensions at the borders of Europe. To me the neighborhood looks incredibly dangerous and increasingly so. On that subject, the lackadaisical attitude of some EU nations towards defense is bewildering (looking at you Germany).

USA is basically surrounded by large oceans and they still spend by far the most on defence.

The US's military expansion (and by extension its defense budget) is directly correlated to its domestic industrial expansion and its need to keep supply lines flowing. They basically spend a lot because they need to jump over two oceans to afford the economic model they chose. That wasn't the case when the US was still content with self-isolation, before the Spanish–American War.

Switzerland used to be surrounded by Nazi Germany on pretty much all sides.

They remain independent because they are a mountainous country that set its defenses up cleverly so that any invasion would be a pyrrhic victory at best.

Most of the population lives in the flatter parts of Switzerland, which are of no real concern for invasions from the West and North. The linguistic border runs inside Switzerland because the geographic border does as well.

That is a myth. These defenses you talk about were built partly with cheap material and therefore significantly less effective. This caused a major post-war corruption scandal.

Nazi Germany did not invade Switzerland, because Switzerland was actually more useful as a neutral state for Nazi Germany to exchange gold for commodities, for spying and Switzerland produced militiary equipment for Nazi Germany anyway.

Switzerland has also had a policy of armed neutrality since 1815 or before I think and the armed bit would probably be a headache for anyone invading.

The Nazis did plan an invasion. See Operation Tannenbaum[0].

Switzerland didn't end up getting divided between Germany and Italy thanks to the Red Army hurtling more humans west than the Wehrmacht could supply bullets east. Swiss munitions production wouldn't be risked.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tannenbaum

There's this joke in Switzerland: When the war wasn't going so well Hitler sent a note to the Swiss government demanding a supply of tanks. The Swiss council deliberated and responded in due time: "Will one be enough or do you need all six?"

It has its advantages and disadvantages. It is also the political system that caused this:

"In 1991 following a decision by the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland, Appenzell Innerrhoden (AI) became the last Swiss canton to grant women the vote on local issues."

Notice how it was a court decision, not a result of the political process. I'd say 1991 is a bit too late to have full voting rights for women.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_Switzerl...

If you think that is the worst example dig deeper :) Sennerburm for example, basically legal child slavery totally normal in europe until not to long ago. And yes switzerland took a bit longer than our neighboors

> Sennerburm

Google returned zero results– did you misspell it? Google usually can't find documents for misspelled rare words

Yeah i missspelled a dialect word, cant google it either. Try 'Verdingkinder' i dont think there is a real translation for that

How can you so sure that your ideal is how they should live?

What I admire about the Swiss is how they live and let live - they may disagree with the neighbour, but let them be.

Granting the right to vote is a bit of a different ballgame because it's a meta-question. Not consulting women (or just everyone, or all citizens, or all adult citizens, etc.) on this issue indicates, to me, that the will of all people concerned in AI was not even considered. There is no consensus in AI to disagree with, from this perspective.

Why am I not surprised that HN is a place to find people who argue against women's right to vote.

HN is very diverse :) But we all argue in good faith and are willing to yield to reason

"argue in good faith"? "willing to yield to reason"?

Please.

Please don’t taint HN with this type of response. HN is such a rare place on the internet, and let’s keep it excellent.

The idea you’re dismissing is that of allowing small groups of people rule themselves which does mean some will use unconventional ways they consider best. Note that the Apenzellers didn’t hinder anyone who disagreed to leave or refuse to trade with them. They also didn’t force their way onto others.

Switzerland was once just a bunch of small independent nations in a military alliance, which allowed them decentralisation and having multiple competing systems, without everyone having to do it one way. If you have that, you must agree that your neighbour may live in a way you disagree with - but in exchange they will let you live in a way they disagree with, as I’m sure many from Apenzell think of the Züricher.

I imagine the Apenzellers argued that the job of the state is military protection. Conscription means the state forces you to give your life for it, and voting rights for conscripts means soldiers will only go to wars they collectively agree with, effectively ruling out wars of aggression. That’s how it was in my country, but I’m not familiar enough with Apenzell (except for their cheese) to talk about their history in this depth.

This is what you said: "But we all argue in good faith and are willing to yield to reason" I am in disagreement with this sentence. "we all" is definitely wrong and I haven't seen many "yield to reason" here or in any forum apart from few examples.

So I found your comment disingenuous and that's why I left a sarcastic remark, not aligned to HN rules sure, but yeah I did it. Also, if you think HN is an excellent place and not tainted, I have no words.

Edit: Grammar, wording.

If “we all” was the part where you disagreed, why did you quote every part of my reply but that?

HN is not perfect, but it’s far from the norm online regarding good faith rational discussion, and I’ve certainly witnessed people here accepting and learning facts and from rational arguments.

Why? I also said I mostly disagreed with "yield to reason" part. Ok, sure, the let me say it again then, I fully disagree with "we all" and mostly disagree with "yield to reason" and "in good faith" parts of your sentence.

Actually at the same votation, Switzerland accepted a law which forbid women to wear Burka. Which is not exactly let live.

We need to be precise here.

Firstly "accepting a law" implies - in western liberal democracies - a legislative process in which a law is proposed and accepted by some kind of parliament. This is not what happened here - in Switzerland, laws can be given to the population directly by non-parliamentary, non-governmental organisations in referenda, which then become binding. The law you are referring to was accepted by the general Swiss population with about 51% of the votes yesterday.

2. The law is not specifically forbidding women particularly forbidding to wear burkas. It forbids anyone to hide their faces when in public (with the exceptions of traditional customs, e.g. during carnival season). The basic idea behind this is that in a free society, we meet each others face to face. This generally good idea was abused by right-wingers to point out that this prevents visible Islamisation of an ultimately christian-conservative country, and by left-wingers to imply it was sexist and islamophobic.

3. Men and women can still wear whatever they like ... in private. In public, all societies have acceptable clothing standards. Try going out wearing nothing but three straps of leather and a gimp mask in front of a school, anywhere in the world, and see what happens.

Exactly. Genital mutilation of minors is next (Scandinavia is front running here). Nothing judeo-islamophobic, just the protection of what is dear to all of us (in this case bodily autonomy of children), and in no means against circumcision: you may still do it when you are 18, just parents should not be allowed to do it to you.

A little tyranny of the majority is not always a bad thing.

> you may still do it when you are 18, just parents should not be allowed to do it to you

You can read this in a positive light or a negative light. I know a guy who had that surgery done as an adult and it was incredibly painful and took a while to fully heal. I want to say it was almost a month. You could certainly argue that it's a lifetime of pain if it's done and you don't like it but that's likely a slippery slope in some regard.

I can agree that we should probably be doing a better job of explaining to parents the pros and cons of each so they make more informed, realistic choices but some of the outrage rhetoric around circumcision is a bit much.

Your friend had medical indication I guess? That's a whole other story, that's not "mutilation" but "the best in the given situation according to medical science".

Medical science is very clear about both male and female genital mutilation: lots of risk and potential harm, not real benefits.

And this does not grow back like nails and hair. It's not a fashion. It's literally putting a knife in your baby because some old culture prescribes it. No problem with that: just do it when the kid reaches the age of consent.

Don’t you think it hurts a child to cut their genitals? I’m ashamed it’s allowed in my country, and due to socialised health care I must fund it. It’s child abuse.

Exactly my sentiment. Tax paid child abuse. We should implore how this ever got this far, and fix the system to ensure this never happens again. As a result I've come to believe that religious freedom should have well enough protection by freedom of expression and freedom of association; and hence should be removed from constitutions and put into the regular code of law.

Freedom of religion may not constitutionally compete with bodily integrity (nor with freedom of expression (blasphemy)).

> Firstly "accepting a law" implies - in western liberal democracies - a legislative process in which a law is proposed and accepted by some kind of parliament. This is not what happened here - in Switzerland, laws can be given to the population directly by non-parliamentary, non-governmental organisations in referenda, which then become binding.

This is more of a tangent, but I would contest the idea that "accepting a law" implies that it is passed by a parliamentary body. This was maybe true in the 1800s, but not today when plenty of western liberal democracies have some form of direct democracy with electoral referendums on important issues. Some (e.g. California) have a system roughly comparable to Switzerland, although it's obviously at the state level in the case of CA.

The second part of the law in question disallows anyone to order someone else to wear this or that.

Imho that was the deciding part.

Which is exactly what the first part of the law does.

Hey, "But only in public!" Are you really defending imprisoning Woman to their homes by maybe robbing them of their few privileges? I am utterly disgusted how they frame this bs.

Does the anti-masking law imprison these women, or are they being held captive (against Swiss law) by their husbands/fathers/brothers?

If it's the latter, that's a reason for them to seek help from the authorities.

You realize this is a cultural and not political issue?

What they don’t do though is tell people in Muslim countries that they must live like a European.

The Swiss rule their house, and let others rule theirs, and this is what I mean with living and letting live.

Not allowing one group to have an equal voice is the opposite of live and let live

Taken to its conclusion should this not include every living being? Why not children, or animals? Ageism and speciesism indeed.

My point is that while the majority of Swiss cantons decided to not have gender restrictions on voting, they allowed Apenzell to keep being the weird one, and in response the people of Apenzell don’t force their way onto others. If I don’t want my neighbour to tell me how to run my household, I must also not force them. Apenzell didn’t force their way into the Züricher.

Although in the end, the people of Apenzell were forced to change their way.

Every time you say "the people of Apenzell" you really mean roughly ~50% of the voting age population. Would you make this same argument if only one person was allowed to vote in Apenzell? What about when that one person starts rounding up the people in Apenzell he doesn't like and imprisoning them?

When you say “voting age population”, you really mean roughly 70% of all residents?

You and I probably agree that a 12yo should not have the right to decide what the state should do with its might, but the argument is the same regarding how the legal voting population of this tiny state of 16k citizens decide to expand who gets to vote in their local elections.

What I say is that I’m impressed by the federal government of Switzerland for allowing even such a tiny group such self determination to select who can vote in local elections - until the UN forced them to conform in 1991 that is. I think this is why they don’t have civil wars when they disagree - they instead let others do their thing and the cantons run their competing systems simultaneously.

Regarding your question whether I would think it was ok to have a Swiss canton where local government was ran by one person, it’d be ridiculous but I would not think it’s right to use force to stop it, unless that local government hindered anyone from leaving. This is at least, as you have identified, the logical conclusion of the argument I am making, and the Swiss did until 1991. In reality no single person would likely run it well, and it would end up an economic disaster, and sooner or later change. Instead of coercion letting a hundred seeds grow, before separating the wheat from the chaff

You think people would really move away? It's just one guy, you just gotta knock him off a bridge.

And if the simplest solutions to problems of governance become violence, rather than the system itself, then you have failed at the main purpose of government.

It’s worth noting that we are talking about a state of 16000 people, who live in a federation, and this federation allowed until 1991 this small state to keep their own laws regarding voting in their local elections. The other cantons were certainly let living their neighbour, and in response the people of AI (again, a state of 16k people) didn’t tell the neighbours what they should do. Again, this until UN influence forced them to be like their neighbours in 1991.

> The 7 member Executive Council is composed of the top 7 candidates from each election.

The executive council is elected by the parliament and also contains candidates that haven't been member of that parliament. This election takes part "seat by seat", so every member has to be explicitly re-elected.

What happens when a council member leaves office unexpectedly, i.e. dies or resigns? Does it kick an election for everyone or just that one seat?

The members of the council are elected by the united parliament. They will also elect the successor...

Since it's not done by popular vote, political games in that process are rare or just not excessive. The people trust the parliament with the process of electing their leaders, you better shouldn't fail them. So they mostly elect according to the current concordance.

Good question. I'm not sure exactly how the successor is chosen, but this section from Wikipedia indicates just the one member is replaced:

> Until 1999, the Constitution mandated that no canton could have more than one representative on the Federal Council. Until 1987, the place of origin was used to determine which canton a Federal Councilor was from. After 1987, the place of residence (or, for councilors who were previously members of the Federal Assembly or of a Canton's legislative or executive body, the canton from which they were elected) became the determinant factor. Nothing prevented candidates from moving to politically expedient cantons, though, and the rule was abandoned in 1999. Since then, the Constitution has mandated an equitable distribution of seats among the cantons and language regions of the country, without setting concrete quotas. Whenever a member resigns, he/she is generally replaced by someone who is not only from the same party, but also the same language region. In 2006, however, Joseph Deiss, a French Swiss, resigned and was succeeded by Doris Leuthard, a German-speaking Swiss, and in 2016, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, German-speaking, was succeeded by Guy Parmelin, a French Swiss.

Well, that same system also voted on banning Muslim face coverings ("Experts estimate that at most a few dozen Muslim women wear full-face coverings in the country of 8.5 million people."), while a pandemic is going on and face coverings for protection are recommended.

https://apnews.com/article/health-legislation-coronavirus-pa...

You seem to be expressing an opinion about banning Muslim face coverings.

I am not responding to your expression of opinion - just clarifying how the Swiss electoral system is structured.

That vote was a referendum, which is another component of the Swiss system, separate and complimentary to the Executive Council.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_Switzerland

My bad, I thought the anti electronic ID vote was also a referendum.

Populist ideas, can easily thrive in a direct democracy.

It was. And the face covering ban was spinned to be against the customs of a minority. It is still allowed indoors.

Every country has some clothing requirements. Some mandate headscarfs (for women only), some mandate the face remains visible. No laws were needed for this in Swiss because no people were covering up. But now this has changed, so laws come. I dont find any problem with it, and hope that the "custom" of genital mutilation done to children is next to be forbidden. You can still do it, at 18, but yr parents should not be able to decide for you. Not against jews/muslims, just in favor of childrens rights. Scandinavia is front running on this one.

"But now this has changed, so laws come."

A few dozen women in a country of 8.5 million do not need a law, especially one that doesn't really do anything for the victims, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26380029

Also, look at that image https://storage.googleapis.com/afs-prod/media/1aad669348cc4c...

Burqua isn't islamic to begin with anyway.

Yep it's definitely a cultural thing. I think it really is mostly to suppress women and not as a way one shows their religion which one does by living and not by clothing.

Historically, the veil was considered a huge step forward for women's rights/freedoms as it allowed them to leave the house more than three times in their life. Before that, they left the house to marry and move from their father's home to their husband's and when they died....and maybe I am misremembering that number of "three times" or maybe I just can't remember the third instance.

(I'm a woman. I've had a college class in Women's History. FWIW.)

Point is, islam was a progressive religion. But many countries took it in as a regressive one since they were also taking in customs from the culture which islam was supposed to progress.

Which totally misses the point. You shouldn't have been importing burqua if women were already were allowed to go outside without it.

The reality is that progress tends to be a case of two steps forward and one step back. It's also reality that this is true in part because people come up with these theoretical ideals of equality or something and they sometimes don't work in practical reality.

Additionally, one way to spread religion is to be tolerant of the existing culture of the people you are hoping to spread the religion to. This is Christianity is associated with a lot of holidays that have seemingly inane and random traditions, such as Easter and Easter Bunnies and hiding Easter eggs.

What on earth do bunnies and hiding eggs have to do with each other, much less the risen Christ? Not much, but it's some pagan set of traditions that got tolerated by the Christian church and that's how you have bunnies and hidden eggs all wrapped up with the risen Christ.

https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/history-of-easter

Yes, I'm mainly complaining about the reverse happening with islam's spread (due to it being spread by wars). Instead of islam progressively adapting to each country's culture, it brought regressive practices with it.

Well, now they'll have to stay at home again...which is what the fascists who brought that in actually wanted. They just don't want to see them on the streets.

It's kinda sad that so many supported this and I'm happy that this wide ban would (probably...) be unconstitutional in Germany.

Someone not letting their wife out because burqua is banned is outright abuse, and should be dealt with that way. It isn't even a common piece of clothing in the majority of muslim countries. (+1 point to horseshoe theory: apparently islam forbids women to go out without burquas according to both extreme leftists and rightists, bu noone else)

How should you deal with it when you're not even seeing it and can't even prove that the woman is being held in her home against her will if her will is already so weak that she'd wear a burka? This is what I meant: you just make the problem disappear from the public with that measure. You don't solve anything and make it actually worse for the women.

I don't even know how you get the leftists in there but at this point I'm too afraid to ask...

What's wrong with banning a backwards custom that limits women's rights?

Because the presumption is that the women in question are being forced to do this and don't want to.

But your solution is to implement a law which punishes the victim, rather then doing anything about their presumed victimizer.

If the women who didn't want to wear the covering didn't want to wear it, what is stopping them from simply not doing it to start with? The answer of course is husband's, brothers, family etc. and probably that they'd be recognized in their community.

But this is someone's religion - a fair bit more important to them then the laws of the state in a lot of cases. So you haven't answered how you're going to protect those women from being targeted and forced to simply never leave the house, if they are being targeted by people who are forcing them to do something they don't want to.

Your law offers no solution to this - and again - implements itself by targeting the apparent victims it proposes to protect with punishment.

Setting aside that the government can stay the hell out of what I choose to wear, this is just a monumentally stupid approach to anything.

The laws of religion should not override those of the state. To do so would lead to a theocracy and that has been shown to be almost universally bad on any large scale.

The laws of the state shouldn't go out of their way to get in the way of the laws of religion, doing so for no real reason other than spite.

To do so creates conflict where there should be none, which is against the very purpose of a state.

I imagine the women are not physically forced (or maybe only some are) but instead are “educated” from childhood that this is the way. How would you solve it then?

Massive public education campaign, as is routinely done for many other topics found objectionable by various religions but acceptable in secular society? From birth control to blood transfusions to interest on loans?

At minimum, show the non-religious benefits of doing (or not doing) a thing and why it is relevant for the individual. Don’t punish the victim for doing the thing; if someone must be punished, make it the person imposing the action.

> Massive public education campaign

That's only slightly better than getting a fine. If gov would run a ad campaign / school program with "making women wear burka is bad" then the victims would still be the ones to suffer because it's still directed at the way of life as they know it.

Let's stop a backwards custom that is practiced by 30 people with a backwards law that limit's clothing choices for seven Million people.

I'm friends with a few Muslim women and can assure you that it has nothing to do with choice.

I knew hundreds of muslim woman and many do it by choice. So what now?

Because it is a complex cultural issue and banning it probably harms woman further from an already oppressed state. In some cases basically imprisoning them into their homes or forcing them to relocate. No one bothered asking those woman about their thoughts or circumstances.

I don't know, countering an authoritative practice that affects women's choice with another authoritative practice that affects women's choice kinda just seems dumb.

So much for "a woman's right to choose"

i think your point is valid but still shouldn't enter the fray.

This is about swiss nationality and customs. Not about women's rights.

Just like you don't go to your greek neighbor's dinner party wearing a turkish flag, there are things you don't do when you are the guest at someone else's party.

The burka represents a lot of very nasty things, in countries that the overwhelming majority (60%) believe 911 was totally OK and beheading or stoning minorities is OK.

The fact is, you don't frown on people because they are spitting on some ideal of freedom. You frown of them because they don't get the basic rules of decency.

My house. My rules.

> The burka represents a lot of very nasty things, in countries that the overwhelming majority (60%) believe 911 was totally OK and beheading or stoning minorities is OK.

There are countries in Europe that are majority Muslim (Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania) where nobody thinks that, and where any kind of face cover is totally up to the choice. Turkey isn't that extreme either. Neither is Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nigeria, etc etc.

Why don't people ever think of those and jump straight to the Middle East? There are just as many Muslims living in India as there are in the Middle East.

In what way does it limit women's rights?

Have you ever been to the beach? Have you noticed that in many western countries, all the men have bare chests and all the women are covering their breasts? Does this custom limit women's rights? Providing that women have the same legal right as men to go bare chested, as far as I can tell no rights are being infringed.

But maybe you disagree, do you think a law banning the wearing of bikinis by women would be a victory for women's rights?

Is it not more of an expression of how the general public of (native) Europeans want to keep their country for their people and culture

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