http://www.harpersbazaar.com/magazine/feature-articles/burka-ban-0909
France's Burka Ban Uncovered
Recently, French president Nicolas Sarkozy proposed that Muslim women be
prohibited from wearing head-to-toe coverings. Should Western countries have
the right to impose a dress code?
By Janine di Giovanni
In 2004, shortly after the French government passed a ban on girls' wearing
head scarves to school, I rode the Métro with a young, religious
Franco-Tunisian student. She was wearing a head scarf that covered her hair and
reached below her collar.
"Watch the reaction of people on this train to me and my scarf," she said as we
searched for a seat. "Everyone will give me a dirty look."
I had not thought much of it, but she was right. Ordinary-looking French
housewives turned to gape at her; children giggled; a man opposite us actually
grimaced.
At the time, I was reporting a story on Muslim integration in Europe. As up to
10 percent of France's 64 million people are Muslim — the highest percentage in
Western Europe — I was trying to see how religion could integrate successfully
with secular society. On that train ride to Bobigny, the grim suburb where
violent riots erupted in 2005, I saw what it was like to be in the skin of
someone who chooses to make a physical statement about her religion.
This past June, French lawmakers decided to begin considering whether the
burka, used in France as a blanket term to include all traditionally Muslim
full-body coverings worn with a niqab (face veil), threatens French secularism.
President Nicolas Sarkozy, a man not known for mincing words, went as far as to
say that the burka was "not welcome" in France. The French National Assembly
then created a panel to launch an inquiry over a six-month period to discuss
the future of the garment.
The issue has triggered a heated debate among intellectuals, human-rights
groups, and Islamic clerics arguing about individual freedoms versus
assimilation.
Though the burka is rare in France — the hijab, or head scarf, is more common —
a ban would mean that women who chose to wear it would not have the right to
make that choice.
"We would be the only Western country to tell women what they can and cannot
wear," says Paris-based writer Ariane Quentier, who lived and worked in
Afghanistan for four years.
Speaking in Cairo in early June (several weeks before President Sarkozy
proposed the ban), President Obama said, "It is important for Western countries
to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit —
for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We can't
disguise hostility toward any religion behind the pretense of liberalism."
Part of the logic behind the ban goes back to the strict French code of läicité
— the separation of church and state that was written into French law in 1905.
Although France is culturally and historically Catholic, it has no official
religion. It should be noted that when the head scarf was banned in public
schools in 2004, the Jewish skullcap and large crucifixes were also forbidden.
But Franco-Muslim leaders view it as discrimination. "To raise the subject via
a parliamentary committee is a way of stigmatizing Islam and the Muslims of
France," said Mohammed Moussaoui, head of the French Council for the Muslim
Religion. "We are shocked by the idea Parliament should be put to work on such
a marginal issue."
For Paris-based designers whose clients include devout Muslim women, the issue
presents a problem. "We are getting into the most private of private matters,"
asserts a designer who declined to be named for fear of offending his wealthy
Middle Eastern clientele. "This is about people's religious beliefs but also
what goes on inside their homes. Is it up to the president of the French
Republic to decide that?"
Giambattista Valli, who dresses many Muslim women, puts the uproar in a
historical context: "It's like a flag or a Mao jacket. The impact is huge in
our minds."
Reem Debs, a Valli client, grew up in Lebanon and finds Muslims who wear the
burka in France "offensive. It's not what my religion — Islam — is about. It's
not in the Koran."
Debs is chic and lithe and could pass as Cameron Diaz's twin sister. When I met
her, she bounded down the stairs of the Meurice hotel in Paris in jeans, a
T-shirt, and a pair of Louboutin heels. "My family are probably the oldest Shia
family in Lebanon," she explains, "and I've never even worn a head scarf. It
has nothing to do with being spiritual."
There is also the argument that wearing a burka doesn't help young Muslims or
new immigrants blend into French society, a big problem within the
Muslim-secular divide here.
As Valli points out, "In the Muslim world, Western women don't wear miniskirts
and bleached hair so as not to offend the people who live there. So in France,
should Muslim women wear a burka if it is provocative to nonbelievers?"
On the other hand, he adds, "Integration is important, but you don't have to
abandon your roots, your DNA. I have been in Paris for years, but I am Italian.
I need my pizza and spaghetti. Yet I respect the culture here in France."
Quentier is divided. "I'm totally against the burka itself because it's a sign
of domination of women," she says. "My French female ancestors fought for
females to be free, and it's betraying them."
But Quentier, who says she didn't wear a burka when she was working with the
U.N. in Afghanistan but did cover up when she met tribal elders in the
countryside, also insists, "What worries me is telling people what they can
wear. Even in Afghanistan, there is not actual legislation [since the 2001 fall
of the Taliban] that forces women to wear the burka. It's a cultural choice
made by the family, not by the law."
Designer Allegra Hicks, whose collection includes caftans she transforms into
eveningwear, says, "I find the burka, as a visual object, a thing of beauty.
What I don't find beautiful is what it represents."
English-born socialite, designer, and UNICEF U.K. ambassador Jemima Khan takes
a philosophical approach. "The issue for me is not so much the burka but
coercion," Khan says. "It is important to make the distinction between the
compulsory burka as worn under the Taliban and one worn by choice."
Khan, who lived in Pakistan for years when she was married to native
cricketer-cum-politician Imran Khan, acknowledges that it is often hard for
Westerners to understand why some women choose to wear such garb for religious,
cultural, or political reasons. "My sisters-in-law, all professional women,
always wore the burka when visiting their ancestral village in Mianwali," she
says. "A Muslim woman, like a nun who wears the habit or a Sikh who wears a
turban, should have the right to choose both what she wears and how she
interprets her religion."
Khan's thoughts strike a nerve with me. A few days after the Taliban fell, I
was walking down the street in Kabul when I heard giggling behind me. It was
three teenage girls in burkas.
"Why are you still wearing them?" I asked, trying to make eye contact behind
the fabric grille. "Take them off! You're free now!"
"We don't want to," one said. "It's not safe yet. We will take it off when we
feel ready."
Janine di Giovanni is the author of Madness Visible: A Memoir of War.
SEE Feature Articles ARCHIVE
Radheetu billahee Rabban wa bil'Islaami deenan wa bi-Muhammadin (SAW) Nabiyya
Laa ilaaha illaal-laahul-malikul-Haqqul-mubeen
(There is no god, except Allah, the Ruler, the Real, the Manifest)
