Banning the Burqa: Not the Answer

Recently, the French Lower House of Parliament voted to ban Muslim women from wearing the burqa (full-body religious gown with a transparent netting over the eyes) and the niqab (full-body religious gown exposing only the eyes) in public places. The bill will go onto the Senate in September where it is expected to pass without opposition.

If a woman is caught wearing either of these garments, she will be fined up to 750 Euros and be required to take citizenship classes. A man caught forcing his wife, daughter, or sister to veil faces a much higher fine and potential jail time, doubled if she is a minor.

According to French President Nicholas Sarkozy, these full-body religious garments are degrading symbols of the “debasement” of women. Citing “égalité,” the principle that all people regardless of sex or relgious practice are equal in the eyes of the law, he claims that, “In our country, we cannot accept that women can be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of identity.”

For a garment that only 1,900 French women wear, this proposed policy has sparked debate and international controversy covering a myriad of political perspectives. Certain feminists are championing a woman’s right to wear what she chooses. Other feminists are decrying the inherently sexist traditions within Islam. Secularists are condemning the garment as an overtly religious statement in a secular society. Muslims are condemning the ban and banners as Islamophobic and racist. Other Muslims support the ban as a means to condemn the Islamic radical right.Despite the numerous opinions, no one seems to acknowledge that distorting a woman’s experience through uninformed “feminist” principles silences and hurts her far more than her “offensive” garments.

President Nicholas Sarkozy and Parliamentary Majority Leader, Jean-François Copé, seem to think they are the great feminist liberators. To hear them talk, Muslim women are waiting with bated breath to toss their burqas and niqabs in their frowning husbands’ faces and promenade the streets in designer sundresses.

Plenty of Muslim women are obligated to wear the burqa or niqab, either through external force or religious devotion. Instead of instantly embracing liberation, these women will most likely remain veiled but refrain from public interaction. Instead of being “prisoners behind a screen,” women will be prisoners behind a screen confined to domesticity. While the law seems well-intentioned in pledging to punish men who force their wives and daughters to veil, one has to wonder how these men will be prosecuted if the women cannot venture into the public sphere.

Many younger women have adopted the burqa or niqab as a political statement. For these women, veiling is a personal and political expression for themselves as Muslims, and for Islam as a highly misunderstood religion. In banning these women from veiling, France not only denies their personal choice, but also heightens already venomous tensions within Muslim and immigrant communities. Ironically, banning the face veil could incite more, rather than less of the immigrant-related crime and Islamic radicalism that the ban is designed to reduce.

French legislators are dressing their racism as feminism, in a desperate attempt to appeal to the right while appeasing the progressive left. In reality, cultural integration has failed, and, as per usual, women are paying the price. By protecting “silenced” women, France is the true silencer, quenching important conversations concerning women in Islam, Muslim women in France, and Muslim citizens in Europe.

Instead of masking racism as feminism, wouldn’t it be more productive to consider how to bridge French principles, such as égalité of the sexes with religious tolerance? How about expanding “égalité, liberté, fraternité” to foster equality between religions, liberty for those forced into religion, and fraternité among both the French and those who have chosen to relocate to France?

Rather than silencing women in their flimsy attempts to be “feminists,” legislators need to give these women the means to communicate their experience. Whether they are proud niqabis, oppressed by their husbands, or political activists, a woman’s right to express her reality is a powerful medium that should be an inalienable right.

Denying a woman’s right to veil is not empowering. It is patronizing. Some feminists and alleged feminists need to recognize that feminism is not the same across cultural borders. Western eyes often look at niqabis (women who wear the niqab) and see silenced women, sweltering in her dark garments in the Arabian deserts. “Enlightened” scholars may see the same women and see a beautiful spiritual transformation, as their dress guides them in how to be a better Muslim by “submitting” to Islam. Perhaps the women themselves are laughing at each other lifting their veils to eat, complaining about the heat or how the wind inevitably blows the veil off their faces as they walk. Is this any different than the girls in short dresses outside a club in New York, complaining that their heels are “killing them,” shivering in their attempts to look cute on a chilly night out? The division between religious motivation and societal motivation goes only so far. Cultural pressures of all kinds are equally to blame for creating rigid, narrow definitions of “womanhood.”

Women across borders are all occupied by cultural expectations. It is our personal choice to decide which ones whether we chose to challenge, and which ones we chose to maintain. The State should not interfere to limit this choice, but to protect it, listening to the needs of all women and people despite their religious, political, and personal choices.

Anna Lekas Miller is a student, writer, and activist who is normally based in New York, but currently studies in Paris. Follow her on Twitter at @agoodcuppa.

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