Today I read an op-ed in the New York Times that made me so angry it took me a good couple hours to calm down after reading it. I’m still fuming. In the piece, entitled “Tearing Away the Veil” (no violent or rape-y overtones there!), the leader of the French National Assembly, Jean-François Copé, tries to argue why the impending ban on the burqa and niqab is not only necessary, but a good thing for France and democracy. In doing so, however, he manages to uphold every single negative stereotype about French politics and culture. His essay is absolutely breathtaking in its snobbery, xenophobia, chauvinism, privilege, and unabashed hateration.
The ban would apply to the full-body veil known as the burqa or niqab. This is not an article of clothing — it is a mask, a mask worn at all times, making identification or participation in economic and social life virtually impossible.
Except that women wearing the niqab and the burqa participate fully in economic and social life every single day, in France and elsewhere. It in no way prevents them from interacting with people or going about their business…unless someone is discriminating against them.
This face covering poses a serious safety problem at a time when security cameras play an important role in the protection of public order. An armed robbery recently committed in the Paris suburbs by criminals dressed in burqas provided an unfortunate confirmation of this fact. As a mayor, I cannot guarantee the protection of the residents for whom I am responsible if masked people are allowed to run about.
Masked people! Allowed to run about! WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN????
This public safety argument is patently alarmist and ridiculous. France is hardly overrun with burqa-wearing criminals, and even if criminals might wear burqas as disguises, that’s no reason to ban all burqas. I’m sure in France criminals also wear hoodies, ski-masks or stockings pulled over their heads to disguise themselves, and yet no one proposes a ban on those.
The visibility of the face in the public sphere has always been a public safety requirement. It was so obvious that until now it did not need to be enshrined in law.
It’s a public safety requirement has never been imposed before, or on non-Muslim French. But now that there are some Muslims around—who just don’t get how obvious it is—the French need to enshrine it so they have a legal pretext for forcing their customs on Muslim immigrants…in the name of safety, of course.
But the increase in women wearing the niqab, like that of the ski mask favored by criminals, changes that. We must therefore adjust our law, without waiting for the phenomenon to spread.
So I assume he’s banning ski-masks? Because he just totally made the argument to ban ski masks AND implied women in niqabs might be criminals….in the same fucking sentence! Oh, and France must do it now, without waiting for the phenomenon to spread. It’s important to deprive citizens of their civil rights now instead of waiting for a legal basis for doing so! When white men start talking about the need for pre-emptive strikes, you know nothing good will follow.
Individual liberty is vital, but individuals, like communities, must accept compromises that are indispensable to living together, in the name of certain principles that are essential to the common good.
It’s not a compromise if a group of people is being forced to give up something and getting nothing in exchange. That’s a sacrifice. Copé expects French Muslims to willingly sacrifice their civil rights in the name of certain principles that are essential to the common good. He’s tellingly silent about what exactly those principles are, or what constitutes the common good. The fact that he can’t offer up a single specific example of how Muslim women would benefit from the ban means it’s not a compromise at all, nor is he thinking of the good of those women or their community. It’s simply the majority’s need for conformity being forced on the minority.
But here’s the part where I totally blew my top. Boldface mine:
How can you establish a relationship with a person who, by hiding a smile or a glance — those universal signs of our common humanity — refuses to exist in the eyes of others?
Finally, in both France and the United States, we recognize that individual liberties cannot exist without individual responsibilities. This acknowledgment is the basis of all our political rights. We are free as long as we are responsible individuals who can be held accountable for our actions before our peers. But the niqab and burqa represent a refusal to exist as a person in the eyes of others. The person who wears one is no longer identifiable; she is a shadow among others, lacking individuality, avoiding responsibility.
Wow. Just wow. According to this French elected official, a woman in a burqa is not a human being. Because the white man can’t see her face, she ceases to exist. If he can’t gaze upon her to his satisfaction, according to his own cultural standards, she has no individuality, no rights, no responsibilities. She becomes a non-person to him. How fucking wrong is that?
I mean, really, I don’t know how you can recover making a statement that blatantly wrong-headed. But he tries:
From this standpoint, banning the veil in the street is aimed at no particular religion and stigmatizes no particular community.
Except the one it’s aimed at: the French Muslim community.
What makes this obvious bigotry even more appalling to me is that Copé is the son of an Ashkenazi Jewish father and an Algerian Jewish mother. Belonging to more than one minority group—groups with very rocky histories in France—doesn’t seem to have given him even a smidge of tolerance or compassion for other despised minorities.
Indeed, French Muslim leaders have noted that the Koran does not instruct women to cover their faces, while in Tunisia and Turkey, it is forbidden in public buildings; it is even prohibited during the pilgrimage to Mecca. Muslims are the first to suffer from the confusions engendered by this practice, which is a blow against the dignity of women.
Muslims are the first to suffer from the confusions? How fucking patronizing is that? The French authorities are only banning Muslim dress so those poor silly Muslims won’t cause any confusion to their neighbors! As opposed to educating the neighbors about tolerance and Muslim custom, of course. And in the same breath, he actually says that this paternalistic, condescending bullshit actually upholds the dignity of women?
Through a legal ban, French parliamentarians want to uphold a principle that should apply to all: the visibility of the face in the public sphere, which is essential to our security and is a condition for living together. A few extremists are contesting this obvious fact by using our democratic liberties as an instrument against democracy. We have to tell them no.
I think I know who the extremist is here: the elected official who uses democracy as a pretext to insult, patronize and even dehumanize the fellow citizens whose customs and religion are different from his own.
I’m going to go farther than “tell them no.” Jean-François Copé, I’m telling you: ferme ta geuele.
Uggggghhhhhhhhhhh. Gross. On a related note, Quebec is preparing to ban the niqab on similar grounds. You can get involved in the movement against this Bill (known as Bill 94) here: http://nonbill94.wordpress.com
I did read about that.
Muslimah Media Watch had a post last month that was just brilliant about the Quebec ban. It had many good links and brought up some aspects of the controversy that I’d never considered before, including whether it’s ableist. The comments are also worth reading, as some of the women talk about their own experiences wearing niqab and how they adjust to the demands of society.
http://muslimahmediawatch.org/2010/04/niqab-and-the-privileging-of-sight/
This topic is fraught. I am at the edge of my understanding here. Underneath all of this is the question “How do you tolerate intolerance?”
Lately I’ve been reading A God Who Hates by Wafa Sultan. Also I’ve read Reflections on the Revolution in Europe by Chris Caldwell. Any thoughts you harpies may have on these books would be welcome.
I fucking hate the idea of the burqa or niqab. Really. I think they’re both terrible customs based in women’s oppression that I would be happy to see fade away. But not torn away–that’s just replacing a cultural stricture with a political one. It’s not my decision, and it’s not any government’s decision.
@PhDork: I agree that they’re terrible cultural customs and I would like to see women reject them.
But this French fuckwad is just as repressive, hypocritical and misogynist a tool of the Patriarchy as the men who would force women to wear burqas. And he’s a howling racist to boot.
Honestly, if I were a woman who wore niqab, for whatever reason, and this dude was the one telling me to take it off, I’d make him pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
Sometimes, I wonder if these bans will just result in women not leaving the house.
Normally, I’d agree with you, but this item popped up in my feed reader on Tuesday (via Boing Boing):
“26-year old Mamel Marmouri became the first woman in Italy to be fined for wearing a burqa in public when she stopped at the post office on her way to the mosque near her home in Novara, in northern Italy. Anti-terrorist laws from the 1970s prohibit anyone from walking around in public with her face covered, but this wasn’t enforced until recently, when the mayor of Novara — a member of the Northern League Party — started cracking down on things like immigration and mosque-building. Marmouri is Tunisian. Her husband, Ben Salah Braim, had this to say about the incident:
I just don’t know where we are going to get 500 euros to pay the fine. We thought as she was going to the mosque she was OK to wear the burqa.
We knew about the law and I know that it’s not against my religion but now Amel will have to stay indoors.
I can’t have other men looking at her.”
The article is here
Yes, it’s the Daily Mail – BUT.
PhDork, That’s pretty much where I stand as well.
I look at it this way: while I think the basis for these articles of clothing is a reprehensible and hypocritical outgrowth of Islam, the right of a people to practice their religion is a paramount freedom. In America, it is so important, it is one of the first things mentioned in The Bill of Rights, right there in Amendment 1.
So, it comes down to this: criminalizing the practice of religion is tyranny (in this case, tyranny of the patriarchy), and this tyranny is simply going to create more chaos, as Muslim fanatics use it as fuel to fire up their sycophantic cohorts to greater acts of violence. Rather than increasing public safety, it will a) turn Muslim women into shut-ins and b) incite terrorist attacks on France, neither of which is a good outcome.
@Jennifer: I saw that in the Mail too. And I think it’s very possible that women who continue to wear the niqab–for whatever reason–will be unable to leave their homes.
The irony is astounding: Copé says that women wearing niqab can’t be regarded as fully human or participate in society, therefore, France must that create a law that codifies their exclusion from society.
Then again, I don’t think the majority of French people think there’s anything wrong with further marginalizing the Muslim community.
@Jennifer Doyle I can’t have other men looking at her. That just jumps off the page for me.
How can you establish a relationship with a person who, by hiding a smile or a glance — those universal signs of our common humanity — refuses to exist in the eyes of others?
Oh gee, I don’t know, maybe by TALKING TO THEM?
I see, the burqa and niqab in a way similar to how I see baggy clothes – sometimes it’s a choice for comfort, sometimes it’s a choice to avoid public scrutiny, sometimes it’s worn under pressure, and usually if it’s a bad thing the fault should be laid on the men who force such conditions.
Fatema Mernissi covers this issue of French (and Western) men insisting on being able to gaze on women’s bodies in order to acknowledge them in her book Scheherazade Goes West. The last chapter illustrates how the West is just as oppressive.
This issue makes me so angry because it’s always framed around what men want, and when framed around the women themselves, they’re denied a voice and who talks for them? Men! Yay.
The right of a people to practice their religion is a paramount freedom. In America, it is so important, it is one of the first things mentioned in The Bill of Rights, right there in Amendment 1.
I’m not French, but I’ve been told that the French see assimilation/French identity as more important that religious expression. Religious symbols, including crucifix necklaces and yarmulkes, are not allowed in public schools. (So I’ve heard–I don’t know if this is always enforced.) So there’s a history of this. I agree, Newt, to me it’s a violation of a fundamental freedom, but that’s an American perspective. I’m not defending the law–I also think it will lead to women being confined/confining themselves to the home.
Religious symbols, including crucifix necklaces and yarmulkes, are not allowed in public schools
That’s only been legislated and enforced recently, for obvious reasons.
@PhDork: You summed up my conflicted thoughts on this issue perfectly. I think this is a fight we are going to have to continue to have on multiple fronts: against the oppression of women through religion; against bigotry, religious intolerance, xenophobia, and racism; against the patriarchy.
the example of the woman in italy who has been fined is a great demonstration of what this law does – punishes women for being subject to larger cultural and religious forces. this woman has been “liberated” by being forced to pay an enormous fine and will henceforth be kept in her home for religious reasons. it’s one thing to fight so that women can make the free and unfettered choice whether or not to wear the burqa or niquab, but to punish them in the existing context is just wrong.
If this ban was tried in America, I would be strongly opposed to it since, as oppressive as the burqa might be, I agree it’s the individual’s choice and we have a strong First Amendment.
But I’m not an expert on the norms and customs of France. Does France, or any nation for that matter, have a right to expect those who wish to live in their country to make certain sacrifices in order to assimilate? I know that if I was going to move to another country I wouldn’t expect that nation to adjust around my values and ideals.
Ugh. What an obnoxious article.
I can’t STAND the UMP, it’s such a backwards, chauvinist party. The fact that France can have such a strong revolutionary/ left-wing tradition yet also have strong support for those bigots and the even worse ones in the Front National is one of the things that sometimes makes me wonder how the country manages to keep together at all. (I hasten to add that I say this as a Francophile and current French resident, not out of ‘freedom-fries’ style anti-French sentiment!)
On the burqa issue, I’m with PhDork and the others above – don’t like them at all, but legislating against them seems like the wrong way to go against them for me. Instead, invest in education (woefully neglected at the higher ed level in France if you’re not at a grande ecole, which I can assure you most Muslims are not) and other things that might actually make women – and men – question the assumptions behind the covering.
I’m perplexed why women embrace their own subjection. Sometimes I think common sense has flown out the window just to be oppositionally defiant. I bet if someone paraded around in fucking KKKlan robes we’d all be mortified right? In the state of GA there’s a mask law for just that reason! I’m perplexed why people embrace and defend Islam (or any other religion)as if they’re defending something noble. BS!
@ Steph,
This may be just me, but if I saw someone parading around in KKK robes, my reaction would probably be somewhere between fear and fury. It certainly wouldn’t be ‘Oh, you silly backwards Klansmen with your antiquated customs, you just need some enlightened person to show you the error of your beliefs.’
This shouldn’t even need to be said, but
Islam=/=Ku Klux Klan.
Say what you want about the burqa custom, but these women aren’t trying to terrorize anyone. They embrace the custom for a variety of reasons, some spiritual, some cultural, some patriarchal, but it’s *their* custom, not yours, not mine, and not Cope’s. This heavy-handed ban will only entrench the custom by convincing Muslim women that the West is trying to opress them . . . because the West *is* trying to oppress them.
Thanks, Brennan.
As someone with a cultural background full of burqa- and niqab-wearers (sorry to be so vague; I don’t want to lay it all out on the internet), I’m glad a lot of you have a more nuanced and balanced view.
FWIW, a lot of ladies choose to wear the burqa/niqab/whatevs.
It seems that there’s some massive doses of haterade being shared by the conservatives in the northern and southern hemispheres – a blog entry by an Australian conservative federal politician Cory Bernardi:
http://www.corybernardi.com/2010/05/ban-the-burqa.html
What is interesting is that there seems to be a lot of similar sentence structures between Cope and Bernardi. Faced with this whilst marking, I would have taken this to the chair of the discipline for a possible plagiarism case.
(FYI, in Australia the two major parties are the Liberals who are the conservative party, and Labor who are less conservative)
Thank you for this article. You said it so well.
Taking away a woman’s right to chose what they want to wear liberates no one. While it is true that there are some women who are forced to wear burqa or niqab there are also women who choose to wear them as a matter of conscience.
Banning the burqa and niqab will not help the women who are forced to wear them. It was just end up sequestering them in their homes.
@ Brennan, Those same arguments you made re women in burqas are the same by those Klan robe wearers, or Confederate flag wavers, “I’m not trying to terrorize anyone, I’m displaying my cultural pride.” Ultimately, what we think of France’s law is irrelevant, it’s FRANCE. Boycott France/French products the way folks are boycotting Arizona.
My position is that I’m perplexed as to how women rush to the defense of the burqa, which is a add on of Sharia law, there’s nothing about it in the Koran, but then will raise hell and highwater about the Taliban’s cruelty toward women or FGM. It’s originating from the same flawed cultural construct.
I defend my right to subdued by the patriarchy! It’s my choice to be subjected to domination! Oh okay…sure. And women talking to women, pointing out some of the crazy notions of their enslavement…wow..well, that’s just good old fashioned feminist consciousness raising. I guess in the 4th or 5th (what’s the number now? I’ve lost count.)wave of post-, post-, post-feminism calling out the obvious is frowned upon. okely dokely….
Found you on Jezebel; GREAT response Becky! My own is at website. I also read that thing and couldn’t see straight to articulate a response for several minutes of wishing I could just hiss like a cat.
To Steph: You don’t have to understand it, but some women are making a deeply personal, spiritual choice to wear it, for reasons that *they* do not understand as having anything to do with oppression. I don’t agree with their rationales for that choice, either, but try to understand that going veiled has a meaning for them that it doesn’t have for me. As long as they don’t use it to hurt anyone else, I will stick up for their right to make that personal decision. Yes, the burqa has been used for the oppression of women, but it is not intrinsically so.
Okay, I am just about talked out on this topic.
BUT…
Steph, if you truly believe that Muslim women who wear burqa/niqab are victims of subjugation and oppression, then why the hell would you compare those victims of subjugation to a violent, terrorist organization like the KKK? That analogy stunningly illogical (and it also comes pretty close to the familiar, offensive Islam = terrorism trope.)
Whether women are being forced to wear burqas by the Muslim men in charge, or forced NOT to wear them by the white, non-Muslim men in charge, they’re still being stripped of their agency and their right to choose. Same shit, different Patriarchy.
You may think you’re being a feminist, or a post-feminist, or a post-post-feminist or whatever, but all you’re doing is expressing a preference for one version of Patriarchy over another.
This whole argument can be summarized very simply..
Forcing people NOT to do it is pretty much the same as forcing people to DO it.. so why do they have to discriminate?
Fuck the French
1. Belgium got away with passing the same law, faster, during the same period, and with less talk about it in the press. (France still hasn’t passed anything yet, much less defined the terms of enforcement and application.) Since Napoleon, France’s track record on women’s rights has been awful: I mean, the vote for women didn’t come until 1944, and women still provide marital status and number of children on their résumés… but why is France taking the flak for every anti-Muslim sentiment that works its way into laws and attitudes everywhere in the West these days?
2. That op ed is just bad. Copé sounds marginally less incompetant in French, which makes me wonder if there isn’t a language issue exacerbating the utter wrongness of what he’s saying.
3. No one has pointed out yet that the armed robbery he mentioned was committed by men after several months of highly mediatized coverage of people citing “security in banks and other public places” as a reason to ban burqas. Previous to this incident, there doesn’t seem to have been any instances of anyone using a burqa to hid their identity and/or arms in order to facilitate criminal activity.
4. Various policemen have said that they think this will be impossible to enforce; in mostly-Muslim areas, a request by an officer for a woman to remove her burqa is likely to be inflammatory, leading to situations that neither the Muslim community nor the police really want to deal with. And is France really going to enforce this for the hyper-rich Saudi tourists in Paris? One officer complained: « Récemment, nous sommes arrivés dans un appartement où la femme portait une burqa noire avec la grille. Ça s’est plutôt bien passé avec elle lorsque nous lui avons demandé de montrer son visage pour comparer à la pièce d’identité. Mais son mari s’est énervé, comme souvent dans ces cas-là. »
[Recently, we entered an apartment where the woman was wearing a black burqa with a screen. Things went rather smoothly with her when we asked her to show her face to compare it to [the photo on] her identity card, but her husband got angry.]
(source)5. Total fail by the French government, yes. My Fellow Commenters, let’s remember not to condamn an entire nation–or state–because their government is doing something stupid. The only good thing about this whole argument is the fact that it’s making some people think and speak out against privilige, racism and external, public signs thereof.