Comments on: Le foulard islamique

By: DINA YOUSSEF

DINA YOUSSEF — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 13:20:18 +0000

i think to interfere in someones food is a great misteke as we cant force anybody to eat on our own choice so sure to interfere in how he or she wears is a much critical problem but to interfere in his religion and the principles of this religion that is totally not accepted and will cause plenty of critical consequences.everyone has the write to wear as the one like mouslim women and girls have the write to wear as their religioun tells them so ofcourse the answer is NO NO NO NO NO DONT PASS THE BAN

By: ali

ali — Thu, 15 Jan 2004 23:07:51 +0000

well i think the french government is doing some thing very serious and i think they should really think about what they are doing because they are risking the support from all islamic governments and the same thing that happened to the U.S.A. might happen to them and in my opinion that law is actually not gonna let the people express them selfs

By: ant

ant — Tue, 13 Jan 2004 18:20:40 +0000

The following essy provides context for understanding how Us and french views on religious freedoms are shaped by the history of both countries—well worth reading! Ant French Views of Religious Freedom U.S.-France Analysis, July 2001 Dominique Decherf, Harvard Center for International Affairs, ———————————————————————————————————————— France and the United States appear not to see eye to eye on issues of religious freedom. This gap in understanding widened dramatically in 1998, when the US Congress and the Government of France both passed legislation on religious freedom that seemed to embrace opposite goals. In the United States, the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) imposed sanctions on countries around the world that were convicted of violating religious freedom. The new law created a US Commission for International Religious Freedom and appointed an Ambassador-at-large to head an office on international religious freedom at the State Department. In France (on the very next day, by coincidence), the National Assembly recommended the creation of a governmental task-force, the Inter-Ministerial Mission against Sects (MILS), to monitor so-called dangerous cults. In each case, the legislation was approved unanimously. Yet their different goals appeared to conflict. In 1999, US Ambassador Robert Seiple, a Baptist and ex-chairman of the Evangelical development organization World Vision, met with Alain Vivien, the French head of MILS who is also president of a secular development organization called Volunteers for Progress. The two discussed their differences, but failed to reach a common understanding on the goals of the two laws. ———————————————————————————————————————— “If the French are more sensitive to religious cults than are Americans, it is in part because of the historical emphasis that laïcité has placed on the freedom of conscience.” ———————————————————————————————————————— The paradox is that both countries embrace religious freedom and respect the separation between church and state. Despite different religious histories, France and the United States have both long embraced religious freedom in their constitutional documents. This principle was affirmed almost simultaneously in the two countries—in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, and in the US Bill of Rights—in 1789. At the end of the Second World War, France and the United States cooperated in drafting the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, which includes religious freedom. Both also embrace the separation of church and state. Separation has existed in France since the 1905 Law of Separation (except in Alsace-Lorraine in eastern France and in French Guyana). Separation in the United States dates to the First Amendment of the US Constitution, ratified in 1791, and to a 1947 decision by the US Supreme Court that extended religious freedom and the disestablishment of religion to individual states.1 Thus, like the United States, the French Republic neither recognizes nor subsidizes any religion (Article 2 of the 1905 law), and it respects all beliefs (Article II of the Constitution of 1958). Church and State But from a common starting point, US courts have erected a higher and more impenetrable “wall of separation,” as Justice Hugo Black called it in his 1947 decision, than have their French counterparts. Controversies that are still divisive today within American society, such as religious discussion in public schools after teaching hours and government subsidies to faith-based organizations, have never been weighty political issues in France. Since 1959, the French government pays the salaries of teachers in private schools, most of which are religious, and gives subsidies directly to those schools. Churches, temples and synagogues built in France before 1905 are the property of the state. National and municipal governments maintain these buildings, which are used free-of-charge by the clergy. Religious feasts are official holidays in France. The government organizes religious funerals for victims of disasters and for French Presidents. These exceptions to a strict separation of church and state in France result in part from the enduring central role of the Catholic Church. Sunday attendance at mass has dropped to about 10 percent of the population in France today, but 80 percent of French citizens are still nominally Roman Catholics. This makes France the sixth largest Catholic country in the world, after Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines, Italy and… the United States. Catholicism was the exclusive state religion of France prior to 1791, and one of the four official religions, together with Lutheranism, Reformism and Judaism (later Islam in Algeria), recognized by the state under the 1801 Napoleonic Concordat up until 1905. The central role of Catholicism has in part dictated the nature of the relationship that the French state maintains with all religious organizations today. The four other main religions in France have, like the Catholic church, been organized at the national level, and the French government is currently discussing with several Islamic groups to achieve a similar national representative body for Islam. In France, the government regulates religious activities in all of their dimensions—worship, observance, practice, and teaching—in order to protect the rights of others, the public order, health, and morals. This regulatory oversight applies not just to religious organizations, but to any kind of organized group in France. In regulating religious activities, however, the state does not make religious interpretations. It does not define religion, as the state is incompetent in matters of belief. But the state also does not make exceptions to general laws and regulations on religious grounds. US courts may interpret laws more flexibly when a strong religious motivation is at stake—permission to use a hallucinogenic substance in Native American rituals, for example—a policy that has created controversy within the United States over the past decade.2 By contrast, French law is applied without any consideration of religion, race, or wealth. This approach has its roots in the universalist tradition of French democracy and citizenship. Within the public sphere, a French citizen is not defined in terms of particular traits. The law represents the General Will, but it is not simply a combining of private interests. Law is instead an act of public reason to be decided by rational arguments. Thus religious preoccupations enter political debate only if they are supported on rational grounds. The French Tradition of Laïcité The traditional conflict between church and state in France, finally resolved by the 1905 law, had focused on the issue of moral authority. The Roman Catholic Church accepted the principle of religious freedom only in 1965, with the Declaration on Human Dignity passed by the Vatican II Council. Until then, under the 1864 Syllabus and the 1870 Papal Infallibility decree, the Vatican required national governments to impose on their people the moral truths taught by the Catholic Church—a requirement that posed problems not only for France but also for the United States. The French term laïcité, translated roughly as secularism, was created to describe the growing opposition to this moral authority held by Catholic priests. Over time, the laïcité movement came to condemn religious coercion as a form of undue religious influence. If the French are more sensitive to religious cults than are Americans, it is in part because of the historical emphasis that laïcité has placed on the freedom of conscience. Both the 1945 UN Declaration of Human Rights (article 18) and the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) embrace freedom not of religion alone, but of “thought, conscience and religion.” The distinction between these different kinds of freedom is frequently overlooked by Americans, who, for historical reasons, often consider the three synonymous. Americans are used to a plurality of religions. It is estimated that 40 percent of Americans change religion or denomination at least once in their life. Thus for Americans, freedom of choice of religion or belief is the most usual form taken by freedom of conscience. The French law of 1905, by contrast, never mentions religion. It guarantees in its first article the freedom of conscience, and in that context the freedom of worship (culte, in the French). This emphasis on conscience has historical roots. The French have, since the end of the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, known only one large majoritarian religion. Either one was within the Catholic Church, or one was a free-thinker outside of it. In the tradition of French laïcité that emerged from this context, freedom of conscience is still understood by the French as a freedom from the moral authority of a single dominant religion. Religious Freedom and Policy This difference in emphasis has consequences for the conduct of foreign relations. The French tend to sympathize with the author Salman Rushdie, for example, who is perceived as the free-thinking “Voltaire of Islam.” Americans agree, but also stress the right of any Muslim to be baptized as a Christian. This can lead to a difference of approach in conducting foreign policy. The civil war in the Sudan, for example, tends to be discussed in US public debate as a religious war. US peace mediation efforts have therefore tended to be more intensive, and more focused on the issue of religion. French policy by contrast tends to treat this conflict as a traditional, secular power rivalry. Both causes are legitimate. But both also risk to ignore the real political and social developments—democratization and women’s rights, for example—that are taking place within Muslim states today. In this sense, both the French and the American views tend to overlook the majority of Muslim people who both follow Islam and are also good citizens. The difference in emphasis also has consequences for domestic policy. In the American tradition, for example, the Islamic faith is fully compatible with religious freedom. But in the French tradition, some aspects of Islam may contradict the governing principle of laïcité. A broad public debate emerged recently in France, for example, on the question of whether Islamic students should be allowed to wear scarves in French public schools. The issue arose because French public schools are considered to be neutral ground, where any religious or political symbolism is prohibited. The practice was eventually permitted, but specifically on the grounds that the scarves were not being used ostentatiously or as a means of proselytising. In general, religious freedom is regarded in France as a human right, but never in isolation from other universal human rights. France therefore objects to a special status for religious freedom over freedom of conscience. This view of religious freedom helps to explain France’s legislation on “dangerous cults,” passed in its final version by the France’s National Assembly in June 2001. Freedom of association in France is guarranteed under the 1901 Law of Association. The law on “dangerous cults” simply grants the government the right, under judicial review, to dissolve such associations if they violate French law. The French government also retains the right to review decisions granting a special tax status to religious organizations under the 1905 Law of Separation if worship is not their “exclusive activity.” Religious groups pursuing non-worship activities are free to do so under the 1901 provision for associations and they do so with the usual tax exemptions accorded to all associations. These measures reflect the French respect for all religious belief, but not for actions that restrict the freedom of others to believe or not to believe. In this respect, the French and US governments genuinely differ in their approaches to religion. Their two societies may even differ on the definition of religion itself. But this difference should not hurt French-American relations, nor their defense of human rights in the rest of the world, which each will continue to pursue according to their own view of religious freedom. Dominique Decherf is currently a research fellow at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. He holds a doctorate in law from the Sorbonne and is a senior French diplomat.

By: Ben

Ben — Sun, 11 Jan 2004 14:23:15 +0000

I think that such feminist issues detract from the fundemental aims of ‘les lois laique’. I think that enforcing a seperation between religion and state is in principle an idea that could work. However, the manner in which the French government are trying to impose this separation through restricting religous expression is absurd. Think of it this way: the way you express yourself, if you are a religious person, is not seperated between your religous identity and your ‘other’ identity. Your religous beliefs and customs are part of who you are. Therefore restricting what people can wear whether at school or if you are employed by the state and work in the public sector, does not promote this seperation of state from religion. I say this because I think this highlights a religous intolerance that lies at the heart of France’s problems. To make a religous person indistinguishable from a secular person merely means that the prejudices that are present in the French people (Lepen fiasco and the like) cannot surface because they have no target to attack. However, it is this mentality that the French government has to attack not eliminating their target! As a Jew – I believe that God has instructed me to be aware of his presence at all times. It is because of this fact that i wear a kippah (skullcap). By telling me that i cannot wear such a garment, not only means i have to disobey God, but means that i have to undermine my own beliefs. Some people will say that it would be possible for me to Join a religous school to avoid such problems. This i find rediculous because that doesn’t separate religoin from the state – it merely means that religous people are not tollerated by the state and are forced into a ghetto like existance – and we all know that such seperations are unhealthy. They are the first step in most ethnic cleansing – seperating the targeted groups. I am not suggesting that this is the goal of the French government but such intolerance cannot be healthy and should not be tollerated.

By: Ben

Ben — Sun, 11 Jan 2004 14:23:06 +0000

By: Mikhel

Mikhel — Thu, 25 Dec 2003 18:56:36 +0000

From a personal perspective, I find this to be an issue of opposite divergence. On the one hand, from a philosophical perspective, I could easily support the ban. I’m not religious, and I take the particular view that religion can be more harmful than not. I also think that such a ban—if passed—could theoretically have positive effects on female Muslims. The idealistic side of my brain says, Pass the ban. Politics is that art of the possible. To me, the plausible and likely effect of the ban in a political manner, is likely to be a backlash against Muslim women; those who refuse to comply with the ban will be punished with ostracization, voluntary or involuntary expulsion, and (possible, since I still don’t know) deficiencies in medical care. Those women who do comply with the ban will very likely face a backlash from extremist Muslim men within their own culture, from which they will have difficulty distancing themselves. One of the problems with this discussion—which Ophelia duly noted—is that most of us (all of us) have only an elementary understanding of the practical lives of the people whom we are discussing. General assumptions have to be made in order to further an argument, but the majority opinion should not feel justified in upholding its own unfounded presumptions as necessarily correct. If I suspected with more certainty that female Muslims personally (that is, secretly or silently) supported the ban, but were fearful of showing it, then my philosophical side and political side would be in convergence. My simple—but just as susceptible to the charge of presumption—suspicion, is that these people want what will least detrimentally affect them, and that not passing the ban is the solution.

By: dmh

dmh — Wed, 24 Dec 2003 22:41:54 +0000

Well, what a boring discussion this is. Yes or no, up or down, right or wrong, all or nothing. There are no ambiguities, there is nothing at all to be said for the other side, no grey area, no ‘on the one hand but on the other hand,’ just No a thousand times no. Very boring indeed. Also rather truculent. Pity, that.

By: rosalind

rosalind — Wed, 24 Dec 2003 22:31:04 +0000

Sorry, I missed the link for some reason. OK, I think Samira Bellil is wrong about the ban, then.

By: dmh

dmh — Wed, 24 Dec 2003 22:21:08 +0000

How does anyone on an Internet comment board know who is white and who isn’t?

By: dmh

dmh — Wed, 24 Dec 2003 22:19:10 +0000

Yes, Samira Bellil is strongly pro-ban. The article I linked to discusses that.

By: drapetomaniac

drapetomaniac — Wed, 24 Dec 2003 21:50:42 +0000

Is there an alliance with the devil on only one side? What about the alliance with people who beat up women who refuse to dress the way the mullahs tell them to? Yes. Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes, it is only on one side. If you can’t see how, that’s precisely why I am entirely skeptical of this pseudo-feminist concern. As Ikram said above, we’re perfectly in favor of many other, less coervice state interventions to help Muslim girls be free, ones that are explicitly divorced from racist agendas. Frankly, Rosalind, Ikram and I have taken far greater pains to distinguish our position(s) from Islamist ones than the white liberals have to distinguish theirs from white racist ones. I’ll leave it to others to work out why. And I look forward to further sociological research on how much commitment French supporters of the ban have for any other concrete steps toward the liberty of women, Muslim or otherwise.

By: rosalind

rosalind — Wed, 24 Dec 2003 21:17:51 +0000

That’s from a letter to the Guardian, to be precise, dmh. The link to the letters page is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,1111545,00.html The gang rapes are terrifying but I don’t see how the ban will alleviate them. I suppose the argument is that it will begin a process of slow acculturation that will purge Muslim populations in France of all misogynistic cultural/religious baggage. I don’t think that’s so; I think Muslims in France will just resent it as another restriction imposed on them by a prejudiced government. And as I’ve made clear above, I also don’t think the headscarf is necessarily part of the misogynistic baggage. I realize, however, that my experience with women wearing the headscarf has been isolated to the United States, whose Muslim communities don’t have a gang-rape problem (any more than the country in general has a gang-rape problem, I mean). Does anyone know if Samira Bellil or anyone else involved in the Ni Putes, Ni Soumises movement is pro-ban? I’d be surprised if they were. To highlight drapetomaniac’s point from above, the protecting-Muslim-women agenda does get very difficult to separate from the hating-Muslims agenda. When I googled for the gang rapes, the second link that came up was from a weblog called A View from the Right that referred to Muslims in France as “Mohammedans” (I am not making that up) and welcomed the backlash against Muslims in the wake of the gang rapes, as it would surely bring Le Pen to power…an outcome that the weblog’s author saw as desirable. There’s nothing about this that isn’t depressing.

By: dmh

dmh — Wed, 24 Dec 2003 19:41:49 +0000

Is there an alliance with the devil on only one side? What about the alliance with people who beat up women who refuse to dress the way the mullahs tell them to? “Madeleine Bunting’s article on French moves to ban headscarves (Secularism gone mad, December 18) made no reference to what is happening in the quartiers sensibles in urban France, where many Muslim girls are pressured into wearing Islamic headdress by their young brothers. Showing their hair or even wearing jeans are seen as signs of western depravity by their menfolk, who abuse and threaten them. Ms Bunting should be aware of the Ni Putes, Ni Soumises movement organised by Samira Bellil and her book about gang rapes of young female Muslims who dare to rebel.” from the Guardian.

By: dmh

dmh — Wed, 24 Dec 2003 18:41:33 +0000

another agenda

By: DJW

DJW — Wed, 24 Dec 2003 18:01:39 +0000

I can’t beleive I missed this thread. A great topic. Since others were suggesting reading, I’ll suggest what I think is one of the more thoughtful essays around on the subject: “Eastern Veiling, Western Freedom?” by Nancy Hirschman (Review of Politics, 1997, also in her 2002 book The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom. We spent a couple of weeks on this topic in a seminar I taught on political theory and multiculturalism and a good portion of the students found this essay particularly persuasive. We began with Okin’s rather famous essay on the topic, which gathered a great deal of support at first, but students became less and less persuaded by her position the more we read and thought about the issue. Two quick points, knowing full well that most participants likely aren’t reading anymore, or are through with the discussion. Ophelia took offence at the comment about Chirac, le Pen and the racists. I can certainly understand why, but the political context here is something feminists considering supporting this law need to consider. At what point, and under what circumstance do you make a deal with the devil. Politics is no place for those who aren’t willing to get their hands dirty, of course, but there are times when those who are promoting an idealistic position. When I think of feminists making this compromise, I can’t help but be reminded of the Makah whaling controversy around these parts a few years ago. Some of my animal rights friends found themselves allied with local conservative politicians who barely bothered to disguise their racism and had been fighting tribal sovereignty for years. If these people are also committed to anti-racism, as I am quite most of them do claim to be, this is a serious problem. Here’s a guideline when to work with those whose positions you find abhorrent: when the initiative in question doesn’t work against your values in a fundamental way. To explain: as an atheist socialist, I would consider forming a political alliance with Christian conservatives in a fight for more support and relief for the homeless, which they might support for biblical reasons. However, before I made that commitment, I’d ask myself the question—is this group using this issue to further a political project (anti-gay rights, etc) that I abhor? If the answer is yes, I’d have to seriously rethink my willingness to enter into that alliance. Speaking of strategic considerations, I suspect that veil wearing often should be thought of in this regard. There is a fourth potential reason to be added to Chris’ list—-that don’t feel compelled for any religious or political reasons, nor are they actively compelled by patriarchal figures. They just do it because it’s easier than not, and the fight against headscarves is not one they are particularly interested in fighting. Someone who was responding to Okin (Honig, maybe? can’t remember) wrote about some women from muslim cultures who were focusing on careers rather than families. These women were not interested in headscarves for any religious or principled reason, but they started wearing them anyway, in order to get men to take them seriously in the workplace. They considered a ban on headscarves in the workplace to be potentially damaging to their careers. These women are appropriating a patriarchal artifact in an effort to combat patriarchy in another way. A ban on headscarves in the workplace would be tantamount to sending the following message to these feminists: “You are no longer permitted to make your own decision about which battles are more important than others in the struggle against patriarchy.” I submit that when one group of predominantly white feminists sends this message to, amongst other people, predominantly non-white feminists, we’ve got a problem, and we shouldn’t need Spivak to help us see that.