Ten minutes in. The woman in the niqab is Sahar al-Faifi, a community organizer and geneticist (the caption says). She says the big question assumes there is a conflict between religious rights and human rights and there is no such conflict. Same-sex marriage is totally impermissible in Islam, she says; that is agreed upon.
But it doesn’t mean for me to actually project my belief into my action allowing myself to discriminate against them. So that’s, that’s – you know, the human rights and the religious rights are in align. There is no conflict between the two.
See what she did there? She completely contradicted herself. She said there is no conflict, and then she promptly described a conflict. Same-sex marriage is right out in Islam, but she doesn’t get to act on that. Why not? Because acting on it would violate human rights!
They get onto the French “ban” on the hijab, and al-Faifi says if there were such a thing in Britain she would be stuck at home, she wouldn’t be able to go out. Which is nonsense, because the French “ban” isn’t a ban everywhere, it applies only in government buildings. Nobody points that out. The presenter asks her to remind everyone why she hides her face and she says “it’s an act of worship and it’s modesty.”
It’s “an act of worship.” Why? Why is sticking a piece of black cloth over your face “an act of worship”? Why is it an act of worship only for women?
I think that’s just some grandiose words that don’t mean anything, to explain a stupid and nasty custom that stifles women.
Other than the bit about “no conflict”, I have no problem with her statement. While she’s downplaying the conflict between her religion and human rights, she is stating that human rights takes priority in practice.
Is that “hijab” or “niqab”? I can see no reason to ban the hijab.
In France there is a general ban on wearing religious symbols in government buildings.
In France there is a general ban on wearing religious symbols in government buildings.
If that’s the case France is doing secularism wrong.
Secularism is about not granting religions special status. If you ban religious clothing (say, headscarves or crucifixes) but not similar non-religious trinkets you are granting religious symbols ‘special status’ even if that’s a negative status.
@Jacob Schmidt, Re Hijabs
Whether banning is an appropriate (or even effective) way to tackle hijab use, is of course debatable. I would however point to several problematic issues related to its use.
1) Re Free choice and minority “rigths”. In many western societies, one could regard observant muslims in general, and muslim women in particular as a minority in the society. In a democratic spirit, the majority could grant minorities some concessions. However, while I agree that many muslim women probably do choose veiling “by free will”, there is also a number of muslim women not choosing entirely freely. The latter group’s restrictiion of freedom is likely linked to the former’s exercising of their freedom. So- if you like: we have a “minoriy in the minority”. Which group is weaksest and have the greatest need for support?
2) Also related to “freedom” is the the exercise of “parental right”, -where parents (of course believing they act in the best interest of their children ) may be using considreable “power” to “habituate” their daughters to use hijab (from early age). I would think this is a problematic ( assymmetric) power situation WRT free choice.
3) (Pan-)community cohesion. Veiled women (claiming modesty reasons) also constantly sends a strong signal to the entire male population: “We are not available as potential spouses for non-muslim men” . One could of course split hairs, but In pracice it is close to unavilable, It is quite reasonable to assume that the hijab women are fairly observant. This means that there are two avenues for a lasting relationship: a) the male converts to islam (Which of course is a “bonus” for the ummah, and apostasy for the women (Which is is forbidden, and rarely can be expected (especially when the hijabi allready do demonstrate considerable observancy).
¤9 Finally, (Alsom implicit in the rationale behind 3: As the women a priori is regarded as inferior and subjected to males for decision-taking) the continued use of veils do propagate and ossify untenable moral codes in the society.
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
No, not really or at least not directly. Secularism is about keeping government and legislation separate from religious mandates and considerations. It is about not basing your social rules on religious rules. France’s position on religious symbols, while problematic , is not violating secularism.
I strongly disagree. If the state has a compelling reason for a law it should apply to everyone equally. If a law can be waived for a particular group then clearly the reason was not actually compelling and the entire law is suspect. One law for everyone should always be the goal. The only exception should be when a law is intended to address an existing imbalance and, by its action, make itself obsolete.
See also: Sikhs and motorcycles, Amish safety triangles.
Of course if a law is maliciously crafted in order to place special burden upon some minority group, as the French ban arguably does… that’s a different question.
If I remember this right, the French didn’t make a big deal out of religious wearables when it was small stuff on chains around people’s necks and that kind of thing. (Yes, mostly crucifixes, but also Shia medallions of Ali, etc.)
The problems came in with face and body covering bags. Those are a real security issue and they’re also a vague-unease-and-paranoia issue. The it-could-be-anyone-under-all-that feeling. The zomg-they-could-be-hiding-a-suicide-vest issue. It’s not helped by the fact that it really is possible to hide it under a niqab.
It seems to me that the draconian ban on all religious stuff became a thing after the French got tired of worrying about all-covering clothing, justifiably or not.
As a side issue, it puzzles me why the super-observant majority Muslim countries expect foreign females to wear head covering of some kind, but other countries are not allowed to dictate Muslim women’s clothing. Surely, the whole point is to always be telling women what to wear?
We’re seeing this in Quebec right now with the introduction of a “Charter of Rights” which would ban government workers from wearing overt religious symbols. Unfortunately “government worker” is so broadly defined it includes anyone who works in an institution which receives any taxpayer money, like a daycare or a hospital, so if your doctor is a devout Jew who wears a Kippa he’s going to have to choose between his career and his religious/cultural identity.
It’s not like there are hordes of Niqab wearing civil servants in Quebec; in fact this is more likely to affect Sikhs and Jews.
I’m all for maintaining a secular government and keeping religious influence out of decision making, but this is an imposition on visible minorities; effectively blocking them from any number of career paths. And when I see this sort of thing happening I think it’s gone too far…
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/hijab-wearing-woman-attacked-in-metro-urges-others-to-don-religious-symbols-1.2494575
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-bus-video-appears-to-show-anti-muslim-altercation-1.1857256
An act of worship is talking to god. I should think that god already knows of your piety.
Modesty? I’m pretty sure that that’s defined as not drawing attention to yourself so wearing conspicuous clothing is false modesty.
I get the impression that Ms al-Faifi is just trying to muddle through to a coherent position. It’s bound to involve contradiction, because she wants contradictory things.
I wonder about the idea of free will when it comes to wearing a veil, seeing as it is such a live issue in Muslim culture and nowhere else that I know of. It seems to me that it isn’t a natural thing to want to hide one’s face except as a reaction to a sense of shame or embarrassment, otherwise people would often do it in all societies and no one would think it odd, and no one would feel uncomfortable in the presence of people whose faces cannot be read. In fact, despite the odd fashion from time to time (which might be significant), my impression is that it’s quite rare. Then there is the fact that it is only women who seem to feel the need to decide whether to cover their faces.
There must (I think) be some social pressure to account for the behaviour at all. I strongly suspect (if I am right about all this) that there is a lot of rationalisation going on. If there is cultural pressure on a woman (e.g, that it is shameful to be a woman, that a woman is a dangerous temptress, that a woman is property that is not allowed to advertise itself as a person or as a body) there is also likely to be a process of rationalisation which will allow a person faced with the apparent choice to cope with what is clearly, at some level, required. Even if it’s an “optional” requirement (I jest not).
Except in the case of some sort of psychiatric disorder or whatever, I cannot help thinking that a sense of shame is deeply involved, whether it causes someone to hide their face or whether a sense of shame is acquired by the act of hiding the face in this situation or that, and this must be bad for the wearer in the long run. And it is easy enough to rationalise this in favour of the practice, because are we not all unworthy worms in comparison to the Almighty? So, it becomes an act of worship.
That’s pretty disingenuous. An act of worship is whatever your godbook requires. Not cutting your hair, wearing a hat, taking Saturday off, eating magic crackers or wearing magic underwear, the list is endless. You’re attempting to apply logic to religious practice, that doesn’t work.
No, it’s not.
“Conspicuous”, in this instance, depends on what everyone else is wearing. Like the Amish “plainness” it only becomes conspicuous when you are surrounded by jeans and t-shirts. This issue is charged enough without inventing “gotcha!” objections.
No, it’s not disingenuous. It’s pointing out the absurdity of claims of that type, by taking them literally. That’s the opposite of disingenuous. It’s the claims that are disingenuous, not the questioning of them in literal terms.
Let me be the token French citizen and resident, here, and clarify a few misconceptions.
1) There is no general ban on the hidjab in France. There simply is not. Maybe Ms. Sahar al-Faifi was thinking of a recent law (enacted under the former president, right-wing leader N. Sarkozy) against the wearing of full-face veils, like niqab or burqa, in public spaces. (Wether this confusion was an honest mistake or deliberately done in order to generate F.U.D. about “islamophobia”, now, is another question.)
2) This law is a can of worms, that much is true. It was crafted as a way to combat Islamist (mostly Salafist) influence in the Muslim communities, and the government used a few high-profile incidents to justify what they saw as a “necessity” for this law: things like a niqab-clad woman refusing to take off her face veil to testify in court even though she was offered to do so in a side-room with a small number of witnesses. There was also a few jewelry thefts in Paris by men dressed up as female tourists from Saudi Arabia. The niqab served to hide their faces to security cameras in the luxury shops they “visited”! Of course (as could have been predicted by even the thickest of politicos if they had taken the time to think about social and historical circumstances), the law backfired and gave even more publicity to the ultra-conservative Islamists, who now can pose as “victims”. By the way, this law only entails first a cautioning, and then a fine for a repeat offense. But in some instances, it led to confrontation (also predictable) between the woman’s family and/or neighbours and the police, hence more incidents and heightened tensions with a part of the Muslim population. Sigh. There’s many reasons not to be a fan of Sarkozy, and this law is only one of them.
3) As for the hidjab or other religious garments like kippas, Sikh turbans, etc., that don’t hide the face, they are banned here in two very precise circumstances:
a) For students public schools and high-schools, on school ground and during school-organized excursions. The rest of their time, they do as they want.
b) For government workers, during their hours of work, including certain private contractors who provide a public service (like a hospital, nursing home or child-care), if they are subsidised by the national or local government.
But, and this is a very big “but”, these lregulations on religious symbols and garments have been accompanied for more than 20 years now by directives to help schools and other administrators enforce them in a conciliatory way, in order to let believers practice their religious customs (like covering their head) in a way that doesn’t attract disproportionate attention to them. For instance, a hidjab is out, but a bandanna knotted over the hair is fine, and so is any other kind of hat than a kippa. In fact, I have a colleague who is an Orthodox Jew and he’s perfectly OK with wearing a beret at work, and so is the government agency we both work for! (Berets are a commonplace style for men here, and so are bandannas and knitted hats for both sexes.)
What this means in practice is that no, a believer doesn’t have to “choose between [their] career and [their] religious/cultural identity”, as A Hermit fears, but find a style that doesn’t shout out loud “look at the religion first, but the citizen and human being last”. I hope Québec finds a way to build some similar compromise and spare themselves more political strife under the guise of religion.
It is disingenuous. While you can certainly reduce most acts of worship to absurdity by superficial presentation, that does not make them any less acts of worship. The very point of most acts of worship is that they are otherwise meaningless (except perhaps as ingroup identifiers), foolish or even self-destructive. No True Act of Worship is a feckless argument to raise against a practice to which a plethora of valid complaints already apply.
It is not disingenuous. I’m not hiding anything or pretending to think anything. I’m taking a piece of rhetoric literally and saying what I think is silly about it. There’s nothing disingenuous about that.
Whether it’s feckless or not is a completely different question.
Thank you Irène, that’s very informative.
@ Gordon Willis:
There’s a lot in what you say about the contradiction of “deciding freely” to engage or not in a behaviour when this behaviour is strongly praised/prescribed/held as an ideal within your own culture, and the dissonance this must create, which must then be rationalized away…
Although, historically, veiling one’s face (especially for women) is not something only related to Islam, by a long way. For instance, face veils or masks were common in Europe among high society women until quite recently, well into the 20th Century in some places. In my country, France, and other Catholic countries, it was not unusual until after WW2 for widows to wear a black gauze veil over their face when they went out in public, for the period of mourning prescribed by tradition and the Catholic Church. Doing so was seen as a show of humility toward God and signaled to society, especially men, the unavailability of that particular woman as a potential love and/or marriage interest, at least for that period of time.
Earlier (say the 16th, 17th Century), women of the aristocracy wore full-face masks made of cardboardd and fabric (often lavishly decorated) when they went out in public, partly to protect their skin from the sun, partly to distinguish themselves from the commoners. This also (perhaps) helped them fend off unwanted sexual attention, since they could feign not to see suggestives gestures and mimics from the men around them.
@ Ophelia #16:
You’re welcome. 🙂
True about veils. I’m 1000 years old so I can remember little veils on hats – not really veils but little vestigial fringe things. I think my mother had one or two hats like that; I think I remember looking at them and puzzling slightly over the veil part. I may even have asked questions about them…I think I did. (But memory is treacherous.)
And of course there were bridal veils, Hell, Diana wore a big whopping one for her StarCelebrityRoyalWedding didn’t she? No maybe she didn’t. But they were a thing. Very gross, really – behold, the veiled virgin, being handed over to The Man.
Ugh.
Jacqueline Kennedy wore a thick dark one for that funeral procession – I’ve seen footage recently enough to remember that. I vaguely assumed it was mostly wanting privacy when feeling shredded.
Oooh, bridal veils! Yikes. They go back at least to the times of the ancient Republic of Rome, i.e. well before both Christianity and Islam, if ancient authors are to be trusted!
My mother wore one on her wedding day, natch. She was also told during her strict Catholic upbringing that a “proper” young lady should always cover her hair in public, especially to go to church! She didn’t like hats, but she did wear bright little fichus. As did, interestingly, famous women from Catholic background, like Jacqueline Kennedy or Sophia Loren.
(My grandmother had one of those hats with dark, vestigial little veils, and I think I remember her wearing it for visits to the cemetary after her husband’s death.)
I think the one I remember, if I do remember it, was supposed to be chic rather than somber and funereal. Maybe possibly the postwar style of chic when it was ok to use a lot of fabric again, not that a vestigial veil was a lot of fabric but that it might have been a nod to the whole idea – “look, bits of material for no useful purpose.”
Which reminds me of the fact that I always wonder (when I think about the subject) how the transition from long skirts to very short ones can have gone. Ankle-length to knee-length – how did that work?
I think it’s very remiss of Downton Abbey not to have gone into that.
What we have here is failure to communicate. I was not addressing you or anything you said. I was addressing kevinalexander‘s comment, which I quoted and then said “That was disingenuous”. Sorry if I was unclear somehow.
Nathair, well I knew that, but I think kevinalexander and I were saying the same kind of thing, and I was pointing out that it’s not disingenuous to take a bit of religious rhetoric literally in order to point out that it’s bullshit. I don’t think the word “worship” does apply to any old thing religious people do; I think it’s more specific than that Or maybe it isn’t, but it’s not disingenuous to poke at it.
Or…maybe the problem is that yes, in a way it is “disingenuous” to take bullshit literally, but it’s transparently disingenuous (aka just plain sarcastic), while your accusation seems to be treating as simply dishonest.
Or, in other other words, as you say, a failure to communicate.
@ Ophelia #21
Hmm. If I remember my history lessons, it’s basically WWI that did the long skirts in (the need for more women to work, including in factories, plus the price of fabric). After the war, the social changes during the “Roaring Twenties”, made all kinds of experiments possible, at least for the fashionable set. Young upper class women cut their hair short, abandonned their corsets for more comfortable bras, and made the hem of their skirt climb up.
I wonder if the fact that they tried to achieve a more or less androgynous figure, with little difference between the width of chest and pelvis, helped make short skirts acceptable: until then, you could see knee-lenght skirts on young, non-nubile girls, but not on grown women. The short hair “à la garçonne” (litt. “boyish”) of the “Flappers”, plus their slim, androgynous figure and their short skirts possibly contributed to make these women less classically feminine in the eyes of their contemporaries, and thus outside the accepted conventions. Which enabled the more daring of them to turn what until then would have seemed an indecent display of legs into cutting edge fashion.
/my two cents.
At other times- most famously Carnival in Venice- the anonymity provided by masks and veils was said to enable people to mix freely and supposedly immorally without being detected.