POSTER READS: ‘Last time I checked I was not living in a sharia state. Religion has no place in legislation! Pro choice”
I saw a picture of this poster in an album of Dublin’s prochoice march.
I don’t understand what the Sharia law has to do with Ireland, the main religion which is catholicism? Why couldn’t it say something about how Catholicism still dominates irish customs?
What does the Sharia law have to do with a catholic country? What’s it to do with Ireland not giving its people access to abortion and aftercare support?
Nothing at fucking all.
Just an excuse to criticize anything to do with islam and/or countries that practice islam. Just another excuse to remind people that there’s something apparently worse out there; sure shouldn’t Westerners be happy we aren’t like ‘those’ countries at least?
Fair enough if Ireland was an islam country whose laws are influenced by its religion which results in restriction to abortion, the poster would then make perfect sense. BUT the sharia law has nothing to do with Ireland so what on earth is the point of this poster exactly?
This sad belief that ‘The West’ is better and more civilized than those barbaric countries with their barbaric religions have got to stop. Dare I say that irritating phrase? ‘I can’t believe this still happens in 2012!’
Awful things happen in the west too; the West isn’t some magical land where all the good lovely stuff exists and all the terrible yucky, racist, sexist, restrictive-laws-influenced-by-religion-which-affects-women only exists in places outside the West.
Where did this idea come from that you should expect great things in a western country that doesn’t have sharia law and if a western country behaves like ‘those’ cultures with the crude religions, it’s something really REALLY bad? Get over this western imperialism, the west is no better in terms of treating it’s people with respect as anywhere else in the world.
I might as well make a sign that reads “Mitt Romney is a racist, legalize abortion now!” for all the sense it makes since some American dude in the US has nothing to do with Irish law and politics.
No one is saying there’s nothing problematic about Romney or the Sharia law but to derail a march to talk about something completely different is tacky and pathetic. I can write about some of the crude, uncivilized, tasteless, primitive things about Ireland- being a state that doesn’t have sharia law doesn’t exempt this country from the unfair ways it treats it’s citizens. Get it together.
Feminist Ire 