Le Vivre Ensemble

While reading Nick Miller’s article Veiled Intent this morning it occurred to me how very complex the issue of racism is. When I first hear that people wish to “Ban the Burqa” or “Not the Niqab”, it immediately strikes me as pure Islamaphobia and I ignore any following  diatribe. But when the argument is linked to security, I can see the problem with people wandering around with their faces hidden.

I mean if they go into a bank they might conceivably be robbers in disguise about to steal pensioner’s savings. In a government department or say, visiting the nation’s parliament house, they may be approaching the building with 10 billatons of explosive strapped beneath their billowing black robes. Of course a fat person too could have a shitload of explosives strapped beneath their copious plaid shirt intent on covering the National Monument with their intestines and those of anyone in the vicinity. Who can know the mind of a madman?

The woman, known as SAS who began the controversy by taking the French government to task when they passed legislation banning the burqa in 2011 was fighting for her rights. SAS sees her wearing of the niqab as a sign of her independence, emancipation and participation in society in keeping with the strictures of her faith. She, like many other Muslim women is choosing to wear the niqab as a sign of her faith to her God who requires modesty at all times. Christians too have this stricture but as we can see on any Western street today, with young women wandering about in their underwear under the guise of high street fashion, no one much in the West takes heed of ancient biblical rules in the twenty first century.

A non-believer will not understand the elemental nature of faith as an essential part of your identity. It is easy to mock and accuse believers of having been brain washed and the like but irrespective of the method of their arriving at their beliefs; they currently choose it and wish to live it out.

Westerners think little of a priest wearing a cassock or some form of robe and many remember the nuns and their wimples or Buddhist monks wearing orange robes. These are outward signs of a faith that is ‘universally’ respected if not shared or even understood.

SAS represents those women who choose to outwardly express their faith but also adhere to strictures of modesty and who reject public displays of vanity. They are creatures of another world, focussed on the next world and a wish to please their God.

It becomes an issue if the niqab or burqa is forced upon women. Then the mode of dress becomes something of repression and abuse and many in the West fight quite rightly against this quietly violent form of misogyny.

The Human Rights Centre of the Ghent University suggested that banning the niqab would cause a rift between Islam and the vastly inconsistent and diverse ‘other’ of the world. In prejudicing a religious group’s right to dress as they please we are isolating that group and directly causing hatred because they feel unduly targeted. And they are. Hatred causes terrorism in its many forms, all stemming from that feeling of isolation, bigotry and unfairness. It’s that simple; children will tell you immediately that ‘it’s not fair’ and that causes more tantrums and fights that much else. It is the same in the adult world. ‘Unfairness’ caused the French Revolution, Joan of Arc, the Massacre of the Mau Mau, many a coup d etat where the government was populated on nepotism… It’s not fair.

Many countries have followed suit and are pressing to legislate for the banning of the burqa or any public facial coverings that prevent identification. In this world of burgeoning governmental oversight, the public sphere is becoming bloated while the private sphere is being slowly but inexorably dismantled and fed to the bureaucratic machine of  Ensuring Your Everlasting  Security or (EYES for short).

Martin Henriksen, from Denmark's anti-immigration People's Party, thinks that Denmark should not accept parallel societies. “We see [the burqa] as a rejection of Danish society." Bit extreme thinking; I don’t believe that accusation is aimed at nuns or yarmulke- wearing Jews or Hippies or Indies. Swiss Giorgio Ghiringhelli thinks that Switzerland must also ban the burqa to send a clear signal that they “do not accept this militant Islamism”. Yes, because that’s what wearing a niqab means. I do wonder if some people ever listen to themselves; question answered.

But what was interesting to me was that the French lawyers defending the ban against SAS said,

“An open and democratic society required a visible face – "the face plays a significant role in human interaction … the effect of concealing one's face in public places is to break the social tie and to manifest a refusal of the principle of 'living together' (le vivre ensemble').

SAS agreed that she understood security measures and that she would gladly comply when necessary to identify herself visually, but wished to walk about her town suitably covered. Surely this is enough? But I do see the point of the open and democratic society being based on a requirement that we see each other.

I know when I walk about my own town and see a burqa’d woman, I feel different. I feel she is different, unknown. I feel she is setting herself apart, making herself other. But that is because she is in the minority. When I was in Egypt many years ago, I was the other; set apart by my western clothing. I was not trying to set myself apart but be who I was which entailed my chosen apparel. Muslim women too are just wearing what they wear not trying to set themselves apart. I think we get caught up in conjecturing the motivation of others when we really have no idea. And sometimes it’s just our own projected racism.

In seeing her as ‘the minority’, in seeing her as other or different, I am making my home town mine with my rules. You can’t be alien or different because, frankly, it makes me uncomfortable. I forget that my home town is also her home town and that somehow we must make it our hometown. If burqa’d women agree to reveal themselves to genuinely necessary identity checks, what does it matter? That is surely compliance enough.

So what should they do? Persevere.
Western society does not target nuns or Hippies or Indies or Chinese or Negroes… Wait. It certainly used to at one time or other.