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The
French Burqa Ban
BY
ISHTIAQ
AHMED
The
commission recommended that if the government was going to ban the burqa,
it should compensate by declaring as public holidays the religious
festivals of Muslims and Jews. It also recommended that steps be taken
to integrate Muslim and other minorities into the French mainstream.
A non-binding recommendation
of a French Parliamentary Commission saying that the burqa (complete
veiling of women from head to foot) should be banned in public
institutions, including banks, post offices, schools and even on public
transportation is indicative of constant tension between immigrant
Muslim communities and host countries in the West. The security risk
linked to the burqa and it clashing with French republican values are
the two main arguments that have been put forth.
The Commission members maintained that their recommendation was by no
means an invasion of or trespassing into the privacy of a Muslim woman
or an attempt to curtail her human rights. It was agreed, however, that
donning the burqa was a sign of the demeaned status of Muslim women. It
may be recalled that the controversy started when French President
Nicolas Sarkozy declared last year that such attire had no place in
France. He asserted that the burqa was not a religious symbol; rather it
symbolised the subjugation of women. He called for a law banning the
burqa.
Polls have indicated that 65 percent of the French population, including
Muslims, would like a law banning the burqa. The interior ministry says
an estimated 2,000 women out of a total French population of 65.4
million, of which 5 million are Muslims, wear the burqa. The 32-member
parliamentary commission that drew up the report claims that all of
France is saying ‘no’ to the burqa because the garment is
“contrary to the values of the republic”. And if it is not religious
attire, then, argue the parliamentarians, the Muslims should support the
release of Muslim women from an outdated and outmoded garment that only
reinforces the inferior status of women in ultra-traditional Muslim
societies.
The commission recommended that if the government was going to ban the
burqa, it should compensate by declaring as public holidays the
religious festivals of Muslims and Jews. It also recommended that steps
be taken to integrate Muslim and other minorities into the French
mainstream. It took the stand that cultures change and transform and,
therefore, to essentialise the burqa as part of Islamic identity would
be wrong. It also makes a strong plea to combat Islamophobia. The
members of the commission range from far right to far left; the
chairperson is a member of the French Communist Party.
Not surprisingly, some Muslim organisations have protested against this,
calling it a gross violation of the human rights of Muslim women. Human
Rights Watch has described it as forced integration that is bound to
fail because it could mean that burqa-clad women may not be able to come
out of their homes because their families may prefer to keep them
indoors rather than let them go out without a burqa. That would only
result in their greater isolation and insulation.
Indeed, all sides of the debate on the burqa have legitimate concerns.
The security risk factor needs to be grasped properly. For a long time
now, al Qaeda and the Taliban have been drafting young men and
occasionally women into suicide bombing missions. While such tactics
have created fear and anxiety among governments, they have failed to
bring down the US or any other state. Rather, the privacy of each and
every individual, including that of pious Muslim women, has now been
made irrelevant. The new screening machines that are being installed in
international airports will make possible an inspection of even the
private parts of individuals. So, if anyone is responsible for
undermining Islamic values, it is the terrorists who have been using the
human body as a weapon of extensive if not mass destruction. Obviously
the French cannot install such screens on roads and streets or in buses
and markets. Therefore, banning the burqa is one way of reducing the
risk factor if not eliminating it.
My second reason for supporting a ban on the burqa is that it represents
a perverted view of piety. Many years ago, I interviewed the well-known
Islamist, Dr Israr Ahmed, on a number of subjects at his residence in
Model Town, Lahore. Naturally, his egregiously reactionary views on
women were one of the subjects I probed with him. To my utter surprise
and shock, he told me that men in the West have lost their manliness
because they see and work with women. That kills their sexuality. By
strictly segregating men and women, Islam keeps men in their most
natural state of virility. The burqa thus helps when a woman must
sometimes come out.
If we ignore such bizarre ideas for a moment and investigate if the
burqa was worn by the earliest generations of Muslims, then the facts
tell another story. Historians have pointed out that the tent-style
burqa became the dominant form of veiling only after the Muslims
defeated the more advanced Persian and Eastern Byzantine empires. Their
nobilities kept their women away from the gaze of other men. This was a
symbol of affluence and power. When these empires fell to the Arabs, the
latter began to imitate this practice since they were the new upper
class in society. Thus when the caliphate of Baghdad, under the
Abbasids, had consolidated, the black burqa became a status symbol of
upper class families and naturally those from the lower orders who
wanted to enhance status would require their women to follow the same.
Most of the ahadith, which prescribe complete coverage of women, were a
product of the period that corresponded to the annexation of Asia Minor
and Persia by Muslims. Therefore, the French parliamentarians seem to
have done their homework seriously.
There is, of course, a deeper philosophical aspect to it too. Can a
civilisation that treats its women as inferior and its men as sexually
uncontrollable claim to be the bearer of the best values of common
humanity? I have my very serious doubts. Saudi Arabia, Iran and the
defunct Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan briefly during 1996-2001,
and later the different parts of the NWFP, all represent, without any
doubt, the worst offenders against the dignity of equality of women. A
young Pakistani scholar, Taimur Rahman, has prepared a list of all the
atrocious rules and laws the Taliban imposed on women to keep them out
of the public eye. It can be accessed at: http://criticalppp.org/lubp/archives/5150.
A ban on the burqa may not help liberate the 2,000 or so women in France
but it will symbolise the need for Western societies to take an interest
in the welfare of the weakest section of their immigrant populations.
These always happen to be women and children.
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The
author is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of
South Asian Studies (ISAS), National University of Singapore on leave
from the University of Stockholm. He has published
extensively on South Asian politics. At ISAS, he is currently working on
a book, Is Pakistan a Garrison State? He can be reached at isasia@nus.edu.sg
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