France’s controversial ban on public face cover, two years in the planning, went into effect on Monday. Any woman wearing the burka or niqab in public is now subject to a $216 fine, and/or may be forced to attend classes on French citizenship. It is estimated that about 2000 women out of about five million Muslims in France presently wear the veil.
Predictably there was pushback from disgruntled opposition. A made-for-media protester, Kenza Drider, age 34, of Moroccan provenance, wearing a distinctive, media-friendly cream and black niqab, travelled from Avignon to Paris to take part in a demonstration against the ban.
Ms Drider is not a typical niqab wearer in that she insists her practice is not about religious observance, but about her own freedom to do as she pleases – indeed, news reports say her husband was “shocked” when she decided to start wearing the niqab 13 years ago.
She is feisty and defiant, and seems to be delighting in the media attention her provocation has garnered. Responding to a question about punishment for breaking the new law, Ms Drider said, “Fines? They don’t bother me. What is the state going to do, send a policeman outside my front door to give me a ticket every time I go out?”
Ms. Drider makes an excellent point, one that the French government should have considered when the ban was first conceived. In general, the ban against face cover is a good thing. As I have argued many times, face cover is as indecent in our culture as public nakedness is; it just sits at the opposite end of a spectrum in which psychological comfort for all means respect for a code that permits reciprocal trust between citizens. Nobody is forced to walk around naked, but for every woman who voluntarily puts on face cover, whether for religious or ideological reasons, there are many more who wear it because they have no choice. Face cover is demeaning to women and antithetical to a culture that is firmly committed to gender equality.
However, the ban as the French have construed it is far too broad to apply discretely and universally. Ms Drider is quite right to challenge the authorities. What are police going to do if twenty women parade down the Champs-Élysées in niqabs as a protest? Drag them physically to jail? Rip off the veils? If they did, the public outcry would be swift and passionate. The women would be held up as martyrs to religious freedom and the ban would surely become such a hot potato politically, overturning it would necessarily become a solid plank in any savvy politician’s platform.
One can see that the police do not have the stomach to arrest women for face cover. Ms Drider was detained, but on the grounds that she was taking part in an unauthorized protest, not for face cover.
France should have taken a leaf from Quebec’s playbook. Quebec’s proposed Bill 94 is also a ban on face cover, but it is not a blanket ban. Bill 94 stipulates only that women may not give or receive services in publicly funded institutions. That is, they may walk freely about the streets, but can not expect to apply for a driver’s licence, vote, appear in court, get treated in a hospital, be eligible for any teaching or daycare job wearing face cover, and so forth.
This law will have the effect of making life for a veiled woman such a nuisance that it won’t be worth it in the end. It will discourage those who have not yet taken up the practice. It will send the message to incoming immigrants that the practice is alien to our culture and abhorrent to us.
Once Quebec is at it, it would be a good thing if Bill 94 tacked on the right of businesses to refuse service to veiled customers (for banks this is a particularly necessary security measure) and to refuse applications for jobs to women who wear them, as well as the right to fire women who decide to wear face cover after they have been hired.
Face cover is gender apartheid. It is not a religious custom, but it is a very aggressive public statement, a stunning insult to every social value the West stands for. It must be fought every inch of the way. But because the veil is about women and emotion and freedom and Islamism, it must be fought intelligently. France’s intentions were honourable, but their failure of imagination may see them reap the whirlwind on this controversial issue.