What We Say Goes

All values and cultures welcome in Europe, as long as they're ours

So apparently Muslim women in Europe are being forced to wear veils and are therefore so subjugated by their male counterparts, they require mainly old, white men to force them stop wearing the veil in public. In the latest case of this, the clearly feminist members of the French parliament have taken it upon themselves to fight for poor Muslim women throughout the country who, we are led to believe, are completely enslaved.

Speaking after a group of MPs requested an inquiry into the “degrading” use of the burka and niqab, government spokesman Luc Chatel said it was important to establish to what extent women’s rights were being compromised by the garments.

The Communist MP who led the call this week for an inquiry, André Gerin, denounced the garments as walking prisons. In his request, backed by 57 other MPs, mostly from Nicolas Sarkozy’s centre-right UMP party, he said: “The sight of these imprisoned women is already intolerable to us when they come from Iran, Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia … It is totally unacceptable on French soil.”

Sarkozy’s leftwing urban policies secretary, herself a Muslim and former president of a women’s rights group, today gave her support to “a total ban” on the burka. “I am for the banning of this coffin which kills basic freedoms…”

There are so many hypocrisies in this discussion, it’s barely worth pointing out. These people completely overlook the fact that many (especially younger) Muslim women choose to wear a headscarf or veil to reinforce the commitment to their faith and cultural backgrounds, don’t want to be sexually objectified (and the mental disorders that that has caused many young women) and related to by others on an intellectual level rather than sexually. It also seems that rather than asking these women their opinion on the matter, many French members of parliament are looking to implement an outright ban, as soon as possible, apparently for Muslim women’s own good.

Obviously Muslim women and their families are regarded as so backward, they cannot see the follies of their own action, and therefore need to be saved by the great and the good white (often catholic) males. I’m sure they also weep a tear and shout in indignation at the injustice of it all when they come across a Catholic nun wearing a headdress & clothing that covers their bodies as they walk down L’Avenue des Champs Elysees.

Salma Yaqoob, a Birmingham City councillor for the Respect Party makes some good points on the matter in a speech from 2004;

“Muslim women find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place. We are caught between those who claim to protect us – the many Muslim men who act to restrict our movement and freedoms, and those who claim to liberate us – killing us with their bombs and allowing us no voice unless it mirrors exactly their own. The women of Afghanistan are an example of this…

We have to get past the simple caricatures of the passive victim or aggressive fundamentalist. We have to recognise that while the road to female emancipation in the West has taken the route of the right to not be covered in response to the rigid expectations placed on women historically in terms of dress and societal roles, many women may choose to liberate themselves in different ways, and just because the trajectory of their resistance to oppression is different, it does not make it any less legitimate or significant…

For many Muslim women wearing the Hijab marks a rejection of a world where women have to endure objectification as sex objects. It helps them to enjoy a sense of their own (special) privacy and personhood. For me, the wearing of the hijab denotes that as a woman I expect to be treated as an equal in terms of my intellect and personality and my appearance is relevant only to the degree that I want it to be, when I want it to be.

The French philosopher Alain Badiou, responding to the banning of hijab in French schools makes the point that the headscarf law is a pure capitalist law in that it orders femininity to be exposed. He suggests that by banning all reserve women are brought into the market paradigm and are forced to display their bodies as merchandise. He further asks the question: ‘Is it not even more mean and petty for a woman at school to act as a sandwich board for a corporation than as a follower of God?’

Indeed it is true that while the Western feminist movement campaigned over many years for the right of women to be uncovered in public this ‘right’ has quickly been appropriated by the forces of capitalism and consumerism. So much so that we are at a point in time where much unhappiness, depression, eating disorders etc are directly attributable to the pressures on women to be seen to be sexually attractive. Clearly such expectations and consequences are oppressive to women. Prevailing cultural norms mean that young girls are robbed of their childhood as their clothes reflect and emphasise female sexuality; and older women are made to feel irrelevant…”

Obviously France has its only republican values to uphold in terms of cultural identity and the separation of church and state, but this discussion takes place all over Europe where many people undoubtedly view themselves as holding a superior value system, than Muslims. It’s none of my business what Muslim women wear (or any other religious group), it doesn’t impact me personally, I don’t feel my female friends are enslaved by their choice of clothing when I speak to them and I’m not arrogant enough to claim to know what’s best for a entire section of the community. Let it go.