Menu Back
issues About
Diabolic Digest
Veiled intentions
Some
prominent politicians – first in France and now in Belgium – are calling for
Islamic headscarves to be banned in schools. Rather than simply guaranteeing
the separation of church and state, such a ban, argues Khaled Diab, is more
likely to alienate the Muslim community – particularly women – and harm
multiculturalism.
January 2004
As I was walking home and thinking about this
article, I saw a large group of teenage girls making their way loudly down the
street. Among the regular-looking Belgian faces were three that looked Arab,
one of whom was sporting an Islamic headscarf. Her hijab made no apparent
difference to this young lady’s ability to joke and socialise with her mates.
Watching this crowd of friends pass casually by
made me wonder how it was that a little square of cloth could cause so much
fuss in two apparently tolerant and open-minded European societies. Although I
am a Muslim, I am not personally in favour of the hijab. However, I
believe that it is a matter of individual choice – an opinion that is not
shared by several prominent politicians in France and Belgium.
Arguing that the separation of church and state
required it, Interior Minister Patrick Dewael of the liberal VLD echoed a
French parliamentary committee when he called for the banning of the headscarf
– and other religious symbols – among teachers (as well as other civil
servants) and pupils. The minister’s comments drew harsh criticism from across
the political spectrum, with the notable exception of the far-right Vlaams
Blok.
Forbidding religious symbols makes sense when
it comes to state institutions – the 10 commandments in a US courthouse or a
cross in a school assembly hall – because it demonstrates government
even-handedness when dealing with its citizens regardless of their religious
background. But schoolgirls are not state property, nor are teachers or other
civil servants.
Government officials are, of course, obliged to
serve the public without prejudice. But dictating how they dress will not
enhance their sense of justice. How does not wearing a cross, a star of David,
a Sikh turban or a Hindu Tika improve a person’s ability to do his or her job?
People will carry their beliefs with them no matter what they wear. A good
civil servant leaves his or her personal views – secular or religious – outside
the door and there are plenty of laws to protect against discrimination.
If such a policy were to get the all-green, it
would raise some important questions about where the state ends and the
individual begins. As critics of Maoist China – with its uniform blue or grey
suits and bicycles – were all too keen to point out, people are not the same
and their differences should not be buried. But purging individuality – a
cherished European value – is precisely what these secular puritans are asking
everyone to do.
Then, of course, there would be questions about
what exactly constitutes a banned headscarf. There are several methods with
which a Muslim woman can cover her hair, including – in increasing conservative
order – hijabs, khemars and niqabs. Which will the
government forbid?
What if a woman covers her head for
non-religious reasons – such as a ‘bad hair day’ or it becomes the latest Gucci
craze? Many Muslim women seeking to stay true to their faith may cover their
hair in a hood, a beret, a hat, or a shawl. Would these items of clothing then
become religious symbols, too?
Splitting hairs
Minister Dewael claims that banning the
headscarf will lead to the “emancipation of young people”. This holds when a
woman is forced by family, spouse, peer pressure and the community to cover up.
In such cases, she should have recourse to a social and legal support network
to help her protect her individual rights. The government should perhaps work
on making such services more accessible.
However, many Muslim women voluntarily don a
headscarf and they do so out of a strong religious conviction. Forcing them to
shed their hijabs against their will is just as much a “form of
oppression” as Dewael claims the headscarf is. Those who do so will feel that
they have been forced to compromise their faith, while other will choose not to
enter places where it is banned. This will have the unwelcome result that,
rather than empower Muslim women, it may actually cause them to feel victimised
and to retreat – or be kept – away from mainstream societies.
This can be seen among religious Turks who are
angered by the decades-old policy banning headscarves in Turkish government
buildings. In addition to his iron-fist rule and corruption, the former Shah of
Iran was despised by many in his country for forcing secularism down the
throats of his people. Now, along with Saudi Arabia, Iran forces its women to
cover up whether they want to or not. Most other Muslim countries leave it up
to the individual.
This highlights the fact that the hijab –
and its other variants – is also a controversial issue in the Muslim World,
even among feminists. Some Muslim feminists see it as liberating because it
effectively desexes their relationship with men in the public arena, others see
it as tool of male dominance. Rifaat Hassan, a feminist from conservative
Pakistan, recently told a Brussels audience that she regarded the headscarf as
a non-issue because it was not expressly referred to in Islamic scripture. As
if to illustrate her point, she let the top of her sari slip off her hair. It
is men’s attitudes towards women that are the problem, she argued – a
microskirt can be just as subjugating or liberating as a hijab.
All this angst over covering hair may seem
strange to non-Muslims but sweeping the issue under the carpet will not promote
tolerance, since to be tolerant, people need to understand and accept their
differences as well as their similarities. We should not pretend that we’re all
the same and we should learn to respect, or at least put up with, our
differences. I say let Muslims, Christians, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus and atheists do
their thing – it makes life more colourful.
This article appeared on Expatica in January 2004.
ã2004 K. Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website
is the copyright of Khaled Diab.