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.
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?