Friday, October 8, 2010

Culture Clash - France Outlaws the Burka


Yesterday, the last obstacle to the outlawing of the wearing of veils (or burkas) by women in France was removed by the Conseil Constitutionnel, that country's highest legal authority. In its ruling, it stated  the law "respected the balance between public order and the guarantee of liberties and constitutional rights" and "is not manifestly disproportionate to its aims... given the mild penalties imposed." 
 
After six months, when the law takes effect, anyone wearing a full-face veil – or any face mask, with a few stated exceptions – could be fined 150 euros (or about $208) or sent on a "citizenship" course. Anyone "forcing" a woman to wear a full-face veil could be fined 30,000 euros (or $41,766) or given a one-year jail sentence. Those who are exempt from the ban include motorcyclists, carnival revellers and sportspeople, such as fencers and skiers. 
 
There has been growing tension in Europe over the last decade regarding the cultural conflicts arising from growing Islamic populations, both immigrant and religious converts. The wearing of the burka, under Islamic religious law, is effectively a cultural requirement within Middle Eastern nations, so the imposition of the wearing of the garment goes beyond a mere religious requirement, since religious, political and social spheres are effectively synonymous in cultures or nations dominated by Islamic tradition and Sharia Law. There is some dispute among scholars and historians and contemporary leaders in the Islamic community about whether the wearing of a burka is really a requirement of Sharia Law, or is the residue to a folk custom deriving from age-old practice and habit. But according to sources I've read, the conservative, more strict interpretation is generally dominant in Islamic circles today. In other words, devout, practicing Muslims are expected to follow the custom of wearing the burka in public, and may expect to be disciplined or persecuted if they stray from this law.   
 
 

In the West, stricter degrees of modesty have been much less formally regarded. With the growth of media in the 20th Century, there's been a general breakdown in the standards of "decency" and "modesty" among both men and women, particularly in Western Europe and the United States. In primitive cultures--such as in Africa, parts of Southeast Asia, and Oceania--weather and circumstance have mitigated against the wearing of elaborate garments, though in the Near East and Middle East, the wearing of certain garments has been intended to protect the body from the extreme effects of sun, wind, sand, and so forth. 
 
Western notions of equality of the sexes, freedom of the individual, emancipation of women from domination (by male culture) and exclusionary regulation and custom, have proceeded historically over the last century, while in Central and Southern Asia, and Northern Africa, no such pattern was allowed to develop. The position of women in Islamic countries has been strictly interpreted under Sharia law, and women are expected to heed the dress codes.
 
As the influence of Western culture has tended to increase through media and the freedom of movement among Western and non-Western nations, Islamic authority has begun to develop increasingly reactionary attitudes towards challenges to traditional custom and authority. This has caused conflict both within Islamic societies--where women feel the tension between what they're expected to do, and what they may feel, given the example of liberated women elsewhere in the world, and how they might wish to behave--as well as within Western nations experiencing influxes of Arab or Eastern ethnic groups, where direct conflicts develop between immigrant communities and the host national culture(s).
 
The conservative Right in France has been advocating the suppression of strict Sharia law for several years. France's growing Islamic community is regarded by some as a threat to the French cultural and political life, which is based on democratic principles which fly in the face of what some feel is an outdated, unnecessarily restrictive view of the relationship between men and women, and the familiar structures of the family, education, governance, worship, and so on. They felt that a prohibition of the wearing of the burka was a necessary step in the preservation of the rights and freedom of French citizens, a reasonable move to prevent the growth of Islamic control of the lives of its members.   
 
There have been reports that certain elements within the Islamic community are threatening reprisals, even violence, in protest over the new regulation. There are those in the liberal French community, as well, who argue that this prohibition infringes on the rights of individuals and groups to live how they wish, and to practice their religion, as long as it doesn't harm others. 
 
How does one separate the religions from the customary, the individual from the group? Is a devout woman who chooses to wear a burka, in observance of her religion, free to express her freedom in this way? Or is the garment a symbol of the subjugation of women, of the loss of power and choice in their lives? Catholic school children still adhere to rigid dress codes in some places. Certain kinds of religious costumes are common in many cultures. Do traditions in which variance of dress, and the freedom to pursue that variety, constitute a real "right" under democratic conditions, or is that an illusion of capitalist economies, in which the market dictates what people may choose to wear?
 
I was not raised in a strict religious household, but I can well imagine how powerful Islamic customs and laws might feel, growing up inside such a rigidly controlled culture. Doctrinal costume may only be a symbol of what that rigidity means, but symbols are meaning; they define what we are, and signal to the world what we believe. Uniforms, like those for soldiers, doctors, policemen, firemen, are intended to separate the wearers from the rest, both for convenience and to make a statement. 
 
And it's the uniformity of the Sharia law, which may be the most troubling aspect of its meaning. The veil symbolizes adherence to duty, to an organization of society based on a severe interpretation of the roles of men and women in society. 
 
You cannot subscribe to notions of freedom and equality embodied in our Western laws and customs, at the same time that you believe in strict Islamic practice. Anyone who attempts to suggest that there is no crisis of morality here, or that it is a trivial, private issue, is really being deliberately naive. 

22 comments:

Kirby Olson said...

C'est bon, mais est-ce que c'est contre la liberte de reguler la mode?

J said...

c'est bonne, bete

Right decision for wrong reasons, which is to say, per
Robespierrean criteria, yes, all the signs of ancien regime theocracy (xtian, jew, or mahometan, as the Encyclopedists termed it) should be ...eliminated. Yet the rabid French right/Front types have done little to combat the catholic church's recent scandals (or evangelical-boneheads for that matter). so...in effect it's the usual power politics.

Either ban all, or accept all--ergo, in a sense I oppose the ban. If France accepts the catholics (who often wear veils), prots, jews, etc, they should accept the muslim people, including their veil. Actually they are sort of...sexxay

Anonymous said...

next thing you'll know is all those French-men who have a beard will have to shave-it-off
which will greatly effect their collective erections!

HOLY BATMAN & Robin

how come the woman with the
burka is wearing eyelash mascara ?

Curtis Faville said...

When I lived in Japan, we used to see the school girls in their uniform jet black long dresses issuing from school en masse, and their only "expression" was the multi-pastel umbrellas, their spumoni colored tennis-shoes. You would have thought these were woman's modest declaration against the imposition of an unjust law.

I'm not sure I understand why Middle Eastern men seem so conflicted by sexual difference. Maybe they don't masturbate enough? Maybe they masturbate too much?

Does persecuting women make them feel more powerful than they would simply by competing for their affections, as we do in the West? Is life simpler, or more orderly, if women are kept under the leash? I'm not sure I get it. If my next door neighbor were a Muslim, and regularly beat his wife to keep her in line, would I be moved to come to her defense? Or would I accept this as the performance of some higher authority (i.e., the Will of Allah)?

Conrad DiDiodato said...

"They felt that a prohibition of the wearing of the burka was a necessary step in the preservation of the rights and freedom of French citizens, a reasonable move to prevent the growth of Islamic control of the lives of its members."

In a recent interview French philosopher Jacques Rancière addressed this very issue, citing it as a case of recent racist policy making promoted in the interests of safeguarding "rights and freedoms" of a French citizenry in general. It's a distinction he said both the Right and the Left have been accused of using for their own crass electoral interests. Although the example in the interview was the recent expulsion of the Roma from France, it's still a case of "an opportunism that is exploiting racism and xenophobia for electoral gain." And I couldn't agree more!

Governments that pass measures like these usually do so (so goes the critique) as a way to temper the dangerous and irrational reactions of a population already growing very uncomfortable with a growing influx of Muslim immigrants. In this way the government is seen as a voice of reason. In Rancière's own words, "All these measures have been taken under the same argument: there are problems of delinquency and various nuisances caused by immigrants and the undocumented [clandestins] that may provoke racism if we fail to enforce good order. So it must submit these delinquencies and nuisances to the universality of law so they do not create racist disturbances."

These same issues have lately arisen in Canada where the Sharia law debate is gathering momentum. I'd make even here Rancière's point that any governmental concern for the "rights" of an exploited Muslim minority of women is probably playing on Muslim stereotypes as a way to bind all Muslims in the country to some vague "universality of law" principle which is probably a neo-liberal cover for racism.

Kirby Olson said...

The French are quite severe about shorts. Even on very hot days, very few men in Paris wear shorts.

I always did.

I think it's good for the French to keep their culture. France is a great country. They built it. It's theirs. They should regulate it any way they wish.

Multiculturalism is too much of an opening to weird and barbaric practices. We should set the clock back 500 years, and move backwards from there.

J said...

Is life simpler, or more orderly, if women are kept under the leash? I'm not sure I get it. If my next door neighbor were a Muslim, and regularly beat his wife to keep her in line, would I be moved to come to her defense?

Not too far from the R-word, Sir F. Comparing the burqa to a leash seems a bit much. There are quite a few sunni muslims from the middle east around Ellay now (downtown, especially), and most of them seem pleasant, industrious, some well-educated--and sober (unlike many a xtian). The women wear their long dresses, and the head-covering--not full burqa, but perhaps "hijab"? --at work, and it's not that a big deal.

(The American converts to Muslim --usually blacks--are another matter.)

Curtis Faville said...

Conrad:

I'd be careful in assigning a charge of racism to French nationals. It's all too easy to accuse others of having the wrong motivation in seeking to solve problems which arise out of cultural difference. The welcome mat has produced a host of seemingly insoluble problems--all of which are laid at the feet of the government. Extra police service, health and legal aid, education, employment and training, and trying to keep the general population from feeling a natural enough resentment at the rapid and chaotic influx of hundreds of thousands of strangers into their midst. One might accuse the conservative French of all kinds of malicious intent, but at bottom they're seeking to address a social crisis which they didn't create, and which threatens to tear the social fabric end to end.

Do you think you have any positive solutions you believe might be implemented to alleviate some of this stress? Short of exporting illegals, what kinds of measures might you employ to keep the principles of French "tolerance" and order in place, without resorting to more draconian gestures?

No one is defending racism. What is being done is restricting the outward forms of confinement, defining the permissible terms of its own loyalty and commitment to the French nation.

This dilemma is one we will soon enough be facing in America.

Curtis Faville said...

J:

Obviously, I'm addressing a more extreme case. But there have been a disturbing number of instances of radical Islam here in America. We tend to think that America is a strong enough context to "persuade" peoples of different backgrounds to play along, in the interests of cooperation and neighborliness. But the Islamic culture isn't based on cooperation and neighborliness: It's monolithic, and theocratic. Its natural tendency is to expand, exclude and demonize.

Read the texts. It's all there.

Conrad DiDiodato said...

Curtis,

at worst it's an Immigration policy problem, of which the abuses are pretty well known in Canada:at best, an opportunity to welcome one more welcome piece to the Canadian mosaic. Since we're a land of immigrants, I believe the immigration abuses will be corrected in time.

I don't fear the burqa, Sharia law nor the presence of mosques anywhere here: it's a neo-liberal media that's purposely playing to fear and prejudice for ratings. Even our nationally owned Canada Broadcasting Corporation (subsidized to the tune of about 1 billion dollars per year)isn't immune to it.

Jacques Rancière is right: it's an intellectual construction. Since nationalist states like France (and America)have no control over global capital, feeling a sense of economic powerlessness when things go wrong, they resort to draconian measures like the banning of the veil to give themselves some sense of legislative control at least over the threat of an ethnic "surplus". They produce the "problem" (of immigrants left in a sort of identity limbo) the more competently and expeditiously to manage it (nothing new here).

I see strong parallels to what's happening to Mexican "illegal immigrants" in the States. The state logic is the same: viz. it's hoped by keeping the notion of American identity in a permanent state of suspension, the Mexicans will be seen as a threat to American values and principles of freedom & equality. They've been denied an identity and their own personal space: even threatened to be separated by concrete walls. Almost relegated to the status of non-person.

J said...

I agree that muslim encroachment may pose a problem in some areas--including France. Then so does encroachment by mormons, or baptist, or catholic, or orthodox jew.

The Rosh Hossanna (scuzi sp.) celebrations in westside LA and valley are at least as annoying as Ramadan (and the muslim faithful take the fasting and dietary requirements very serious...whereas jews blow on their goat horns, swill MD, etc)and ..what about Xmas, etc.

There are radical muslims, but Islam as a whole doesn't seem nearly as monolithic as the usual protestant WASP wingnuts. In some ways, Islam is more akin to catholicism, which contains various sects and schools with slight philosophical differences. (Some not as sympatico as others--) The early muslim scholars such as Avicenna were keen scholars of Aristotle, and there existed a sort of rational Islam--more typical of the Shia --

you probably know this but I think the American media has apres- IWE succeeded in presenting Islam in its extreme forms.

As I said above, ban all, or accept all. From where I sit, bapticks and mormons are quite more bothersome than the few muslims

Curtis Faville said...

J:

I'm really less concerned about the radical Islamic problem (terrorism). What bothers me more is the long-term problem of a messianic Islamic plurality on the North American continent. Religion was on the decline around the world for most of the 20th Century, but Islam presents a real threat of a potentially fast growing discipline, given the simplicity of its approach, and the clarity of its focus.

I think that civilization has been on a gradual ascent since the Enlightenment, steadily applying the principles of science and unrestrained inquiry to the age-old superstitions of organized faith. But any religion which conscientiously restricts the education of its offspring to the indoctrination of the faith, presents a real threat to enlightened thinking. There has never been anything like a "protestant" reformation in Islam, consequently it remains a dogma unrevised since the Age of Faith. Its followers are living in the pre-industrial, pre-democratic, pre-scientific, pre-enlightenment world. Even Shakers and Quakers and other quasi-christian sects are many times more modern and forward than Islam.

Muslims are always telling us how "peaceful" and "tolerant" they are, but they have a vested interest in convincing us everything is hunky. The real threat isn't the isolated nut-case looking to commit holy suicide, but the gradual, relentless advance of faith. History tells us that Christianity has evolved along with democracy in the West, gradually loosening the trappings of an old order. Islam, on the other hand, has become ever more fervent in its hold on its followers, in the countries where it has spread.

Kirby Olson said...

Curtis, Ayaan Hirsi Ali would agree would all your sentiments here. Have you read her books? The Caged Virgin is where I'd start -- it has brief essays that lay out a position. Her position is pure Enlightenment with a touch of feminist overlay -- but American feminists seemingly want nothing to do with her.

Those who do are far right by your standards.

What's odd about you is that you have an emotional identification with Berkeley and SDS and the Dmoecratic Party which represents everything you don't really believe in any longer.

Meanwhile, your real positions: anti-immigration, anti-feminism, anti-terrorism, anti-Sharia, are more like Tea Party positions. But you are so linked to your identity as a progressive that you don't want to deal with the fact that the progressives are actually regressive in how they surrender the gains of the Enlightenment on the altar of tolerance, and thus allow back in very regressive notions formulated in covens whose ideology seeps back into the swamps of paganism, and into bizarre Carthaginian notions of child sacrifice to Baal, and to black magick, and sex magick, and everything that Anton LaVey and Aleister Crowley stood for. Against Christianity? Then you allow in those other weird faiths, simply by being so one-sided in your opposition.

Thinking is a tricky business, and I admit I'm not so good at it, often hugging a new idea too tightly. But certainly Luther and the Reformation led to the Enlightenment, even if it went too far with Hume, I presume, it started to wend its way back to a functional community with Kant (steeped in pietist Lutheranism although forced to speak with secularists on their terms).

Perhaps common ground could be found in a book like Eleanor Roosevelt and th eUniversal Declaration of Human Rights, May ann Glendon's book about the 1948 Declaration made via the UN.

Even Muslims signed it, though they didn't like the part that said you could change religions, or drop religion altogether. (Penguin, 2001).

People coming here ought to be able to truly sign on to the Constitution. If their religion prevents this, we ought to prevent them from coming. If the Bill of Rights (especially the First Amendment with its freedom of speech AND religion) is anathema to a particular group, that particular group should be anathema to us.

Kirby Olson said...

Curtis, Ayaan Hirsi Ali would agree would all your sentiments here. Have you read her books? The Caged Virgin is where I'd start -- it has brief essays that lay out a position. Her position is pure Enlightenment with a touch of feminist overlay -- but American feminists seemingly want nothing to do with her.

Those who do are far right by your standards.

What's odd about you is that you have an emotional identification with Berkeley and SDS and the Dmoecratic Party which represents everything you don't really believe in any longer.

Meanwhile, your real positions: anti-immigration, anti-feminism, anti-terrorism, anti-Sharia, are more like Tea Party positions. But you are so linked to your identity as a progressive that you don't want to deal with the fact that the progressives are actually regressive in how they surrender the gains of the Enlightenment on the altar of tolerance, and thus allow back in very regressive notions formulated in covens whose ideology seeps back into the swamps of paganism, and into bizarre Carthaginian notions of child sacrifice to Baal, and to black magick, and sex magick, and everything that Anton LaVey and Aleister Crowley stood for. Against Christianity? Then you allow in those other weird faiths, simply by being so one-sided in your opposition.

Thinking is a tricky business, and I admit I'm not so good at it, often hugging a new idea too tightly. But certainly Luther and the Reformation led to the Enlightenment, even if it went too far with Hume, I presume, it started to wend its way back to a functional community with Kant (steeped in pietist Lutheranism although forced to speak with secularists on their terms).

Kirby Olson said...

Perhaps common ground could be found in a book like Eleanor Roosevelt and th eUniversal Declaration of Human Rights, Mary ann Glendon's book about the 1948 Declaration made via the UN.

Even Muslims signed it, though they didn't like the part that said you could change religions, or drop religion altogether. (Penguin, 2001).

People coming here ought to be able to truly sign on to the Constitution. If their religion prevents this, we ought to prevent them from coming. If the Bill of Rights (especially the First Amendment with its freedom of speech AND religion) is anathema to a particular group, that particular group should be anathema to us. We should realize that some groups can NEVER BE AMERICANS, and that oil doesn't mix with water.

Luther permitted total freedom of inquiry in every domain, as did all of the Founding Fathers. This is not incompatible with secularism (although it is incompatible with Marxism, and its political correctness codes).

Self-expression has to come before respect for others.

Kirby Olson said...

But this is also where I am leery of the French law. If the rights of the individual always trump the rights of the state, then why can't women wear what they want? I think this sets a dangerous precedent, even if it has the right goal (get rid of Muslims because they are not pluralist).

In itself, this is an attack on pluralism, in order to sustain pluralism. I find it's circular, and its circularity will ultimately lead French law to bend itself into pretzels of circular interpretation.

Curtis Faville said...

Kirby:

I've tried to stay independent of all dogmatic approaches all of my life. I get very prickly when I'm told I must do or think in a certain way. It's probably a form of paranoia learned in childhood. My parents told me that the theory of child-rearing when I was born was "hands off"--never touch or hug the child, never invade its space--and maybe I developed a sense of physical and spatial alienation from that early period. In any event, I never felt comfortable in church or under the sway of any faith-bearing text. I think this is common in America.

Curtis Faville said...

I think the French are saying "You're welcome to come here legally and integrate into French society, but you don't get to make up all the rules. This is France, not Saudi Arabia. If you insist on spitting in the face of French law and custom and culture, you should not expect to be coddled and rewarded. There's a basic contract in seeking to be assimilated and granted the privilege of citizenship, and that contract can't be contravened without consequences.

J said...

Kant opposed the german Junkers-- mostly Lutheran theocrats--and was often in danger for his moderate, dissenting views--including objecting to the divine right of Kings....and supporting the French Revolution, at least in principle. Nor was Kant supportive of traditional theology, protestant or catholic. Metaphysical and religious speculations, yes--dogma, no.

And another KO chestnut! Progressives approve of child sacrifice to Baal, and black magick. John Dewey--On the present Need for Child Sacrifice. KO's got a million of 'em.

jh said...

i find it hard to believe that the french would not want to adopt the burkha as fashion

i mean it sort of makes me excited even to think of it
a lovely french lass unravelling her head shawl right before my eyes

i truly think most american women should wear the burkha
they are getting so terribly ugly

wisdom lies in what is concealed not in what is revealed

hmnh

jh

Kirby Olson said...

I don't think it's all of France, by any means. There are political coalitions within France who've wanted this for years. The National Front, for instance, has wanted this for at least twenty years. There are also more liberal models that would find this abhorrent.

Similar parties exist in the Netherlands (their leader, Pim Fortuyn, a gay man, was murdered a few years ago -- but by an animal rights nut).

Anyone who attempts to lay down any line against the nutcases gets gunned down, or in your state, called a whore, and dismissed as a basketcase.

The normal people who want norms, people like Sarkozy, do not really have a legitimate leader in America. At least no one that you would accept.

If you were French, you'd be against Sarkozy.

Kirby Olson said...

Like JH, I think there will probably be a fashion trend toward the burqa since it's now forbidden. In the film Submission, (written by Ayaan Hirsi ali, and filmed by Theo Van Gogh) you see a transparent burqa, which is an amazing shock. I don't know who designed the darned thing. It's just about the craziest thing I've ever seen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neQcqyUAhr8