France’s “burqa wars” have reached a crucial stage after French Prime Minister François Fillon last week asked the Council of State to help draft a law banning the Islamic veil, or burqa.
The prime minister’s appeal to the administrative court of last resort, which also provides the government with legal advice, follows Wednesday’s parliamentary commission report: after six months of hearings, it recommended a burqa ban in all public service facilities such as buses, hospitals and welfare offices.
The law reflects growing worries by the French public about the increasing visibility of Islam in French society. A recent poll revealed that 57% of the French favor a total ban on the burqa. So while Socialists have accused President Nicolas Sarkozy of using the issue to garner conservative votes ahead of the regional elections in March, the bill does have support from politicians throughout the political spectrum.
Last week’s events are also the culmination of the French government’s two decades of efforts to bar religion from public life. All “prominent” religious signs in the country, including the burqa, were banned from state schools and other public buildings in 2004. A complete ban has been ruled out for now on grounds that it would be unconstitutional.
Leaving aside human rights concerns and moral grounds of the law in addition to its constitutional validity, a more practical question to ask is whether the ban is likely to achieve its goal. The problem is that there are no clearly-defined goals.
The draft law submitted by the ruling Union for a Popular Movement party mid-January suggested a security concern: Any outfit hiding the face, including my very own “V For Vendetta” mask, would be banned. But from what the politicians have been saying, the real goals are to prevent radical Islam and uphold the values of the French republic.
And judging by the statements of President Sarkozy, who labeled the burqa as a sign of subservience and debasement, and Fadela Amara, a Muslim female politician in France who called it a “prison,” the legislation is also burdened with the very noble goal of the emancipation of Muslim women.
It would definitely help if we knew a bit about those would-be-emancipated women. According to Interior Ministry figures and expert testimonies to the parliamentary commission, 1,900, or fewer than one in a thousand, Muslim women in France wear a burqa. Of these, almost all are young, one-third second- or third-generation French nationals and a quarter converts.
It’s safe to assume that at least some of those 1,900 don the burqa because of their genuine religious beliefs, and don’t want to be emancipated. Others probably do so because, in any chauvinistic society that relegates women to the confines of their home like the French Muslim community, wearing a burqa is their only means of going out.
Ironically, Amara’s claims that the 2004 law helped Muslim women face up to male chauvinism are moot, since it could well have imprisoned many of them in their homes
What about those who use the burqa as a political symbol of radical Islam? Would the ban prevent further proselytizing? Not likely, at least judging from my experience living in predominantly Muslim Turkey, which shares an equally fierce secular tradition with France.
The turban, a special type of headscarf used as a symbol of political Islam in Turkey, has been banned from public buildings here, as well as in schools and universities since the early 1980s. While many Turks support the school and public building bans, the 1990s saw rising criticism against the university ban. The coming to power in 2002 of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), with roots in political Islam, then marked a turning point for the turban’s prospects.
In July 2007, the AKP won the general elections with an overwhelming majority. A survey conducted by the opinion polling firm Konda shortly after found the number of turban-wearers had quadrupled from 500,000 to 2 million during AKP’s first four years of office.
Why such a big jump? Some point to the zeal of the secular establishment, in particular the judiciary and the Army, in upholding the headscarf ban and their frequent clashes with the AKP. There is meanwhile no visible evidence that this has been accompanied by more radical converts: As Konda founder and president Tarhan Erdem argues, the new turban-wearers have not turned the country into a bastion of anti-Westernism, although there are certainly anti-Westerners among them.
The turban is more of a political than religious symbol in Turkey. The same survey by Konda showed that while other types of religious clothing like the traditional headscarf and burqa were less popular among the educated and those with higher incomes, no such effect was present with the turban.
There are big differences between France and Turkey, but Turkey’s experience suggests that the burqa debate is not as simple as the French officials see it, and demographic evidence of the burqa-wearers hints that the law is not targeted well.
As for curbing radical Islam, there is the risk that the law will lead to more proselytizing, not less, by stigmatizing Muslims. The converts among the burqa-wearers have already been boldly telling the French media how disappointed they are with the ban, and how they intend not to obey it. This reminds me of the Turkish university students at the height of the “turban uprisings” in Turkey.
France would be much better off addressing the roots of its problem with integration--inequality and alienation from the mainstream society--rather than resort to such knockoff measures that will not achieve much more than appeasing the conservative public before the regional elections in March.
Or if all they want is a homogenous society, they should just say so openly.