It was inevitable that Italy would start talking about a burqa ban sooner or later — indeed given that the country is run by a coalition of ex-fascists, quasi-fascists and paranoid nationalists, it’s surprising it didn’t happen years earlier.
The Northern League has proposed the law, which goes beyond most such laws in its punitiveness — promising a fine of up to €300, and/or a “community service” order to “promote integration” — yes I know, but let’s get to the obvious humour a bit later.
The proposed Italian law goes further, promising up to a year in prison for anyone who uses “physical or psychological” threats or violence to enforce burqa wear.
The law has the usual circularity — on the one hand the burqa is against our traditions etc etc, but as our traditions include freedom and equality, it has to be wrapped in a general law, banning all facial covering.
As the SMH columnist Elizabeth Farrelly wrote approvingly, in relation to a similar NSW law would cover everything from niqabs to plastic Reagan masks. So a whole range of activities has to be criminalised to preserve the illusions of liberal society.
That gutless sleight-of-hand process is typical of proposed niqab/burqa bans. It’s perfectly expressive of a Western culture that can’t assert its distinct identity — which has been worn away by decades of image/consumer capitalism — except by defining it against a minor other, which must be inflated to vast proportions in the process.
In this case, it’s a practice adopted by a few thousand women in each country, and with virtually no transmission beyond a few cultural groups.
That it’s the Northern League doing this is predictable and symbolic — for the Northern League is a cultural confection that’s equally expressive of the predicament of meaning that prompts such a response to the burqa in the first place.
The NL argues that northern Italy is a distinct place, with its own culture, that southern Italy is parasitic on it, etc. It was originally the Lombardy League, a locus with some genuine historical roots. But as such it could never win a decent brace of seats in the Italian parliament.
So, suddenly, it became the Northern League, and reverse engineered a whole realm — Pandania — as its homeland. It’s a politics founded on resentment, envy and an unwillingness to face the real challenges of hypermodernity.
In that it’s not alone. Fred Nile is just an owlish old media-attention junkie, of course, but what about the increasing tendency for professional/liberal feminists to sympathise with a ban?
Sushi Das, in The Age, argued that anyone who supported a woman’s right to wear what she wanted, even if it’s a medieval garment, was a cultural relativist. Farrelly engaged in an argument with a rally by Muslims who defended such garments as a response to the commodification of women’s s-xuality in images, etc, and cited the usual unnamed latteistas who wouldn’t denounce the burqa because that would be racist.
Farrelly’s point against the burqa-as-feminist was fair enough, but it would be great if at least once, feminists who want to use the state to tell other women what they can and can’t wear, would quote some actual “cultural relativist/latteista”, etc, defenders of the burqa.
In the absence of such, it’s fair to accuse them of lazy and unreflective thinking. What exactly is being objected to here? Is it the garment’s excessive covering? Why is that now offensive and its opposite — the bikini, which used to be banned in NSW — now acceptable? Is it the idea that women who want to wear it are being brainwashed? But how do you determine a free commitment to tradition, from a false choice, in these matters? That young girls are being raised in situations where they’re not offered choices for greater freedom of expression? But what about less visibly repressive cultures such as strict Christian sects or orthodox Jewish ones?
None of it adds up for the simple reason that the burqa ban is a mass displacement. Some of it is engineered, as a way of creating support for the Afghan war, but for nationalism, liberalism, and yes, some types of feminism, it serves as a way of avoiding a deeper confrontation with the degree to which their own projects have become stalled and increasingly irrelevant.
Yes why isn’t Elizabeth Farrelly out to set free the children and women confined by the EB, or the orthodox Jewish women and their restrictive lives and garb?
I don’t much care what anyone wears and the so-called new age liberationists have lost the plot.
The reason we old broads wanted liberation is so that woman had the right to choose, whether other women like it or not.
We didn’t win the war so these regressive juveniles could misunderstand what it was about.
If a woman chooses to wear such and such why is it our business?
We haven’t banned budgie smugglers after the horrors of Debnam and Abbott being seen in public in them.
When I was growing up it was considered rude not to take off your sunglasses when speaking to someone especially those mirrored sunnies that coppers favoured. I consider the burqa to be simially rude in that one person is refusing to show their face in a conversation. However it is not appropiate to make them illegal. (Interestingly I believe there is a strong belief among many muslems that burqas are overdoing it and should not be encouraged).
Your mention of repressive strictures in many fundamentalist groups raises the question of child abuse in that these children are carefully kept from all opposing thoughts and isolated from the general community. The catholic church are coping a lot of criticism for their tolerance of abusers but small cults routinely sail under the radar.
When I am Prime Minister, we will have National Nude Day. Failure to comply will result in a 30 day prison sentence (emergency service workers exempt).
But every other day, anyone can where whatever they hell they want.
Guy Rundle seems as confused about Burqa bans as about same sex parenting males. After some confusion about what he thinks, he seems to acknowledge the bans are about something else, but then joins into the attack on feminisms which much of this debate is about. This issue is another example of a widespread odd and very limited interest in aspects of feminism from men who otherwise ignore gender issues. They used the status of women under the Taliban as the excuse for war and now with many others, somehow accuse feminisms of undermining western democracy for failing to condemn a dress code.
I reiterate my criticism of Farelly’s views in a letter to the SMH. It is not appropriate to use the power of the state to express disapproval or approval of dress codes, which to me should be the end of the story.
Being coerced to wear certain garments or not may raise legal issues but that is a separate issues and unlikely to happen as conservatives would not impose such strictures in families.
evacox
Debate on the burqa has wandered all over the place from Fred Nile to feminism to human rights to religion. However, the strongest argument against the burqa (and niqab) is a sociological one. In Western countries the face is an essential part of one’s identity and social interaction. We all rely on the face as an expression of who you are and the emotions you feel. In many ways, you are your face; without it, you are a figure without identity. People with covered faces become in a sense invisible. In particular, one’s eyes and mouth can convey a lot in conversation. What a loss to us all if smiling and laughing should no longer be visible. So I have no problems with the hijab, but the burqa and niqab are blatantly antisocial and therefore unacceptable. This would be just as true for males should they advocate wearing a full face covering in public. The fact that not many Muslims wear a burqa is irrelevant to the principle. If you’re not prepared to accept a large number of burqa wearers, why wait until a large number eventuates? It is not acceptable for anyone to appear naked in public, thus demonstrating that “freedom” is always constrained to some extent.