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Why
Do the French Refuse Hijab?
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By
Hadi Yahmed, IOL Correspondent in France
Translated
by Dalia Abu Bakr
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24/01/2004
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Can
we say that the campaign against hijab implies the notion that the Muslim
minority was not up to the challenge it faced?!
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Despite
the acknowledgment of men of law and Muslim and non-Muslim men of religion that
a law prohibiting hijab in state-run French schools and public offices runs
counter to all religious and personal rights, the French government intends to
pass a law to the parliament in this respect.
Demonstrations
were organized everywhere, yet one unanswered question is still absent from all
hypotheses defending hijab: what is the role played by the Muslims of France in
this regard? Have the Muslims of France contributed, either intentionally or
non-intentionally, to mobilizing such a hard-line secular trend against them?
Such
questions should be introduced in order to interpret the current scene before
accusing a particular sect or group. As the debate grows hectic, different sides
may misuse these interpretations. Our ultimate goal here is to reveal the mutual
misunderstandings and decipher the sophisticated cultural specificities.
Demonstrations
were organized everywhere, yet one unanswered question is
still absent from all hypotheses defending hijab: what is the
role played by the Muslims of France in this regard? |
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Apart
from the extremist right National Front, under the leadership of Jean-Marie Le
Pen, whose slogans can be summarized in “oust Islam,” there has been a
growing sense of suspicion and apprehension on the part of several sectors of
French society regarding this religion, which was officially recognized in April
2003. By forming the French Council for Islam, Islam has been added to the three
recognized religions in France: Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism.
Why
is there all this worrying? What are the motives? The general atmosphere
prevalent after the events of September 11 and the wave of Isamophobia that has
overwhelmed all Western capitals, made the French realize that they are actually
hosting one of the biggest Islamic communities in Europe, averaging around 6
million Muslims. The people who belong to the same religion as Osama bin Laden
surround Paris and occupy complete districts inside Paris and in several other
French counties.
French
bookstores and the front pages of newspapers and magazines mirrored this
attitude during the months that followed the collapse of the twin towers of the
World Trade Center in New York.
Photos
of veiled women, men with beards, prayer halls full of the faithful, the streets
of Paris blocked with worshipers-this media propaganda nurtured a growing worry
among the French elite, and they called upon the Republic to take steps to
reassure them and to save secularism.
Up
to the Challenge?
Apart
from describing this as “a second Battle of Poitiers” or as “a war against
Islam,” which is coupled, as some believe, with a real Isamophobia, not only
in France but the West in general, can we say that Muslims in France have
actually played a part in what is going on? Regardless of the fact that hijab in
general is a matter of personal and religious freedom, can we say that the
campaign against hijab implies the notion that the Muslim minority was not up to
the challenge it faced? In other words, “do religions threaten the
republic?”
The
periodical World of Religions in its third issue (January and February)
put forward a file that concluded, “France needs to add the slogan of
secularism to its three famous slogans of freedom, equality and fraternity.”
This was the headline on the front page of Le Figaro, 17 December, 2003,
when the French president made his speech on secularism in which he recommended
a legislation that prohibits all religious symbols in schools and public
administrations. Was France really in need of being reminded that secularism is
the fourth of its slogans? What urged President Jacques Chirac, three centuries
after the French Revolution, to mention that equality between both sexes is a
basic value in the republic?
Many
perceive that the mere mention of the values of equality and secularism and the
call to have a legislation prohibiting religious symbols, is an indication that
there is some sort of ambiguity of vision; or, as the French philosopher Jean
Paul Ricoeur expressed it, “shaky trust in the power of secularism.” The
ambiguity of vision discloses another genuine problem created by the hijab and
Islamic conduct in French society, which believed that it had finally got rid of
superstitious thinking after the French Revolution and a long conflict with the
Church and religion.
Threatening
the Secular Entity
Based
on the results of the Bernard Stasi report, the focus was on several marginal
incidents that implied a violation of certain secular values; however, those
incidents were not faked or fabricated. When a French Muslim woman, for
instance, refuses to let a male doctor examine her, this incident causes panic
in the communal conscience of France. The same happens when a French Muslim
woman working as a public relations employee refuses to shake hands with male
clients or to go alone into an elevator with a male. Several examples were
included in the Stasi committee report; all underscoring that French secularism
is facing valid problems concerning Islamic religious manifestations that
flagrantly violate the principle of total equality between male and female as
called for in the secular doctrine.
A
manager of a French company mentioned that she finds no problem whatsoever with
any of her employees, be they Jews, Christians, or even disbelievers, yet she
finds a real problem with those veiled employees who refuse to shake hands with
others. This manager commented, “I do not know if I have to hide my employees
in order not to embarrass either my clients or my employees.” Many French are
also in favor of steering clear of such offending incidents; they find it
embarrassing, for example, to have a veiled woman in a mail office dealing with
a Jewish client wearing a kiba, or the other way round. Isn’t it more
convenient for both to take off their religious symbols, to guarantee that
administrative work is done in a smooth way? There are many other examples other
than those mentioned in the Stasi report; these examples were given wide media
coverage, which in turn touched the French secular societal conscience.
The
French secular elite portrayed these incidents as an exhibition on the part of
some Islamic activist organizations and movements in France. When the French
Muslims performed their prayers in the area facing the Parisian municipality of
Cliché in May 2002 , to demand a private hall for prayers, the
extremist right National Front Party considered this a flagrant challenge to the
feelings of the French public. France thought that it had finally excluded
religion from French public life in 1905, when the
law separating Church and State was passed. The French Muslims, by this demand,
spared Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the extremist right, any additional
effort to make Islam and the Muslims seem the biggest danger to threaten the
secular republic entity.
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There
is a call prevalent in Western Islamic circles to set a clear fiqh for
minorities
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Thousands
of veiled women appearing before the head of one of the Islamic organizations,
in a conference for the Islamic Organizations Union (April 2003), clearly showed
that the Islamic wave, which had been stopped before in Tours in southern
France, is continuing today and has not only reached Paris, but Brussels too,
the capital of the European Union. Doesn’t this give the French the right to
suspect the intentions of the Islamic associations working in France and to
suspect their aspirations in Islamizing France?
It
is usual for French women to see the black Taliban chador or “the
mobile tent”-as described by the French media-roaming around the streets of
France. This is despite calls from Islamic leaders for the veiled women to
consider the traditions and culture of the country they are living in and to
wear an appropriate costume and veil that match the values of beauty, fashion,
and bright colors. It is not strange in this regard to find that the image of
hijab is associated in the French feminine mind with the Taliban movement.
Several
incidents and violations have impaired the introduction and performance of Islam
in the democratic environment of French society, and these violations have
nothing to with the issue of private or collective freedoms. This has led the
French elite to render the value of tolerance as one of the values of
secularism, and they spread the idea that some Muslims make use of the
democratic environment they are living in to compensate for the lack of
democracy in their country of origin. Such freedoms make it easier to spread
hard-line Islamic thoughts.
The
same idea has also been mentioned in several articles by French authors
interested in French Islam. One has to admit that there is a real problem
brought about by the introduction of the Islamic rituals and practices in a
secular environment. Fiqh of minorities is a new law given for Islamic
life. Muslims living in a secular society are asked to respect the traditions of
this society and to yield to its laws, a belief that is totally new in Islamic
thought, and was never put forth before.
The
current experience is entirely different from past experiences, even that of
Spain’s Muslims after the fall of Grenada. Whereas the Moors faced
persecution, the Muslims of France are living in a democratic system, whose
power springs from respecting the freedom of belief guaranteed by the 1905 law.
This law stipulates that “the republic guarantees the freedom of belief and
protects the freedom of practicing religious rituals,” in so far as no
provocation to Western secularism takes place in one of its historic
strongholds-namely France.
Sources
of Hostility
The
intransigent application of the veil (hijab) as a religious
manifestation has been linked to the growth of Islamic
movements, or rather political Islam in Western terms |
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Searching
for the sources of hostility to hijab among the French elite, it is obvious that
there is a sense of danger, which was mirrored by the prohibition of all
religious symbols, spearheaded by Islamic hijab, and is attributed to the
following:
First,
the intransigent application of the hijab (veil) as a religious manifestation
has been linked to the growth of Islamic movements, or rather political Islam in
Western terms; no doubt the American war on radical Islam, or rather terrorism,
enhances these attitudes. Many of the French elite think that the prohibition of
hijab is not an infringement on Islam, as much as it is resistance to the growth
of political Islam. It must be remembered that France is a base for the
activities of several Moroccan Islamic movements that wish to make up for the
oppression they are facing in their countries, the Tunisian Nahda movement, the
Islamic Salvation Front, the Moroccan Al-`Adalat wal-Ihsan movement, and other
fundamentalist movements.
This
explains why those interviewed in the media, when asked about hijab, answered
that hijab is not an Islamic obligation as much as it is a new political symbol
associated with the Islamic movements that are gaining strength in France. This
belief was manipulated by Jean-Marie Le Pen to mobilize the French in support
for his extremist rightist front.
Second,
it is largely believed that hijab is a symbol of the submission of women in Arab
and Islamic countries, and therefore contradicts the principle of the freedom of
women. Hijab is believed to be the natural outcome of a patriarchal society in
which the father and the brother have the upper hand, and in which the choices
of a wife, daughter, or sister are made through the males. Therefore, the call
for the prohibition of hijab in schools is relevant from the secular point of
view; the girl, at this age, is compelled by her father or elder brother to put
on the veil. In many Parisian districts and other areas, girls are compelled to
put on the veil so as not to be labeled as prostitutes. The “no prostitution,
no submission” movement was greatly welcomed by the French elite, which
considered this movement an opposition to the prevalent picture of these
districts as strongholds for Islamists.
Going
back to the contribution and the responsibility of the Muslims of France in
mobilizing the secular intransigent trend against them, one can easily deduce
that the issue of hijab would not have been put forth that strongly if there was
an authentic strategy for merging on the part of the Muslim organizations
working in France. The issues of merging and adaptation are totally absent in
most associations’ agendas, with the exception of very few efforts on the part
of some Muslim intellectuals (Tarek Ramadan for example). Otherwise, the French
Muslim arena seems to lack the existence of any potential leadership capable of
introducing a vision in harmony with the new reality lived by Muslim groups in
France.
Most
French Muslims are still under the control of Algerian, Moroccan, or Saudi
Islam. Therefore, the concept of European Islam, put forth by Tarek Ramadan, is
often contradicted in Friday sermons that have nothing to do with the new
reality that the Muslims are living in, speeches that call for a narrow-minded
Islam that has nothing to do with the environment in which the French Muslims
are living. This urged French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy to threaten to
oust some preachers from France and to accuse them of spreading a hard-line
Islam that has nothing to do with France.
One
has to admit that there is a real problem brought about by the
introduction of the Islamic rituals and practices in a secular
environment. |
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Third,
there is a call prevalent in Western Islamic circles to set a clear fiqh
for minorities in order to provide answers for Muslims living there. The lack of
such fiqh has led many French Muslims to resort to the Eastern fatwa
banks that are totally ignorant of the European Islamic reality, impeding all
the more the issue of merging.
The
Jews of France found a slogan to adhere to, represented in the declaration of
Rabbi Joseph Sitruk “the law of our country is our law.” Muslims on the
other hand, in the absence of any French Muslim references capable of
crystallizing a clear fiqh for minorities, have fluctuated between Sheikh
Tantawi's fatwa supporting the law, and Sheikh
Qaradawi's messages to President Chirac objecting to the law.
Some
of France’s Muslims have intentionally, or non-intentionally, mobilized the
right wing and a considerable part of the left wing around a law that prohibits
hijab in schools and public administrations. Several erroneous practices were
implemented, leading to the generation of a negative image of the hijab. In a
demonstration on 21 December, 2003, by veiled girls objecting to the law due to
be submitted to parliament, TV channels and journalists were surprised to see a
man with a red beard, dressed in a white shirt, pulling a bike with a
three-year-old child on it, veiled in the black chador. One of the veiled
girls defending the issue of hijab commented that “the ignorant should
shoulder his responsibility” and then she left.
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