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A cautionary tale…
Sarkozy’s proposed burqua ban is a blunt instrument
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This week, French President Nicholas Sarkozy used a historic state-of-the-nation address to proclaim that the burqua, or face-covering, was a symbol of women’s subservience that was “not welcome in France”. Sarkozy backed calls for a parliamentary inquiry into the issue, following suggestions from a government spokesman that the face-veil could be banned in public places — which amounts to an outright ban, since even the Taliban saw no need for women to veil in private spaces. The burqua is worn by only a tiny proportion of Muslim women in France, but Sarkozy’s speech is yet another act of political stigmatisation against an already marginalised community. I asked French academic Dr Rachel Bloul how to translate “dog-whistle politics” into French. Dr Bloul responded that she did not think that there was such a term, but that having based his political reputation on a loud commitment to law and security, Sarkozy is “falling back on the same kind of manipulation that has allowed him to win previous elections, and does not care about the consequences for anyone else.” She added that after watching the footage of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy smiling proudly in the background during the speech, she thought that Sarkozy was also out to impress his wife. Last year, I spent a few days in Paris with a French friend of Moroccan background. She and her family and friends related stories of almost routine discrimination — of elderly relatives being rejected as unworthy for citizenship after fifty years of law-abiding, tax-paying residence, of always having to strive that little bit harder in work and study in order to prove yourself to your non-Muslim colleagues, of the banning of religious symbols in public schools, which was seen as particularly targeting Muslim girls wearing hijab. My friend now lives in Sydney, and said that she felt a sense of resignation in the face of Sarkozy’s speech. “It’s just another chapter. The kind of events that are almost unthinkable in Australia are commonplace in France. It’s supposed to be about the burqua, but it’s really about something deeper — about attitudes to Muslims.” Many Muslim women, including many hijabis, are deeply uncomfortable with face-covering. It is so vanishingly rare among Muslims in the West that many observant Muslims have only encountered it at a distance. In Australia, a disproportionate number of the women who observe this practice seem to be converts. Their stated commitment to face-covering as their “personal choice” is rendered problematic by the fact that many of them don’t believe that personal choice over dress standards should be extended to women in Muslim-majority societies. While they believe that covering the face is commendable rather than obligatory, they defend the mandatory covering of women’s hair in countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia. But as Sarkozy’s speech illustrates, they are not the only ones who think that choice is a one-way street — you can choose, so long as you choose what I tell you to choose. There is no single experience of face-covering, just as there is no single experience of the bikini. Some Muslim women describe face-covering as providing a sense of privacy and comfort. It is true that some Muslim women and girls practise various forms of veiling under family and community pressure (while other Muslim families are equally horrified when their daughter begin to cover). But those are not the kind of dynamics where government intervention can serve any useful purpose. As my friend observed, after politicians began to attempt to regulate the hijab back in 1989, many teenage girls adopted it as a form of rebellion. Sarkozy’s speech seems likely to add a similar cachet to the burqua. |
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16 Comments
Isn’t there also a persepctive worth considering that by banning the burqa marginalisation of the muslim community will actually decrease? Sarkozy talked about the barrier people perceived when interacting with women wearing the burqa, so is this not an attempt to remove that barrier and facillitate communication, exchange and understanding?
Thanks Shakira. I agree with your sentiments and think this is part of Sarkozy’s racist agenda to divert attention away from the great recession and placate a possibly combative workign class. I wrote to similar although more strident effect on my blog, En Passant, in an article called Ban Sarkozy, no the burqa.(See http://enpassant.com.au/?p=3816).
I am not going to “get behind” the burqua, nor will I unveil it. What I am going to say, quite simply, is that I do no believe there has been an adequate articulation of what it means for Muslim women to wear the burqua (or face-covering). All these questions - is it a choice?; is it men oppressing women?; why do some Muslim women wear it while others do not? - remain unanswered.
I have asked many Muslims woman - and men, too - about the importance of burquas/hijabs/face-coverings and I have received a range of responses. These included “it’s a choice” right through to “it’s the law”; indeed when I was studying at university in Turkey, it was against the law for woman to wear a face-covering (to university).
As I mentioned, I am not arguing for or against the burqua. My point is there has not been that clear articulation, and most of us know what ignorance breeds…
I agree with the article written by Jill Singer in The Herald Sun June 25th;
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25685364-5000117,00.html
She says, and I quote … “It’s all such a load of male supremacist tosh.” and
“I’m with Sarkozy on this — the burka sends all sorts of messages that are anathema to ideals of freedom and gender equality.
Sure, there are women who say it’s their right to dress as they like, but there are also women who think they should have the right to slice off their daughters’ clitorises.
Such controls on women’s sexuality are pointless, and that should be condemned along with other mumbo-jumbo still practised across the world. “
The first time I saw the full black muslim womens regalia I was stunned. To me, it’s obvious it’s a control thing by muslim men.
Chris: “Is it a choice? Is it men oppressing women? Why do some Muslim women
wear it while others do not?” I’m about to indulge in a piece of heresy by saying that apart from the countries whose leaders insist on burka clad women it’s about fashion and snobbery as much as anything else. For hundreds of years the West was asking your exact questions about foot-binding in China. Which was also about fashion and snobbery. If a woman had unbound feet she was deemed to be a peasant-yes there were people like the Hakka who didn’t do it.
When I was in Iran I met women who saw great virtue in wearing hebjab and burkas. The greater the time spent being totally covered the greater the virtue of the wearer. One lady I met was so devout (?) she wore the hebjab in her own house causing her brother to whisper to me “Doesn’t she take herself so seriously?”
I find it offensive that Muslim ladies-especially the converts-to hold governments to ransom and political correctness over a practice of fashion and snobbery, and all in the name of religion.
What would the government do if all the women of Oz decided to get into burkas? But then we wouldn’t have the chutzpa to do it in the name of religion. Would we?
Shrouding is nothing to do with islam- it was an ancient persian/class perversion, adopted by the triumphant meccans surging out of the Empty Quarter into the decadent, crumbling bronze age empires of the more ancient (and matriarchal) Fertile Crescent shattered by irrigation born salt and crazyily monotheistic nomads.
If only more westeners would read the Kortna, it’s barely 150 pages of (very) widely spaced verbiage, described by a 19thC french arabist as “..the Torah editted for the arab mind..”.
It is NOT abiut protecting women, it is about porotecting men from their worst instincts, pace Raw Meat Hilaly “I don’t wish to be anonymous - I, Epicene wrote-
“If only more westerners would read the Koran. It’s barely 150 pages of widely spaced sentences - nowhere near as tedious as the Torah or NT; as a 19thC french arabist it was simply the OT redacted for the arab mind.
The thing that really pisses me off is seeing young, pre pubertal Oz girls shrouded.
As Pascarl accurately points out “the veil, much lauded by so called Islamic teachings, is a protection for men” which I STRONGLY RESENT as it implies I am something I am not.
If their kultur has so warped muslims that they have to do something to someone else to cover up their own failings then it is they need education.
Whilst I dislike Sarkozy and don’t like the idea of supporting him, I agree that the burqua should be banned. The social attitutde that comes behind it, from women who choose to wear it, and more specifically from men who create an atmosphere where women choose to wear it, has no place in any society.
I also find it amusing when people label Sarkozy “racist” over this issue. No one has a clue what racism is anymore. It’s just a good word to throw around when some hysteria is called for.
I appreciate everyone’s responses; they confirm my initial point.
It centres on the misunderstanding of ‘choice’; so much misinformation is out there. It is similar to when people throw around the word the ‘choice’, describing the supposed ‘choice’ someone makes to be gay, as if accepting your sexuality is like choosing between a well-done or a rare steak. The gay community has failed to articulate that being gay (or accepting a queer identity, a bisexual one etc) is not the choice; accepting it is the choice. The Muslim community has failed to articulate why women wear the burqua (or a face-covering), and the above article and the subsequent posts confirm that.
The only way forward is to have that open discussion, which I am glad to be part of.
Passant thinks this is part of Sarkozy’s racist agenda. Since when did Islam become a race? I didnt know that there was a Muslim ethnicity. Know why? BECAUSE THERE IS NONE. There are white, black, asian etc etc muslims. Stop insulting everyone’s intelligence by trying to place criticising a religion under the same bracket as racist. They are nothing alike.
JACKS
Thanks for the Daniel Pipes argument. Hmm, you could say the same think about anti-semitism too, but I would think anti-semitism is racism on the basis it is a reaction against the ‘other’ for their supposed difference.
And your specious argument ignores the fact that most Muslims in France are either from, or the descendants of, people from its former colonies in North Africa. That looks like racism to me.
The liberation from above left, having supported US imperialism in Afghanistan to ‘liberate’ women, now turn theri authoritarianism to Muslim women in France to help Sarkozy stir- up islamophobia and divert attention away from the great recession.
If it is OK to ban the burqa as disempowering women, then why not the bikini too? And who decides what is empowering and what is disempowering?
Liberation comes from struggle from below, not from laws from the very people who benefit from women’s oppression, the ruling class.
Passant, anti-semitism is typically directed at people who are actually ethnically jewish. Islam however is not, and has never been an ethnicity. The fact that people criticise islam has nothing at all to do with people being from Africa, you are just trying to divert attention away from the fact that people’s issues with islam have NOTHING to do with the colour of their skin.
Next, I would say that the french presidents comments say more about the French view on secularism than islamophobia - in France religion has a very specific role that is supposed to be private and left to the individual.
JACKS, I do have a first name by the way.
Racism has never been just about race.
The horror of the racist project in Nazi Germany now sees dawn upon us the racism of culture. All the old racist stereotypes find a new bottle in islamophobia.
I’d suggest you read for example S Sayyid on racism and islamophobia in dark matter. See http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2008/03/26/racism-and-islamophobia/
Islamophobia is the new and almost acceptable racism – the racism without racists as Sayyid so eloquently and sarcastically puts it.
All the old racist stereotypes find a new bottle in islamophobia? I guarantee you that very people who take issue with islamic human rights issues, sexism and violence care too much whether the person is black, white or asian. It doesn’t matter.
Jacks, John Passant, etc. When I rant about the burqua I want to make it quite clear that I find orthodox Jews to be just as offensive. All those men running around with Dutch Caps on their heads and the obligatory Shirley Temple ringlets dangling down. Catholics who wear large crucifixes are equally as offensive as are the Steve Fieldings of this world. True, he doesn’t wear a huge cross. He doesn’t have to. He makes it clear he believes only what was written in the bible. WTF he took a fact-finding trip OS when he’d already made his mind up re global warming was a total waste of money.
All religionists who indulge in this sort of extravagant group behaviour do so because they believe they are morally superior to people who don’t hold their beliefs.
It is an ego sodden up yours Kazaly attitude I find to be nauseating. Worse, they hold a peculiarly nasty gun to the heads of the weak-kneed, PC politicians and PC voters to ransom. Those people who question this behaviour are racists. Pity about those of them who have brought a great deal of thought to arrive at their opinions. As fine a piece of blackmail as I will ever see.
If you doubt what I say go out yourselves in burquas-with only your eyes showing and have a huge letter sown back and front. A for Atheist, P for Presbyterian GB for god botherer, etc, etc. The cops will have you up before the law quicker than an eye can blink. The charge? Making a public nuisance of yourselves.
PS: Whereas the professional religious groupies can wear sack cloth and ashes, shrouds and whatever else they choose. It would be a brave cop who would haul them up before a court.
jacks
That’s why its racism without racists. And so they could well say what you say - I don’t care what colour people are - possible but unlikely since most muslims are not white. Or they could say I’m not anti-Muslim but …
It is all the old racist prejudices and attitudes packed into a new box of anti-Muslim words and action.
But look, if it makes you feel more at home intellectually, let’s call it is islamophobia. It’s still on a par with racism.