After more than six months of straining to convince itself of the immense, nationwide danger of a phenomenon that involves fewer than 0,1% of France’s Muslim population, a parliamentary committee recommended the banning of the full veil in many of France’s public places.
As usual, when France confronts such debates, a panoply of intellectuals, politicians and artists gasp their indignation over an alleged assault on “our values”. The French have been systematically treated to four justifications, all hammered home with the aim of getting the full veil banned for good: the feminist, the theological, the humanistic and the securitarian.
None has been convincing. The majority of women concerned have clearly chosen to wear the veil, sometimes in the face of their family’s opposition. Many see it as a means of expressing independence, even as a vehicle of feminine empowerment.
In the 1970s, Muslim women who had arrived from North Africa were often kept behind suburban doors by their heavy-handed husbands. Sometimes they were forced to wear the veil, but nobody gave a damn. But, paradoxically, once the veil emerged as voluntary during the 1980s, visibly flaunted in the street by a new generation of determined young Frenchwomen, concern began to rise. Pseudo-feminist rhetoric cannot conceal that it is the voluntary veil that is being fought, not the imposed article.
As to the theological justification, it is laughable to see government members and the president himself pompously arguing that the veil is not truly Muslim, as if they are more knowledgeable than Muslims themselves about their own lifestyle.
A peculiar facet of so-called French secularism sees government ministers assuming the role of imams. Others argue that one cannot be a true citizen if one hides one’s face, because this refuses human interaction. Yet some people habitually wear dark glasses, and nobody would think of denying them their right to humanity.
The security-based objection requires one to bare one’s face in order to have the right to pick up one’s children from school. It forgets that in practice, the new generation of women do not refuse to comply.
It is no coincidence that the debate on French national identity is occurring simultaneously. They are picking on Muslim women, or Muslims in Âgeneral, or all immigrants, as scapegoats, to avoid facing their current crisis. The French are confronted daily with the declining influence of their language, art and cinema.
In fact, they are digging into a deep narcissistic wound, their helplessness in the face of globalisation and the waning of the “French exception” driving them blindly to trash our most sacred fundamental values while pretending to defend them. —