Ishtiaq Ahmed

The commission recommended that if the government was going to ban the burqa, it should compensate by declaring as public holidays the religious festivals of Muslims and Jews. It also recommended that steps be taken to integrate Muslim and other minorities into the French mainstream

A non-binding recommendation of a
French Parliamentary Commission saying that the burqa (complete veiling of women from head to foot) should be banned in public institutions, including banks, post offices, schools and even on public transportation is indicative of constant tension between immigrant Muslim communities and host countries in the West. The security risk linked to the burqa and it clashing with French republican values are the two main arguments that have been put forth.

The Commission members maintained that their recommendation was by no means an invasion of or trespassing into the privacy of a Muslim woman or an attempt to curtail her human rights. It was agreed, however, that donning the burqa was a sign of the demeaned status of Muslim women. It may be recalled that the controversy started when French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared last year that such attire had no place in France. He asserted that the burqa was not a religious symbol; rather it symbolised the subjugation of women. He called for a law banning the burqa.

Polls have indicated that 65 percent of the French population, including Muslims, would like a law banning the burqa. The interior ministry says an estimated 2,000 women out of a total French population of 65.4 million, of which 5 million are Muslims, wear the burqa. The 32-member parliamentary commission that drew up the report claims that all of France is saying ‘no’ to the burqa because the garment is “contrary to the values of the republic”. And if it is not religious attire, then, argue the parliamentarians, the Muslims should support the release of Muslim women from an outdated and outmoded garment that only reinforces the inferior status of women in ultra-traditional Muslim societies.

The commission recommended that if the government was going to ban the burqa, it should compensate by declaring as public holidays the religious festivals of Muslims and Jews. It also recommended that steps be taken to integrate Muslim and other minorities into the French mainstream. It took the stand that cultures change and transform and, therefore, to essentialise the burqa as part of Islamic identity would be wrong. It also makes a strong plea to combat Islamophobia. The members of the commission range from far right to far left; the chairperson is a member of the French Communist Party.

Not surprisingly, some Muslim organisations have protested against this, calling it a gross violation of the human rights of Muslim women. Human Rights Watch has described it as forced integration that is bound to fail because it could mean that burqa-clad women may not be able to come out of their homes because their families may prefer to keep them indoors rather than let them go out without a burqa. That would only result in their greater isolation and insulation.

Indeed, all sides of the debate on the burqa have legitimate concerns. The security risk factor needs to be grasped properly. For a long time now, al Qaeda and the Taliban have been drafting young men and occasionally women into suicide bombing missions. While such tactics have created fear and anxiety among governments, they have failed to bring down the US or any other state. Rather, the privacy of each and every individual, including that of pious Muslim women, has now been made irrelevant. The new screening machines that are being installed in international airports will make possible an inspection of even the private parts of individuals. So, if anyone is responsible for undermining Islamic values, it is the terrorists who have been using the human body as a weapon of extensive if not mass destruction. Obviously the French cannot install such screens on roads and streets or in buses and markets. Therefore, banning the burqa is one way of reducing the risk factor if not eliminating it.

My second reason for supporting a ban on the burqa is that it represents a perverted view of piety. Many years ago, I interviewed the well-known Islamist, Dr Israr Ahmed, on a number of subjects at his residence in Model Town, Lahore. Naturally, his egregiously reactionary views on women were one of the subjects I probed with him. To my utter surprise and shock, he told me that men in the West have lost their manliness because they see and work with women. That kills their sexuality. By strictly segregating men and women, Islam keeps men in their most natural state of virility. The burqa thus helps when a woman must sometimes come out.

If we ignore such bizarre ideas for a moment and investigate if the burqa was worn by the earliest generations of Muslims, then the facts tell another story. Historians have pointed out that the tent-style burqa became the dominant form of veiling only after the Muslims defeated the more advanced Persian and Eastern Byzantine empires. Their nobilities kept their women away from the gaze of other men. This was a symbol of affluence and power. When these empires fell to the Arabs, the latter began to imitate this practice since they were the new upper class in society. Thus when the caliphate of Baghdad, under the Abbasids, had consolidated, the black burqa became a status symbol of upper class families and naturally those from the lower orders who wanted to enhance status would require their women to follow the same. Most of the ahadith, which prescribe complete coverage of women, were a product of the period that corresponded to the annexation of Asia Minor and Persia by Muslims. Therefore, the French parliamentarians seem to have done their homework seriously.

There is, of course, a deeper philosophical aspect to it too. Can a civilisation that treats its women as inferior and its men as sexually uncontrollable claim to be the bearer of the best values of common humanity? I have my very serious doubts. Saudi Arabia, Iran and the defunct Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan briefly during 1996-2001, and later the different parts of the NWFP, all represent, without any doubt, the worst offenders against the dignity of equality of women. A young Pakistani scholar, Taimur Rahman, has prepared a list of all the atrocious rules and laws the Taliban imposed on women to keep them out of the public eye. It can be accessed at: http://criticalppp.org/lubp/archives/5150.

A ban on the burqa may not help liberate the 2,000 or so women in France but it will symbolise the need for Western societies to take an interest in the welfare of the weakest section of their immigrant populations. These always happen to be women and children.

Ishtiaq Ahmed is a Visiting Research Professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS) and the South Asian Studies Programme at the National University of Singapore. He is also a Professor of Political Science at Stockholm University. He has published extensively on South Asian politics. At ISAS, he is currently working on a book, Is Pakistan a Garrison State? He can be reached at isasia@nus.edu.sg