A ban on the wearing of the burka in France would help stem the spread of the “cancer” of radical Islam, one of its female Muslim ministers has said.
Urban Regeneration Minister Fadela Amara told the Financial Times that a veil covering everything but the eyes represented “the oppression of women”. Ms Amara said she was “in favour of the burka not existing in my country”.
The comments come as French MPs hold hearings on whether to ban the garment, which covers the body from head to toe.
A 35-year-old French convert to Islam has threatened legal action after she was evicted from a public pool for wearing a “burkini” – a veil, trouser and tunic covering that she said allowed her to swim while preserving her modesty. The case revolving around the pool east of Paris has reopened France’s bitter row about how Muslim women can dress.
Carole, who would not give her surname, bought the suit while on holiday in Dubai and wore it swimming with her children once at a local pool in Emerainville. The second time she wore it, she was banned. “What annoys me is that I have been made to believe this is a political problem,” she told Le Parisien. Carole, who converted to Islam at the age of 17, said she would seek advice from anti-discrimination groups.
Only 367 women in France wear Islamic veils that cover their faces and bodies, a newspaper reported on Wednesday, undermining the position of politicians who are pushing for a ban on the garments.
A panel of legislators is studying the issue of whether the number of women wearing such veils is on the rise and why. The panel is expected to say in coming months whether it backs a ban on the veils in public places, as advocated by some politicians.
The influential newspaper Le Monde said that in light of the tiny number of women concerned, the idea of a ban should be dropped. “Do we need to legislate for fewer than 400 people, legislate for an exception? … Given the risks, including the stigmatisation of Islam … the answer is no,” it said in an editorial.
The intelligence reports cited by Le Monde suggest that the reality of women who cover their faces in France, and why, is quite different from the description given by politicians.
The reports say most women who wear full veils are under 30 and do so to make a political point. Outraged by what they see as widespread anti-Muslim sentiment, they want to defy society and, in some cases, their own relatives.
French converts to Islam account for around a quarter of wearers, the newspaper said, quoting the reports.
Anas Altikriti draws the lessons from the brutal murder of Marwa Al-Sherbini.
“Though disguised under a hypocritical cover of secularism and protecting women’s rights, the anti-burqa campaign is a racist assault on basic individual liberties. It is also particularly dangerous in that it sets precedents whereby the state can outlaw political or religious beliefs it deems contrary to its interests.
“No credence can be given to claims that Muslim women’s rights can be defended by whipping up an anti-Muslim atmosphere and forcing women to modify their beliefs and conduct under the threat of punishment by the state.”
French lawmakers opened hearings Wednesday on whether to ban the burka, calling in experts who said France should act to discourage Muslim women from wearing the head-to-toe veil.
Islam expert Abdennour Bidar called the full veil a “pathology of Islam” embraced by hardline Salafists who tell Muslim women to cover themselves as a way to “get back to their roots”. “It’s up to the republic to help Islam in our country choose its destiny and help French Muslims resist this pressure,” said Bidar. “We must find ways to prevent the burka from spreading.”
Anthropologist Dounia Bouzar said young women had in recent years taken to wearing the full veil after being indoctrinated by “gurus” who pervert Islam’s teachings. She suggested that measures be adopted under France’s security laws barring citizens from concealing their identities by covering their faces, be it with a niqab, a ski mask or even a paper bag. Such a measure would apply equally to all citizens and ensure that France’s five million Muslims do not feel stigmatized for their religion, she argued.
As the hearings got under way, the leader of the governing right-wing majority in parliament came out in favour of a law banning the burka but said it should be preceded by a period of “dialogue” of six months to a year. “We must prohibit what should be prohibited but only after having explained why,” said Jean-Francois Cope, a leading figure in Sarkozy’s UMP party, in an interview to Le Parisien newspaper.
See also Bloomberg, 8 July 2009
“Last week French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced his support for legislation to ban the burka, the dark, heavy and not-too-comfortable garment worn by many Muslim women. The question arises: Is this forcible French secularism run amok, or a prohibition that Americans, who often believe we have struck a better balance between church and state, might entertain? I would say the latter….
“It is quite plainly designed by men for the subjugation of women. One cannot be absolutely sure that no woman has ever donned it voluntarily, but one can certainly say that, in countries where women can choose not to wear it, then not wearing it is the choice they generally make. This disposes right away of the phony argument that religious attire is worn as a matter of ‘right’. … Western masochism about other people’s ‘culture’ often obscures this obvious fact.
“Think of the things that we all have to do now, like submitting to humiliating searches at airports, or showing our ID to people who have no ‘probable cause’ for demanding it. Can we turn up at airport security wearing a bag over our heads? Can we produce a photograph that shows only our eyes through a slit? Of course not….
“And don’t force me to say this, even though I will: One reason we have to undergo such indignities is because of faith-based suicide attacks on our civil aviation, and so far the perpetrators of this nightmare have not been caught wearing crucifixes or Stars of David around their necks….
“It is depressing that our President, in addressing the Muslim world, takes the most reactionary religious practice as the symbol of rights and identity. The klansman’s hood, remember, is also the symbol of a white Protestant religious ‘identity’ movement.”
Christopher Hitchens in the New York Daily News, 1 July 2009
Spare a thought for poor, maligned David Toube. Today he posts an indignant article complaining that Lindsey German of the Stop the War Coalition has misrepresented him and his fellow bloggers at Harry’s Place. She can only get away with this, Toube writes piously, because she knows that “as a matter of principle, I will not sue for defamation”. Given that Toube regularly denounces Muslim activists he disagrees with as racists and fascists, and once described Inayat Bunglawala and myself as the “ideological wing” of the terrorists responsible for the attempted car bombing of Glasgow airport, perhaps he should be grateful that his opponents apply the same principle when responding to his attacks on them.
“Hats off (or should that be chapeaux off?) to French President Nicolas Sarkozy for calling for a ban on the burkha in France…. No British politician would be brave enough to do what Sarkozy did or to follow through with what will almost certainly be a nation-wide ban on the burkha. Our politicians are, unlike our European amis, too cowed by political correctness and misguided multiculturalism to speak out on such a difficult topic and risk offending the two-million-strong Muslim population.
“Except the burkha isn’t a Muslim issue. It’s a British issue. It doesn’t just demean the woman who wears it, it also demeans the men and women who have to see her wearing it…. The idea of a ban is certainly not preposterous…. As Sarkozy pointed out the burkha is a political, not a religious, statement…. It is a direct and explicit criticism of our Western values and belief in the equality of men and women.”
Julia Hartley-Brewer in the Daily Express, 29 June 2009
In the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, with its busy market, fast-food joints and bargain clothes shops, Angelica Winterstein only goes out once a week – and only if she really has to.
“I feel like I’m being judged walking down the street. People tut or spit. In a smart area west of Paris, one man stopped his car and shouted: ‘Why don’t you go back to where you came from?’ But I’m French, I couldn’t be more French,” said the 23-year-old, who was born and raised in bourgeois Versailles.
Once a fervent Catholic, Winterstein converted to Islam at 18. Six months ago she began wearing a loose, floor-length black jilbab, showing only her expertly made-up face from eyebrows to chin. She now wants to add the final piece, and wear full niqab, covering her face and leaving just her eyes visible.
“But this week, after Sarkozy announced that full veils weren’t welcome in France, things have got really difficult,” she said. “As it is, people sometimes shout ‘Ninja’ at me. It’s impossible to find a job – I’m a qualified childminder and get plenty of interviews because of my CV, but when people see me in person, they don’t call back. It’s difficult in this country, there’s a certain mood in the air. I don’t feel comfortable walking around.”
Human rights groups warned this week that the row over niqabs risks exacerbating the growing problem of discrimination against women wearing standard Muslim headscarves. Five years on from the heated national debate over France’s 2004 law banning headscarves and all conspicuous religious symbols from state schools, there has been an increase in general discrimination against adult women who cover their heads.
“Women in standard headscarves have been refused access to voting booths, driving lessons, barred from their own wedding ceremonies at town halls, ejected from university classes and in one case, a woman in a bank was not allowed to withdraw cash from her own account at the counter. This is clear discrimination by people who wrongly use the school law to claim that France is a secular state that doesn’t allow headscarves in public places. It’s utterly illegal and the courts rule in our favour,” said Renee Le Mignot, co-president of the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between Peoples. “Our fear is that the current niqab debate is going to make this general discrimination worse.”
Samy Debah, a history teacher who heads France’s Collective against Islamophobia, said 80% of discrimination cases reported to his group involved women wearing standard headscarves. He had rarely seen any instances of women wearing niqabs, even in the ethnically mixed north Paris suburb where he lives. “From our figures, the biggest discriminator against Muslim women is the state and state officials,” he said. “What people have to understand is that the concept of French secularism is not anti-religion per se, it is supposed to be about respecting all religions.”
Horia Demiati, 30, a French financier who wears a standard headscarf with her business suits, said: “I really fear an increase in hatred.” She recently won a discrimination case after she and her family, including a six-month baby, were refused access to a rural holiday apartment they had booked in the Vosges. The woman who refused them argued that she was a secular feminist and didn’t want to see the headscarf, “an instrument of women’s submission and oppression”, in her establishment.