The burqa is a common sight on the streets of Philadelphia, and no one seems to be worse off for it. I admit that I don’t care for them, but it’s something I easily tolerate. However…
France’s justice minister went before parliament Tuesday to defend a hotly debated bill that would ban burqa-style Islamic veils in public, arguing that hiding your face from your neighbors is a violation of French values.
Michele Alliot-Marie’s speech at the National Assembly marked the start of parliamentary debate on the bill. It is widely expected to become law, despite the concerns of many French Muslims, who fear it will stigmatize them.
What do you think?
I’m…ambivalent to bans on them. I don’t think the bans are intruding on liberty, but I don’t think they’re a good way at solving what I perceive to be a problem. So, meh…
I think Sarkozy is a racist and that’s what’s driving the bans there, personally.
I think you touched the rock bottom here: it is the hand of bigotry working, as well as a failure of church-state separation, which seems to be motivating these laws. In this case, the state is not only not protecting the individual from the majority, but is in collusion with it.
I’d like to ask whether France would be willing to outlaw all public displays of religious behavior, like church bell ringing on Sunday mornings, calling Christians for services or mass?
See, I don’t see the burqa as a religious tradition, it’s cultural in its origins. There’s evidence of it existing before Islam was even invented.
In so much as it’s religious, however, Afghanistan Muslim women once wore head scarves similar to the women in Iran, or none at all! This was before the Russian invasion, of course.
In any case, I do not believe in cultural relativism. Sexism is a form of violence, and I do not think it should be tolerated; I see the burqa as a sexist “tradition” by putting the onus of men’s sexual and power trips on women, just as has been done for centuries. When it comes to basic human rights, nothing pisses me off more than arguments based on “cultural acceptance”. I just don’t think banning it is a good way at combating a way of thinking. Education is the most important tool, that’s what we should use. Banning it will be seen as a war on them, their culture, their religion, and their people. This will not be productive.
Outlawing the burka then is an act of intolerance in spite of its association with anti-feminism. “Education is the most important tool,” you said, and no one would disagree with that conclusion.
In our culture men are allowed to parade themselves on beaches topless while women (generally) are not – is that be a sexist “tradition”?
Yes, it is. It’s just in a different form; female breasts are sexualized and their purpose, to feed infants, is ignored.
If you want to argue that the veils perpetuate a sexist cultural practice, that’s at least a valid argument. I don’t agree … but it’s an argument that represents a valid and fair position.
But this? “hiding your face from your neighbors is a violation of French values”
That’s pretty blatantly racist.
I don’t see the difference. France is in effect saying that wearing a veil is a sexist cultural practice that violates French values.
Why is dress – any dress – any of a government’s business? Not liking something is not the same as needing a law.
Once again…
Certain situations demand your face be uncovered. Such as identification photos on a driver’s license or other security badge–the entire point of the photo is to see the face for easier ID! Certain professions such as government employment where it is important that government employees show their faces to the citizenry as a matter of open government.
Also it should be noted that the use of full body coverings in Western Countries actually produces what the intent of the coverings is to preclude–attention. The result is for the women to draw attention to themselves and what they might be hiding under there, contrary to the stated purpose in the Koran.
Personally I find them self-defeating but am not into prohibiting them for personal use. That said I will say it is disconcerting to be around them not because they are new but because you cannot see their faces.
I personally am in favor of their banning but as a citizen I cannot in good conscience support a blanket ban as that would be a violation of certain freedoms I support. But I am also completely against anyone being forced to wear those coverings including under age women by their parents or siblings. It should be presented as one choice among many as other articles of clothing are.
I teach Muslim students from many different ethnic backgrounds: Yemani, Bengali, Bosnian, Albanian, and Pakistani.
Of all those cultures, the only girls who wear the full body covering are the Yemani girls. And, in my 13 years of teaching, only two girls have worn the face veil, just this past year. I don’t know how much choice any of the girls have in the matter – I’m just glad that their parents allow them to attend high school.
Freedom of religion is a fundamental right. But like all rights it has limits. Mormon men are not allowed to have more than one wife anymore, even though that was once regarded as part of their religion. The burqa is both a symbol and a cause of oppression of women. It restricts women in their day to day activities — that is largely what it is meant to do, in my opinion. It limits women in any profession where a persons face needs to be seen for them to effectively perform their jobs. And try playing softball in one! 🙂 I think they should be banned everywhere, including the middle east.
I felt worse off for it. In its practice and its association with a set of cultural mores, it introduces an oppressiveness that our society is better off without. And I think the oppressiveness of the burqa is greater than the oppressiveness of the intolerance that would ban it.
Let’s complicate the question: let’s say the male family member – husband or 6-year-old son – accompanying the woman wearing the burqa insists that all conversation go through him. No direct interaction with the woman whatsoever. Would anyone other than the woman be worse off for that?
This is playing to the extreme right-wing gallery, aided and abetted by the stupid left who allow themselves to get caught up in arguments about secularism and feminism.
Sarko is doing this because he thinks it will help him get votes that might otherwise go to the likes of Le Pen. It apparently doesn’t work very well, but that’s what he’s doing.
It’s probably unconstitutional, apparently.
In solidarity with another`s cultural choices or lifestyles
(way of life) one should remember that first its the burqas, then its brown shoes, then black motorcycle jackets then baggy pants, bikinis & crucifixes, french fries & lets also get rid of obese people, or Jews, Papuas & Seminoles, American native headress & the few Native Americans that are still around.
Then lets ask everyone for Real ID to make sure they can be allowed to walk free in this great country.
When its political, no one is safe & nothing is sacred.
When its racism, even more so.
What is the difference between the popes robes & pointy hats, judges in black robes on the take, & women who want to wear what they do, be it full covering, a head scarf, or nothing.
Oh I know!! National Security hah, the bottom line excuse.
“We can`t see their face”. Outlaw ski masks so we can be sure they are not used for bank robberies, or trench coats to protect everyone from flashers.
I know I know I forgot the Gypsies, sorry., & yeah vegetarians.
There is no stopping banning anything when we allow bannings to begin with.
Of course certain things shouldn`t be allowed if they inherently may harm other humans, like going to the mall with matches & a case of dynamite sticks, but I`m almost sure you`re all reasonable enough to get my point.
The start of the slippery slope.
Now priests and bishops should be made to drop their dresses.
…but just imagine the reaction if Zorro-style masks became the fashion?
Does 2nd Amendment open-carry rights extend to rapiers? Since they existed in 1791, when the 2nd was ratified, I think by original intent, they have to be included, unlike assault rifles.
Ha HA!
The charge of being un-American is in America a political charge.
The charge of being un-French is in France a cultural charge.
Periodically, French politics delves in politicizing cultural stigmatization. It happened in the Dreyfus affair and now it is happening with the issue of muslim dress. First it was the chador and now that the chador has some acceptance it is the burqa.
And there is an echo of French trauma to it just as American policy in Afghanistan and Iraq have echos of the trauma of the Vietnam War.
That echo is of the battle of Algiers in which women acted as terrorists, first adopting muslim dress and then returning to Western fashions as the French colonial authorities started suppressing muslim dress.
No doubt a popular anxiety, if not fear, about terrorism is driving this policy. But that anxiety comes from the large influx of “un-French” former inhabitants of French colonies and of current French overseas territories.
The folks in the Netherlands have the same anxieties but have taken a different tack to dealing with them politically – they have elected members of a specifically racist party to a significant number of seats in the Dutch parliament.
“The charge of being un-French is in France a cultural charge.”
It is then the beginning of laws against anything un-French, i.e., it is the demonstration of cultural intolerance with all of its racial and ethnic aspects. It is not just about burkas.
Cultural intolerance is not unknown in France, and the party of M. le Pen has traded on it for two decades. The elections in the Netherlands has put European heads of state on notice that there is rising intolerance of immigrants.
But there is a formal defense of French culture that has been a part of politics for some time. A panel of linguists oppose foreign coinages and invent corresponding terms in French. Americanization of the culture was opposed for the last 60 years, and Europeanization of the culture is being opposed now. Unassimilated immigrants just aren’t “French” in the same way that Americans are intolerant of unassimilated ethnic groups. Neither France nor the US has the Canadian concept of a “mosaic of cultures”.
We have instead the concept of the melting pot, and when you mix peoples together from over 170 countries, some semblance of tolerance is a must and is legalized as much as possible.
But there is no doubt that to many this idea is unacceptable, and has even entering politics, as we’re observing today in Arizona.Strangely it seems that it is being perpetrated by the old minorities, whose ancestors were given the same treatment in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
As for the French, it is difficult to understand how McDonald’s fast food could conceivable compete with slow French food. Don’t buy it. I also don’t see French culture or cuisine being threatened by new immigrants who might prefer Arabic food. Will couscous replace the French fry? Just not getting it. Suppose someone decided to open an Italian restaurant in Paris, would that bring forth calls for laws to prevent Italian cuisine being sold in Paris or France as a whole, because it threatens French culture?
I guess my lack of sympathy here is that I was brought up in America among peoples who came here like my parents, from over 170 foreign countries.
the French already banned many “American” words for things: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2008/03/12/french-ban-the-words-email-blog-and-post-box-115
875-20348325/
Idon’t like putting it this way, but as the world gets smaller, the French or some of them are getting smaller still. I’m certain however that most do not go along with official attempts to maintain the culture pure.
I don’t know for certain, but if France is a democracy, then freedom of speech is part and parcel of its democracy. Which is just to say that attempts to curtail impure or foreign speech is likely illegal.
Banning them is a bad idea. Apart from the fact that it’s a sign of weakness,fear and bigotry, it can’t be interpreted by Muslims as anything except an attack on their religion– which of course it is. One of the surest and easiest ways to make enemies is to attack their religion. Fewer people will wear burqas if the government doesn’t make them an issue.
This.
Burqas are not necessarily a religious symbol to most Muslims – they’re a cultural element of certain backwater tribes that have been assimilated into certain ultra-conservative strains of Islam. But the more a government – any government – goes out of their way to hammer on the folks who wear them, the more it will become a symbol of Islam and the more “right-thinking” Muslims will be called upon to wear the burqa to show support.
This is the way this shit always happens and we never fucking learn from it. I understand the desire to minimize sexism (though I don’t think that’s what France is doing here – this is a pissing contest for the French equivalent of “real America” to show that they’re not going to “fight to keep France for the French”), but an outright ban is not going to be effective – it’s just going to radicalize people even more. I don’t know what would be effective, but banning an action generally serves to make the action a political statement – especially when the people most affected are already at the fringes of the culture.
The burqa isn’t a Muslim thing, it’s a cultural thing from particular parts of the Middle East. But for women who grew up wearing it, or seeing their mothers and grandmothers wear it, it’s part of their culture. They may feel uncomfortable without it.
I can see the requirement that ID photos show the full face — that’s what an ID is for.
But otherwise, I don’t think demanding women give up traditional garb is either effective or fair — the sexist traditions that the burqa represents can only be changed by time and assimilation into a more open, multi-cultural society where women have more personal freedom and the education to take advantage of it.
I’m no more interested in requiring women who are accustomed to wearing hijab or a burqa to discard it than I am for society at large to require wearing it. This law sounds like cultural elitism to me, and as such is not going to help the situation — only make cultural tensions with resident ethnic minorities worse.
Personally, I find the full burqa pretty off-putting, but of course, no, the idea of banning it is all wrong.
It points out a real difference between France and the U.S. Let’s take an analogy from US history. During the late 19th century and much of the 20th, the guiding ideology of American Indian policy was to destroy tribal customs as rapidly as possible. One of the chief mechanisms was to place the children in military-style boarding schools far from home for long periods of time where they had to cut their hair short, dress in uniforms, were forbidden to speak their native languages, etc.
Now here’s the point. The people who advocated and developed these mechanisms of imposed cultural assimilation, like Carl Schurz and Capt. Richard Henry Pratt, were liberal humanists who firmly believed that all races have equal capacity to succeed and that the greatest impediment to the Indians was their “primitive” culture. In their view, to leave them under the control of their own parents and elders was to condemn them to a life of savagery and ignorance. If the Indians would learn to fit into the modern world, there is no reason why they could not be good citizens like everyone else.
I am sure that is exactly what the French believe about the Muslim women in burqas.
There is , however, a counter-tradition in America. The idea of religious tolerance , which goes back to liberal Protestants in 17th-century England like John Hales, and the idea of diversity which goes back (in this country anyway) to people like William James and John Collier. But its roots are in our federalism and regionalism, and probably more, with our long history of immigration, racial and religious differences. With all the frictions (including civil war), cultural difference is very much a part of our American liberal humanist heritage.
France evidently has a problem with this. The French cultural world is very much centered in Paris, they have trouble dealing even with their own territorial diversity, which is considerable. Languages like Breton, Occitan, regional dialects, etc. have had to fight a long battle for survival, which Breton at least seems to be losing. But what the French ideologues don’t seem to realize is that enforcing dress codes against minorities will only entrench resistance and create more friction.