What a stunning coincidence. In many nation-states around Europe, simultaneously, laws are being debated that ostensibly have no connection to one another — defending secularism in France, defending women’s rights in Belgium and Sweden, defending states’ rights in Germany, defending the autonomy of state-funded Christian schools in Spain and Italy — and yet, miraculously, despite these disparate if lofty ideals, they all converge on the exact same effect: Muslim women will not be allowed to wear headscarves in public schools.
If there is anything redeeming about this sudden flurry of legal innovation, it is that collectively these laws betray a certain embarrassment about their aims. In each case, the proscription against Muslim women is officially construed as a secondary effectThe silliest example of such a secondary effect is not France’s law against “conspicuous religious symbols” being used to ban the headscarf, but the defence in Spain of a state school run by nuns that forbade a Muslim girl from obeying the same biblical precept that obliges nuns to wear habits! Sorry, but that merits a rare exclamation mark.. To me, this signals that the proponents of these laws know they are treading on shaky legal ground. They know they can’t just come right out and say, “we’re going to make a law forbidding Muslim women from wearing headscarves at school,” because its intent would be laughed out of any human rights tribunal.
Hence the proscription as side effect. It’s the same desired effect, minus the intent. Countries are doing an admirable job of coming up with their own home-grown solutions, though with varying levels of precision: Sikhs are still in limbo in France, it turns outUpdate 2003/02/15: Scott Martens on A Fistful of Euros surveys the state of the headscarf debate online..
France is the furthest along this road to madness; if ever the lunatics end up running this asylum, blame the one with the Napoleon complex.
For bonus points, this has got to be the stupidest editorial I’ve read in years. But I’d love to be trumped.
Funny that it always is men that defending womens headscarves. Even you, although I suppose you are not a muslim. But still you like the idea of women forced to wear headscarves. Do you really believe a seven years old muslim girl loves her hearscarves, loves that she never will be allowed to play soccer in a team or any other free activites. The headscarves are just the top of the iceberg, the symbol, of the non-free- muslims women. No one can prove that they are free.
Chadie,
I hate the headscarf and the inequality it symbolizes. But a free society allows people to be morons. It is the government’s role to ensure that citizens’ rights are enforced, but you’d have a hard time drawing a causality between wearing a headscarf and being denied rights under the law. Moreover the arbitrary nature of these European initiatives makes it clear that one particular religion and identity is being targetted, which is not just.
Maybe women and girls hate the headscarf, I’m sure many do. On the other hand, when I travel in Islamic countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, I find a great number of women do choose to wear it – more than before. It’s partly religious but it’s more about identity, and you can’t tell someone they are not allowed to display their Muslim faith.
A headscarf poses no threat to others; it does not impinge upon the liberty of others. For a government to decree that headscarves in schools are to be banned is unjust.
Jame:
I think that you are missing Chadie’s point. There is no question that laws banning the voluntary wearing of headscarves by adults impinge on liberty in an unacceptable way, but her comment points to the difficult question of voluntariness and children. We in the US have not taken a consistent stand on this issue either, because it is tough — we allow the forced medication of the children of Christian Scientists but we also allow the Amish to pull their children out of school before any other children are allowed to leave school because it is considered important for the preservation of Amish culture. This decision has the side effect of limiting the ability of Amish children to gain enough education to make up their own minds. My general inclination is to agree with Stefan’s view that these head scarf rules are objectionable and probably racist, but I don’t think Chadie’s concern can be lightly cast aside.
Chadie,
It would be a logical fallacy to argue against the merits of my position by pointing out I am a man. It would be equivalent to me arguing that your position should be depreciated because you, as a woman, are too emotionally involved in the topic to reach a rational conclusion on the matter. (I don’t make that argument, by the way:-).
I believe women should be free from coercion when it comes to religious expression. So I do not “like the idea of women forced to wear headscarves,” although you may be arguing that, given the social climate of women growing up in (some?/many?) Muslim households, me being against a ban against headscarves in schools means tolerating a mysogynistic male Muslim perspective of how women should behave.
I do not know if you think it is possible for a woman of school age to decide for herself that she would like to wear a headscarf, or if you think anybody who does is by necessity brainwashed or coerced. If you think not, then surely you can see that this law will harm her rights? Restoring rights to some by taking them away from others is a bizarre public policy. But if you think yes, such people need to be helped, even if against their will, to achieve proper norms of dignity, then I can only point out that these norms are yours.
Let’s not kid ourselves about the pressures western women face to conform to social norms of behavior, especially in schools. In adults, a boob job sounds about as sad as wearing a hijab, but I for one would never consider banning either. Children too, are given dolls/machine guns, skirts/jeans, makeup/video games, and then in school have to navigate a whole set of social norms that govern attractiveness, sexiness, popularity, etc… most of them determined by how males react. Legislate against this too, and then perhaps your headscarf ban would become less obviously a reaction to norms of dignity you do not share.
Of course I do not think we should enact such legislation. It might be tempting to try to limit the extent to which parents hand on their values to their offspring, especially if they are not your values, but in a liberal society we should be very careful with this impulse. My own preferred middle ground is the one Ben mentions in the US: Prohibit physically undoable abuse to minors, such as female circumcision, or the denial of medical attention (and I would add, male circumcision, but that’s another story), they can do all that stuff if they want as adults… But for all the rest, a ban on public behaviour that is not illegal is to me unethical, not to mention counterproductive. Instead of focussing on banning the symptoms, prosecute cases of real physical abuse. We don’t need new laws, we need to apply them better.
Europe is full of hypocrites. They watch TV and and lap up every slanderous thing that their tabloid media says about America. But they don’t even have the mind to look critically a themselves like we do here in the States. They call Bush xenophobic? He never passed any laws oppressing different religions like Europe has done. Europe never gets it. People fled from Europe becuase of religious persecution or ethnic cleansing and came too America. In America those people created our Constitution to ensure that the governemt gave the freedom of religion and can never oppress the people again for their religious beliefs. In Europe they saw that America was getting along fine with this “freedom of religion thing” and tried to emulate it. But they got it wrong. Instead of freedom of religion, Europe decides it is better to have no religion, and anybody who shows any religious beliefs of any kind is singled out and oppressed. And this is still the 21st century. Europe’s state sponsored atheism (or secularism as France calls it), is no better than the state sponsored religion made by the Taliban. Maybe one day Europe will discover freedom. But until that day comes, the continent that invented Communism and Nazism will continue to be a nest of tyranny.
Do you really believe a seven years old muslim girl loves her hearscarves,
No, but I’ve seen 11 year old girls leave schools where their forbidden to wear them (in Turkey) and put them on the minute they passed the front gate.
I also know adult, professional, women who started to wear hijab as adults, even when they’re parents and family were non-practising Muslims and though they were weird. You may not be able to understand that, but surely the essence of a free society is that one doesn’t ban things just because one doesn’t understand or like things.
loves that she never will be allowed to play soccer in a team or any other free activites.
I’ve seen girls play soccer in full hejab loads of times. Go to any Primary School in East London or East Lancashire. I’ve even seen them play touch rugby. Your point is?
Oh and, by the way, this isn’t about protecting children, much as ban-supporters claim that it is. A similar ban already applies to Civil Servants, thereby excluding Conservative Muslim women from hundreds of thousands of jobs. What motivation, other than Islamophobia, does that have?
Ben – and Chadie
The Amish are struggling to survive; they barely maintain their population, not because of demographics, but because so many kids bolt for assimilating into the greater society. So there is a choice being made, a rational one.
I’ve met women in Malaysia and Indonesia who freely make the same decisions as Young Fogey has described in Britain. I find these things a little disturbing, and certainly a lot of the Islamization of these societies is worrisome, but banning scarves won’t enduce warm, fuzzy feelings.
I really don’t like headscarves. I do sympathize with Chadie’s point. But I don’t think this is something that can be challenged by diktat; or rather, state decrees only end up being counterproductive and shift the problem – integrating Muslims into Western society – elsewhere.
I don’t have a magic bullet. European laws that discriminate in this way, however, strike me as folly.
As for G. Resaba, ‘state-sponsored atheism’ is going too far. People of all religions can still worship in Western Europe. I’d take French secularism any day over the Taliban regime to which you unwisely compare it. And while I share your admiration for the religious freedoms in the US, let’s face it…some of these zealots are pretty obnoxious, and they do affect policy in America’s “culture wars”.
The rights of children and parents in the religious sphere may indeed conflict but it is not always the parents who are the more “pious”. The question is really the proper function of government which is, I think, to be as unobtrusive as possible. If the schools were not an arm of said government, many of these controversies would be moot. On the editorial… I may be outing myself as a dunderhead but I don’t see anything obviously stupid about it. Actually it doesn’t seem to say much.
I don’t think the question of if a seven year old girl wants to wear a hijab or not is relevent. There are lots of things my five year old doesn’t like to do, but I make her anyway because I am her parent and it is my responsibility to teach her what is right.
Basically, we have a government telling parents they cannot raise and teach their religion to their own child in the way they see best. This is appropriate in those very rare circumstances where the parents’ desires and methods harm the child (e.g. violent exocisms, sex-based “religious” practices, scarification and mutilation), but nobody has yet to demonstrate to me the damage done by a hijab to either the child or her peers.
How odd that among non-Islamic countries, only in “The Great Satan” and “The Zionist Entity” is the right of muslim women and girls to wear the hijab in schools and governmental offices unquestioned. As Young Fogey pointed out, even Turkey regulates its use.
Yet these sophisticated and mature European societies presume to lecture the United States and Israel about respecting the rights of others. Is it any wonder that much of the American public finds them comical.
So far as athletics goes I have only one anecdote. A couple of years ago I watched an international rock climbing competition on TV. The contestants zoomed up one of those artifical rock walls, two at a time on identical sections. One of the women was obviously muslim, covered head to wrist to ankle in an opaque but loose and unrestrictive set of garments. All the other girls were wearing tank tops and shorts. After several rounds of heats and semi-finals the muslim girl came in third, about 2/100 off second place.
The question of women and girls wearing hijab is not one of coercion or oppression, but one of religious liberty. When any government bans one religion’s customs in the public sphere, it comments either on the religion or the custom. However, not all regulations in this realm are created equal.
Banning snake-handling, for example, is a public-health regulation. You handle a snake, you’re likely to die from a stupidity-induced snakebite. Forcing children of Christian Scientists to be medicated is another public-health regulation. It keeps children from dying of the common cold. Banning the Sikh adolescent male’s traditional knife at school also has a certain basis: The knife can be used to stab another student. That’s the public-safety route.
Then we get to a head-scarf regulation, which bans a Muslim woman from wearing hijab. What is the purpose of this regulation? It’s certainly not some sort of public-health regulation, as the media record very few hijab-related deaths. It’s not public-safety weapons-related regulation, as the hijab is not known as a deadly weapon.
The only real rational basis left is some sort of religion-based discrimination. Not exactly what you’d expect from a liberal democracy.
The problem here is with the Islamists not with the states in question. The non-Muslim world is coming awake and rejecting Islam’s attempt to set aside state authority in favor of Koran, imam, and sharia, for which the hijab is the nose of the elephant. Muslims interpret the right to worship freely as the right to impose their religion on the state. All these nations that are implementing these measures have problems with Muslims in their society. It is interesting that none of these nations sought to move against Muslims before, but now that global attention is on the Mid-East, the world is seeing that Islamic states are not beneficent towards non-Muslims; thus these changes are the states’ attempt to preserve their own laws, culture, and religion – whatever shred remains of it. I can only hope that nations will turn to Muslim states and demand that they allow churches to be established and proselytization to occur freely. Now, will Muslim males in these countries persist in raping women who don’t wear hijabs, persist in calling them whores? Or, will Muslim males learn to behave according to the norms of the civilization in which they live?
-Funny that it always is men that defending womens headscarves. Even you, although I suppose you are not a muslim. But still you like the idea of women forced to wear headscarves. Do you really believe a seven years old muslim girl loves her hearscarves, loves that she never will be allowed to play soccer in a team or any other free activites. The headscarves are just the top of the iceberg, the symbol, of the non-free- muslims women. No one can prove that they are free.
Let’s not comment on proving they are free–you’d have a difficult time proving I’m free, too. They are not free. We agree to that. Yes, they are the tip of the iceberg. And laws that address headscarves aren’t addressing the problem that Muslim women aren’t free. The point is that Europe is solving the wrong problem. Instead of forcing assimilation, instead of forcing the rule of secular law, they are busy pretending laws like this will make Islam in europe melt in the whole. They are rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Muslims need to enter the any of the last couple of centuries. They need to act civilized. Laws about headscarves aren’t civilizing this society, aren’t having the Muslims in Europe act as European first, Muslim second, aren’t making Muslims into citizens of nation-states, and aren’t teaching Muslims that their treatment of women–including physical abuse, rape, honor killins, locking them inside, emotional abuse, unwillingness to let them talk to men, drive, work, etc etc etc –is unacceptable in society.
How does banning the headscarf achieve freedom for Muslim women trapped in that culture? Won’t they need to drop the veils themselves?
Religion in Europe
Yesterday, the Telegraph claimed that most of the moves in England against religion in England are anti-Christian in nature, since the PC types have to claim that other cultures are OK. That is a very American way of looking at…
Dragging the Islamic world into modernity is a very long process. The universal values we proclaim to exist in a modern, tolerant society rest on notions of individuality. The West holds no monopoly on this concept but it is in the West that it is the most advanced. Individualism is fostered in environments that are democratic and free-market – environments that not only allow choice, but force choice, and therefore self-reflection.
It is not obvious how the Middle East transitions to such an environment. Morocco, Qatar and Jordan, thanks to benign monarchs, have made limited moves in that direction, while Turkey is proof that a secular Muslim democracy can exist. Iran demonstrates that theocratic Muslim “democracy” is a failure, and one can only hope that the internal pressures there will some day put Iran on a more Turkish path.
But for the most part, Arab governments have been impervious to reform, with catastrophic results. Now one dictator is gone. Iraq now is engulfed in chaos; this experiment at revolutionizing society has yet to run its course. But there are positive signs amid the bombings. The next generation may look back and say yes, this is where it really began.
Just a pointer to an article in the latest issue of London Review of Books: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n04/hard01_.html
Chadie,
My wife wears a head scarf and if you can get her to stop, you sure won’t hear me complaining. Methinks you’ve made a poor generalization.
Don’t all these countries believe that the “root cause” of terrorism is disrespect for Muslim culture?
The US and Israel don’t believe in this root cause theory, but they seem to be the only countries that respect head scarves.
well, im a musilm, im 15, and my mother was not very religious until she met a bunch of women who think they know all about islam, and how THEY are right and everyone isn’t; which totally pissed me off. I have always fought back,when my mum tried to ban me from being me, but she was finally convinced on how naive the women were when one tried to get her daughter married at teh age of only 16, claiming it’s what “Allah wants”. i don’t wear hijab, but many of their daughters do, and they seem to be very naive about western concepts, and because of their parents own naiveness, misenterpreting parts of the koran and acting as if they know all. i was the most hated, dubbed as the “whore” for refusing to wear hijab and not listening to anything they said at one of their meetings when i was dragged down there, whilst arriving in a jumper n a pair of jeans. when they learned my love of rock music, they were horrified, and even convinced one of the daughters not to go near me or even talk to me. It wasn’t like i didn’t disrespect them , or mocked them, i covered my head during whilst they prayed, i didn’t show up in something that flashed my boobs, but then again i refused to show up in a “burka”.
I respect them for their belief, but i don’t respect them for their naiveness and disrespect for others who choose not to believe what they do, and how they treat and see non-muslims.I believe thatbehvaiour like this causes misinterpretations and issues to develop.
From my understanding jihad is a holy war, a war to protect islam if under attack, to defend, NOT attack, so as our islamic beliefs are mis-interpreted, many issues such as teh head scarf bans are broyght up, and of discrimination of women’s role in society.
My role is the same as men, to be educated, be equal, and to lead a life taht i wish to lead, not to get married to a bigamist at the age of 16 and give birth to many kids whilst in a burka and in hijab.
I am Muslim and am really proud of it. I pray and fast and try to dress modestly. But now Im so confused. Its almost May and the weather is getting really hot. I want to wear shorts to school. REALLY. I don’t see what is SO wrong with wearing shorts to school. everyone does it. its not like guys are like – “O LOOK SHES WEARING SHORTS which means shes a prostitute. The UGLIEST girls in school wear shorts. im NOT kidding. and guys aren’t all over them by any means. I hate going to school in jean capris. Like after gym class im so hot and swaeaty and it feels like CRAP to put jeans over my sweaty legs. I feel so GROOOSSS! I don’t see wats the problem with shorts. im not gonna roll them up sky high like 99% of my friends. I just want to be comfortable in school. I don’t want to be like some sex idol or watever..ive got enough girls in my school to fill that role…TRUST ME! my parents are all..you can’t do that..but they just do’t understand. Its so annoyning being alone with no one who really understands where i am comming from. I am a good Muslim and I know it. God has blessed me with a lot. I don’t want to be bad..i want to be good. but i RELE WANT TO BE COMFORTABLE in school. I don’t think that shorts are bad – and i really think i should be allowed to wear them. Its so hard sometimes. This is part of the reason why I HATE it when it gets hot….i have to be sweaty and hot and disgusting. I just wanna scream or cry or throw up or all three. PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME!