jk I'm all about that bread @danishcookies@computerfairi.es

What the colonisers were doing when they ripped the veil from the heads of Algerian women was institute a reign of ideological terror.

The reasons why the veil was targeted by the French, the way they exploited its symbolic and corporal importance, and the impact it had on the Algerian population is discussed by Frantz Fanon in his second book: A Dying Colonialism, whose French title literally means "Year Five of the Algerian Revolution".

But the French colonists honed in on the veil *in particular* as an aspect of Algerian culture they wanted to undo. Algerian women were forbidden from wearing the veil in spaces they shared with the French occupiers.

The French military held un-veiling ceremonies, which were filmed and broadcast.

Before Algeria's transformation into a settler colony, the veil did not have the extraordinary status it is currently considered to have. It was a traditional item of clothing, linked to religious practices as most other aspects of daily life are when one is a practising Muslim. It was not charged with anymore meaning than the fez or the djellaba.

Despite the extraordinary amount of public debate which accompanied the introduction of these laws, few people mentioned their striking historical precedent.

In the 1930's and 40's, as France began to transform Algeria into a full-blown settler colony, the French colonists started establishing what they thought would be a long-term system of exploitation of the Algerian population. This system was somewhere between apartheid and the systemic racism we have in liberal democracies today.

Only time will tell whether this trend will continue, and increasingly stringent laws on Muslim clothing will be introduced. It seems likely.

This second law, incidentally, was brought to us by Nicolas Sarkozy, whose most famous speech as President of the French Republic contains the sentence "Africa's mistake was that it didn't sufficiently participate in history."

Six and a half years later, the "Law of 2010-1192: Act prohibiting concealment of the face in public space" came into effect. This law repeats the pattern established by 2004-228: nominally, it forbids anyone from having their face permanently concealed in public. In practice, however, it was introduced, voted on, and has been enforced as a ban on the burqa.

It became illegal to be too "conspicuous" a Muslim woman in France.

On the 2nd of September 2004, just as France's children were preparing to go back to school, the "Law 2004-228 of 15 March 2004" came into effect.

Nominally, this law banned anyone from wearing "conspicuous religious symbols" in schools. In practice, however, it was widely understood to specifically target Muslim students and parents, in particular those who wore the hijab.

Girls and their mothers were now forbidden from "conspicuously" belonging to their faith.

my cat is sitting on my lap and i've been looking at train pictures for 2+ hours so i'd say i'm living my best life

@sexybenfranklin But what about people saying "octopussies" and then doing finger guns?

I feel like the biggest purpose in life is really to see how much of a positive impact you can make on the lives of people you care about and that's how I try to live

Capitalism: a cultural framework in which mutual aid is arbitrarily withheld, in service of creating hierarchy.