BBC2 broadcast “a fascinating fly-on-the-wall documentary”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_world/4352171.stm this evening about France’s Islamic headscarf law. It followed a group of young Muslim women about and had them explain their thoughts and feelings about the law and did the same with the teachers in their school. The teachers clearly sincerely believed that the women were the puppets of fundamentalist groups, though this wasn’t the impression given by the film. Rather, their families urged compromise so that they might finish their education. Obviously, much of the impression the viewer gets will have been shaped by the editing decisions of the film-makers. Nevertheless, the message I took was of the profound unwisdom of the measure. The headmaster tried to be pragmatic (by his own lights) and insisted that the law could be complied with if girls wore a bandana in a colour other than black that left the forehead and ears clearly visible. This upset some of the extreme secularist teachers (who saw this as backsliding from pure Republican principle) but didn’t leave the pupils happy either (though they largely complied). But the image that one was left with was of the hapless headteacher stopping the Muslims one by one at the school gate, singling them out, insisting on minor adjustments to their dress (“A bit more ear please!”). Utterly, utterly humiliating for all concerned. And the women themselves, now convinced that they would never be accepted in France. One had ambitions to be a nurse, but the government has now extended the law to medical service. Petty inspection, endless argument about the tiniest details of the garb worn by “those people”: humiliating and counterproductive.
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shwe 03.29.05 at 5:07 pm
I saw it too, and agree with you. I found it highly interesting for the range of different perspectives it expressed in support of the ban, from the extraordinary typecasting by the history teacher–“she’s articulate and assertive therefore the fundamentalists must have gotten to her” to the genuine if wrongheaded sentiment that if others had died to free themselves of the veil in Algeria or somewhere else, it was imperative that this freedom be forced onto muslim girls. The bizarreness of having teachers individually decide, according to no apparent criteria whether or not a pupil’s attire (veil or no veil) was expressive of religion was striking. On the other hand, it brought back the sense of massive discretion and capriciousness that teachers everywhere seem to have.
yabonn 03.29.05 at 5:44 pm
Strange, i support this law, precisely because i don’t believe there is such thing as “these people”. I’d even bet that for the 80% of the parliament that voted it (that’s about everybody except the most traditionalist catholics), it wasn’t a law against “these people”.
“A bit more ear please!â€
… and the former education minister went on pondering about the religious signification (or not) of beards, too. There are ridiculous aspects to this law. Point is, people here (including muslim women apparently) think it will do more good than harm.
Precisely, it’s associations of muslim/immigrant women that were an important part of the process that lead to this law. I suppose they felt that being forced to hide yourself is humiliating too.
shwe 03.29.05 at 5:52 pm
I wish I could believe your first assertion but given the consistent ghettoisation of French Muslims, I find it unconvincing. You’ve also missed the point of the comments related to the film which is that regardless of the pros and cons of such a law, its implementation is highly problematic in the way that it gives power to some people over others. Indeed, people should be free not to wear the veil (and I don’t see why those who don’t want to shouldn’t deveil while in school, or anywhere else) but people should also be free to wear it if they want.
M. Gordon 03.29.05 at 6:18 pm
I’m not European, and have not followed this law very closely, but I’m struck by this comment:
its implementation is highly problematic in the way that it gives power to some people over others.
Isn’t that the whole point of government in general? And I think it’s a pretty well accepted premise in schools. By comparison, we could examine school dress codes in US schools as they apply to trying to keep gang symbols and gang colors out of schools, to prevent violence. In that case, there’s the same kind of nit picking, e.g., “Hat a little straighter please!” It’s humiliating, it’s irritating…but I don’t think most people would argue that this makes it worthless.
I’m not saying I agree with the substance of the law. But I think that the point made by the poster, that it leads to nit pickiness and humiliation, is not a particularly good argument against it. Dealing with teenagers is almost always annoying and denigrating to all parties involved.
Ophelia Benson 03.29.05 at 6:39 pm
But many “people” (girls, actually) aren’t free not to wear the hijab, and for many of them, the law creates freedom rather than removing it. Does the documentary show that aspect at all, I wonder? It doesn’t sound as if it does.
Yusuf Smith 03.29.05 at 7:18 pm
But many “people†(girls, actually) aren’t free not to wear the hijab, and for many of them, the law creates freedom rather than removing it. Does the documentary show that aspect at all, I wonder? It doesn’t sound as if it does.
My aunt came out with this canard when we discussed this a few months ago. She, however, forces her own daughter to wear a skirt to school (which they don’t have to do), which the daughter doesn’t like. Isn’t it normal for parents to have rules that their children sometimes don’t like?
Andrew McManama 03.29.05 at 8:44 pm
I don’t think the law was to give freedom to muslim girls, though the politicians may have sold it as such. Which is more free: Having no choice but to wear a habib or no choice but to not wear a habib? I can’t appreciate the difference. I think the law was an attempt to force the muslims and other minority religions to act or at least dress like the rest of the population. Chris said “the women themselves, now convinced that they would never be accepted in France.” I think that’s the point of the whole thing.
Their choice I guess, though it seems like a bad one.
Andrew McManama 03.29.05 at 8:47 pm
haha sorry I meant to say hajib but I said habib because my new neighbour’s name is habib. that’s pretty embarassing.
Colin Danby 03.29.05 at 9:19 pm
The notion that you increase freedom by banning certain kinds of symbolic clothing is just bizarre; I’m also struck by the assumptions (a) that one cannot simultaneously be an observant Muslim and fully French and (b) that the only reason you might wear a scarf is because you were forced to. Is it not possible that some people are genuninely and thoughtfully religious, including young women?
Bruce Wilder 03.29.05 at 9:43 pm
It seems like a remarkably stupid law to me, but, then the Muslim requirement that women dress in humiliating ways seems pretty stupid to me, as well.
Danny Yee 03.29.05 at 10:17 pm
One of my friends told me once that me that her (single-sex girls) high school used to have “pantie checks”, where teachers made sure that girls were wearing appropriate underwear.
I don’t know of she was pulling my leg or not, though!
François 03.29.05 at 10:28 pm
Hey all,
Interesting debate. I’m French. I made a presentation on secularism (laïcité) one year ago, find it here: http://phnk.com/scpo/3/#cm3-pmc
I have a few comments to make, the first of them on the broadcast which I sadly missed although I live in a BBC country.
– First, be aware that only a few girls were banned since the law was passed. When I say a few, I mean a dozen.
– Second, in most cases, it occured that the teachers and the educative staffs were the ready-for-conciliation party, and the parents+girls were the intransigeant one. Apparently the broadcast shows the opposite.
Concerning CT comments, then.
May I start by saying that I first was a strong opponent to this law in the beginning, because in my view, throwing out a girl from school was the worst option possible. When writing my presentation, I realized that the girls who would refuse to get the scarf off were a epiphenomenon, and that the law would result in only a few girls banned in exchange of two things:
1) freedom for all girls who are forced to wear a veil
2) respect of the French conception of secularism, id est: religion and education should never meet (again)
May I now continue with a “Fisk” approach to the CT comments:
yabonn– “There are ridiculous aspects to this law.”
Of course. How could you write a law that points to cosmetics without having people smiling? It is obvious that blaming beards is objectively ridiculous.
… Unless. Unless you consider what stands behind the beard. A famous French intellectual called Régis Debray (he also wrote a report to the government where he strongly recommended religions courses, I’ll come back to this later) wrote a book called “What the veil veils” (Ce que nous voile le voile).
The veil hides proselytism. Believe me, both my parents are teachers, one of them in a Catholic private school. Teachers don’t care more about veils than they do about caps. But some veils have meaning that is more than fashion: some are ideological. This law confirms that schools should not be penetrated by *any* ideology.
Now I said any. I insisted because the law also bans all other religious signs. Political signs were a question, but these were finally allowed (although frankly speaking, no one wears this type of stuff, whatever their age).
shwe– “its implementation is highly problematic in the way that it gives power to some people over others.”
Only in school. We’re a free country too, don’t worry.
shwe– “Indeed, people should be free not to wear the veil… but people should also be free to wear it if they want.”
They do in the rest of the public sphere. Again, same comment, we’re as liberal as other democracies, outside of our own sanctuary – school.
andrew– “Which is more free: Having no choice but to wear a habib or no choice but to not wear a habib? I can’t appreciate the difference.”
The law did not come out from thin air, it popped out of a commission. Its social diagnosis was alarming: some girls are slaved by their families outside of school. Group coercion was propagating in schoolyards, forcing Muslim girls who had abandoned their religion or who had simply decided to follow it in their own liberal way to put a veil.
There was thus enough evidence that the law would generate freedom by suppressing some. Descartes begins his meditations by eradicating all interiorized prejudice (the fooling God): our educational doctrine starts here. You’ll find the same idea in the last chapters of Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra: “it’s only when you’ve lost anything that you’re free to do anything” (okay, this is a slightly modified ‘Fight Club’ quote :).
Again, this suspension of [dis]belief is temporary: you can believe in Adam and Eve outside of school if you want, but until you’re 16, you’ll have to obey the dirigist Socialite Froggies and learn about biology. You may reply that the parallel with creationnism is superfluous and misleading: but did the BBC say that Muslim veiled girls were beginning to refuse to attend biology lessons? that they were refusing mixed physicial education classes (I said classes, not lockers)?
colin–“I’m also struck by the assumptions (a) that one cannot simultaneously be an observant Muslim and fully French”
Depending on your own version of Islam or any other religion… Should the state capitulate, then, to polygamy? stoning? sacred cows in the streets? no activity on Saturdays?
We have a Muslim Council here, who clearly stated you could be an observant Muslim AND drop your veil at school (because Islam asks for the respect of societal pacts). A discrete religious practice is part of the citizen pact here.
The only point I find fruitful is the one about integration. Alas, integration failure is more than the scarf problem. It’s more about job discrimination, latent racism etc. And on this topic, I’m clearly ashamed of my country. I also regret there is no teaching on religions (not religious teaching, please keep both distinct).
I’m sorry for the length of this post. My long two cents then.
Amardeep 03.29.05 at 11:12 pm
One can’t be an observant Sikh and fully French either. The Sikhs in Paris (5000 of them) are cutting their hair; the devout are probably going to leave, as it is now not possible to even get a driver’s license while wearing the turban that observant Sikh men are required to wear.
Francois, your reply to Colin misses one important distinction, and that is that religious apparel doesn’t violate someone else’s human rights. Polygamy, in contrast, violates the human rights of women, and that is why nation-states that have Muslims are justified in banning it. Wearing a scarf, turban, or Kipot in a school, government job, or professional service (such as medicine) is a form of religious expression that should be allowable in a free society.
cloquet 03.29.05 at 11:23 pm
What’s the French policy on hooded sweatshirts, I wonder.
François 03.29.05 at 11:28 pm
In your version of human rights (HR) maybe: the European court of HR has case law which tells that forbidding religious signs in public services is not contrary.
Article 9 of the Eur. Conv. on HR and Article 10 of Uni. Decl. of HR were presented as contradictory with this law, because they state every individual has the right to the public expression of his religious opinion. I suppose that’s your point.
The ECHR has however stated that some patients were refusing to be under taken care by non-veiled personnel. In return, these patients left hospitals and started practising home childbirth, leading to a few disasters.
Equality is a reason, good or bad, to hide some differences between people. The whole school uniform debate was reactivated in France when the law passed.
I do admit however that my comparison did not take the elements you brought into account. It does not invalidate my point, though.
Dan Kervick 03.29.05 at 11:55 pm
But some veils have meaning that is more than fashion: some are ideological. This law confirms that schools should not be penetrated by any ideology.
Ohhhh, we wouldn’t want to have any of those pernicious ideologies floating around the school halls. You allow people to express an ideological position in school, and before you know it you are far down the road toward passionate debate – in the schools! – and some students actually having different opinions than other students!
By the way, are expressions of republican ideology also forbidden?
François 03.30.05 at 12:01 am
Hard to tell: republicans have stopped wearing beards to mark their political commitment since the 1890s.
More seriously, please add the implicit ‘religious’ qualificative to ‘ideology’. As I said earlier, political signs have not been forbidden: the legislator listened to Marx and not to Aron about how to define the people’s opium.
Andrew Boucher 03.30.05 at 12:24 am
“We have a Muslim Council here….” Just to add that this is basically a tool of the French government – created by the French government to encourage “moderates.”
“This law confirms that schools should not be penetrated by any ideology.” Hardy har har! (I think you need to add “religious” in front of “ideology” if you want something which is true.)
“the law would result in only a few girls banned…” It would seem to me that anyone who would get banned, would likely avoid the ban by being sent to a private school. Francois, do you know how many children have gone from the public to private schooling because of the ban? (Honest question – I don’t know.)
fjm 03.30.05 at 1:41 am
A reply to Francois.
The issue as I (a non-observant Jew) see it is that the standard of secularism being asked for is actually a default to Christian norms.
So, a discreet cross is ok, but a yarmulke or turban is considered a “blatant” symbol. The only thing a Christian could do to breach the clothing requirement is to wear a very large cross whereas observant Sikhs, Muslims and Jews all have more obvious clothing requirements (Jewish men have to leave the fringe of their under shirt showing).
Francois mentioned polygamy and that for me always rings alarm bells. You see, monogamy *is* a Christian “symbol”. Neither Islam, Judaism or Hinduism actually insist on it (although most of us practice it). It is being argued for as if it were a symbol of secularism when it is not. It is fine for a secular state to refuse to support extended families–that’s an economic decision–but I cannot see how you can argue that family structure is a secular debate when it is absolutely and utterly shaped by religious belief and prejudice (and please don’t try the “polygamous marriages are abusive” argument, our women’s shelters are full of women from stifling monogamous relationships.)
One last word: the entire debate is clouded by the word “secular”. France is not secular in the English sense (ie indifferent to religion). Like the US, it is anti-clerical (hostile to *organised* religion).
bi 03.30.05 at 1:42 am
Andrew, do you know how many speeches promoting fundamentalist Islam have been made in the US since 9/11? (Honest question — I don’t know.)
Viva la liberation!
Luc 03.30.05 at 2:03 am
The BBC chose a school where there was discussion about that law. And the school wanted that discussion to be public, on camera. And that provides the context here.
vs.
The school wanted that argument. It didn’t have to.
vs.
Maybe the law is extreme?
Andrew Boucher 03.30.05 at 2:07 am
“Andrew, do you know how many speeches promoting fundamentalist Islam have been made in the US since 9/11? (Honest question—I don’t know.)”
No I don’t know – and that’s an honest answer to a dishonest (and idiotic) question.
My question – about how many children have switched from public to private schooling because of the scarf ban – is entirely honest. I don’t know, and I don’t even have a hunch; I wouldn’t be surprised if it was 0, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it is was tens of thousands. I don’t know, and I don’t have any agenda behind the question. Depending on the answer, I would probably revise my views on the ban – if the answer is closer to 0, then I would think better of the ban; if it’s a high number, then I would think that the French blew it with the ban, by shooting themselves in the foot.
François 03.30.05 at 3:39 am
A very quick follow-up reply:
andrew B– ““We have a Muslim Council here….†Just to add that this is basically a tool of the French government”
In short you are right, although the argument could be slightly balanced (the coalition that was elected head of the council was not the one intended by govt).
ibid.–“This law confirms that schools should not be penetrated by any ideology.†Hardy har har! (I think you need to add “religious†in front of “ideology†if you want something which is true.)
Didn’t I do this in a further comment?
ibid.–“the law would result in only a few girls banned…†It would seem to me that anyone who would get banned, would likely avoid the ban by being sent to a private school. Francois, do you know how many children have gone from the public to private schooling because of the ban? (Honest question – I don’t know.)
AFAIK but I have limited knwoledge on the topic, there is no Muslim private schooling in France at the moment. I know a bit about private Catholic schooling and strangely enough you may think, they do *not* promote extensive religious symbols.
fjm’s comment is well-grounded, although it should be taken into account ‘laïcité’ is neither anti-clericalism or secularism.
Back to pub.->private schooling: in a vast, extremely vast majority of cases, compromise was reached by discussing the issue with parents. As the BBC broadcast apparently did not show, 99% of the Muslim living in France think you can be an observant believer and drop hijab in school. The Renseignements Généraux (ergo central intelligence) recorded only a dozen cases of school exclusion when the law was passed, and I think the figure never reached a hundred in one year.
Also, the gap betw. private and pub. schooling is quite a thin one here. Private schooling is subject to very heavy regulations (e.g. the programmes cannot differ, mixity is not an option, etc.).
Thomas Palm 03.30.05 at 4:47 am
I kind of like the French girls interviewed in TIME(?) who had come up with a solution to the contradictory demands from their parents that they couldn’t show their hair in public and the school that they couldn’t cover it. They shaved their heads!
Not that I expect either the parents or the school were any happier by this solution, but that is the point. Idiotic rules leads to idiotic solutions.
Andrew Boucher 03.30.05 at 4:51 am
“AFAIK but I have limited knwoledge on the topic, there is no Muslim private schooling in France at the moment.”
Interesting. I remember reading somewhere (sorry about the specificity!) before the summer that some parents were planning to set up schools so that they could send their children to them, but I never saw any follow-up on this, and I’ve always wondered whether it was more bark than anything.
François 03.30.05 at 5:03 am
I think there was one attempt to open a Muslim high school somewhere in the North of France. It failed for several reasons, the first one being that the teachers were not affiliated to National Education (read: self-proclaimed).
Gillian Russell 03.30.05 at 5:28 am
But the image that one was left with was of the hapless headteacher stopping the Muslims one by one at the school gate, singling them out, insisting on minor adjustments to their dress (“A bit more ear please!â€). Utterly, utterly humiliating for all concerned.
At my secondary school (state-funded, in the UK, 1989-94) the rule was that skirts had to be at least long enough to reach to 1 inch above the middle of the knee when we were standing. Mrs Mason used a ruler to check. This didn’t stand out as a more than usually petty enforcement of the rules. I think that young people have to put up with a lot of this nonsense, and it’s easy to forget once we’re old enough to command a little more respect.
Peter Briffa 03.30.05 at 5:57 am
I think you’d have had a more rewarding hour spent watching the Sweeney on BBC4.
Chris 03.30.05 at 6:43 am
Gillian, I’m not sure quite how to read your comment. Suffice it to say, that once a particular religious or ethnic group is singled out for this sort of treatment, I think that worsens the humiliation involved and inevitably leads to justifiable resentment.
dsquared 03.30.05 at 6:50 am
Lycee Eugene Delacroix
Which rather makes fjm’s point about the “secular” state being permeated by Christian norms; I wonder what would happen if you tried to open up the “Lycee Eugene Delacroissant”?
yabonn 03.30.05 at 7:29 am
Suffice it to say, that once a particular religious or ethnic group is singled out for this sort of treatment,
But the only group singled out here is consists of people that bring religion into school.
There’s here the implicit that the carefully religion-neutral phrasing of the law is duplicitous, as in “we found a way to get at the muslims in a very hypocritical way, yay”.
Seen the large backing this law had among lawmakers (and the nature of the opposition to it) i find this a weird belief : they can’t really be all muslim haters, can they?
Luc 03.30.05 at 7:41 am
But then Delacroissant ain’t dead and famous.
While the painter guy from the cross has his own museum.
And while the norms in a (formerly) christian society can be described as christian, fjm made a glaring omission when stating
Now, us non religious people are somehow prevented from debating family structure.
I believe homosexual marriage is a fine counter example. Normally there would be another commenter stating this. Just filling in.
cncz 03.30.05 at 7:55 am
So many comments! Nice! I don’t know if this has already said in the comments, but one thing interesting is that within the text of the anti-secularism law are actual mathematical requirements for the dimensions of any bandana a girl is allowed to wear.
I also think the role of immigrant and Muslim womens’ groups was essential in the passing of the law in 2004 and a good reason why a similar law wasn’t passed in 1989 when the headscarf issue first came up. Very nice article, got referred here from Indigo Jo.
Ophelia Benson 03.30.05 at 2:06 pm
“Suffice it to say, that once a particular religious or ethnic group is singled out for this sort of treatment, I think that worsens the humiliation involved and inevitably leads to justifiable resentment.”
But what about members of the same religious or ethnic group who are humiliated by and resent the presence of the hijab? Who, in fact, support the ban? What about Ni Putes ni Soumises and their fans and supporters? What about the girls who get pressured, threatened, beaten up if they don’t wear the hijab? Why do they always, always get left out during all this worrying about the humiliation of people not allowed to wear the hijab? Why is this discussion always so one-eyed?
Colin Danby 03.30.05 at 2:48 pm
I’m sure there are more thoughtful folks in France than Francois, but please notice how his antiscarf position *rests* on bigoted presumptions. Francois’ foundational assumption is that Muslim women are incapable of thinking for themselves and can *only* be understood as acting under compulsion of one kind or another, as in the extreme language about “forced” or “slaved.” The assumption that they cannot think is also evident in his response that “We have a Muslim Council here, who clearly stated you could be an observant Muslim AND drop your veil at school.” *So what?* This is only an argument if you assume that young women take orders from “Councils.” Why can’t people make up their own minds about what it means to be religiously observant?
There is a spirit of absolute dogmatic assertion tied to tendentious argument throughout: this symbol can mean only one thing, and that is a meaning against which the state must mobilize coercive power.
Re religous freedoms, obviously it is possible to summon up any number of examples, like say ritual cannibalism, in which an assertion of a particular religious right would conflict with others’ rights or with a legitimate state function. *The question is whether this particular case, wearing a scarf to school, is such a case or not.* So invoking sharply different examples like stoning hardly helps us think about wearing a scarf.
It’s jarring to see Descartes enlisted on the side of all this sloppy thinking. And even Nietzsche warned against the pillaging of the works of dead writers for convenient quotations.
To Yabonn: The fact that a large majority of lawmakers supported this repressive law is *chilling*, not reassuring. And it reminds the rest of the world of how easy it is to to assemble a culturally-Christian majority in a place like France against a religious minority.
Chris 03.30.05 at 3:15 pm
Ophelia, since the headscarf ban only operates on school premises then it hardly looks like an effective tool against those who would pressure, threaten and beat up, does it?
yabonn 03.30.05 at 3:31 pm
It’s all discombulated. (Dear reader, i’m not even sure of the meaning of the word, but i am nevertheless absolutely convinced that colin’s post on the matter is absolutely discombulated. Discuss.) I would answer the other points, but i’m sure françois will find time to, hm, adress them.
The fact that a large majority of lawmakers supported this repressive law is chilling, not reassuring. And it reminds the rest of the world of how easy it is to to assemble a culturally-Christian majority in a place like France against a religious minority.
The “culturally christians” (catholics) in parliament voted *against* the law. All the others voted *for*. Which explains the score, btw, and ha, ha, ha.
Polled muslim women said they were *for* the law.
Get it?
… Besides discombulated is, by itself, a beauty to behold, well worth the repetition of these points, already mentionned upthread.
Yusuf Smith 03.30.05 at 3:33 pm
#36 Colin Danby:
The assumption that they cannot think is also evident in his response that “We have a Muslim Council here, who clearly stated you could be an observant Muslim AND drop your veil at school.†So what? This is only an argument if you assume that young women take orders from “Councils.†Why can’t people make up their own minds about what it means to be religiously observant?
A spectacle you can see twice a year when vast numbers of Muslims ignore the so-called authorities and celebrate Eid on what they consider the real Eid day, rather than the day the Saudis claim is Eid. Muslims will treat the words of “authorities” with extreme suspicion when they appear to be politically compromised.
François 03.30.05 at 4:03 pm
Should I use ‘obliged’ instead of ‘forced’, should I make politically correct statements instead of addressing what shares much resemblance to domestic slavery – in any case please take it as semantic ignorance from my own if you were shocked by the vocab’ I used.
You have oversimplified what you read to turn it into a unilateral view that you could then easily beat by a “let people choose” argument. The word for that was used in a previous comment: one-eyed. I think it lacks intellectual honesty to proceed so.
The “council” in question was created on request of Muslim groups, there was hence a demand for an official representation.
It is part of our own national model that schooling and religious belief should never interfere, in a way or another. Coercion was used (although reluctantly) to enforce a model which you apparently do not know, understand, nor try to understand. Which brings me to return to flip your relativist comment back to you: why can’t people make up their own minds about what it means to live in a “laïc” country?
yabonn 03.30.05 at 4:20 pm
chris,
It is presumed that adult women are able to make their choices freely, ot go to the police.
Veil is a problem in school because it is considered children deserve a neutral zone, where they can learn enough to make their own, independant, educated choices as adults (insert marseillaise, watery eye, and the third republic here). The “being forced by your peer/family to wear a religious thingie that hides you, or be presumed a slut” doesn’t fit in that.
Another case is civil service, where signs are banned too, it’s more a matter of neutrality of the state to religions.
Ophelia Benson 03.30.05 at 4:27 pm
Chris, it depends what one means by an effective tool. It doesn’t look effective in the sense of total or complete or covering all bases, no. But then to do that it would have to be extremely intrusive, so intrusive that even I (and others, of course) would have qualms or reservations or doubts. But it is an effective tool in the sense of protecting one space from that kind of bullying. So, yes, it does look like an effective tool. And one worth mentioning, at least, I would have thought. You do consistently frame this issue as if opposition to it were universal among all Muslims and people of Muslim background, you know – and by doing that you give a distorted impression, it seems to me. You just leave out Muslim and Muslim-background supporters of the ban – and there are a lot of them.
Colin Danby 03.30.05 at 5:10 pm
Ah, it’s come to this. People speaking for the tradition that produced the Declaration of the Rights of Man now argue that this is an internal French matter and that outsiders should stop worrying about the rights of religious minorities. Nothing in my posting is relativist or rests logically on relativism. My claims are precisely universalist. And essential to the notion of individual rights is that one is not obliged to obey majorities in opinion polls. But perhaps this is no longer taught in French classrooms.
And you know you’re dealing with a bigot when Francois’ only reply to being called on bigotry is to repeat the bigoted statement and to say that the alternative is “politically correct statements.” Given this bigotry, yes, I tend to think that the claims of laicism are insincere.
My point about a “culturally-Christian” majority, to be clear, is to make a distinction between religiously-professing Christians (some of whom were more thoughtful on this question), and the vast majority in France for whom various forms of Christianity are a matter of cultural background, whatever their practice. It’s this background that comes very much to the fore when Jews or Muslims are stigmatized and regarded as somehow less than fully French.
François 03.30.05 at 5:29 pm
Refusing terms such as “forced” and “slaved” is a case of politically correct blindness when cases of both were reported. Please refer to the Stasi Commission report for evidence and detail. The rest of the argument sounds purely rhetorical.
Randy McDonald 03.30.05 at 6:06 pm
Ophelia, since the headscarf ban only operates on school premises then it hardly looks like an effective tool against those who would pressure, threaten and beat up, does it?
No. It’s a start, it’s a crack.
shwe 03.30.05 at 6:15 pm
Ophelia, you’re guilty of a one-sidedness that you accuse Chris of. You and others don’t seem to see that banning is not protecting space and liberty for some who freely choose to wear the veil. If Muslims don’t like the social pressure that certain other Muslims put on them to wear the veil, resorting to the state to outlaw its use in schools hardly seems the right way to tackle what you perceive to be wider social pressure and peer pressure.
A different argument that has been mooted is the secularism argument, which, in so far as its validity rests upon empirical evidence about what is necessary for shared values and cohesion, looks to me extremely weak. If this secularist argument is one of “principle” or “tradition”, then it seems to me even more groundless in the face of what most Western countries accept by way of pluralism and diversity.
yabonn 03.30.05 at 6:24 pm
#43 Colin Danby:
Maybe there’s a simpler explanation? One not involving social-democrats of doom (plan : hide your life-long religious hatred of muslims, seize power, annoy them), the state wide religious oppression of muslim women (plan : hide your oppression by polling for the law, making pro-law association), and sharp-eyed online diagnostics of bigotry?
Like : separation of church and state as it is understood here, the role schools are supposed to fulfill, the complaints of the muslim women associations, that kind of things?
If it didn’t pass trough before, it won’t make it this time, i’m afraid. I suppose we’ll have to agree to disagree and all that.
Ophelia Benson 03.30.05 at 6:31 pm
Shwe, no I’m not. I realize that the ban is an encroachment on the freedom of the people who want to wear it, and I’ve said as much (though not on this thread, to be sure). I think there are competing freedoms and competing encroachments here, rather than a matter of all freedom on one side and all encroachment on the other.
But of course life in society is always a matter of competing freedoms and encroachments. There are all sorts of things we’re not allowed to do in all sorts of places and contexts, so I don’t see the fact that the ban is an encroachment on freedom as a knock-down argument by itself.
yabonn 03.30.05 at 7:00 pm
#46 shwe:
You and others don’t seem to see that banning is not protecting space and liberty for some who freely choose to wear the veil.
I think we (the pro law) see the inconveniences, and think the benefits outweight them.
If Muslims don’t like the social pressure that certain other Muslims put on them to wear the veil, resorting to the state to outlaw its use in schools hardly seems the right way to tackle what you perceive to be wider social pressure and peer pressure.
Muslim children. But anyway :
Is there another way to make sure that each veil is wore freely? That no one is harrassed in school about it?
Later, both the secularist and tradition argument look weak to you. Quite simply, they don’t here. But yes, if this boils down to “comment peut on etre français”, this is probably the best argument against the law.
Colin Danby 03.30.05 at 7:42 pm
“Yabonn” (who, like “Francois”, apparently lacks courage to post under a full name) persists in deliberate misconstrual: mine is not an accusation of specifically religious hatred, but of old-fashioned bigotry toward a minority group. Atheists, for example, are still capable of antisemitism.
Yabonn’s “separation of church and state as it is understood here, the role schools are supposed to fulfill” hinges on the weasel-words “understood here” and “supposed.” So the pro-ban position circles back, time and again, to argument by assertion and to the implication that this is a purely French matter whose subtleties can be understood only by French people.
A final word, to anyone still reading who finds me too harsh in all this: an essential presupposition of bigotry is that all members of the stigmatized group are essentially alike, so that evidence against one convicts all. A typical presupposition of antireligious bigotry is that all members of the stigmatized religion are victims of mind-control by sinister religious leaders. Both assumptions are a way of dehumanizing people by portraying them as having no minds of their own and no capacity for thoughtful independent action. The consequences of this kind of stigmatization, across history, have been ugly. As an exercise for the student, therefore, go through the pro-ban posts and see how many times you find logic that rests on either or both of these two assumptions.
François 03.30.05 at 8:00 pm
The first line of your comment gives an indication of how irrelevant this debate has become. I should have escaped it earlier.
François is my real first name, by clicking on it you will get my full identity. I cannot figure how someone so much older and experienced than I am did not figure this before posting an aggressive, superfluous, scornful and IQ-lacking attack.
I guess we are going to disagree and that’s it.
MALOD, Guillaume 03.30.05 at 11:16 pm
Mr Danby,
I find your attacks on some thoughtful posts here unfair. You call “understood here†and “supposed†weasel words, and say that their author implied that this problem can only be understood by French people. I find this is an unfortunate misreading. I can say “cuisine as it is understood in France”, meaning that is is different from cuisine in Japan, without implying that Japanese chefs cannot understand French cooking, and indeed they sometimes understand French cuisine marvelously. I hope I am not putting words in their mouths, but the posters’ point is that France has a different conception of the place of religion in education. Much as France and the US have a different conception of free speech rights. Or consider British libel laws which have been briefly touched upon in another post on this blog. Now you may well think that one conception is better than the other, and I may well agree with you, but please state those differences and your arguments and do not accuse the posters of bigotry or guess too boldly at their intent.
Back to the subject of this post, maybe we can narrow things down a little.
i) A rather common position in France is that education should be neutral with regard to religions. Neutral here means that religion should not be visible, it does not mean letting all religions be equally apparent. The idea is to leave a space for children before their majority to be free of any religious influence. Whether this is a desirable goal is open to debate.
ii) Implementing this raises a number of problems. Banning religious symbols or imposing school uniforms are possible solutions. Once again, whether these are judicious means to attain the goal above can be argued. I would like to note in passing that I dislike the reference to “France’s Islamic headscarf law” in the original post. the law is against all religious symbols, and even if one may argue that it is targeted towards muslims, as I believe, using this qualifier makes readers think that France has passed a law specifically against one religion, and thus distorts the debate from the start.
iii) Even without arguing point i), one can still debate practical issues and solutions. In this case the pressure that women may feel to wear the headscarf. Or how to resolve the friction between religious prescriptions and the civil laws of a state.
And about your little paragraph on the symptoms of bigotry, please tell me where posters like François or Ms Benson have implied that “all members of the stigmatized religion are victims of mind-control by sinister religious leaders”.
dave bones 03.31.05 at 4:00 pm
Amazing documentary. It was crystal clear that these girls differed to their piers only in dress and were model students. No danger to anyone. The documentary provided me a great insight into how the French hold secularism almost as a religion. In some ways this is great but this documentary clearly showed French secularism gone mad. With Jamies school dinners following on the other side, it was a great day for British TV.
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