Racism veiled as liberation

[earwicga]

IMO, this is a brilliant article today by Madeline Bunting - an excerpt:

"The veil debate is making it entirely legitimate to pillory, mock and ridicule a tiny number of women on the basis of what they wear. French politicians described the full veil as a "walking coffin"; on comment threads online there is contempt and sneers for the full veil and those who wear it ? "hiding under a blanket", "going round with a paper bag over your head". In France it is estimated there are only 2,000 women who cover their faces with the burqa or the niqab out of a Muslim population of five million. The response is out of all proportion.

Let's be clear: the niqab and burqa are extreme interpretations of the Islamic requirement for modest dress; few Islamic scholars advocate their use, and many ? including Tariq Ramadan ? have urged women not to use them. They are as alien to many Muslim cultures as they are to the west. And yes, there are instances of patriarchy where some women might be encouraged or even forced to wear a full veil by their husbands or fathers. But generalisations don't fit. Increasingly, young women are choosing to wear the full veil, seeing it as a powerful statement of identity.

Invoking the full weight of the state to police dress codes in public is an extraordinary extension of state powers over an aspect of citizen behaviour which is largely regarded as your own business. Provided you are wearing some clothing, western public space is a free-for-all, and across every capital in Europe that is strikingly self-evident"
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jul/14/forced-into-freedom-france

One example of a young French woman's reaction to this can be found here: bit.ly/aBVa4x

What do MumsNetters think? Seems to me that if we condemn those who dictate as to women's clothing in Sudan for example (see Lubna Hussein) then we must equally condemn those who dictate as to women's clothing in Europe.

Exactly Riven. A friend works with women in the local community (I live in a predominantly Muslim area) and she knows of women who are not allowed to leave the house, except for medical appointments or with their husbands or mother-in-law or other suitable chaperone. If the burqa was banned here, this would become even worse.
People do not necessarily revolt in the end, if anything, years of being forced to obey will commonly result in a broken will and inability to make the decision to leave.

This debate is not about the burqa, it's about civil liberties and women's rights. If you take away a woman's right to decide how to dress appropriately (whether that's short skirt or burqa) then you are saying that she cannot make that decision for herself. For some women, wearing a burqa is empowerment, for some it is not a choice, for other women it is the reverse. That is all.

As I said before, you already don't have the right to do whatever you want. You cannot behave in a way that the society at large finds unacceptable.

Burqa is not just a garment. It is the symptom of a certain mentality that is very alien to Western way of thought and life: Women are temptation and they should be hidden from view.

Banning the burqa is therefore not just banning a piece of clothing. It is taking a stand against this mentality.

'Choosing to wear a burqa in a Western secular society is wrong because it legitimises the culture that forces in on women in other countries

It also sends out a message that is totally incompatible with equality and democracy and it is counter to the fundamental principles of our society.'

MsBoogie I agree 100% with this and the rest of your post.

Some of the Koran is time-specific -- but enforced as if it were written yesterday bu the fundamentalist 'back to the original and best' party, just as the Bible is used by Christian fundamentalists. If FGM had been the practice in Saudi Arabia at the time of the inception of Wahhabism, then it would probably be promoted today as part of Islam, just as the extreme covering and restriction of the rights of women are, just as the Wahhabis baulked at the introduction of the telephone in SA (until the king recited verses of the Koran over the phone).

And as for driving abused women underground by forbidding the veil -- Sweden has banned FGM, and the consequences for imposing FGM on a DD are draconian. In the predominantly Somali immigrant community, isolated by language and culture from the rest of Swedish society, where FGM is deeply entrenched, rates of FGM have dropped very sharply, because the consequences include losing custody of your children and being deported from your nice comfy life in the Swedish welfare state back to Somalia where you can cool your heels and reflect on cultural differences at your leisure and wonder how your children are getting on back in Sweden with their foster family. It took effort on the part of Swedish authorities to accomplish this, but a few well-publicised cases resulted in word spreading fast.

Just throwing up your hands and saying, for instance, murder keeps on happening so why ban it, is ridiculous, but it is the same argument that is used against the banning of the veil, essentially. It is enforceable, and a few examples will spread a message. The law can be used to teach as well as to punish.

Change can be forced.

So Riven do you truly think that women who wear the burqa now will voluntarily remain inside their homes for the rest of their lives if they cannot go out in their burqas?

Muslim women are quite regularly asked what they think. The vast majority want nothing to do with burqas.

Burka clad women are hardly going to have a balanced view are they? Muslim women, in general, must appreciate it has no religious basis or I would imagine they'd all wear it and so must have little choice but to oppose it being cited as being religiously significant and therefore oppose it being worn.

"by criminalising a few women?" Yes, as Somali parents, mothers as as well as fathers, in Sweden were criminalised, to great and very quick effect -- the freeing of young Swedish women from the threat of FGM.

"And this will acheive what exactly? Education and liberation for women in far off lands?"
It will achieve education for the wanker element of Muslim society (your term) that seeks to keep women in a subordinate, second class citizen role. And send a message to the radical elements of Islamic society in the middle east and beyond that the west is not cowed or weak or simple minded and will not accept the legal subjugation of women.

"Nope." Obviously, yes, in the long run, I believe ignorance and discrimination should always be challenged and denounced.

"The same for sequestered women here? not a chance." Legislation should be enforced. False arrest/ sequestration is a crime.

"What it will do is stop some women going out." What are these women and their husbands doing in the west in the first place if they won't go out unless fully covered? What breakdown in their apprehension of reality has occurred to prevent them from understanding that they are no longer in Kabul or Abu Dhabi or Mogasdishu or Peshawar? Western women must observe the dress code in the middle east, after all, or be accosted, in the case of SA anyhow, by the religious police. Do they fear some sort of equivalent of the religious police in the UK? A law banning the burqa would inform them of their rights, at the very least. What's wrong with that?

"And feed the extremist mindset that the 'west is against Islam'" I sincerely hope the west is against the extremist mindset, and I sincerely hope that the burqa will be recognised as an 'in your face' challenge to the west. The burqa represents to fundamentalists a message that the holiest men control 'their' women better than western men do.

The extremist mindset operates without all that much reference to the reality of the west anyhow. It takes very, very little to persuade an extremist that someone or something is against them. A policy of appeasement is never the answer to irrationality.

"You'll end up with protest marches of poeple with covered faces, men and women and having to arrest them all etc etc " I sincerely doubt that. The idea of a protest march is fundamentally democratic, so miles from the mindset of those who promote the burqa. A far more likely scenario is the issuing of a fatwa against the government minister responsible, and a general cursing of the infidel west.

Posie, you have to tread carefully.
The entire reason the Islamic revolution took place in Iran was because Iran banned the muslim veil. Iran was westernized until the 1970s; our queen was on friendly terms with the Shah and visited frequently; IRan took offence that their Persian cultural heritage was being Macdonaldized and there was an enormous Anti-American backlash, led by women.
WOmen who previous wore Western fashions took to the streets with the muslim veil on their head.
Long and short of it: the state can't push women over the edge, one way or another, because women revolt.

Sorry, Iranians took offence, the Shah didn't. I think the Shah was exiled to America.

One of my Friend's father was the King's photographer, she was born in the early 70's and whilst observes the wearing of a head scarf when she goes home, her and all of her, rather affluent, friends live in the UK and live a very Western life. She does regard herself as a Muslim. Perhaps if their more evolution toward freedom was less quick and less 'American' Iran may have had a chance.

The more I discuss Islam the more I see it's difficulties in ever fitting in well in the West, the five pillars alone make it tricky to go to school, do exams, have a job....afterall a surgeon can hardly go, mid heart transplant, to pray or a teacher, etc.

I know Western children who find the Burka frightening and most people I talk to feel there's no place for it in the UK. My personal feeling is that I'd never make an effort to talk/communicate to someone who walked six paces behind her husband or covered her face, I certainly wouldn't talk to the man with her. It's bad enough seeing these women on holiday sat by the pool with their bodies covered and their sons and husbands splashing about, in fact it really makes me angry. It's a very very poor message.

We won't ban it here as we don't do that sor of thing but we do ban things that are worse. It is against the law to undertake FMG in the UK and rightly so.

And we will remain free to lobby against clothing which makes women second class and point out of the errors of their ways to those who damage their daughters by adopting it.

Yes, good point Posie, if Amerian cultural imperialists hadn't been so arrogant in Iran women would probably pushed for freedom in other ways.
I find Iranians fascinating. I had an Iranian friend who came to the UK with her husband to do a PHD. I thought "Oh, yeah, just following her husband". She only had a degree in hospital machinery or something and got herself a job in the local hospital fixing and researching new technology. SHe was only here for a few years while her DH finished his studies, so she must have had some blinding qualifications for the hospital to take her on like that.

The Iranian Revolution was not about the veil.

It was not about Iran being pushed towards 'freedom' too fast by the American 'friends' of the Shah either.

The Shah's regime was one where personal control rested essentially with the Shah. He played groups within the power elite against each other to prevent any threat to himself from developing within that group (army officers, etc.)

His regime was set in place by the CIA, bolstered and advised by the CIA, and was used by the US to fight the Cold War and keep oil flowing to the west. The oppression of the secret police therefore was focused on the leftist opposition to the Shah, the Iranian Communist party and others, while the religious opposition, which the US did not see as a threat, or understand, remained comparably free to operate under the radar. There was a disregard fro Islamic tradition, notably in the introduction of a new calendar whose starting point was the birth of Cyrus, as opposed to the former Mohammed-centered calendar.

Under the guidance of the CIA the regime was corrupt, brutal, and oppressive, and one of the tipping points was the introduction of diplomatic immunity from prosecution for those CIA operatives who were responsible for the brutality.

Additionally, the regime's extravagance was in sharp contrast with the lives of most Iranians, especially in 1977-78, when inflation hit hard and austerity measures were introduced despite the fact that Iran had reaped a huge windfall from oil revenues in the early 70s.

The regime was not heading in the direction of more freedom for anyone except US business and political interests. It was opposed by many and varied factions throughout its history.

Iran has had a long relationship with the veil and the symbolic use of the veil for political purposes. It was first banned in Iran in 1937, resulting in much uproar, and then restored in 1941. From then on, the veil was manipulated by political groups (it was never the central focus of any group or a major issue in and of itself) When the Revolution began to gather momentum in 1978-79, women took to the streets in huge numbers, using the veil as a symbol of their opposition to the regime -- the regime collapsed and within a month of his return from exile in Paris, Khomeini issued a decree requiring women to veil in public (March 1979).

The next day, which was International Women's Day, enraged women took to the streets and continued to protest against the repressive policy of the new regime for quite a while afterwards, to absolutely no avail. The protests were massive and spontaneous -- and received no support from the political groups Iranian women had strengthened in the leadup to the revolution. Veil-wearing was strictly enforced by enthusiastic misogynist zealots.