The issue of headscarves in France

The issue of headscarves in France

The Muslim population in France, as it is else where, is representative of a whole spectrum of practices and beliefs; however in France the Islamic headscarf became a popular symbol for the problems associated with Muslim immigration, “Islamism” in France, and the role of secularism in French society (Bowen 4,5). The issue of Muslim women wearing headscarves has become a heated issue in France especially after a law banning all religious garb in public schools went into effect in 2004.

Hijab is an Arabic term used to describe proper dress according to Islam. There is variation to what exactly hijab, which is related to modesty for both men and women, exactly means. Different Islamic schools of thought, called madh'habs (not to be confused with larger more general sects such as Sunni or Shiite) have different answer. What's considered hijab in one movement may not be hijab in another movement. Here on out I will use the term hijab specifically to refer to headscarves worn by some Islamic women.

In 1994 it was reported that of the whole Muslim population in France only 700 girls wore hijab to school (Hamel 295). John Bowen, an anthropologist and Islamic scholar argues that through the combined workings of French media, politicians, and popular writers the hijab not only became a symbol for the tensions between Muslims in France and the larger, supposedly secular, French society but it became an externalization for everything that is wrong with French society and was associated with everything from anti-Semitism to the suppression middle class suburban women (Bowen 3).

In French politics there is a trend to justify current actions by putting them in context of larger French history and this is what was done to justify promoting secularism and barring religious apparel in public schools (Bowen 5, 6). Therefore the argument, whether valid or not, is that Muslim immigrants to France should have to adapt to a long standing tradition of secularism and keeping religion out of the public forum and one need not only know how this fits into the larger French history but also one must be well versed in all the major French political and philosophical writings of the last few centuries (Bowen 6).

The tensions between Muslim immigrants wanting to maintain some of their linguistic or ethnic culture verses a French society, that while ferociously denying it, promotes and harbors “la pensée unique ” or the single [French] way of thinking are obvious. What is less obvious is how all these complex issues became epitomized and externalized into the hijab. However irrational or convoluted the reasons for the hijab becoming the focal point of many complex issues, it is not really surprising when one puts it in the larger context of Islam's relationship with the West and how women's role in both societies have a tendency to become not only issues in their own right, but also symbols of the larger struggles of the West and the Middle East.

March 15th, 2004 Jacques Chirac signed a bill from the national legislature that banned the wearing of religious garb that is immediately recognizable from being worn in French public schools (Bowen 7). While this bill bans all religious garb unilaterally there are several issues we need to unpack first before we can appreciate why some Muslims felt like this bill was specifically targeted towards them.

First off we need to understand a key difference between attitudes towards the role of the government in France verses the Anglophone world. One of the key differences between what Bowen categorized as Lockian views of personal liberty verses what Bowen categorized as Rousseauian ideas of personal liberty is that in the Lockian system the government is only responsible for providing for the safety of its citizens. People give up their right to take justice into their own hands in exchange for living in a safe society. I being very simplistic here but in the Rousseauian system the government, besides securing the safety of its citizens, is responsible for providing ways for people to become good citizens.

In France citizenship is based on being integrated into the larger dominate society and adopting their social roles, unlike the United States that bases citizenship on birth or Germany that bases citizenship on ethnicity (Killian 21). In the Rousseauian system you cannot be a good citizens without certain things, so the government is responsible for making sure that all of its citizens have access to those things. One very important social agent in this system is the schools (Bowen 17). Schools, more so than any other institution, are the agents by which people learn what it means to be good citizen, and in the case of France what it means to be a good French citizen.

The school is a system of the state used to make people into good equal citizens. The notion of equal citizenship is an important notion in the Rousseauian system. It is important that in order to facilitate this equality students should not set themselves apart in any kind of subgroups. Habits that do not promote becoming a good citizen are discouraged. Therefor some argue that religious markers are a problem because they divide up the student body into subgroups and promote non-unity. So in order for somebody to grow up to appreciate equality, fraternity, and appreciation of the over-arching dominate culture religious markers should be discouraged.

Notice that this system puts a great deal on precedence, and that the goal is to become a good French citizen. What it means to be a good French citizen is the issue where people tend to find themselves disagreeing. Imagine being an Islamic family that your daughter should wear a headscarf at all times and then imagine that the school system says your daughter cannot wear a headscarf to school because it is contradictory to what they want to teach them about what it means to be a good French citizen. You might be understandably upset.

Although it is a crude system, integrating women can be viewed in two different lights, either as “barriers of assimilation” or as “vehicles of assimilation into the dominate society” (Killian 11). The issue of hijab is an example of women being used as pawns in a larger struggle, a struggle that is less about women or hijab and more about France’s fear of Islamic extremism being harbored in French ghettos, or le citiés, that some French people were scared had become nodes in an international Islamic fundamentalist network (Killian 15).

The French media played no small part in making the public believe that Muslims in France, especially Muslims in bad neighborhoods, were in on a larger Pan-Islamic plot to take over the whole world (Bowen 157, Silverstein 4). French fears of radical Islam were shaken up by the linking of French-born Muslims to the 1995 bombings in Paris and Lyon as well as the arrest of French-Moroccan Zacarias Moussaoui (Silverstein 4).

This is an issue of integration (Bowen 247). Some Muslims think this system is unfair because it favors those who, “drink wine and wear berets” over “those who prefer tea and headscarves” (Bowen 427). The issue of integrating Muslims into the larger French society is also a complex issue we'll return to after one more point about Lockian versus Rousseauian views.

A criticism of the Rousseau point of view that people need to be conditioned and taught how to be equal is that in practice sometimes it seems that the quest for equality infringes on people's personal freedom to do what they want. A related issue of laïcité or the idea of a secular state that's devoid of religious influence or input (Bowen 3,156).

According to Bowen some staunch supports of laïcité will trace its lineage back unbroken to the French revolution, however Bowen argues that the real issue is much more complex (Bowen 23). Those that say that there is a precedent for laïcité are correct however the notion that laïcité is unyielding and absolute can't be right and to prove his point Bowen says that even if you omit France's relationship both culturally and in legislation towards the Catholic church and use only Islamic examples the precedence of laïcité begins to fade (Bowen 27). Bowen points to examples like that French state and local governments giving monetary aid to help build mosques, to provide graveyard space for Muslims, and the creation of the quasi-state Muslim Council (Bowen 27, 35).

And it's hardly fair to say laïcité is a 200 year old institution when, the interplay of church and school has been complex but mostly has leaned towards favoring the Church. It wasn't really until after the Paris Commune in 1871 that there was really an big push to use the schools as an instrument to create "French citizens" and thus make and an attempt was made to decrease the influence the Church has on schools, previous to this time besides have major influences over schools Priest could dismiss school teachers in their diocese that they didn't like (Bowen 27, 30-33).

In 1989 three young ladies were expelled for refusing to take off their headscarves (Silverstein 3, Killin 23). The Highest French court decided that students may wear religious garb as long as it wasn’t “ostentatious” or “political” in nature (Silverstein 3). The court’s decision set the precedent of letting the individual school decide what and was not ostentatious or political and most hijab school issues after this were settled through parent-teacher compromises and when that couldn’t be done be done special Stasi commission, a special commission established in 1998 to specifically handel issues of laïcité members were sent to try to mediate (Silverstein 3).

Why women wear hijab is another issue. Its kind of a no win situation for the women that want to wear hijab because many French people argue that she's only wearing it because she feels pressured into it and even if she really wants to wear it she only really wants to wear it because of how she's been raised. So even arguments by Muslim women defending their choice to wear hijab fall on deaf ears according to Bowen (45).

Besides attacking hijab in lieu in other more serious problems, another tactic the French have used to quell their fears has been to create its own brand of secular-Islam and sell it back to the French community as a whole (Silverstein 4). Many young Muslims and other Muslims that have been acculturated enough to French society enough or it are just naturally ready for such a progression to prefer that kind of Islam.

These developments have made the issue of hijab very complex. I can only imagine what it would be like to be a Muslim in France that on the one hand you have your traditional culture pulling at your loyalties, you have a larger society that’s trying to bring you over to the French way of thinking, and you also have the voices of successfully integrated Muslims to listen to. Growing up in such a world must be having some effect on young Muslims today and I’d imagine that these tensions pulling them in all different directions will be the source of many interesting novels and coming of age books in France in the next few decades.

The separation of church and state, integration, and learning to become a good citizen are all superfluous issues being used as an excuse to attack Muslims, specifically hijab wearing women, as a reactionary retaliation to the tensions surrounding immigration and fears of radical Islam (Bowen 198). Bowen argues that the hijab became a symbol of all the problems with society and that some politicians, news media, and popular writers fueled the fire of over simplifying issues.

According to Bowen one of the really serious issues underlying the hijab issue is the issue of Muslim immigrants and few-generation Muslims in France and the fear of Islamic extremist terrorist (Bowen 155, 182). The issue of immigration of Muslims into France is complex but it is fair to say that many Muslims in France come from or are decedent from families from North Africa, especially Algeria (169). However modern waves of immigration have people coming from all over the Muslim world (Bowen 170).

Paul Silverstein argues that the notion of “religious freedom” has been sacrificed in France in France’s strive for national unity. Silverstein argues that this isn’t a case of separation of Church and state but the case of a new state religion of France that supresses other religions. The notion of laïcité has become some abstract source of morals and people have been eisegesisically using it as a tool to supress the religious freedoms of others, thus making laïcité not only a quasi-state religion but also a suppressive tyrannical one.

For many first, second, and even third generation Muslims in France the whole situation of trying to find a happy medium between being true to their ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and religious roots while also being good French citizens must be very frustrating.

Works Cited

Bowen, John B. Why the French Don't Like Headscaves: Islam, the State, and Public Space. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2007.

Hamel, Chouki E. "Muslim Diaspora in Western Europe: the Islamic Headscarf (Hijab), the Media and Muslims' Integration in France." Citizenship Studies 6 (2002): 293-308. Google Scholar. 03 Apr. 2008.

Killian, Caitlin. North African Women in France: Gender, Culture, and Identity. Standford UP, 2006.

Silverstein, Paul. "Headscarfs and the French Tricolor." Middle East Report Online. 30 Jan. 2004 <http://merip.org/mero/mero013004.htm>.