Tag Archives: France

France Is Banning the Niqab for the Worst Reasons

Debbie says:

Now that the French Senate, as well as the lower house, has voted to ban the niqab, and French president Sarkozy will surely sign it into law, it’s a good time to point out Chiara’s very strong post at Chez Chiara on the political background of the niqab ban. The niqab is the full face veil worn by some Muslim women, where only their eyes show. By next month, it will almost certainly be illegal in France, and local jurisdictions are already fining women who wear it.

While France has a long tradition of laicit&#233 (which is not quite the same as our “secularism”) the ban on the niqab stems at least as much from far-right persecution of Muslims, for which the French invoke both the medieval history of the crusades and the 20th century history of the Nazis (apparently some French people have forgotten that their grandparents were victims of the Nazis).

a halal (religious Islamic bakery) in Lisieux, France with Islamic hatred slogans and a Nazi swastika painted on the wall

Here’s Chiara:

It is important to be clear–about what is being proposed, by whom, and why, in the French context specifically–before jumping on the French “Ban the Burqa” bandwagon. This ban is against wearing the face veil any time anywhere in public–not just in public institutions, banks, government offices, or police stations, but walking down the street, going to the neighbourhood park, window shopping, giving the baby a stroll, taking out the garbage, anywhere. Transgressors are subject to fines, and then further legal penalties.

The ban was originally proposed last June 2009 by President Nicholas Sarkozy. From the right to the left, all pundits and politicians consulted by their supporting newspapers then stated that this was an election ploy on his part to garner votes from the far right in order to assure his own (more centre right) re-election, and a majority Parliament, which would then include a Prime Minister on the right as well.

This manoeuvre of course makes Sarkozy more beholden to the far right who have a clear agenda against immigrants, Muslims, Arabs and Africans; and, think they should all be “sent home”, even though by now Maghrebi immigrants recruited in the 50’s and 60’s (government planes were sent to villages in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, to hire labourers for France by the plane-full) have 2nd and 3rd generation descendants. They also believe that children born in France to Arab/African-French citizens have no right to French citizenship.

This, of course, mirrors far-right hatred of Islam in the United States and the rest of the western world, although it takes its own shape in every country.

It’s very common for Western feminists to have complicated reactions to the niqab and other forms of religious headscarf. It’s a complicated question. Here’s how I feel:

1) Many women wear the Islamic veil out of their own examined choices and their own beliefs. While some women may be forced into modest dress by a patriarchal society, there’s no way to tell by looking at a woman what her motivations are, and it’s not my (or your) business to try. The right to choose one’s own clothing extends to the right to choose religious clothing–although France has issues with crosses and Jewish yarmulkes, along with headscarves, nonetheless the freedom to observe one’s religion is a key freedom and should be supported everywhere.

2) Extremist hatred of Islam (and all hatred of Islam), like any other kind of bigotry, cannot be tolerated by our governments, let alone supported. Just as we in the U.S. must work to get past vile concepts like “anchor babies” and the completely inaccurately described “Ground Zero mosque,” the French also have obligations to each other. When hatred is allowed to thrive, everyone is in danger. Sarkozy is allowing himself to get in bed with hatred, and you always wake up changed when you do that.

3) Because Muslim women dress in ways that visibly mark their religion more frequently than Muslim men do, this ban unfairly targets women and young girls and is, in and of itself, a sexist law.

No one in the U.S. should be patting ourselves on the back about this one; it’s worth looking at from here as a cautionary tale, not as grounds for superiority.

Thanks to delux_vivens for the pointer.

Muslim Women: Beauty Contest Winners and Threatened Rights

Debbie says:

This weekend, Rima Fakih was crowned Miss USA.

As I’m sure you can imagine, I don’t generally give a frig who wins beauty contests. If it was completely up to me, I’d be happy to see them disappear. Nonetheless, Fakih is the first Arab-American, and first Islamic woman, to win Miss USA, and that’s of interest.

At the same time that Fakih is gaining both positive and negative attention in the U.S., devout Muslim women in Quebec and France are facing serious discrimination.

The proposed [Quebec] law — Bill 94 — was tabled earlier this year following a controversy over a Montreal woman who refused to uncover her face while attending publicly funded French-language classes for new immigrants.

The bill does not specifically mention any particular religion but says anyone seeking a public service related to security, communication or identification must show their face.

If enacted as it is, said [Pierre Chagnon, head of Quebec’s Bar Association], the law could mean that a Muslim woman visiting Quebec who wears a niqab could be denied information at a tourism office unless she agreed to uncover her face.

I wish I could remember where I saw the link to this story, because whoever posted it said it more clearly than I can: this is discriminating against women for what they wear. I know that France (and by extension Quebec) has a long and complex history of secularization that is difficult for Americans (who have never really separated church and state) to understand fully. And I can entertain arguments that some serious matters of security and/or identification would require something more than being able to see a woman’s eyes.

But language classes? Tourist information? In France, the proposed law will ban the niqab from streets, public transportation, and public places. (In other words, the French law in particular will do what westerners are always crying that Islamic men do: keep women at home and imprisoned.) The Quebecois and French people pushing for these laws aren’t concerned with safety or identification: they’re trying to cut a whole group of women out of the citizenry for what they believe and how they dress. They’re haters, expressing themselves in a French style.

In the U.S., the hatred takes a different form. One standard criticism of Fakih’s victory is that somehow Arab and/or Muslim women have an advantage (yes, really, that’s what they’re saying) in beauty contests. Fortunately, we have the incisive Ta-Nehisi Coates responding:

Whenever a non-white person succeeds at something that is regarded as the province of whites, there’s some sense that the fix is in.

The sense that whites are being cheated in favor of non-whites is as old as slavery itself. White Confederates framed the War as an attempt to cheat whites out of their God-given right to subjugate black people. When colored troops hit the field fighting for the Union, and managed to win a few battles, white Confederates reacted with disbelief, the great diarist Kate Stone said.

The point is that the narrative of white supremacy holds victimhood sacred. It paints whites as the truly put-upon class and asserts that non-white success–black, brown, red, yellow and now “Muslim” — is mostly achieved through vile and despicable means. When reality challenges that view, white supremacy simply moves the goal-post. So in the 19th and early 20th century, blacks were thought of as physically inferior to whites. When blacks succeeded in athletics the logic became that blacks’ “animistic” nature gave them an advantage.

It’s come to beauty pageants, folks. These fools are crying about beauty pageants.

By the way, the assertion in Pipes’ article that Muslim women are winning beauty pageants with “surprising frequency”? Not borne out by Google. At all. All I can find is Fakih and lots of articles about beauty pageants in Arabic countries where one can hardly be surprised if Arabic and/or Muslim women win.

What connects these two stories? They’re both about Islamic women, and they’re both about hatred/bias/discrimination. But together they also illustrate an obvious but almost-never-stated fact about Islamic women:

Islamic women are as different from each other, and exhibit as wide a range of behaviors, interests, preferences, skills, and choices as any other group.

Yes, really.