France, like most Western countries, prides itself on individual freedoms. It has a long history of dissent and uprising when these norms are threatened or minimized in anyway. Immigrants change French social structures because they bring with them their own cultural norms and traditions. The transition is not always smooth, as hardliners often aggressively push to maintain traditional norms, thus clashing with those who want to assimilate. Now, in the name of freedom, the Republic of France has decided to limit the options on what women wear. France is now considering banning the wearing of a burqa in public.
Contrary to popular belief, the Q’uran calls for both men and women to be modest in dress, but does not specifically demand the wearing of either the burqa or the niqab. There are countless women who are forced to wear these garments against their will; however, many women today consider the burqa or the niqab a part of their observation of faith and a commitment to modesty.
At Versailles this week, President Sarkozy stated,
Sarkozy employs colonialist rhetoric even as he uses the words freedom and liberation. Western nations have often spoken about elevating those that they deem as marginalized bodies, even as they imposed values or traditions that are offensive and operate to maintain Western privilege. Many of the women wearing the burqa in France originate from Africa, and this, to some degree, legitimizes the white man’s burden in the eyes of men like Sarkozy. The third-world woman is always denied her agency as a means of paternalistic oppression; her stated desires are always discounted. Freedom comes from the ability to choose your own means of self-expression, not from being forced into what is deemed ‘liberating’ clothing.
If this law passes, these same women that the French government is supposedly attempting to empower will not be able to leave their homes because it is unacceptable for them to appear burqa-less in the presence of males that they are not related to. If interaction with the public is reduced, it becomes even less likely that any potential abuse that they are suffering will come to light. Allowing women to negotiate the terms of interaction further presents opportunities to exchange cultural ideas that will not happen if the rules of engagement are set only by Western standards.
Why does freedom for the women in the West routinely mean the shedding of clothing? We have normalized bikinis, high heeled shoes and short skirts; throughout the Western hemisphere, these items still function as a form of female uniform. The high heel is known to have damaging health effects, and yet we still promote this shoe as a form of standardized beauty. We view this fashion as liberation and choice, and yet as any socially aware woman will tell you, failure to perform femininity is not without consequence. The Western world is not more liberated; it simply has normalized its oppression through the normalization of different cultures as uniquely impinging upon women’s rights.
Banning women from wearing the burqa is not about freedom, it is about the normalization of the Western performance of femininity. Though this law has received support from some feminist groups, this does not grant the decision any greater legitimacy, as patriarchy has become reliant on women to assert its power and privilege. Without the collusion of women, patriarchy would be unable to act in such a totalizing manner. The support of women’s groups for this proposed law is based on maintaining a hierarchy of bodies, in that their approval allows them to assert power thereby reinforcing that the bodies and or ideas that matter are strictly Western. As is often the case, if it can be understood that marginalizing members of our own group will allow the traditionally powerless to express power, hierarchy is quickly reaffirmed. No one wants to be at the bottom of the social pyramid.
It is tempting to assert our privilege and play upon the understanding of those that wear the burqa as uniquely oppressed, however if we allow this sentiment to prevail we are devaluing the very bodies we claim to be concerned about. Agency can only be affirmed though the promotion of choice and a respect for the ways in which we differ. A monolithic construct of femininity is something we should uniformly fight against as it is the basis of all woman centered oppression.
Renee, i am a fan of your work on this site. However, on this occasion, i totally disagree. I fear that your article is part of a trend amongst liberal democrats in Europe and the US that ultimately ends up serving as an excuse or legitimate cover for the proponents of political, social and religious backwardness in our Arab and Muslim worlds. You simply cannot try to understand or explain everything in the context of local culture. There is a point in which you have to draw the line. There are things that are simply WRONG, and no amount of political correctness or cultural sensitivity should blur that truth. For a woman to be asked to be covered from head to toe, and have her face and hands covered, and walk around unable to see or be seen, is SIMPLY WRONG. There is no choice in any such oppression. There is no cultural angle in any such nonsense. This is a social disease and I, as a Muslim, must do all within my power to fight that. And people like us need support from the Liberals of Europre and the US. Many other examples abound. Are you going to defend the prohibition on Saudi women driving or working as a matter of empowering choice? Are we going to say that it is a choice to be respected that, essentially, a woman in Saudi cannot do anything without being accompanied by a man! Come on. Enough with the political correctness. Let’s just call oppression and backwardness by their true names. And I speak here as a Muslim and as an Arab. We need the support of liberals like yourself and we don’t want you to get lost in futile attempts to evince extreme and ultimately defeatist cultural sensitivty!!
@Reclaim Islam
I am not in support of a woman being forced to wear a burqa against her will, however at the same time I cannot support the government legislating what a woman can wear. I think that in a country as supposedly liberal as France that this is a backward step. What we must seek to do instead make cultural bridges that allow women to get education so that they can be empowered to make their own decisions as well as set up social relief so that if they are forced to leave that they can arrive at safe havens.
Stating what women can and cannot wear is incredibly sexist and controlling, and here the French premier has aimed this control at women who are overwhelmingly of colour.
Yes, it is Incredibly wrong to force women to wear a veil of any type. Yes, it is equally wrong to deny women the right to wear one if they so choose. This sort of heavy handed “freedom!” relaive is utterly ignoring the agency of female POC, and it’s absolutely the right thing to speak against it. Great post Renee.
Thanks for this, Renee. I’ve been so frustrated to see people who identify as feminists speaking out in support of the French proposal — which points to one of the reasons I don’t call myself a feminist, actually. This is one of the best illustrations of why many women don’t feel welcome in the Western feminist movement. The denial of agency to these Muslim women, the inability or refusal to step outside of a secular paradigm to understand these practices, and the reinscription of Orientalism on the bodies of the ‘other’ — it upsets me immensely. As a (non-Muslim) woman of faith who strongly believes in gender-equity, I often feel like many ‘progressives’ are unhappy with anything which calls into question the values of their own individualistic, secular, Western worldview.
Thank you Renee, as once again you’ve hit the nail on the head. there was a discussion about this on question time lat night and we had a former editor of the sun newspaper say how islam is a backward religion and its view on women is one of them being second class and that the burqa should be banned. probably not surprising from the paper that brought us page 3 he would have that view. problem is no one could argue with him because non of them were muslim women or even muslims and some in the audience-also non muslims felt it was ok to speak on our behalf. we dont need anyone to speak on our behalf thank you. in fact the one woman who had contact with muslims said the panel would be surprised how many muslim women in european countries choose to wear it. your line about “it is about the normalization of the Western performance of femininity” is not somthing i have seen anyone bring up before and it really feels like your scratching well beneath the surface. thank you so much Renee!
This is a fascinating topic and will be a very interesting one to follow in the future. It should be a personal decision – not banned, nor enforced. Though I do understand there are some technicality issues with this (see http://www.mindreign.com/en/mindshare/World-Politics-and-Current-Events/Sarkozy-3a-e2-80-9cMuslim-Burqas-are-Unwelcome-e2-80-9d/sl34045952bp295cpp10pn1.html). Looking forward to hearing the results of this soon….
I also told them (the students) that while in Afghanistan, I asked all of the many women I met there whether they liked wearing a burka. Not one said yes. In fact, they all said they hated it almost as much as they hated the Taliban.
It’s no wonder. The burka’s toll on these women was harsh. Many had lost most of their teeth and hair as a result of not having enough vitamin D, which comes from the sun. During the time of Taliban rule no portion of their skin, save their hands, was ever allowed to be exposed to sunlight.
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/sane+free+person+would+choose+wear+burka/1739277/story.html
This is a really awesome post, Renee.
Excellent post. I agree with posters on other sites (Feministe for one) who think this law through to its logical conclusion and what will likely happen to some women. If a woman is forced to wear a burqa by males in her family, and the burqa is then made illegal, the males will not be likely to allow her out of the house, and she will more often than not be confined to the home, isolated and without support. Given the choice between seeing women wearing a burqa in public vs. NOT seeing women because they’re confined to their home, I’d opt for the former.
Laws like this are made by people who will never have to bear the real life consequences of their enactment.
Yep, good article. There are basically two centres of power here: one side saying that women should be forced to wear the burqa, and one side saying that they should be banned from wearing it. This is just an exercise in removing power from those untrustworthy foreign brown men and placing it in its “rightful” place: in the hands of rich white men. As if those were the only two choices. I mean, actually promoting women’s agency without legislating what they can or can’t do? What a CRAZY suggestion!
–Should be a personal decision, neither banned, nor enforced.
I agree with this. I think that Sarkozy’s decision was wrong, as no harm comes of free choice (though family and social pressures in some Muslim communities probably often render such “free choice” theoretical, in practice).
I appreciate what Reclaim Islam and Kafirist are saying, and I absolutely detest the Taliban’s and the Algerians’ forcing of women to wear “modest dress” on pain of beatings or being shot to death, as many Algerian women were during the 1990s civil war there. The so-called “honor killings” that have occurred in Germany, when Muslim women have been murdered by family members for wearing “immodest dress” or dating (horreur!) also disgust me. I also experienced much angry denunciation as a “cultural imperialist” when I deplored these phenomena at university, and I agree with Reclaim Islam that such things should not be tolerated in the name of “sensitivity.” My rejoinder on the question of Algerian women being forced to veil on pain of being shot to death, was: it’s not cultural imperialism to defend the women, because who the heck said that they were less Muslim than the people shooting them?
However, in Sarkozy’s case, he is also removing women’s personal choice; just in the other direction. If one is non-violent, one should be allowed a freedom instead of being denied it.
I applaud Sarcozy’s decision. There is no religious justification for the burqa. It is a symbol of oppression against women. Moreover, it is not part of a long-standing cultural tradition, but a practice ressurrected and enforced by the Taliban, which seized power in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s. I cannot be convinced that a woman wearing a burqa on a hot summer’s day does it by choice or with pride. Violence has been and continues to be used in some countries to enforce the wearing of the burqa or the veil. Women do not “choose” to wear burqas; they are brutally forced to do so.
Why I wear a Hijab ?
By Raseena Sherif
I was asked by a friend about why I wear a hijab. This is my answer.
You asked me ages ago why I wore the hijab. It was always somewhere in my mind – not necessarily always the back – that I should reply and I finally decided I wouldn’t put off your reply any longer, and therefore you shall have it.
Having grown up in a practising Muslim household, many things were just handed over to me. And having studied in an Islamic school all my life, consequently having an entirely Muslim circle of friends, I never questioned them. That was the way things were done in my little world, and it was therefore the way I did things too. The hijab was one of them. I grew up in it. Physically and also mentally. I think the question, or at least the one with the more interesting answer, is why I continue to wear the hijab even after having spent more than three years now, in Christian colleges, and with a friend circle that is largely non- Muslim.
There are many things I found in the hijab as I grew up. Things as varied as the convenience of not having to spend considerable amount of worry and time on my wardrobe and outside appearance, to philosophical, spiritual, and you might be surprised to hear this, but even feminist concepts that I feel proud to stand up for and show my belief in.
In wearing a hijab, a woman is identified by the things she does and the things she stands for, rather than her looks. Even as a woman, there are times when I have found myself identifying another woman by her looks, where I might ask “Oh, the one with the long hair?” In underplaying my looks, I force others to look for more in me.
My hijab saves me a lot of the time, effort, thought and worry that would otherwise go into my dress, my hair, my skin and my make up. I think it’s a pity that while theoretically looks aren’t supposed to matter, one must spend so much time and money on them. With the hijab, looking good means looking neat and the best part is that I get to stop where others begin.
As a teenager, I have seen girls go to large extents to look attractive to men. I have heard of an entire class getting their mums to pay for breast implant surgeries as graduation gifts. I have heard of girls hanging themselves because they weren’t invited to a prom. I think it is so demeaning to believe that your worth lies in the admiration of the opposite sex. I think you insult yourself by preening in front of them. People say the hijab is oppressing. I think being compelled, by society, or even worse, by your own mind, to confirm to external standards of beauty is oppression. Mental oppression. In the hijab, I find dignity and freedom.
Corporate circles are aware of power dressing concepts and how women feel that if they dress in certain ways, then they gain power and confidence. Does this mean that there are women out there who are learning that the way they look can earn them power? I guess in their ideology, we in the hijab are powerless. Maybe in the corporate world, the way you dress does give you power – I’m not arguing with the idea. I just don’t want to think of what happens to the self esteem of the people who believe in this theory when they grow old, or lose their beauty.
And honestly, look at the larger picture. In society, the more women are expected to look that way at work, the higher becomes the man’s standards of beauty for women. The more dissatisfied he becomes with “ordinary” women. I think dissatisfaction is where it all starts from – look at the number of broken relationships, broken people, broken homes! I hate to think we are breeding a collective idea in the minds of both men and women about what a “modern day” , “powerful”, “influential” woman is “supposed” to dress like, and subsequently, look like. Why power dressing? Whatever happened to the power of goodness, the power of ability? Isn’t society supposed to run on the power of love?
People say the hijab is “backward”. So I’m guessing I can find forward in the opposite. Hmm. In which industry does the focus lie on beauty, on desire and exposure? It’s the fashion industry! Starve yourself to get the right look, and once you get it, you can rule the world! If you die in the process, oh, how sad! Enjoy your short period of power, by the way, because tomorrow when you lose that figure of yours, you’re going to be dropped like a hot plate and no one is going to turn around and give you a second look. Personally, I think the hijab is fast forward.
I know someone who doesn’t really like the hijab, but finds it convenient to wear one when she’s traveling by bus. She’s saved the stares and the gropes. People wearing hijab find that men don’t mess with them as much when they’re in one. They’re given a decent amount of space when they’re walking down a side walk.
I can go on about the hijab and what it means to me, or what can be found in it. But the reason I wear it is none of them. In Islam, a person does a thing because her Lord asks her to. And because, she has faith. She believes. She believes in the Infinite Wisdom that the Creator of the universe would have. She believes that what comes from Him can be nothing less than the best. That does not translate to unthinking obedience.
In the Quran, we are repeatedly asked to use our brains, and to think for ourselves – not to evaluate everything God asks of us, but to establish for ourselves that there is only One God, Allah, and that the Quran and all that is in it cannot be from any other source than Him. But once you do come to that belief, as I have done, you also believe in His Infinite Wisdom. You don’t need any other source of advice, or knowledge – you have the Creator of the universe in front of you. To settle for a lower source doesn’t make sense. It results in, not blind obedience but faith. And from that point on, it is a spiritual journey.
We continue from there, trying to please Him by following His various injunctions. If He allows us to see the beauty and the wisdom behind them, that’s great. But those reasons do not then become the primary reasons for following those injunctions. The reason for doing what we do remains to please Him. And we feel good about pleasing Him, for we know that He is not a whimsical Lord. What pleases Him is what is good for humanity. Sometimes in so many more ways than we realize. In so many ways that it surprises us when we find another. And because we believe in accountability. That is the reason I wear the hijab.
Looking back now, at how I began to wear the hijab, I’m glad I did start the way I did. In spite of the fact that I prefer to find things out for myself, and hate taking things for granted, or doing things without really believing them. Because having started the way I did, to me, the hijab was always just another type of clothing.
I think about the kind of stereotypes people have about hijabs, and women who wear them, and I know that if I were left to discover the hijab for myself, it would have been tough for me to go beyond those stereotypes, to go back on all that I grew up hearing, seeing and believing, and to allow myself to actually see the hijab for what it is and its beauty. Having grown up wearing it, in a society that didn’t jump to conclusions about me because I did, or look at me like I was weird, I have always felt comfortable in it, and never thought of myself as any different from the rest. It was just my way of dressing. And with the stage for objective evaluation of that type of dressing set, I have come to love that way of dressing above others.
On the other hand, I know there are those that hate the hijab they wear. I feel bad for them – for the fact that they are forced to do something they don’t even understand, and the fact that they haven’t understood something so beautiful. However, I think the saddest part is that they are losing out on both the happiness they might have found in dressing the way they would have liked to, and the happiness they could have found in pleasing their Creator. It’s always our intentions that are considered and if you’re doing something only because you’re forced to, it doesn’t count. You might as well enjoy yourself living life the way you want to. And then if you are fortunate enough to find God for yourself, I think you are really lucky.
In fact, I feel bad for all those Islamic ideologies that are reduced to meaningless customs and traditions, and the joke that they have been allowed to become in the minds of people. Anyway, I won’t start on that or I shall go on for a couple more pages. I just want to ask you to make a distinction between actual Islamic ideology and the actions that one sees from some people born into Muslim households – especially the kind I heard you grew up with.
In the hijab, honestly, I feel blessed.
Hi Renee,
Thanks for your excellent analysis on the subject.
If France’s version of secularism is so fragile, that even some kind of clothes could demolish it, well, it doesn’t deserve a survival.
As a Muslim Lady, I want to say certain things:
There are lots of misconceptions about MUSLIM WOMEN in West, let me make things clear:
1. Western media needs to do survey of Muslim countries to find out real picture, it shouldn’t be Biased.
2. Read Chapter NISA(Women) from holy Quran, it speaks about Women Rights, to Property, Education, Work, Liberty and freedom of thought and speech.
3. 50% of Business in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is headed by Muslim Women, Read Arab News.
4. There was no Women American President, but Muslim countries had Female leaders like Benazir Bhutto, Khalida zia, sheik Haseena, Megawati Sukhano putri of Indonesia
5. TALIBAN and ALQUIDA don’t represent Islam, there are the monsters created by USA(CIA) Pakistan to counter communism and Soviet block.
6. Through out Islamic History there were great Muslim female leaders like Razia sultana, Ayeaha, MAriyam, Khadeeja, Fatima, Juveriya etc
7. Islam doesn’t restrict female from driving Cars, Saudi Law does, in Islamic history Female warriors rode horses and waged wars.
8. BURQA is no sign of slavery, but sign of Protectiona nd Modesty.
If the wearing of the burqa was free choice I would agree with you. However, it is not. No one has the right to choose for themselves to be a second-class citizen. It is only after years of teachings that cause that. The choice is made after internalization of backward religious teachings. If power was equal I would agree, anyone can wear it. But power is not equal and thus that difference must be taken into consideration.
Even in the liberal West, it is an offence for women to go half naked revealing their whole breasts at public places, in educational institutes, at the churches and other places of worship? It is against public decency. There are restrictions on dress even in Europe, is my contention. So it is in Muslim countries. The difference is only in degree.
Absolute freedom is non-existent in any culture. Being social animals, men and women have animal magnetism and sex appeal. One can never deny the fact that when a young man looking at a woman revealing a major part of her firm, round, shapely and bulging breasts gets sexually excited and would have train of quite often lewd thoughts in his mind.
And in Islam we say, let men and women dress modestly not revealing more than what is necessary. This helps both to restrict their erotica, their sex urge. The following is a verse from the Muslim Holy Book called the QURAN, Quote,
“Tell believing men to lower their look and tell believing women to lower their gaze so that they will guard their modesty” this is a shariah law. Is it too much for Europeans to accept this?
We are not asking for the moon. As the French have fundamental rights, so do others? As it is the fundamental right of a European non-Muslim woman to reveal as much of her beauty as she likes, a Muslim woman has equal fundamental right to cover as much as she wants to cover.
Why does it bother some? It is simple prejudice and bias and hatred of other people’s culture. Islam is the fastest growing religion in Europe as G.B.Shaw said Islam may be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today.
A big issue is in the world is maintaining family values.75% of the marriages in the US end in divorces. How to make families live more happily and successfully. Please read the book, written by a non-Muslim scholar : Karen Armstrong: Title: Muhammad : A Western Approach to islam