This is a cross-post by Kenan Malik
In his bestselling book America Alone, the Canadian writer Mark Steyn fantasises about the state of Europe in 2020. The Islamists have stormed to power right across the continent. No English pub can sell alcohol. Holland’s gay clubs have been relocated to San Francisco. And every French woman is forced to be veiled.
The fashion police, at least, have already arrived, a decade early and without any help from Islamists. But rather than forcing women to wear the burqa or niqab, their job is to force them not to. Earlier this month Italian police in the northern city of Novara fined a Tunisian immigrant, Amel Marmouri, €500 for being veiled in a post office. Belgian police are likely to be doing the same after the Brussels parliament outlawed the burqa. France expects to pass a similar law by the autumn. Holland could follow suit. The Spanish city of Lleida has forbidden the burqa in public buildings; the Minister of Labour and Immigration Celestino Corbacho has hinted at a national ban. In Canada, the Quebec government has drafted an anti-burqa law. Australian politicians are demanding one too.
The rhetoric accompanying the bans has been as gushing as the oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. Jean-Francois Copé, leader of the majority UNP party in French National Assembly, has talked of ‘a reaffirmation of our ideals of liberty and fraternity’. For the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, the bans are nothing less than a ‘defence of the Enlightenment’. According to Celestino Corbacho without a burqa ban it would not be possible to protect ‘the values of our society’.
There is certainly something medieval about the burqa and the niqab. The idea that in the 21st century women should be hidden from view for reasons of modesty or religious belief is both troubling and astonishing. Yet, there is also something surreal about the way that this piece of cloth has been turned into a battleground for Western values and about the idea that the burqa poses some kind of existential threat to the West.
The campaign against the burqa is particularly puzzling when in reality so few women choose to wear it. The sight of a burqa in Paris or Brussels is almost as rare as a glimpse of a bikini in Riyadh or Karachi. France has a Muslim population of 5 million. Its government estimates that fewer than 2000 women wear a niqab or burqa. (The original survey, conducted by DCRI, the French secret service, came up with the oddly precise figure of 367; that was so low that the Interior Ministry told the DCRI to count again.) In Holland some 500 women in a Muslim population of one million do so, in Denmark the estimate is fewer than 200 out of 170,000 Muslims.
So why, at a time when Europe is beset by so many fundamental economic and social problems, have legislators become so obsessed by this piece of cloth? There are three main kinds of arguments against the burqa: practical, political and existential.
The burqa, Jean-Francois Copé has suggested, ‘poses a serious safety problem at a time when security cameras play an important role in the protection of public order’. Many worry that the burqa would allow terrorists to evade airport security or provide the perfect camouflage for bank robbers. Others fret that wearing the burqa makes it difficult to perform certain jobs, particularly those that require face-to-face contact with clients or the public – doctors, nurses, teachers, police officers.
There are clearly practical problems that come with wearing the burqa. It is, after all, a piece of clothing designed for feudal life, not the modern world. Practical problems, however, can usually be solved on a case-by-case basis without the need for national soul searching or draconian legislation. Airports already require veiled women to reveal their features when passing through security. Police have no problem demanding to see faces when checking ID cards. And if banks insist that people should not wear bulky clothing, so be it. But that is very different from the state imposing an outright ban on such clothes.
If wearing a burqa is incompatible with the needs of particular jobs, then those particular employers – hospitals, schools, shops even- can legitimately demand that employees not be clad from head to foot. But again, one can impose dress codes for certain jobs without banning a type of clothing for everyone. After all, we don’t have judges and teachers wearing bikinis on the job either.
The practical arguments for a ban on the burqa are weak and shallow. More profound is the political case. The burqa, proponents of a ban argue, undermines gender equality and makes social integration impossible. It is, Bernard-Henri Lévy has written, ‘not a dress, it’s a message, one that clearly communicates the subjugation, subservience, the crushing and the defeat of women.’
The burqa is certainly demeaning to women, and often used to enchain them. Many other practices and rituals that Western societies tolerate are, however, also degrading. Orthodox Jewish women must shave their heads and wear a wig when they marry. The Catholic Church forbids women priests. Many Protestant evangelical churches insist that wives must ‘obey’ their husbands and that the role of women is to breed new evangelicals. Nobody seriously suggests that Jewish marriage rituals be banned or that the Catholic church be forced to accept gender equality or that evangelical wives be saved by state legislation from being baby factories.
A liberal society accepts that individuals should be free to make choices that may not be in their own interests and that, to liberal eyes, demean them. This applies even to particularly distasteful expressions of degradation, such as the wearing of the burqa.
What of the suggestion that women are forced to wear the burqa, and so need protection from the law? It is true that in countries such as Saudi Arabia or Yemen women have little choice but to cover up their face. That in itself is a good reason for liberal societies not to impose coercive dress codes.
If women are forced to do something against their will, the law already protects them in democratic countries. But what evidence exists, suggests that in Europe most burqa-clad women do not act from a sense of compulsion. According to the DCRI report in France, the majority of women wearing the burqa do so voluntarily, largely as an expression of identity and as an act of provocation. A second French report by the information authority, the SGDI, came to similar conclusions. Burqa wearers, it suggested, sought to ‘provoke society, or one’s family’, and saw it as a ‘badge of militancy’, and of ‘Salafist origins’. The burqa ban will only deepen the sense of alienation out which the desire for such provocation emerges.
The burqa is a symbol of the oppression of women, not its cause. If legislators really want to help Muslim women, they could begin not by banning the burqa, but by challenging the policies and processes that marginalize migrant communities: on the one hand, the racism, social discrimination and police harassment that all too often disfigure migrant lives, and, on the other, the multicultural policies that treat minorities as members of ethnic groups rather than as citizens. Both help sideline migrant communities, aid the standing of conservative ‘community leaders’ and make life more difficult for women and other disadvantaged groups within those communities.
What of the impact of the burqa on social integration? The veil has been rightly described as ‘ghetto walls that a person wears’. It often inhibits normal social interaction – that, after all, is its very purpose – and may preclude those who wear it from integrating into society. But given that virtually no Muslim woman actually wears the burqa, it can hardly be held responsible for creating a sense of social separation.
The real significance of the burqa is that it has become a symbol of the anxieties that have come to beset Western nations. What does it mean to be French? Or British? Or Swedish? Most Western nations have undergone a crisis of identity as both traditional values, and trust in the institutions in which those values were invested, have become eroded. Unable to define clearly the ideas and values that characterize the nation, still less to win people to those ideas and values, politicians have taken the easy step of railing against symbols of ‘alienness’. In this sense the burqa bans are similar to the prohibition imposed last year by the Italian city of Lucca on kebab shops ‘to protect our culinary tradition’ or to the decree by the mayor Rome that schools can no longer serve couscous or Chinese fried rice but only ‘regional cuisine dishes’. They are attempts to define ‘Western values’ or the republican tradition by showing what such values or traditions are not at a time when politicians find it increasingly difficult to express what they are.
And this takes us to the existential argument against the burqa. ‘This is not about the burqa’, Bernard-Henri Lévy claims. ‘It’s about Voltaire. What is at stake is the Enlightenment of yesterday and today, and the heritage of both, no less sacred than that of the three monotheisms. A step backwards, just one, on this front would give the nod, all fanaticism, all the true thoughts of hatred and violence.’
The idea that the entire weight of the Enlightenment tradition should rest on banning a piece of cloth worn by a few hundred women shows how absurd has become the debate about the burqa. Certainly, it is important to defend liberal social values, the secular society and the heritage of the Enlightenment. But we cannot do so by promoting illiberal policies, stigmatizing immigrants, or banning symbols of ‘otherness’. The very values that Lévy believes are undermined by the burqa demand that we oppose any attempt by the state to ban it.
15 Comments
Well, it’s more than a few hundred.
Having just read Spittoon’s excellent post on the “The Paradox of Tolerance” I think a line has to be drawn. I don’t like the idea of banning any form of dress (indecency aside) but I wouldn’t be at all too upset if face covering was banned in “official” places (airports, public transport of all kinds, post offices, libraries, etc) and anyone who chose not to serve or deal with a veiled person was at complete liberty to do so.
I thought this was a very cogent analysis – interesting to read about the rather odd bans on non-Italian food in Lucca and Rome.
this is EXACTLY the sort of false equivalence and lack of precision that i am complaining about here.
wigs are only worn by a minority of orthodox jewish women. others wear scarves or hats offering varying degrees of concealment. of those who do conceal their hair, this is considered a “private part of the body” – it’s no different from not walking down the street topless, the only difference is where the line is drawn. in no sense is this demeaning to women, rather the opposite. of those who wear wigs, only the members of some hasidic sects, such as the satmarers, shave their heads. this is NOT a religious requirement, but a “chumra”, or sectarian stringency.
ignorance about stuff like this that lumps everyone together into one amorphous, indigestible mass. what we need is a way to discriminate between PRACTICES and POSITIONS that we find incompatible with our civil society, not to demean entire groups of people on the basis of presumed and often incorrect positions and behaviours.
b’shalom
bananabrain
This is a serious security issue. Moreover, Chasidic women do not cover their faces
and can be easily identified. If you wish to live this way there are places you may do so and should consider relocating.
Also lost in the discussion is the sense of entitlement some Muslims have to violate laws of countries they immigrate to. Sorry, but if you wish to practice polygamy kindly leave the USA. It is not like immigrants are unaware of this restriction.
The social contract
1) Obey the laws of the country you immigrate to.
2) Respect others
3) Remain gainfully employed
4) Do not ask the public to support your children
5) Learn the language
6) Show some loyalty
7) Learn about the larger culture of the host country.
Sorry but public safety trumps all other issues.
Well said Beakerkin
Beakerkin – Kenan Malik invoked (Jewish) wigs and other instances of discrimination or perceived discrimination in the context of discussing the apparently degrading nature of the burqa. So it’s not really relevant to his argument that Chasidic women don’t cover their faces. Malik deals with security elsewhere – obviously that’s not the last word on the issue but he *does* engage with it.
This post isn’t about polygamy! That’s a separate issue. You associate it with Islam, and obviously it is allowed in Islam and sometimes practised, but it is also practised in many cultures which aren’t Muslim – Jacob Zuma is a famous example of a Christian polygamist.
Quite a lot of native Brits (so I assume native US citizens too) fail a good many of your criteria.
Not least the Mormons!
As i expected from kenan mailk an intelligent, rational piece from a very good thinker….
Faisal
The overwhelming number of Mormons do not practice Polygamy. They are also born in the USA and do not relocate to the USA to violate our laws intentionally. Muslims who immigrate to the USA and practice polygamy are deliberately violating laws. There are sections in the Bronx where this is quite common and some African Christians practice polygamy as well.
Sarah
The issue in an American perspective is reasonable accommodation under the law.
The Burkha unlike Chasidic wigs is a public safety issues. Would you be comfortable
standing next to a person in a bank or an airplane with a ski mask? Have you ever had to conduct an interview with a person clouded in a shroud, I have. How does one do so when you can not read body language.
If a person wishes to wear a wig or cover their hair this is acceptable. One does not have a right to divers licenses, passports and Alien Registration cards. These are privileges earned by following rules and procedures and determined by the citizenry.
Public safety is first.
Second point
The overwhelming number of immigrants in the USA do not have a sense of entitlement and do comply with those seven points. One can walk in any barrio and see people proud of this country with the rare exception of the few La Razza loonies. After 9-11 I walked through many barios in NYC notably Sunset Park and saw flags all over the place unlike the Union Square area where I resided. One can walk into Chinese, Russian, Cuban, Indian, West Indian enclaves in my beloved NYC and see the vast majority comply with all seven with rare exception. Even most Muslims comply with the majority of those points.
“Also lost in the discussion is the sense of entitlement some Muslims have to violate laws of countries they immigrate to. Sorry, but if you wish to practice polygamy kindly leave the USA. It is not like immigrants are unaware of this restriction.”
——————-
Let’s remind our US immigrants, muslim and non-muslim, of the New World Order “social contract” as defined in 21st Century USA, not in 1776.
The NEW social contract:
1) Find a gay partner and practice Gay Marriage.
2) Every 5 years, visit the Catholic Priest (who is a child molester),
3) Be happy to remain un-employed, over 27 weeks, 45% of un-employed are.
4) Contact your neighbor, who is a ‘registered child molester’ online
5) Learn to become a drug addict, large majority of locals & students are
6) Appreciate the art of Body-Piercing and Tattoing as a
7) Learn about the larger Alcoholism Culture of the host country.
If you want to be accepted in US society, drop your Burqa, and practice the 7 Habits of an effective US immigrant, above. US Social Values trump all other issues !!
Kgazi
I do not know what immigrants you are talking about. Your comments do not reflect the people who are part of my community and my family. I just returned from a Guyanese community party. Hindus, Christians and Muslims all get along and work hard and celebrate together. These immigrants are a credit to the USA and understand the social contract. They are very accepting of other faiths and marriages between them is common.
Beakerkin, looks like the immigrants in your community and mine are doing just fine, and THEY are the ones who can teach the NON-immigrants which “social contract” to follow, the new or the old !! The Veiled Values only belong to the NON-immigrants.
Kgazi
The American people are doing just fine without your condescension. We live a life embodied by the wisdom of our founding fathers in our founding documents. We have no desire to be like the EU as we have our own traditions. Those who wish to create an Umah do not share our values.
Guyana is a magical place where people from many faiths and races left all the old world garbage behind. Unfortunately, it was hampered by socialists who never knew how to manage the country. In many ways its culture is similar to my beloved
NYC except that NYC is usually very well run. People of all faiths get along in NYC
each and every day. We do not need a Cordoba house as our culture has always been to respect others. I am more at home with my fellow NYC residents be they from China, Guyana, Jamaica, Poland, Italy, Haiti or Ghana than I am with Vermonters who share my complexion.
Yet every time my city is attacked it comes from a certain place. Nor does it start with the WTC. There are failed plots to blow up the Subways, Times Square and the Beauty Parlor Bomber are just some of the crimes. What crime did Ari Halberstam commit when he was machine gunned to death for no reason. A problem exists but it is the failure to embrace the wisdom of Guyana and the values of America. Welcome to the USA but kindly don’t come here with your Old world primitive hatreds.
The best case for Cordoba House is the one you can never say. Let Muslims look at the City where people of all nations and faiths work, live and love together in peace.
Look up the block where hatred incinerated 2900 innocent people just going to work. Marvel at a place that permits a mosque so close to the site of the greatest crime committed against the American people in the name of our faith. ( This does not infer all Muslims are to blame for 9-11) Muslims have much to learn from America and NYC in particular and need to embrace these values in their home countries.
Looks like the subliminal brainwashing by US propaganda machine is working OK with you. And I bet you are one of the 70% Americans who still think Saddam Hossain masterminded 9/11, even after Bush was embarassed by that stats of misconception.
OK my quota of 9/11 discussion is over for 2010, enjoy the weekend.
Kgazi
You lose but then again you seem young and have much to learn.
The best teacher is life itself. You know very little about America and my beloved NYC.