Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 2004, pages 36-37

Two Views

 

Hijab in the West

 

The Railroad Starts in Paris

 

By Samah Jabr

A new “hate wave” is crossing France following President Jacques Chirac’s decision to ban Islamic headscarves from public schools, grant company executives the right to decide whether religious symbols can be worn at work, and prevent patients from refusing care from doctors of the opposite sex.

The ban is presented as a “reaffirmation for the long-established secularism” in France. The French government proposes to expand and liberalize the law of separation of church and state passed in 1905 which meant—at the time—confining religious observance to the private sphere.

A 1989 resolution issued by the French state council, the country’s top judicial body, stated that, unless it was worn deliberately to offend others, Islamic headscarves did not violate secularism. Nevertheless, the new law, which the French National Assembly passed by a wide margin, is expected to be implemented in the 2004-2005 school year, which starts in September.

Since the debate over this law began, thousands of Muslim women and men have marched through the streets of Paris to protest President Chirac’s proposal. Leading the demonstrators were schoolgirls, wearing French tricolor headscarves—the blue, white and red symbolizing France’s most cherished values of liberty, equality and fraternity—and singing the French national anthem.

Appealing to their government and concerned fellow citizens, the marchers carried banners reading “The Veil Is My Choice,” and chanted, “Don’t touch my shyness,” and “Beloved France, Where is my liberty?” Some held their identity cards above their heads or pinned enlarged photocopies of their voter cards on their chests to show that they are no less French than their compatriots.

While the ban on “the ostentatious wearing of any conspicuous religious symbols” include Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses, the Islamic headscarf is the center of this crisis. While banning the former also is an intrusion and a violation of personal freedom, the major difference with regard to the hijab is that the Islamic headscarf is functional rather than symbolic; the scarf serves to cover a Muslim woman’s hair, neck, and the upper part of her chest, as a manifestation of the modesty perceived as obligatory by many adherents of Islam.

Unlike French Catholics and Jews, moreover, Muslims will not have alternative private schools or private Muslim companies to take them in when they are dismissed from the French community because of what they wear.

There are other aspects to this issue, however. This acute crisis is superimposed on the underlying “problem” of France’s growing North African Arab community, comprising primarily Algerians. The few million brought to France as laborers three generations ago have grown into a community that today represents 10 percent of the French nation. With their increased visibility has come increased awareness of their different look, culture, and mentality. No longer merely imported laborers—even if that is how most of them earn their living—today they are citizens whose native language is French. Not surprisingly, they are demanding rights and inclusion into the fabric of French society.

 

A Feverish Media Campaign

Over the past few months I have been following closely the feverish French media coverage of the proposed law, and the resulting attention to Muslims and Islamic issues. The effort to stigmatize, isolate and stereotype Muslims, and especially Muslim women, has been relentless.

This intensive campaign against the visibility of Islam in France has been orchestrated by French mainstream papers, radio and TV, and by a few French intellectuals who set the norms for the French society. Not only do the French mainstream media not provide a stage for Muslim intellectuals who cherish their religion to speak out, but they also target, discredit and undermine those who attempt to do so—such as Tarek Ramadan, a Muslim scholar who is gaining popularity among Francophone Muslims.

Several TV programs on the hijab were broadcast without any Muslim participants, or misrepresented Muslims. For example, Chahdortt Djavann, author of the book Bas Les Voiles (Put Down the Veil), was the only Muslim interviewed in Agapé’s special program on the issue, “La Religion une Affaire Privée” (“Religion, a Private Affair”).

Anti-Islamic stings are even to be found in art and humanitarian efforts. In one episode of the interesting French TV show “Dr. Sylvestre,” for example, a Muslim woman rebuffs the charming male doctor. He behaves very gently with her, however, and goes out of his way to demonstrate the medical examination on her son, who subsequently examines his mother. The son then explains to the doctor where his mother’s pain is. It worked—not the medical examination, but the unfair stereotyping of Muslim behavior.

Another example is a popular advertisement showing a picture of a masked surgical team which reads: “Send veiled people to Afghanistan”—thereby depriving the veil of its significance and making a mockery of other people’s values and tradition.

It is an established trend in French cinema, moreover, to portray the Muslim who drinks and sleeps with women as the “good” guy and the one who wakes up early in the morning to pray as one who has several wives and kills his daughter by the end of the movie.

It is stunning, moreover, how ill-informed about Islam are the intellectuals who are trying to impose a dress code on Muslims. Not only do they not distinguish between what is symbolic and what is functional, and draw a false comparison between the role of the mosque today and the Catholic Church in France of yesteryear, but they make such ridiculous statements as, for example, “There are Muslim Arabs and Muslim Christians in Iraq.”

Some “understanding” others suggest that, since Islam arrived 600 years after Christianity, it is no wonder that it will always lag behind the West and the Christian world. “How do you expect the Muslims of today to do what we did 100 years ago?” they ask. Then there are those who oppose the law not because they are better informed, but because they fear Muslims’ reactionary behavior might make Islam even more visible.

Those obsessed with ethnic purity express fears about “changing—or maybe disfiguring—the face of Europe.” If Muslims don’t submit to the norms of Western society, they argue, why are they living among us? Apparently exposing women’s bodies is the Western norm Muslims are violating. Perhaps non-Muslim French women should be ordered to wear bikinis.

A few apologetic people are trying to find excuses for the behavior of their countrymen. The government is trying to help the oppressed Muslim women by this law, they say, arguing that Muslim schoolgirls use the veil as an excuse not to participate in sports and activities. If the government really has these good intentions, however, it could deal with these exceptions as it does with other cases of abuse and lack of discipline at school.

The real motivation behind an individual woman’s decision to wear the veil is beyond my knowledge and that of the French government and media. Whether it is out of modesty, fashion, tradition, or because a Muslim woman is on chemotherapy, what people wear and do with their bodies is a private choice that should be respected—just as Western countries allow their citizens to sport large and small tattoos or dye their hair purple and green.

 

Expressions of Hostility

There is no doubt that the media’s negative image and coverage of Islam and Muslims have affected the beliefs and behavior of the French people. Many of them now engage in racist behavior and do not hesistate to confront a veiled woman.

Over the Christmas holidays, for example, I looked forward to attending a concert at Notre Dame Cathedral. After a couple of hours of listening to Bach’s magnificent music, an older Frenchman came to me and said harshly: “Don’t wear the white headscarf, the contrast it makes with the darkness bothers the eyes.” Does blond or white hair bother French eyes as well, one wonders? While walking down a Paris street, a friend of mine was asked to remove “this toilet paper” from her head.

I’ve been to many Western countries and occasionally heard people muttering under their breaths, but since my arrival in Paris, not a single day goes by without my hearing a brazen insult about my veil—let alone being subjected to the looks and gestures of rejection and annoyance people frequently throw at me.

Nor have all the ramifications of the French ban been subjected to analysis. “Big” crosses will be banned from clothing, for example, while “small” ones are acceptable. The Islamic veil, however, is banned—period—whether one wears it for fashion or to maintain a hair style on a rainy day. But “beards are allowed at this stage, because it is difficult to know the motivation behind them.” Where does this nonsense stop?

Outrageous official reports and media programs suggest that Muslim women are forced to wear headscarves by male relatives or to avoid being insulted by men in public. Accordingly, the ban is supposed to “free terrorized Muslim women.” It simply does not occur to them that the vast majority of Muslim women chose to wear the veil. They wouldn’t dare suggest that Jewish men wear the kippa because they are forced to by their women. Why, one wonders, does the West want to interfere in the lives of those whom they perceive as “oppressed” when Muslim women are not complaining about it?

Over Christmas France looked as pretty as other Christian countries, with holiday decorations, lights and feasts. So much for French laïcité, or secularism. What is one to make of a selective laïcité which provides Jewish women’s associations with special days in swimming pools—but deprives a veiled teenager of an education?

This is indeed a difficult time, one that requires of Muslims a responsible, restrained and steadfast response.

It is essential, of course, that French Muslims remain loyal citizens, with full participation in society. Social cohesion and civil peace must be maintained. While adhering to a peaceful French Islam, both culturally and ethically, it is equally important that French Muslims develop secular resources for an ideological and legal dialogue with their fellow citizens and government.

Ultimately, what is occurring in France today is an issue of human rights. The French military grants exemptions from service to those whose religion or conscience prohibits them from engaging in war. Muslim schoolgirls are asking only that the government not touch their shyness and respect their choice to fulfil what they consider a religious duty. Can French compassion not show more understanding for these girls’ desire to practice their beliefs?

Samah Jabr is a Jerusalem-born physician currently studying in Paris.

 

Piece of Cloth

 

By Laila Saada

This past summer, I went back home to Egypt. I expected to see rampant resentment toward U.S. foreign policy in the Mideast. What I didn’t expect, however, was a radical shift in people’s attitude toward me, as an Arab and a Muslim now living in the United States.

It was obvious from conversations with friends and family that because I now live among the “others,” I have an obligation to educate them about my religion, to resist their demonization of Islam and, more importantly, to be visible in my protests. And what could be more obvious than taking on the veil?

I have always thought that religious belief and its practice are matters of personal choice, veiling included; for a majority of Muslims, this is indeed the case. But is wearing the veil as a sign of solidarity no longer optional in a post-Sept. 11 world, where the whole faith seems to be under assault in the West?

In Egypt, I found that the veil had become increasingly central to women’s discourse and identity. I found that faith, once largely private, was forced to take on a public face and be used as a statement. On the personal level, I found myself repeatedly judged according to such new standards of piousness, or at least the outward signs of it.

Back in New York, I discovered that the veil, which is really tangential to the practice of Islam, has taken on importance for Muslim women living in the United States as well. Now I wonder: Does the fact that I will not wear the veil mean that I do not show enough solidarity with Muslims here?

I raised these questions with my cousin, who lives in Los Angeles and wears the veil. Two years ago a driver cut her off, forcing her to swerve off the road and nearly fall off the edge of the highway. It was during the wave of backlash against Arabs that followed the Sept. 11 attacks. She wore the veil, even though the Grand Mufti, the highest religious authority in Egypt, had issued a decree allowing women to take it off to protect their lives during those trying times.

For my cousin, a mother of a 3-year-old, keeping the veil was more crucial than her safety. It’s the first thing people see, she said.

True, the veil is visible, and true, no one has the right to impose on Muslim women a dress code or, rather, a lack of it. True also, as my cousin says, by sticking to her values, she teaches people to look beyond her headscarf and actually know her person.

She dismisses as ridiculous the notion that veiling means backwardness or repression, as the U.S. media has suggested in its portrayal of the Afghan burqa, which was required of women under the Taliban and became optional after they were overthrown.

I applaud my cousin for her courage. Yet, I feel uncomfortable when a piece of head covering becomes the focus of political expression. Is this piece of cloth Islam’s best first line of defense against Western backlash? Especially when it can take so many different forms: headscarf, burqa, niqab (the Egyptian version of a burqa), Bedouin head cover and so on. In Egypt, which version you choose can send a particular message. Generally a veil is thought to project modesty, but displays of class and piousness are associated with particular types.

It’s not so true inside Egypt, where most people are Muslim, but by obsessing about the veil in the United States, Muslim women reinforce the notion that Arabs are a different breed. Muslim women in effect wrap their scarves around their community, alienating all “others.” This alienates us too, Muslim women who don’t necessarily want to wear a veil. Yet it does not absolve us from our responsibility to shed more light on Islam and one of its core values, tolerance.

While I agree with the principle of non-violent protest and expression of solidarity, I don’t approve of the veil being mobilized to reclaim the image of Islam in Western eyes. To me, Islam is much more than just an image and the symbols that go with it.

I’m afraid that until women focus more on interaction and open dialogue with non-Muslims, and less on positioning ourselves as “us versus them,” all we do is stretch the boundaries that separate us without ever actually taking down the barriers. For me, sustaining a dialogue that leads to mutual understanding is the truest expression of faith and solidarity that I can show and be comfortable with.

Laila Saada is an Egyptian graduate student in journalism and Near East studies at New York University. This article first appeared in the Nov. 30, 2003 edition of Newsday. Reprinted with permission.

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