In the first premise Colin Harper from Advance Australia has tried to ‘appeal to novelty’. They claimed that the wearing of the Burqa is a medieval practice and Australia is a modern country, therefore it should not be allowed. This is fallacious as the age of the practice has no implication of its properness in the Modern Australia. Also Harper claims that the Burqa “represents the repression domination of women”. Harper mentions that equality is one of Australia’s core values and that those who wear Burqas are violating this value. This argument has the potential to be valid, however it is a very weak one and is fallacious as no evidence was given and this argument was left as a stand-alone statement.
This premise could possibly be an example of the red herring fallacy. It starts off mentioning how the Burqa is a representation of the dominance …show more content…
It was presumed that all Muslims who wear a Burqa are forced to do so, therefore, wearing a burqa is a form of repression. However, this is untrue, while some women are forced to wear a Burqa, most do so willingly. Furthermore Advance Australia also committed the ‘Ignoratio elenchi’ fallacy as they interpreted the equality of women as similarity in culture and custom when they expressed that “the equality of women is a core Australian value”.
Many examples of equivocal, vague, emotional and loaded terms were used in the last two paragraphs. For instance “wishy-washy”, “old world”, “real Australian culture” and “great nation”. Circular reasoning was also used, as well as the ‘begging the question’ fallacy by presuming that Australia’s diverse cultural make up is great, then disregarding the different contributors.
To conclude, Advance Australia has used many rhetoric devices and language ploys. Accompanying these are also unsound arguments that do not provide the appropriate evidence, there is also examples of biased, and fallacious