Why Do the French Refuse Hijab?

Can we say that the campaign against hijab implies the notion that the Muslim minority was not up to the challenge it faced?!

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.

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.

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

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.

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 fatwasupporting the law, and Sheikh Qaradawi's messagesto 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.