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Hijab is now almost officially banned in French public schools. An anti-hijab ban
was passed with an overwhelming majority in the French
Parliament. What is next? Other European countries, such
as the Netherlands,
Belgium and Germany, are expected to follow in the French
footsteps.
Oversimplified dogmas such as “Islamophobia,” “secular
fundamentalism,” and even arguments such as “Handed to fanatics
on a silver platter” or “This is a violation of my individual
right” are no longer solutions to the size of the problem we now
face. They will simply take us nowhere.
Victimization is now self-betrayal.
One needs to
maturely assess what happened--paying attention to history,
politics, law, society, demography, philosophy and culture. A
truthful exercise of “self-examination” is the imperative
problem-solving action at the moment. So far we have tried to
take that path, in our attempt to act by a true and
well-informed Islamic spirit, parting as much as possible from
random misinformed ranting that does little but further fuel
emotional bursts.
Both the
particularity of the French political model and the French
Muslim community should be examined, both in the global context
and in comparison to their counterparts in other countries. It
is not enough to criticize France without pinpointing some of
the key characteristics of the distinctive French Muslim
population. Problematic questions such as “assimilation,”
“conspicuousness” and “defense of national values” partly
underlie existing problems on the Muslim part.
Nonetheless,
we should tactically look ahead. Plain and trouble-free as it
appears to be to some, what happened is a sad chapter in the
story of the demographic neutralization of Muslims in the
“liberal” space of Europe. When tolerance is not an option, ideological indoctrination and
“veiled” political freedom is not necessarily the right
solution. This is at the heart of how far the secular
nation-state project can go: to forcefully strip one of any
differences to a one-sided perception of the norm.
Are
Muslims now the new subjects to the experiments of modern
statecraft? |
