Mon 28 Jul 2008
Niqab and the Social Contract
Posted by dvarisco under Ethics , Gender and Sexuality , Islam in Europe , Immigration Issues
Remember your Rousseau: “man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains.” Updating the male-oriented language of his day, women must also be born free. Feminists would argue that everywhere she is also bound in chauvanistic chains, but what would Rousseau say about women who in some places are hidden away head to toe in full-length veils? To veil or not to veil: that has become more than a philosophical question these days. A recent legal opinion in France denied Faiza Silmi, a Moroccan woman, French citizenship because of her insistence on wearing the niqab, which obscured all but a narrow slit-view of her eyes in public. In a similar context, a Muslim woman in Florida was not allowed to have her driver’s license picture taken without showing her face. While relatively few Muslim women in Western societies choose to be chador laden or walk around in full-length woven tents, the few that do invariably stir strong feelings. If the intention is to be invisible, the opposite response is inevitable. In both these cases the issue was not one of physically removing their choice of dress in public, but one of a lack of the conformity necessary for negotiating individuality in the public sphere. If you want to become a French citizen, an option rather than a natural right, then you must accept the range of behavior agreed upon as acceptable in secular French culture. Dressing like Muhammad’s wives supposedly did in the 7th century may convince the authorities in Saudi Arabia, but modern France freed itself from the bloody history of religious bigotry that such symbols often cover. If you want the privilege of driving a car, then you need to pass a driving test and not obstruct your vision or prevent authorities from identifying you by failing to show your face.
Is this discrimination against Muslims who choose to practice a very conservative style of faith? Should a woman be allowed to wear the niqab, covering completely in public, is she so chooses? The answer, I believe, is a resounding ‘no’ both in France and the United States, and indeed any secular state. First of all, by far the vast majority of Muslims in secular societies do conform in public. Responding to the case in Morocco, Ms. Fadela Amara, France’s Minister of Urban Affairs, said: “It is not a religious insignia but the insignia of a totalitarian political project that promotes inequality between the sexes and is totally lacking in democracy.” To the extent wearing such garb in public is viewed as extreme by fellow Muslims in France, the issue is not simple discrimination against Islam. Second, a key component of secular society is not the absence of religion, but its cultural domestication for the good of the many. In the case of total covering of the body to the point of not being recognizable, such a nonconformist act is not a simple religious symbol. The act treats the public sphere, which is necessarily shared by a range of citizens, with disdain.
The logic of ethics in a pluralistic society suggests that if an individual has a right to break the conformity of acceptable dress by wearing too much than that same right must be granted to those who would choose to wear nothing at all. To argue that any man who sees a woman’s face or hands is necessarily exposing a woman to evil has no moral priority over the idea that a woman or man should be allowed not to feel shame about their body in public. Here Rousseau is right: public presence needs to be moderated by a culturally negotiated social contract for the public good and not simply for the peculiar practice of an individual. The same conformity considerations which do not allow a woman to bare her breasts in the normal public sphere cover the case of someone who would float through the public sphere in a virtual tent without any recognizability. In a secular state public space is for the public good, and total concealment is as much a threat to the social order as nudity. The issue is not what is natural, as the very choice of wearing clothing at all is cultural. I may personally believe that there is no Eden-induced shame in exposing my genitals, but the cultural trajectory of society at large has not yet arrived at a point when clothing can be considered optional in public. Nor, in secular Western societies has the anti-social notion that a woman’s body (but not a man’s) must be totally removed from view in public.
Faiza Silmi insists that wearing the niqab is her choice and not the dictate of her husband. On an abstract level this raises the issue of when a choice is a choice and how anyone can determine that free will is indeed free and not coerced in some way? As philosophical and theological questions, the debate over these kind of quotidian but ambiguous ethical principles has long been engaged. In the past heads have been lopped off and whole bodies roasted as heretical, often with the mantra of God’s will being done. The problem is that when an individual chooses, even if she only thinks she is choosing, to wear niqab in a social context where it is seen as aberrant or an affront to shared public space, it is not simply a statement of faith; such a nonconformist act can and will be read as a challenge to the established norms of a secular society. Had Faiza chosen to parade naked down Les Champs-Elysees, the problem would be the same.
In the case of Ms. Silmi, her quest for French citizenship needs to include acceptance of what Rousseau so eloquently stated almost two and a half centuries ago:
“Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.”
At once, in place of the individual personality of each contracting party, this act of association creates a moral and collective body, composed of as many members as the assembly contains votes, and receiving from this act its unity, its common identity, its life and its will. This public person, so formed by the union of all other persons formerly took the name of city,4 and now takes that of Republic or body politic; it is called by its members State when passive. Sovereign when active, and Power when compared with others like itself. Those who are associated in it take collectively the name of people, and severally are called citizens, as sharing in the sovereign power, and subjects, as being under the laws of the State.
Modesty in dress is a principle that crosses religious borders and allows Muslim women, as well as all others, access to a shared space. Muslim men who have a problem with this should lower their gaze, as the Quran recommends, rather than making women invisible. The human body must, within reason, be subject to the body politic.
Daniel Martin Varisco
July 28th, 2008 at 9:33 am
I fully agree with Mr Varisco’s analysis and conclusions. I would like to add the following personal thoughts on this subject.
Many Muslim women think that they are obeying religious prescriptions when they wear the veil. They therefore defend in good faith, and with much conviction, their right to act according to their faith.
But, does the Qur’an really prescribe the veil? That is the question. There is no consensus on the issue.
There are, of course, some verses on the subject in the Qur’an, which recommend to women to dress modestly. One should remember that, at the time of Revelation, some women went in the streets nearly bare-chested, especially at night.
The Prophet is said to have recommended to women to cover themselves in a certain way, but one should remember that in Arabia, men and women have to cover themselves as fully as possible, to protect themselves from the burning sun. So, the clothes worn in Arabia in the 7th century may not necessarily represent the norm for people in the 21st century, who moreover do not live in the sunburnt Arabian environment.
The veil was restricted, in its beginnings, to free Muslim women, and Muslim slaves were forbidden by Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab to wear it. This means that wearing the veil was not a matter of religion. For, free women and slave women have the same religious obligations, and the Caliph wouldn’t stand in their way when they merely conformed to religious prescriptions.
Islamic history is no help, either, in clarifying the matter. In the Middle Ages, Muslim women covered themselves in different ways, depending on the culture of the times, which differed drastically depending on whether one lived in Spain (Andalucia), in North Africa, in Egypt or in Baghdad. Moreover, in the culture of the times, women in all societies and countries covered themselves from head to toe.
Modern history shows that the veil was not considered as an issue, until recent times. For example, in 20th century Egypt, women didn’t wear the veil in the 1960s. Nobody had any second thoughts about it. It’s only the Muslim Brotherhood, and wahhabism, the extremely conservative Saudi interpretation of the Shari’ah (religious law), which brought the subject to the forefront in the last decades of the 20th century.
But, the veil was essentially used as a political tool to establish the presence of Islamist movements in the public field, to become a factor to be taken into account on the political scene. When the Saudis began financing the promotion of wahhabism in the Muslim world at large, and within Muslim communities in Europe and America, the issue gained momentum, because wearing the veil became a symbol of the wahhabi influence.
Similarly, in North African countries, the veil was no issue until the last two decades, when Saudi-backed movements started promoting it. In North Africa, women used to wear a veil that covered their face. This was the local tradition. But, today, few women cover their face. Many of them wear European-style clothes. But, increasingly, women cover themselves in the Middle Eastern tradition. Some of them even walk in the streets wearing niqab or khimar, which have nothing to do with local customs. The practice is gaining momentum thanks to the efforts of political parties associated with Islamist movements.
So, “to veil” today in the Muslim world isn’t really, nor merely, a matter of personal choice. It’s an act of politics, based on manipulation by powerful Islamist groups. As to whether it has anything to do with religion, one can find no guidance from the Ulamas, unfortunately. They merely repeat what they were taught themselves, at religious school, without any personal “ijtihad” (reflection) on the subject.