Forces for and forces against
The new law received support from across the
political spectrum as the right and centrist parties and a section of
the Socialist Party approved of the ban. It is clear that Sarkozy
chose to opt for a new controversial law – rather than making use of
existing laws on public security that would have allowed him to
legally curtail full face-covering – because he is courting the votes
of the far-right National Front in view of the 2012 presidential
elections.
In Europe today, right-wing parties cannot afford
to dispense with the support of the traditional xenophobic far-right
parties that are rising rapidly: they get about 15 per cent of the
vote in France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Austria and Hungary
and more than 30 per cent in Switzerland and Serbia.
But even more radical new organisations are now
emerging to the right of the traditional far right. In their view, the
French state has failed to adopt adequately tough measures with regard
to ‘Muslims’, whether fundamentalist or otherwise. In France, for
instance, such groups undertake provocative street actions against
‘Islam’ in response to provocative street actions by Muslim
fundamentalist groups. Both sets of antagonists seek physical
confrontation in order to rally and radicalise their troops. So far
the state and its police have turned a blind eye to these illegal
actions – a policy of laissez-faire that many fear will incite further
violence.
The growing rapprochement between Sarkozy’s
right-wing government and the various far-right organisations has
disturbing consequences for secularism.
Denouncing the government’s manipulation of
secularism in a statement issued on April 9, 2011, Sihem Habchi,
president of Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores Nor
Submissives), a leading women’s organisation in France, who actively
supported the ban on the full-face veil, said: “Secularism is being
eaten alive by a political power that cynically instrumentalises it,
by a far-right heiress [a reference to Marine Le Pen, the newly
elected president of the National Front and daughter of its founder]
who attempts to privatise it in order to feed hatred, an often
cowardly left wing that is guilty of being far too retreative, a
worrying ‘holy alliance’ between religions that invite themselves into
the debate under the pretext of defending secularism and editorialists
who endlessly ethnicise secularism and form troubling alliances.”
Soheib Bencheikh, the former grand mufti of
Marseille and director of its Institute of Higher Islamic Studies, has
also criticised the French government which, he says, “supports
communalism”. Speaking in Montreal in 2005, Bencheikh, a well-known
French Islamic scholar and author of several books and articles,
including groundbreaking work on Islam and secularism, stated: “Islam
is a prey for politicians, not only in Muslim countries but also in
democratic countries like France.”
Ranged against the government’s recent ban is an
unholy alliance of the Muslim right, human rights groups and left and
far-left parties, chorusing a simplistic defence of the religious
rights of ‘Muslims’. And it is to them the international media gives
full and nearly exclusive coverage. No wonder so many foreigners
believe that ‘Muslims’ in France cannot practise their religion at
all.
Some human rights organisations have gone even
further and supported the full-face veil as an expression of political
identity. On August 31, 2010 Amnesty International (AI) issued a press
release opposing a proposed similar ban on face covering in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, which followed previous appeals not to ban the full-face
veil in France and Belgium. In response to the AI statement, on
September 2 last year Secularism is a Women’s Issue (SIAWI) wrote:
“For the first time AI is not just justifying its position only
through the defence of religious rights, as it has done so far. Please
note, in passing, that although several Muslim theologians have gone
public in Europe to say that covering is not a religious duty,
AI has repeatedly chosen to ignore their voices (on what grounds?) and
given the floor to conservative and obscurantist voices instead. But
it is the first time that AI supports ‘the right to veil’ as the
expression of a political stand: [AI wrote]: ‘Such a law would violate
the human rights of women who choose to wear a full-face veil as an
expression of their religious, cultural, political or personal
identity or beliefs.’ Hence AI is for the first time admitting to the
fact that veiling in the heart of Europe in these days and times is a
political stand. Isn’t it what we have been saying for many years? The
veil in all its various forms, as a recent introduction in western
life, is indeed the political flag of fundamentalist groups.”
The most recent migrants, many of whom have been
victims of Muslim fundamentalists themselves, resent being labelled
traitors or racists, as having sold out to the extreme right or to
foreign imperialism, by many militant left-wingers and human rights
activists. As journalist Malika Zouba points out, “It is the
over-simplistic way of thinking that kills us.”
In her statement of April 9, Sihem Habchi argues
that “Secularism is not a theme that belongs to the far right… There
is a need to put an end to this dialectical folly that depicts as an
ally of the far right anybody who hints at the problems that result
under pressure from obscurantists, such as rejecting mixed presence of
men and women in the public services, especially in hospitals, in
schools, in swimming pools, in municipal services, etc.”
Addressing all those who “unwittingly use the same
arguments as Islamists and their lackeys in the left”, H.A., a
journalist who was active in a left-wing organisation in Algeria,
makes an impassioned case: “In order for these two laws [2004 and
2011] to be passed, secularists and feminists, among them many Muslim
women and men, had to fight bitter battles against Islamists and those
who promote them in the left.”
Lalia Ducos, president of the Women’s Initiative
for Citizenship and Universal Rights (WICUR), was equally disparaging.
Ducos, who works with left-wing and women’s organisations in Algeria,
said on April 11: “I am sick and tired of this manipulation of
secularism by the government in order to snatch votes from the
National Front and, of course, I am sick of the manipulation of
secularism by Islamists and now even this has been toppled by its
manipulation by extreme-right groups!”
Holding the fort for secularism
The most determined and outspoken defenders of
secularism today are citizens of Muslim descent, among them numerous
women. This is certainly no accident. As Sihem Habchi says, “Those of
us who came from other countries benefited from secularism and this is
why we are so deeply attached to it.” In recent years several
individuals and groups of Muslim descent, many of them women, have
come out publicly in support of secularism on three significant
occasions.
They testified before the Stasi Commission (set up
in 2003 to re-examine the application of secular laws in state
schools, which was challenged by Muslim fundamentalists) and helped
promote the 2004 law which reiterates the founding secular principles
of the French republic as defined in the laws of 1905 and 1906. These
century-old laws institute the separation of state and church (where
‘church’ referred to the Catholic church, as Islam was not in the
picture at the time).
Article 1 of the 1906 law affirms the principle
that the French secular state guarantees to all citizens the freedom
of belief – or not to believe – and the right to practise their
religion – or not to practise any. Article 2 states that beyond the
religious freedom enshrined in Article 1, the secular state declares
itself incompetent in religious matters: religions are beyond its
mandate and hence it would not interfere with them, would not grant
them any recognition and would not fund them. Matters within the
state’s mandate, such as education, would be entirely secular and both
teachers and pupils would abide by this rule while on school premises.
Thus it follows that children are not allowed to wear any sign of
their religious affiliation (i.e. neither cross, nor veil, nor
kippa, etc) in state schools where education is compulsory,
entirely free and secular. Ironically, the 2004 law is now erroneously
labelled the world over as ‘the law against the veil’!
Speaking to the Liberal Islam Network in 2004,
Soheib Bencheikh declared: “I have to emphasise that it is thanks to
secularism that Islam [in France] can stand on an equal footing with
Catholicism, in rights and duties.” And later, reiterating his support
for the 2004 law, Bencheikh said in Canada in 2005: “Salvation for the
young French Muslims in France, who are often confronted with poverty
and exclusion, will come from a neutral non-confessional educational
system.”
France’s definition of secularism is very different
from what the Anglo-Saxons call secularism. Hence French secularism is
poorly known and often hastily misjudged by ignorants. While in
Britain and in many other European and North American countries the
state is only supposed to treat all religions equally, in France, the
state is not supposed to interfere with religions at all. In Britain,
for instance, the state does interfere with religions, constructing
them into organised political entities, a system which has indeed been
breeding communalism.
In 2005, during the winter riots in the suburbs of
Paris, French citizens of migrant Muslim descent picketed day and
night to defend various public facilities such as schools, health
centres, sports centres, public libraries, etc against the unemployed
youth who were setting them on fire – thus teaching the youth the
meaning of ‘res publica’ – commonwealth, something that belongs to all
citizens.
In 2010 they testified in large numbers before the
Guerin Commission (set up to advise the government on the issue of the
full-face veil) and made public statements demanding that the
full-face veil be curtailed in France.
Fadéla M’Rabet, who was a popular journalist with
the progressive radio channel, Algiers Channel 3, in the 1970s, had to
flee Algeria after being forced out of her job and gravely threatened.
Now a well-known academic, scientist and author of several books on
women in Algeria, M’Rabet says: “The veil is not, as they would like
us to believe, a religious sign for Muslim women. This symbol of
submission is the seal of humiliation for women and the marker of
their lifelong status as underage minors that they try to impose on
women… Only a law that will reaffirm these two indissociable
principles – secularism and equality between the sexes – will protect
the girls of the suburbs and further the status of women.”
These sentiments were endorsed by Meriem, a young
lawyer who lived near Paris, in a statement made in 2004: “When I hear
a girl say: the veil protects me, I respond: no, it is the republic
that protects you.”
However, there was heated debate among women who
agreed that the full-face veil was to be combated, on the strategy to
be followed in achieving this objective. Many women favoured the use
of existing public security regulations for doing so thus avoiding a
new law that explicitly stigmatises ‘Muslims’. This option would also
have spared them the over-simplistic accusation of backing Sarkozy’s
rightist social agenda which in actual fact they do not support.
Why are French citizens of migrant Muslim descent
capable of such complex political analysis which many media
organisations and political parties seem incapable of?
North Africa, and within it Algeria, has been the
main source of unskilled migrant workers in France, through economic
migration that began in the period between the two world wars and grew
rapidly after World War II. These workers put down political roots in
workers’ trade unions and parties and became further politicised
during Algeria’s struggle for liberation from French colonial rule.
Many of them, whose families have lived in France
as French citizens for three or four generations, are just not
religiously inclined: the overwhelming majority of them have never set
foot in a mosque. But for those who are believers and support secular
laws, secularism is beneficial to religion. Soheib Bencheikh believes
that: “Separation between religion and politics will clarify the place
of Islam as a divine spiritual doctrine, not as an instrument which
can be misused to gain political power. Thanks to that, Islam can go
back to its original stand, as promoting its teachings, not forcing
them” (Interview given to the Liberal Islam Network in 2004). Speaking
to the media in support of the 2004 law, Saoudia, a 23-year-old
student from Nice, echoed Bencheikh’s views: “Religion is in the
heart, not on the head.”
Still in touch with relatives living in Algeria,
they received first-hand accounts of crimes committed against the –
all-Muslim – population by armed fundamentalists during the 1990s
which also led to the most recent wave of emigration. These new
émigrés included intellectuals, artists, writers, feminists and others
who fled Algeria to save themselves from both targeted assassinations
and massacres perpetrated by armed fundamentalist groups such as the
GIA (Armed Islamic Group), AIS (Islamic Salvation Army), FIDA (Islamic
Front for Armed Defence) and so on.
They have first-hand experience of what it means to
live under the boot of the Muslim right and they now identify early
warning signs of its political growth in France. Inducing or imposing
a culturally alien dress code on women has been one of the first
warning signs of rising fundamentalism in most Muslim countries. Asma
Guenifi, a psychologist who lives near Paris and current president of
AFEMCI (Association of Euro-Mediterranean Women Against
Fundamentalisms), has lived through the horror – her 19-year-old
brother was assassinated by armed fundamentalists on her family’s
doorstep in Algiers during the ‘dark decade’ of the 1990s. She
testifies: “I was born in Algeria. I witnessed the rise of
fundamentalism. Unemployed boys who force you to wear a headscarf,
mosques popping up like mushrooms, the social discourse, the
extremists posing as victims… they are doing the same thing in
France.”
Covering women is also just a first step that leads
to many other demands, in particular the demands for separate
religious family laws and courts. Speaking in Montreal on May 13, 2005
against religious courts as a means to arbitrate family disputes among
Muslims, Soheib Bencheikh supported the principle of one law for all:
“Positive laws, conceived of by representatives of all the people,
including Muslims, must be enforced on everyone, including Muslims.”
Despite the fact that the international community
falsely used the defence of women’s rights as a proffered
justification for the invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq, and despite the
increasing ‘instrumentalisation’ of secularism, women of migrant
Muslim descent in France continue to support secularism to this day
and to denounce the rise of fundamentalist forces that physically
target women and girls in the ‘suburbs’ (i.e. the underprivileged
areas around Paris and other big cities).
Aicha, a social worker from a Paris suburb, said in
2004: “Today the little brothers are the ones who tell their mother:
your daughter must be veiled. This is the culture of the suburbs. What
upsets me? That the extremists monopolise the attention of the state
and the media. Nobody listens to Muslims who do not create trouble,
who practise their religion in the private sphere.” Fadoua, 25, a
student living near Paris, averred: “In my suburb, the streets belong
to boys, girls stay at home. The outside space, the right to speak,
everything is limited. I do not want to be limited to that.”
On April 11 this year Sihem Habchi of Ni Putes
Ni Soumises spoke to Europe 1 radio on the enforcement of the new
law banning the full-face veil: “This law was necessary to safeguard
and protect these women [in the suburbs]… I think it is crucial not to
step back, especially while one is witnessing a protest demo in which
one can identify notorious Islamic fundamentalist activists.” Three
years earlier, in a 2008 essay entitled ‘The Law of the Republic
versus the “Law of the Brothers”’, Karima Bennoune, an Algerian
American law professor at Rutgers University, had said much the same
thing.
Moulded by their individual and familial life
experiences, these secular women and their organisations are
especially, and politically, well equipped to combat the problems that
specifically affect citizens of migrant descent, such as racism and
discrimination in jobs and housing (unemployment among youth of
migrant descent rises from an average of 10 per cent to 16 per cent,
and is as high as 50 per cent in the ‘suburbs’ of Paris), and to
simultaneously stand for secularism, firmly refusing that social and
political problems be addressed through a religious lens. For them, it
is not an either/or option: they have to fight on both fronts.
We must acknowledge their political courage and
clarity and learn from their analyses. If we do not, we will witness
the communalisation of France, and indeed of all of Europe, through
the abandonment of the notion of citizenship and the ethnicising and
religionising of laws. This process, against which French citizens of
migrant Muslim descent have been repeatedly warning the world, is,
unfortunately, already well underway.
