Foulards, burkas and the insecurity of French republicanism

(c) Shira Golding

UKIP has been described as a libertarian party. However, under Lord Pearson, it has taken an authoritarian tone by announcing that it will include a ban on burkas in its manifesto for the General Election. UKIP’s supporters have looked across the Channel for inspiration. Last week, a parliamentary committee in the French Assembly has proposed a partial ban on the burka.

The 32 member committee met for six months and interviewed 200 people. Its 200 page report suggested it should be banned in hospitals, schools, public transport and government offices. Furthermore, it suggested withholding citizenship and residence cards from women who have “radical religious practices”.

“I think this is one step,” said Jacques Myard, deputy for the Yvelines departement. “There is also a huge majority in the mission as in the Parliament to totally ban these kind of clothes. We consider it contrary to the equality of sex, contrary to the dignity of women and this is a Middle Age practice which is unbearable. It is contrary to our social values in this country.”

The report follows a sequence of measures against burkas and other religious symbols in France over the last decade. In 2004, the head garment or hijabs was banned in schools and last year, a woman was refused entry into a public bath east of Paris due to her wearing the burkini, a new swimsuit designed for Muslim women. The proposal has the blessing of President Nicholas Sarkozy who has described the garment as a pernicious object for women and “contrary to the ideals we have of a “woman’s dignity.”

While those advocating a total ban have been disappointed, the current proposal will have the effect of making life impractical for those women who already wear the full veil. The report found that out of the 6 million strong Muslim community, 1,900 women wore the full veil.

It appears the French are going the way of the Swiss in resorting to rhetoric that borders on the hyperbolic. Similar to the four minarets, the garb of these 1,900 women is taken as an existential threat to the values of the republic. Similar to the arguments during the Swiss referendum, a Muslim item is taken as an essential symbol of oppression and separateness.

That view is not taken of the other religious garbs that are worn by women in France. As a comparison, nearly half of France’s Jewish community follows the moderate Orthodox strand. There are religious requirements regarding dress that seeks to encourage modesty in women in the belief that they are sacred and should be spared the attentions of men. For example, wigs and prayer shawls. Catholic women too are encouraged to have conservative attire. French politicians haven’t described those items as a threat to women’s freedom or to the republic.

In the case of the veil, there is vigorous debate amongst Muslims in France and elsewhere about whether the veil is a religious requirement or even desirable . One scholar from a New York Islamic centre said that only the wives of the Prophet Mohammed were compelled to wear the veil; not Muslim women wherever they may live. Others have used more fiery language. The pressure group for Muslim women in France, Neither Submissives nor Whores, has described the veil as “our yellow star.” The Tunisian born imam of Paris, Hassen Chalgoumi, believes that it hinders the participation of women in French society and if they want to wear it, they should go to Saudi Arabia.

Notably, he pointed out that face veils are part of a “tiny minority tradition”. The figures prove him right and it would be better that this debate within Islam continues and those who object to the veil can prevail. The heavy handed intervention of the French state by legislation is simplistic in treating Islam as a monolithic faith. Similar to Swiss Muslims, young French Muslims will start to think that the society they live in regards them as an “other”.

This case is symptomatic of what could be called insecurite in France about republicanism and secularism. In the place where Thomas Jefferson hoped the French Revolution would follow, The  United States, there are no calls for a ban on veils in public places and the American Civil Liberties Union has defended in court the right of pupils to wear religious clothing in America’s secular high schools. In 1989, when three Muslim girls arrived at a lycee school outside Paris wearing the hijabs, it was described as a “dissolution of the republican idea.”

The republican idea that Sarkozy and his political allies articulate in their speeches has been described as the traditional form of republicanism. There have been prominent French philosophers who have looked to the United States as an example to emulate. They have argued that the traditional republican ideal of turning peasants into Frenchmen was fine in the nineteenth century with a homogenous population, but has little resonance now when France has a significant immigrant population with treasured social mores from the former colonies. One of those writers, Dominique Schnapper, the daughter of Raymond Aron, has written of a need of what has been called modernising republicanism.

In her 1994 book La Communaute, she writes that for “humiliated people”, “transcendence through citizenship appears as purely formal, having only the function of consecrating the dominance of the other under the guise of universality.” In order to avoid this, individuals “must have the sentiment that their collective dignity is recognised and respected.” At the present moment, French republicanism is presented in a Manichean way; be the ideal Frenchman or not.

The girls in 1989 were never asked why they chose to wear the headscarves and it looks like the current committee did not interview the women it catalogued why they wear they veil. The automatic assumption is that the veil is a challenge to French values. As France wrestles with the legacy of its war in Algeria, it would be pertinent to wonder whether there will be more humiliated people.

The present proposal makes the idea of being a franco-musulman ever more difficult.