“Contrary to the values of the republic”

Insisting that the veil is ‘contrary to the values of the republic’ (which it manifestly is if those values are summed up as ‘liberte, fraternite et egalite’ or rough equivalent) does not imply that wearing the veil is ‘aberrant’ if by that you mean uncommon, which you seem to here. A practice can be very common in a locality and still contrary to the local values.

Since it isn’t much longer ago than the example you cite that ‘official France’ [for some values thereof] was shipping Jews off to Auschwitz, I remain to be convinced of why this intervention is more than just a cheap crack. French official discourse is severely f*cked-up on this issue, as it is on almost every issue where ethnicity, culture and politics intersect. But one of the key reasons why it is, is that the French left-leaning intelligentsia continue to think that ‘the values of the republic’ are some kind of magic wand.

Full marks for understatement on 6!

“The power of the Constitution compels you!”

I think it’s rather shaky reasoning to say “France tried to unveil Algerians, and then Algeria became independent, and the new Algerian government stopped trying to unveil Algerians, and now Algerians are not doing very well; therefore France should not have tried to unveil Algerians”.

It’s analogous to saying: “I tried to insulate my house. Then I moved house, and the new owners ripped the insulation out again. And their heating bills are huge. Therefore I should not have tried to insulate my house.”

Plus, as alex points out, this was half a century ago, for Pete’s sake.

that’s simply because the state, in this case as in so many others, isn’t interested one whit in emancipating women or establishing Enlightenment values

Like ajay, I think the fact that the backlash was preceded by a war of national liberation complicates the picture a tad. It’s a bit late to ask, but I do wonder to what extent metropolitan French citizens’ conception of ‘France’ included the overseas départements.

[That ain’t me @9, evidently]

But, @11, it is always fun to see that, according to the weather forecast on the telly, St Pierre-et-Miquelon, Guadeloupe, Tahiti and several points in between are definitely part of the Hexagone.

Notice how the French were much more cunning about their decolonisation than the British. What did her Maj keep? The Falklands, St. Helena… The French hung onto a full range of stunning holiday locations.

[OK, I’ll give you Bermuda, but nobody actually goes there on holiday.]
[And St Pierre-et-Miquelon are two rocks in the North Atlantic, but the exception merely proves the rule.]

But the Muslim Algerian population did not, even when “L’Algérie est la France” was accepted in wide circles, receive citizenship rights, unlike the Christian and Jewish population in the colonized Algeria. So the “Algérie” that WAS “La France” does not, in fact, include the Muslim Algerians, other than in a mechanical sense of the land being inhabited by them.

How it works, in my opinion : the right has realized that a swift little pre electoral backstab of the arab minority pays well – think Chirac 2, Sarkozy. The media always follows. Cops will even participate, with a little push in the stats, just to show good will.

So I think it is precisely the dog whistling it appears to be. If the matter is still alive in 6 month maybe it was a Grave and Pressing Matter after all, that just happened to begin before an election, poor thing.

Sarkozy – generally the racist friendly new right – thrives on communautarist tension and doesn’t really care about the republican model – apart as a fig leaf. I just bang my head against the walls and hope for no long lasting damage.

Silver lining : it is slowly (maybe it’s just me) dawning – even on the right – that arabs vote too, and that racism/security is not anymore the silver bullet it once was.

About the decolonisation background, or the backlash thing : yes, no, maybe, don’t know, don’t see how I could know for sure.

Not too many folks here making the point that, at its heart, this is the kind of ignorant political babble we deride in the US. Because it’s France, where even foreign “experts” tend to be at sea, we give this racist crap a pass?

Sorry.

This is another version of the Swiss decision to ban minarets. It’s anti-Muslim hysteria being couched as something noble, even in the “spirit” of the “Republic”. French Tea Baggers might support it, but this American does not.

Ah. That didn’t take long.

#19 is a “Doesn’t exist!” response and Chris’s #20 is “it’s ok if most of the people are not coerced” response.

Let’s get down to details. Here’s the main assertion:

“Normally, it doesn’t enhance freedom to coerce everyone not to do a thing in order to prevent some people from coercing some people to do that thing.”

The problem is that not “everyone” is doing the thing, right? Roughly half are already not doing the thing. They’re exempt. Yet it’s clear that some nontrivial fraction of the exempt half are doing the coercing.

So the above quoted principle transforms to something along the lines of (I think): “Normally, it doesn’t enhance freedom to coerce a minority of the population to not do a thing in order to prevent some people (including some other exempt people) from coercing some people to do that thing.”

I don’t think that’s a particularly strongly founded principle. Looks pretty muddy to me. And I haven’t even touched on the underlying power relations. Which only make it muddier, and weaker.

Which is not to say that a Government can on balance “fix” the situation by applying top down blunt instruments.

(Can we stifle the stupid racism accusations? Tx)

Russell @18,

Yet my sympathies remain with the freethinkers

Don’t presume you know what “the freethinkers” think about this. This freethinker deplores the veil, but deplores even more attempts to use the force of the state to ban it (esp. when such attempts are transparent xenophobic demagoguery at the expense of a powerless minority). Freethinker Steve LaBonne, sometime contributor to CT‘s comments threads, is really, really not a fan of religion (of any kind); yet regards veil-bans as an appalling abridgement of liberty by the state. And he’s right.

I would be more easily convinced that stupidly blunt, top-down government intrusion in this particular case were unwarranted were I to be given a plausible reason why the abuse women have suffered from disregarding this particular “custom” is unimportant. “Doesn’t exist!” or “Never Happens!” are not a valid replies.

Is it valid to point out that there are lots of ways to expand the freedom of Muslim women that don’t involve deploying the coercive power of the state against those women? One could devote resources to improve access of Muslim women to schools, to employment, to housing if they need to flee an abusive family situation, etc. This kind of law, by contrast, makes it harder for observant Muslim women to benefit from higher education and other public services, and so leaves them *more* dependent on the men in their immediate communities.

There’s a lot of meta bandied about in this discussion but it all looks far more reasonable when the detail is examined, unlike, say the Swiss minaret idiocy.

A few further thoughts along similar lines: Decades-old examples as a means of implying hypocrisy are sometimes absurd when no effort is made to show that they have an enduring legacy that makes them relevant to the contemporary situation. The human world is accelerating, especially the industrialised part, and a cultural gap of decades in the late 20th and early 21st century is like a few centuries, a few centuries ago. Also, its shallow to compare veils as fashion accessories to veils as an instrument of control.

Context matters, particularly when it comes to big statements of apparent principle. This paragraph in a newspaper report put the French law in a different light for me:

Women wearing the head-to-toe covering, which leaves just a narrow opening for the eyes, are a rare sight in France. The French domestic intelligence agency said late last year it has even counted them, and found precisely 367 niqab-wearers in a country with a Muslim population estimated at close to six million.

If true, it seems incompatible with Farren’s statements.

…Muslim women forcibly unveiled so that they could be photographed for compulsory ID cards.

France is not alone in this. If memory serves, there was a case in Florida a couple of years ago in which a court ruled that the state could require a woman who wanted a driver’s license to be photographed without her veil. A driver’s license is not compulsory, of course, but it’s awfully central to modern life.

On the other hand, an ID without a picture loses a significant component of its utility.

The French President is actually making sense. The garments he is referring to were conceived by oppressed women to make themselves invisible and so able to go out without being seen in PUBLIC. If any such woman was involved in a crime, she would be executed.

While visible as a garment on the streets of my city, these clothes nevertheless conceal identity making it impossible to get helpful descriptions of persons in them.

Should there be a religious exemption from being identifiable in certain public and private places (banks)? I would argue no on both utilitarian and deontological grounds. As for women who “choose” to wear the full covering, well, I understand. Most women don’t tolerate the male gaze well and anyway, I should not be prevented from taping myself up like a mummy if that’s what I want to do when I am at home.

If you claim the right to use a public realm or realm of equality, then you must abide by one of any public realm’s central organizing tenets: Whatever rules you want, they have to apply the same to everyone. The extent to which individuals are free to choose whether or not to conceal their identity is the point at which the public realm begins.

If there is no absolute limit on concealing one’s identity, then there is no public realm and therefore no political equality.

Tomslee, not only are there hardly any niqab wearers, another (or perhaps the same) report mentioned that a large fraction of them were converted women who used the rather strict dress to show devotion to the new faith.

Basically, the muslim groups in France have no full-veil tradition at all, making it very unlikely that pressure from old-fashioned family members is making women wear them.

Tomslee et al, its my understanding that the source of contention was not simply niqabs but far more common variations of headscarf being banned from classrooms and other public institutions. Am I wrong?

I think a some people on this thread would benefit from acquainting themselves with the opinions of some French Muslim Women who’s experiences are pertinent to the discussion.

If you have to take it off to use any public service, it’s going to be a mite tough to get out of Aulnay sous-Bois and integrate into the republic as a fully empowered citizen, ‘cos they won’t let you on the RER…this is pretty much a classic bit of the discourse of the Modern Thinkers.

A: We should ban manifestation x of these brown people’s culture.
B: That’s authoritarian, illiberal, and just bloody rude. You’re pandering to the far-right vote and the tabloids.
A: How dare you suggest such a thing! These people are poor and oppressed. They need our help!
B: They’re poor? Perhaps you should give them some money?
A: We can’t just throw money at the problem. We need a new model of service delivery that engages local communities, uses private sector market disciplines, and works through the third sector.
It’s the failure of the project of 1968 and the traditional, top-down welfare state approach.
B: You know, that reads just as well forwards as backwards. Anyway, these people are oppressed, you say. Obviously, what they need is another excuse for policemen to stop them and demand their papers.
A: Are you with the terrorists? Ban ban ban!

Ah, but the trouble with allowing everything which is ‘offensive’ , without permitting anything to be done in response except further expressions of offence, is that you end up with a real world that starts to look like the blogosphere – lots of people screaming apoplectic abuse at each other, and nobody’s mind changing about anything, ever. It may be wonderfully free, but it’s hideously ugly, futile and dispiriting, and if there’s a better way of getting people to live together, I’d much rather someone tried to find it.

In a free society, people are allowed to wear clothes in public that others find offensive, whether it’s veils or six inch heels or tattoos saying ‘Hate’.

This is actually not true – or if it is then “free societies” is pretty much a null set. Nazi regalia are banned in Germany. Parading in masks is, IIRC, illegal in some US states (an anti-Klan measure). Public nudity is illegal in a lot of countries. Strippers are heavily restricted in almost all. Parading in political uniforms was made illegal in Britain in the 1930s in response to the BUF.

If Muslim women in France are being coerced to wear the veil or coerced in any other way, there should be… punishments for anyone proved to be carrying out this coercion.

And I’m sure that enforcement of such a law would be completely possible.

magistra @ 41 and Mrs Tilton, who further endorses that view:

“there are other and better actions” should be amended to “there are other actions”. When a form of oppression has achieved the status of being an ambient cultural one, it need not manifest itself explicitly. The awareness that some boys from your neighbourhood might gang rape you out of school need not entail any explicit threats that can be taken to authorities that might help. It is simply an awareness, fostered by a history of such events. Such an awareness might force you to comply without ever being personally threatened.

The state cannot intervene on a female child’s behalf on the basis of such an awareness alone. It cannot offer you a personal police escort. And it is too late when you have worn those jeans and that t-shirt and left your hair uncovered, and been raped for that lack of modesty, to jump in and bring the full weight of the law down on those boys.

So you dress with extreme modesty, maybe wear a simple headscarf that doesn’t cover the face. But you don’t want to. It sets you apart. The Jewish or Christian or Atheist boy you are interested in will not even look at you, because you are signalling a that you are a conservative and insular Muslim, even though you are not. You find it difficult to make friends among the other girls, who find the glowering looks of some young Muslim men in the school when they are friendly to you too uncomfortable, and feel too culturally disconnected from you, even though you yearn to while away the hours talking about whatever it is most French teenagers talk about with them.

I cannot see how the state can address this in other ways, other than to respond to the ambient threat when it is too late.

I think the thinking evident here is founded on a false dichotomy, that victims cannot themselves ever be treated as perpetrators. Muslims, especially from the Maghreb, are a victim community. The French bear a historical guilt for actions against them. But they also harbour in their midst a subculture of brutal, primitive and deplorable savages who’s savagery is a product of culture. While that cultural savagery may be moderated or exaggerated by external forces such as French oppression, it existed before that oppression and it is wrong, wrong, wrong to handwave it away in the name of guilt and cultural sensistivity.

Such handwaving is no different from exhonerating Israeli Apartheid because of the Holocaust, or because of Muslim bigotry in the ME. It is no different from exhonerating the hate speech of Hamas because of Israeli colonialism and Apartheid. It is no different from exhonerating and ignoring Afrikaner-forged Apartheid because their women and children were hearded into concentration camps, where they died in their thousands, by the British. All of these things are simultaneously wrong. And at least part of a state’s responsibility to right wrongs.

And this is why NPNS sides with the headscarf ban. Because it addresses a means of oppression that no suggestions I have seen on this thread actually address. Comparisons to Carmelites are facile, IMHO. There is no social compulsion for Carmelites to don the veil, only personal choice.

A little personal background to flesh out why I find so much of the stereotypical (if erudite, as I would expect CT commentators to be) left dialog here.

I’m a white South African former Catholic atheist. I have dated a dark-skinned Muslim hippy. I have lived with a dark skinned Muslim DJ friend. I have celebrated Eid-El-Fitr with a Muslim family who treated me like a son. I have worked for, with and employed Muslims.

And it is these experiences that make, for instance, the rabid Islamophobic hate speech of confederate-flag-waving American neanderthals and Le Pen-style French nationalists repugnant to me. I know, in the very intimate and visceral way that goes far deeper than simple intellectual acknowledgement, that Islam qua Islam does not make people misogynists, terrorists et al.

I have also lost a Muslim friend, a successful architect, who chose to disappear off the face of the planet, cutting all ties with her social circle and starting a new life like someone in a witness protection program, after explaining to each of us her reason why. Her family had selected a husband for her, a man twice her age, and expected her to leave her career, marry this complete stranger, and spend the rest of her life in the back of his cloth shop, modestly covered and working towards his welfare. If she maintained one link to the past, she explained, her brothers might track her down, violently assist her into the boot of a car, and frog march her to a wedding. And this is merely one of several similar stories I have direct personal experience of.

So my impassioned feelings about the plight of Muslim women in misogynist Islamic subcultures is in absolutely no way informed a fear or hatred of an alien culture predicated merely on their differentness and in every way on the anger one feels at seeing one’s friends and loved ones so imposed upon.

Yet throughout this thread, and, in fact throughout left dialog (and though I depart from the norm on this topic the sum of my views place me firmly on the left) I detect a powerful subtext that views similar to mine must always be premised on fear and hatred of the other, and that those that think in this manner must be simply unaware of their own prejudices if they honestly believe its just about these poor women. That is exactly why stridently independent voices from these communities, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, end up tacking to the right and finding themselves very strange bedfellows.

Because so many on the privileged left will not even entertain the idea that while yes, as historical hegemons we must guard against purported humanitarian intervention as a cover for cultural imperialism, there are nonetheless cultural practises and ideas that should be abhorrent to anyone who calls themselves an egalitarian and they should be opposed.

scathew @ 50 kind of proves my point @ 49. No, we are not all secret racists. Some of us are the diametrical opposite.

46: who said the French state is “scared” of women in veils? You’re setting up a straw man there. They want to ban them: not the same thing. Might as well say that the British police are scared of people parking on pedestrian crossings.

I think this is one of the few places us Yanks got it right – there is no way we would ban veils, minarets, or similar. While we’d happily waterboard every Muslim on the planet, but religious freedom is sacred to us. It honestly would not occur to us to block this sort of expression.

Quite right. It’s unthinkable that Americans would, say, conspire to burn down black churches.

Farren@49 – I am not arguing that you or NPNS are motivated by racism, I am arguing that the French government is, basing that on how little they care about immigrants generally. And I don’t see how this particular act will help oppressed Muslim women, because it’s entirely symbolic. It will not stop forced marriage, it will not stop women being coerced in other ways. What specific difference, for example, would a ban on veils have made to your friend?

Indeed, the French government’s specific proposals may make it worse, by making it harder for oppressed women to get out and meet people with different views. At my daughter’s school, one woman currently wears a veil when she comes to collect her child. If she is banned by the state from coming like that, will she still be able to come and have a chance to talk to other parents? Or will she instead feel obliged or be made to stay at home and lose any chance for interaction with those who don’t share her views? And how easy it for a veiled woman to go and talk to someone about her problems if she’s banned from going on the bus in the first place?

Aside from concerns on principle about bans on what women can wear, I think veils and headscarfs shouldn’t be the key. There are a lot of ways that the lives of Muslim women can be improved and most of them involve giving them better access to the public sphere and to a wider range of views. Anything that acts as a barrier to that, however well-intentioned, seems to me unhelpful.

At my daughter’s school, one woman currently wears a veil when she comes to collect her child. If she is banned by the state from coming like that, will she still be able to come and have a chance to talk to other parents?

Yes.

Or will she instead feel obliged or be made to stay at home and lose any chance for interaction with those who don’t share her views?

No.

And how easy it for a veiled woman to go and talk to someone about her problems if she’s banned from going on the bus in the first place?

Extremely. All she has to do is take off her veil. They come off fairly easily. And anyway, I thought (see 35) that these veiled women were supposed to be doing so out of free choice? Now you seem to be arguing that they’re all under the thumbs of their families, who wouldn’t let them out on to the street at all unless they were wearing full veils.

ajay@56

If you say that women who wear the veil can freely choose to take it off whenever they like, then they are not being coerced into wearing it. So why should they be forced to take it off? The only semi-liberal argument for banning the veil is that women are being forced to wear it. (The arguments about identity and offensiveness are transparently bogus because they’re not been applied to other forms of costume).

If you believe that women are being forced to wear the veil, then the state banning it just means that women have two coercive forces being targeted at them – I don’t see how that helps them.

Farren, I just don’t see the role of veil-banning in prevention of forced marriage and gangbangs.

JoB, the effective counter measure is a strong civil society which gives women in subculture and migrant communities safe exit strategies, and in the long-term provides these communities with the sort of external support they need to reduce coercive peer pressure based on lifestyle or personal choices.

Everyone knows that this sort of environment is not fostered in a community that feels it is under attack from a coercive state or a racist external community. I don’t understand how the liberal left ever managed to let any part of their discourse get captured by this right-wing concern trolling.

If it’s seriously the case that the underlying principles of a nuclear-armed post-colonial superpower are threatened by the actions of a few schoolgirl citizens, it has much deeper problems than their clothing choices… And, more to the point, they don’t have to change the way they want to dress to suit anyone else’s insecurities. Isn’t there a whole branch of feminist theory devoted to that principle? Or is feminist theory about clothing only relevant when it’s encouraging women to wear less, not more?

See 45. Desirable or not, pretty much every country has laws that limit the way women (and men) dress. And in many cases it does so to avoid its underlying principles (whether democracy, pluralism, tolerance, or “public decency”) being threatened. Germany is the most obvious example here.

Your claim that women can just take off their veil is completely at odds with how these women think

Ah, “these women”, with their strange, alien way of thinking. Othering much?

@Substance McGravitas, maybe if my post @47 finally stopped “awaiting moderation”, you would understand

63- I guess it is because that in schools the peer pressure was mounting and that girls that were not wearing scarfs started wearing them only in school. Since school is the safe exit strategy, it is a bit rash to denounce all concerns as trolling. Or are you sure that you know better than the head of the biggest non-Catholic secondary school in Antwerp?

69, & where have “commentators on the left” picked up this tendency to be specifically cautious when talking about religious icons?

Talk about missing the point, Engels.

The point being that laws governing dress are not inherently oppressive. Laws that virtually imprison half the population (dress being one component of that), as found iun Saudi Arabia, are. But they are not oppressive simply because they govern dress

@Farren

I absolutely know that many Europeans aren’t racist, in fact I am sure most aren’t or at least don’t intend to be. The same is actually true of Americans, I just meant more to point out that when we are racist, it seems like we express it differently, which is curious.

Anyway, it strikes me the the tolerance for Islam is a special case for Europeans – it’s more in your face there I think. I live in the “boonies” of the North East and we really have very few Muslims in our area, and probably about half of those we think are Muslim are actually Indian (they “all look the same” to us unfortunately)(I don’t mean that as racist as it sounds – it’s just the sad truth. We are unable to discriminate because of our lack of cultural understanding). Thus it’s easy to claim a higher ground, when we’re not faced with the issue. Same goes for African Americans.

It’s easy to be enlightened from 1,000 miles away. And then of course to prove we’re not “racist” we’ll launch a couple cruise missiles in Yemen, so there you go…

As far as anyone arguing about veils being outlawed because they hide identities, that is an enormous red herring. Also it is patently legal to wear a hooded jacket anywhere or anywhy you want, so someone who has something to hide has plenty of options.

No, this is about suppressing the Islam, its symbols, and it’s possible rise in power (with perceived cultural takeover) in France. At best it could claim to be the misguided attempt at giving women their “freedom” while at the same time taking away another (the freedom of expression). At worst, and I am inclined to believe this is it’s real cause, it’s Xenophobia and the fear that France will become Muslim ala “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”.

It’s the kind of thing that if I were Muslim (er, not to mention a woman) would want to make me wear a veil more just to protest the blatant unfairness of the thing. It would be akin to not allowing women to wear crosses out in the open. Thus it’s really counterproductive, and certainly not a way to win the hearts and minds of the world Islamic community.

@ajay

I don’t argue that some forms of expression via clothing are limited throughout the “free world”, but to me this seems quantitatively different. It’s the only example I know of where a symbol of a single religion has been expressly targeted. I mean, anyone can wear a devil worshiping pentagram on their chest, but not a veil, right?

I don’t argue that the veil has cultural implications that I find offensive, however depending on your interpretation, wearing a cross means that you should be subservient to men as well. At least that’s the US Southern Baptist’s interpretation, thus it is potentially equally offensive. No one is going to suggest banning crosses being worn.

As far as anyone being coerced, well we’re all coerced by religion. If you’re brought up Christian you are brainwashed with Christian dogma, if you’re brought up Hindu you’re brainwashed with Hindu dogma, and if you’re brought up Muslim you’re brainwashed with Islamic dogma. Few children if any are given a choice, and if that’s not “coercion”, well I don’t know what is.

Moreover, even after you’re “of consent”, you’re constantly coerced to go to church, not have sex, etc., etc. Same thing, different religion.

Unfortunately the only answer in my mind is to let people work it out in their own consciences. After all you can take the veil off of the woman, but you can’t take the veil out of the woman. They will be just as suppressed without the symbol. If they are going to cast this thing off, they will have to do it themselves.

sg, I chose the example of the school in Antwerp because it is politically not suspect in the way the burqa ban in France is. I only want to argue that I don’t see how you all can condemn any a ban on principle. If there is social peer pressure then there is a point at which it becomes quite defensible for the state to barge in. Whether or not that point is reached in this or that case is a matter best left to those that know the details of the case. In the Antwerp case it is the head of the school that was questioned quite heavily in public discourse and whose credentials are – as far as racism and discrimination goes – quite beyond any doubt.

(and yes you’re right some people have allowed themselves to be abused by the right in helping an anti-muslim sentiment but that still doesn’t prohibit me from saying something without being subsumed under those ‘some people’)

sg, you’re just refusing to believe that anyone disagreeing with you might be arguing in good faith. You’ve taken the position that anyone on the other side is either a racist or a dupe of the racists, and I can’t really think of any way to argue against that. People like JoB or Farren keep popping their heads up to say “no, actually, forced veiling is a real problem, and people with otherwise unimpeachable liberal credentials and plenty of relevant experience think so too” and it doesn’t seem to make any impression on you.

Farren @47,

But [the French] also harbour in their midst a subculture of brutal, primitive and deplorable savages who’s savagery is a product of culture

And so, of course, the way to deal with these awful savages is not aggressively and relentlessly to prosecute and imprison the savage boys who rape the savage girls, but rather to forbid the savage girls to wear veils.

The much less distasteful Farren revealed @49,

A little personal background to flesh out why I find so much of the stereotypical (if erudite, as I would expect CT commentators to be) left dialog here

You seem to have left out a word here, but that’s OK as I can probably guess what it was.

Look: what Magistra said @55. I don’t think you’re a racist (or even some milder form of xenophobe). And I quite take your point about the tribalizing, isolating potential of the veil and some other Muslim (and for that matter non-Muslim) cultural practices. Indeed, as I’ve said, I hope every currently-veiled Muslim woman will, for her own sake, shed her veil and, for that matter, her religious beliefs in general. (I hope you don’t think I take the position I do because I like the veil.) Even if I do not think you and NPNS are right on the veil issue, I think the reasons for your anti-veil positions are laudable.

But neither do I think that French governmental anti-veil campaigns are, in the main, motivated by what motivates you or NPNS; and I don’t think it is the votes of people like you that these campaigns are, in the main, intended to hoover up. I do think that positions like yours, well-meaning though they be, unwittinghly assist a fairly unpleasant mainstream French right as it seeks to protect its right flank against far more unpleasant, non-mainstream French rightists while motivating unpleasant right-wing French people who might not otherwise vote to head down to the urns and put those horrid Muslims in their place.

I am well aware that you could, with (from your perspective) equal justice, accuse me of unwittingly assisting horrifically oppressive and superstitious religious fanatics. I’d disagree, as I would (if I were the French government) at the same time seek any and all ways consistent with the constitution and basic human rights to minimise the fanatics’ ability to influence society or stunt the minds and lives of anybody but themselves. But I’d take your point. Nonetheless, in my view anti-veil legislation is an unacceptable violation of the liberty of traditionalist Muslim women. (That I detest their tradition and deplore their choice is neither here nor there.) Depriving women of liberty in order to make them be and act as I think they should be and act? That’s what Mullahs (and Christianists) want to do. And I don’t want to be like them.

Yeah, a whole lot of concern trolling in this thread.

If you are a minor and your parents tell you to wear a headscarf – then you wear a headscarf. If that somehow prevents you from being popular – tough luck. But it could be worse; be happy you’re not stuttering.
If you are being bullied, assaulted, threatened, etc. – for whatever reason – you go to the police. And that’s, pretty much, all there is to it.

.. just a further comment to Mrs Tilton, which I forgot to write down because I got carried away with another stream of thought. I grew up in an environment of savagery (under Apartheid), where the savages were all white racist scum. Would you chide me sarcastically for expressing my disgust thus about people that share my skin tone and language?

If you are being bullied, assaulted, threatened, etc. – for whatever reason – you go to the police.

Yep, six-year-olds are really good at this.

It’s a good thing we give them sufficient free reign to ensure this opportunity is available to them, and that they understand that unlike the white bullies who torment them, the white cop is guaranteed to make everything OK and ensure that no violent retribution will ever occur. (It’s also a good thing we found all those cops who always take victims’ accusations of abuse with appropriate gravity and act accordingly.)

I am not sufficiently aware of French political or social currents to have an informed opinion of that.

Neither I am, I suppose, but I can try.

The veil law and this proposition have little in common. The first is about the veil for children, and in some circumstances. The second is about creating a non existent problem to get the racists before an election.

The first one passed with a big majority, left and right. The second will -I think- dodo quietly after the elections.

Welcome to the wonderful world of French pre elections, Sarkozy era. Maybe we’ll have still time to squeeze in a few cemetery desecrations, synagogue/mosquee burning – with lots of cops on TV.

It’s a good thing we give them sufficient free reign to ensure this opportunity is available to them, and that they understand that unlike the white bullies who torment them, the white cop is guaranteed to make everything OK and ensure that no violent retribution will ever occur. (It’s also a good thing we found all those cops who always take victims’ accusations of abuse with appropriate gravity and act accordingly.)

The allegation was that girls are assaulted not by “white bullies”, but by Muslims that belong to some “savage subculture” or some such; so your theory about “the white cop” being necessarily (or only likely?) a racist doesn’t really help.

And yes, if assaulting six-year-old girls for wearing jeans is a common phenomenon (which I highly doubt), then the authorities should know about it, and take care of it.

Me @96,

My last sentence was unfair and uncalled for. Withdrawn, and apologies to Henri.

@Mrs Tilton

Seriously, forgive the rant. I’m very, very tired (I worked till 2am on some software dev for a product demo at 8am this morning so I’ve had hardly any sleep in 2 days) and struggling with a mixture of feelings on this issue after reading two stories of cleric endorsed rape elsewhere in the world recently.

You make a fair point. I don’t know if its just gangs of hooligans or youths taking their cues from their elders. I do know that there are several places in Africa and Asia where clerics do prescribe such measures and am making a leap from that. It really, really makes me angry, but that doesn’t give me the right to leap to assumptions.

Farren @99,

no problem. As you’ll have seen from later developments in this thread, I am myself not immune.

Are clerics in Africa and Asia really preaching rape? Horrible. In the culture I come from, they never do that. As I was reminded watching Deliver Us From Evil last night, they save the kiddies for themselves.

A different note: South Africans and apartheid. I knew a few (white) S. African expats back in apartheid days; emphatically not fans of the system. Here is a memory I have from those heady days when apartheid was consigned to the rubbish tip — far from the most important thing but it still brings a smile to my face. After the first free elections, one of my S. African friends said to me, “Well, now I can finally stop telling Americans that I’m from Australia”.

JoB (84), this is bad on principle because it’s fundamentally illiberal and it attacks a minority community through a powerful symbol of their religion. I set out these points at 63 but no-one has read or responded, it seems – this is where the debate “stops”. The debate has also “stopped” at the point where commenters claim the women can just “take the veil off”, or would welcome being forced to, without further explanation, directly contra the point of the post. I’m surprised so many people have to be reminded of their liberal principles when religion enters the picture.

I also don’t recognise that bullying may be part of it, but if it is then it needs to be dealt with at a school and community level, not a state level. And always, bullying needs to be dealt with by attacking the bullies, not forcibly shaming the bullied. Why, oh why are so many basic principles of modern society being ignored in this little debate?

ajay, claims of forced veiling do make an impression on me, but I’m a) not convinced they’re at all widespread, b) unsure how banning the veil is going to work for those who choose to wear it and c) not convinced it’s such a big problem that it requires we all side with a far-right attack on Islam. It has been pointed out repeatedly in this and other threads on this debate that there are other, more feminist and more empowering ways to stop forced veiling, which will be good for the community in which it happens and not bad for the wider liberal society. I pointed out some of these in 63, but apparently all I’ve been doing is accusing everyone of being a dupe of the racists.

Speaking of Switzerland, a court has just upheld the women’s basketball league’s refusal to let a (native-born) player wear a headscarf. For safety reasons. And also to preserve “religious neutrality.”

sorry Mrs Tilton, I missed a paragraph…

S Turner, how does one reconcile the moral equality of every member of a public realm with a state intervention erecting special rules about the clothing restrictions of a particular subgroup of that public realm? Either everyone has the right to wear what they want, or they don’t.

Other clothing laws – about, for example, decency – are about being required to hide things which the general public consider to be private. They don’t preclude individuals choosing to define other areas of their body as private too – and passing laws which require individuals to make a part of their body publicly viewable is a new and disturbingly weird type of law-making which seems dangerously close to harrassment to me.

What, theoretically, is different between your definition of “hiding” and a definition of make-up as “hiding”? These laws are immediately and obviously wierd, evil and asinine. It’s only the fact that they will affect a much-misunderstood muslim minority in a (very superficially) proto-feminist way that appeals to their liberal interventionist streak which makes anyone on the left consider them anything but abhorrent.

I waited patiently.

It took till #86 to get to LDS. Lily white LDS. The US Government’s 19th century action and the to-this-day-cold-war against the remnant are, or at least should be, a counterexample to the notion, emphatically on display in the initial comments in this thread, that complaints against cultural oppression of women are always racist[1].

I have to say that I agree with both Mrs. Tilton and Farren (when he’s not ranting). I tried to say as much in my posts (way too succinctly for the Very-Deep-Critical-Reader Chris Bertram, apparently).

Among the things that Mrs. Tilton says that I agree with is that it’s not the pious that are the main source of the problem. Rather, there’s a layered-on paternalistic social element that’s free riding on some vague theology. Thugs are part of the problem.

Some say, well, it’s just bullying children. They’ll get over it. Perhaps we should just remind ourselves what the age of a high school or University undergraduate is.

Others shift the discussion from “what do they wear” to “it’s just a veil”. That’s not right either. It’s a lot more than the veil, but those other parts are mostly not the problem.

Finally, if you read my first two posts’ sentences on what the possible actually-might-make-a-difference solutions inflicted by a Government could be, you’ll see I have none. No confidence in them, that is. In this I’m in agreement with Mrs Tilton #100, especially. Enforce the laws. Maybe they need to be revised. We evolve.

I think for the most part people are not (or were not) allowed to conceal their identity, at least in European society. In Elizabethan England mummers were not allowed to wear masks, which is why the custom grew up of using blackface and strips of paper, instead. Of course, during Carnival or other theatrical ocasions, a certain playful transgressiveness was/is allowed — like on Halloween, especially for children.

Eighteenth C. Spain banned wide brimmed hats at one point because people used them to conceal their faces and commit crimes.

In short, I don’t think hoods and masks were banned in the US only because of the Ku Klux Klan. I suspect it is because of the republican nature of Calvinism, in which citizenship takes place in the public square, and all are supposed to be equal and identifiable before the law. People are also supposed to refrain from staring at or bothering each other or standing out too individualistically in their appearance. (This was carried to ridiculous extremes in the 1950s when everyone strove to look exactly like every one else, down to the last jot and tittle.) It is almost, one might say, as though every citizen were draped in an invisible veil that prevented them from attracting too much notice. But you could also say that coming a citizen could be viewed as a discipline or vocation — as a sort of secular way of “taking the veil”.

However that may be, it seems obvious that in a republic, real veils are not appropriate in institutional settings like schools, hospitals, or the army, for example. And also at work.

Otherwise, I don’t see why in their private time and space, women and girls shouldn’t be allowed to wear headscarfs or veils, like the netting on hats, that, even in my memory, widows used to wear on dress-up occasions.

@100 Thing is, I don’t think the rapists are particularly religious, save in a sort of cultural-background way. […] But it is incumbent on the state not to forbid girls to wear the scarf but to pursue the rapists so aggressively, and punish them with such breathtaking severity, that as many as possible of their would-be fellow-criminals do a fast and fundamental rethink.

Well, we seem to be pretty much in agreement now.

Although I suspect even “cultural-background way” is probably missing the point a bit. Gangs in the ghetto attack people for betraying their ghetto identity, whatever it happens to be; in the US one would be attacked for “acting white”. As long as the ghettos remain this will be going on, in one form or another.

sg103, I did respond to your 63. I think we’re more or less aligned but I am sure it is against the etiquette of the medium to publicly admit that. You agree bullying can be a reason for action, & I agree that the first action to take on it is not to handle the bullied. However if the bullying is to wear a certain uniform and the bulliers can’t be in a naïvely Vieuxtempian way be stopped (as it is not uncommon in the case of bullies) then I believe that one does not attack the bullied when one forbids the uniform. Once it is forbidden there’s this neutral zone where bulliers and bullied are stripped from the symbol of bullying.

For all the many negative effects such a course of action has, there may be a point where it’s just the best one.

So, not in principle a bad course of action. Kemal Atatütk: OK. Antwerp secondary school: well, seems to be quite justified. Most city administration personel in “Old Europe” – dunno really. & the burqa in France: no, but hopefully it is not a question of probably not yet.

But to restate the impopular point: why do so many people from AngloSaxon origin feel so very comfortable making blanket statements about something in continental Europa where it’s clear things are completely different migration-wise. It seems like you all believe in Old Europe after all; well then maybe you should loose faith in social democracy as well as it is something that we invented over here all on our own.

I think these guys sum up my opinion of this legislation very nicely…

well, it’s complex, lol

Also I think forcing all girls to dress “provocatively” (i.e. unveiled) because some of them are being bullied for dressing “provocatively” seems to be an awesomely counterproductive measure.

Well…yes. What is the mechanism of action here? The plan seems at the moment to be as follows:
1. Punish veil wearers.
2. …..
3. Ponies!

What’s step 2 meant to be? If you make the enormous concession of assuming good faith here, it seems that they’ve observed that there seems to be a correlation between unveiledness and socioeconomic status and decided to remove the veils. But, y’know, correlation is no evidence of causation without a plausible mechanism of action.

There’s another point here: this is a bunch of fairly horrible rightwing politicians who are demanding extended police powers over a specific, disadvantaged ethno-religious community, which they justify with tales of racially charged sexual violence and appeals to liberate so and so by force. If this was in Texas, or, say, Berlusconi’s Italy, I suspect a lot of people here would instantly identify it as an ugly exercise in racist pandering. For some reason, attaching Frenchness to it seems to block some people’s immune receptors for authoritarian bullshit.

120 – Except, Alex (if you can stop shouting for a moment), that it’s more complex than that, & it is not a purely French thing, & a zillion other things mentioned upthread. Carry on…

Ah, laws – you can’t base them on some abstract universal principle, and you can’t base them on what a community wants. Apparently. Oh noes, what are we to do?

123: embarking with some trepidation on this analogy, you’d have to imagine a British politician who campaigned on sucking up to ex-Rhodesians, but who also appointed the first black cabinet minister in British history, which complicates the picture a little.
And isn’t the motive of the people introducing this law a bit of a side issue? I mean, for all I know, Lyndon Johnson only backed the Civil Rights Act out of a selfish desire for a place in history. Road to hell, good intentions, and vice versa.

Meanwhile, you have an issue where those in favour include: lots of non-Muslim French people, who think veils are against French principles (and, a priori, they should have a good idea of what those principles are and what’s against them); an unknown number of French racists, who just back anything that can be seen as affecting Muslims; and a lot of French Muslim women (NPNS, etc), who should have an even better idea of the veil issue.

Meanwhile, those against include: a lot of Anglo-Saxons on the internet who are unlikely to ever live in France and are even less likely either to be forced to wear a veil or to be banned from doing so, but who rather like the nice multicultural feel that the occasional hijab gives to Regents Park on a summer evening.

“French political culture, even some very left-wing bits of it, is, on balance, ideologically opposed to the concept of multiculturalism at a quite profound level.”

It’s also ideologically anti-clerical, especially the left-wing bits of it. The freedom of religion stuff that Americans get teary-eyed over doesn’t play in France.

Bloix, that is also my understanding. But I have a hard time understanding how Beauvoir and Sartre, say, treated their IIRC Dominican and Franciscan peers with the very deepest respect. It’s not that I think they are unworthy of respect–it’s that a left-leaning person behaving similarly today would be met with widened eyes and warned off with the words, “But he’s a Catholic and very conservative, you know!”

Henri V makes an interesting point but I think Daniel’s response is correct. Religious fanaticism in the inner city is presented as an alternative to the gang culture, an insistence that when the gang says “joining us is what it means to be a man” they are wrong, but in the US the gangs aren’t usually a matter of immigrants failing to assimilate (may be less true in London and Paris).

JoB at 118, Australia has the 2nd biggest greek populatoin in the world outside of Athens, and I think the 3rd biggest Italian. We have significant Lebanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, Malaysian and Indonesian communities and a huge overseas student population. Sydney has, I think, the 4th largest number of nationalities of any city in the world – much more than Paris. Australia has something to say about multiculturalism and, I suppose, I think it’s a philosophy which, if not universal, might give people with significant migrant communities a few more tools with which to manage these issues.

I think you confused my point about provocative dressing – currently the girls being bullied are being bullied for being unveiled. The proposal to prevent bullying is to unveil more. I don’t know how this works?

I’m also really dubious of your claim that “more and more women” feel they will be harassed if they walk unveiled. 132 comments in and I don’t see much evidence of that. The OP does contain some evidence that veiled women feel harassed if they are forced to unveil.

I really don’t think you’ve answered Alex’s points very clearly either. “It’s complex” is never an answer.

Commenting anonymously is to take advantage of the veil that citizenship affords us — to express our opinions in the public square without being stereotyped because of occupation or origin. It is like an orchestra member who auditions behind a screen so as to get a fair hearing.

The United States has always traditionally permissive about letting people use whatever name they wished as long as it was not for criminal purposes.

I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us – don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know!

How dreary to be somebody!
How public like a frog
To tell one’s name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

And in the Western part of our country self-reinvention was just a way to start over:

Oh, what was your name in the States
Was it Thompson, or Johnson, or Bates
Did you murder your wife and fly for your life
Say, what was your name in the States

sg, what can I say, I said loads of things and then I said ‘it’s complex’ once because this ranter comes in as if nothing has been said before him and nothing van be said after – & you do as if that’s everything I said.

I tried to say something like this:

“currently the girls being bullied are being bullied for being unveiled. The proposal to prevent bullying is to unveil more. I don’t know how this works?”

So you admit (more than) the possibility of them being bullied into a veil, or a burqa. & I will assume that you agree the world would be a better place if they weren’t bullied.

(and I did not want to point to a beauty context between migration policies; I just point to the fact that the migration is very very different between Australia and Europe – and the idea that what works there should work here utterly naïve. But yes, this is universal at least: a world without a need for freedom of religion is a better one, if we can bring it about to have no individual of her own free will to still be religious)

The issues here aren’t anything like the same in the French school situation as I understand it. France has secular schools, as well as Catholic and Jewish schools (at the time of the school controversy I think they were considering Muslim schools as well). I think the cost of all of them to the parents is the same (free). I don’t see anything wrong with mandating the secular schools be secular. Students who want a religious environment can choose a different school (Muslims were permitted to wear the headscarf in Catholic schools, for example). They don’t have to pressure the secular school authorities to change school policy to conform more closely to their parents’ beliefs (as happens in the US).

I have not seen any official arguments that the problem is social separation, either. I have heard that officials do not like to talk to veiled women, and the reason they give is that they do not feel the women are “open” with them, which might just not make a woman who wears a veil or headscarf feel a whole lot like changing her mind. And to make the argument about a woman wearing a shoulder-length scarf that leaves her face in full view is stupid.

1) Essentially irrelevant. I don’t interpret it as modesty or religiousness. What I interpret it as is up to me and none of anyone’s business until such time as I make it public. I do, however, interpret the proposed legislation as being unwise, illiberal, discriminatory, and probably motivated by a desire to get racists to vote for its proposers.

2) No.
3) I would be very surprised if people who actually do this for real go around with no idea who they are talking to. Certainly, in 80s-90s West Yorkshire, I never heard of such an incident occurring. This is anecdote, not data, but it’s usually the responsibility of someone making an unusual assertion to bring the data.
4) No. Nothing does. If someone believes that (something) makes other people less than human, it’s not the fucking dress regulations that are the problem.
5) No – see 4.
6) Define “full integration” and “society”, if possible explaining why in that case we shouldn’t all wear uniform.

JoB, I’ve said repeatedly that I don’t admit the possibility of much bullying going on, and that I think it’s a smokescreen. But even if the bullying were happening, forcibly unveiling more women to expose them to the same ridicule is a) not going to help and b) is not attacking the cause of the bullying. The only solution to bullying is to attack the cause, and the cause of bullying is always the bully.

I didn’t read Alex’s comments as rants (sorry Alex I think this offends your moniker). There are a number of obvious reasons to think that these laws are racist or colonialist, of the “we know what’s good for them” variety. As I have repeatedly pointed out, and as was the original purpose of this post, “what’s good for them” in this case seems to ignore the opinion of the veiled women themselves, who object to being forced to walk semi-naked through the streets of Paris. Or Algeria. Or wherever. And I still think that the claims of bullying are concern trolling, a smokescreen to enlist concerned dissenters into uncomfortably supporting these laws “for the good of the women”.

This is where I think Australian multicultural policy has something to show Europe. It’s not a beauty contest, as you put it – but we have some ideas about how to manage difference that don’t involve ghettos and guest workers, and I really don’t think Europe is so different to Oz that some of them might not be valid.

There are a lot of items on the list
“contrary to the values of the republic”
including the many regional dialects of the French language itself, which have been actively suppressed, in honor of a monolithic entity.