Headscarves off!
In France, Muslims are demonstrating massively against the law that prohibits headscarves on public schools, this Saturday. They feel stigmatized. The other French, both left and right, are squarely behind the law.
De Volkskrant
By Fokke Obbema
Thursday 15 January
"Where will this end? Now there will be a law that forbids us to wear a headscarf at school, next up we won't be allowed to wear one on the street anymore either. We are given the cold shoulder ever more. This law will be a black page in the history of France. I don't understand how something like this is possible in a country that has always been proud of the freedom of its citizens."
Fury and desperation resound in the voice of Nora Jaballah, a 44-year old mother of five children, who is also president of the LFFM (Ligue Francaise de la Femme Musulmane), an umbrella organisation of twelve associations of Muslim women. She sketches the struggle that she has been waging in her own circles since 1995, against what she calls "the two extremes": aversion to God - and fundamentalism.
She doesn't feel at ease with either. Muslims who lose their religion collide with her religious convictions, but she doesn't want anything to do with the radical Islam either: "The fundamentalists think that only God counts and turn away from the society in which they live. But I want to both serve God and be a French citizen."
Walking the middle way, in her view, is being made more difficult by the law that President Chirac announced last month: on public schools, from the next schoolyear on, students will not be allowed to wear headscarves, [Jewish] skull caps and big crosses anymore. That may look like an equal treatment of religions, according to Jaballah, but isn't. "In practice the law is targeted at us. Because the Jews and the Christians have their private schools, where they can keep wearing their skull caps and crosses. But we don't have schools of our own. There is no equality here."
The "stigmatising" law can lead to a radicalisation of her constituency, she fears. "I know girls who used to wear a simple headcsarf, were suspended from their schools for that, and now walk around from head to toe in black clothes. They feel marginalised and then just identify with their religion. Repression always leads to more extremism."
The public opinion in the West, outside France, shares her concern. Leading newspapers in the US and EU almost unanimously say that Chirac is about to go too far in limiting religious freedom. To have the state force Muslims to take off their headscarves is "the wrong decision", writes the New York Times. Who fights fundamentalism this way, can expect "the pious to become more fanatic because they have the feeling they are being repressed".
A danger that is expressed by Iman Cheikh, a 38-year old mother of three schoolgoing children, who is waiting outside at the Lycee Jacques Brel in La Courneuve, one of the most depressing suburbs of Paris. The grey towerblocks, that were hastily put here in the sixties, seem ripe for demolition.
Minority people are an ample majority on this school, where the headscarves for now are still being tolerated. But that tolerance is in an ever worse shape, argues Cheikh, a Syrian Muslima with a headscarf. She lists recent incidents: a school that suddenly refuses entry to a friend because her headscarf would be offensive to the students; a civil servant who refuses to marry a veiled Muslima; a bank where Muslima's have to take off their headscarf when they come in.
"I respect France and Jacques Chirac, but the Muslims will fight this law. There will be Islamic schools and the Islam will only become stronger", she predicts. In her eyes, by the way, the law wasn't Chirac's own idea. "He is no more than a puppet; there are other people who have more power still and who don't like us." When she sees my incomprehending look, she continues in a conspirational tone: "It's the Jews, they are behind this law."
A little later, lunching in a little workers' restaurant in La Courneuve, a truck driver, a good-natured-looking man in his thirties, expresses his approval of this "fine law". "Of course the muslims feel stigmatized. That's how those people always feel. But the headscarf doesn't belong on our schools. End of story."
That opinion is sometimes expressed a little more subtly too, but the consensus about it is extremely widespread among the French. The discussion this past year, thus, was not anymore about whether the headscarf does or doesn't belong on public shools - but about whether or not it should be prohibited by law.
Now that the latter is about to happen, the French are unifying behind the proposal. The initiative may come from a rightwing government, but left-wingers would rather make the law even more stringent than weaken it. According to the Socialists, not just every "ostentative" religious sign should be forbidden, as Chirac is proposing - every "visible" sign should be, a small cross too.
After all, each expression of "conversion fever" is out of place on a neutral, public school. The leftwing intellectual Régis Debray upped the ante this week by also wanting to ban all commercial expressions. No more Nike or Coca-Cola on T-shirts, because that only evokes propaganda for brands like Adidas or Pepsi, he contends.
With his knitted sweater and little beard the 43-year old Paul Morin looks like the prototype of the leftwing teacher. The headmaster of the Lycée Jacques Brel is known among his students for his liberal attitude about the headscarf: fifteen of the 650 girls wear one and thus far not one girl has been sent from school. But in September he won't be able to keep that score, he expects: two of the fifteen are not prepared to enter the building without headscarf. And the law is implacable in that regard.
"I will experience that as a fiasco", he says in a soft voice. Nevertheless he stands firmly behind the law, because "personally, the wearing of headscarves shocks me deeply." In his eyes it is a symbol for the discrimination of women. Moreover, girls far from always wear it voluntarily. In how many cases they are forced to, he doesn't know: "A girl would never dare admit that, out of fear for her father."
Those girls will be offered protection by the new law, Morin expects. That some girls will be lost to education, is a price that will just need to be paid for that. He looks ahead to the demonstration that is held next Saturday with concern. The fundamentalists might just be helped by the extreme-right to get as many Muslima's as possible on the street. "For Le Pen it would be wonderful, of course, if there'll be twentythousand veiled woman walking through Paris. "They are everywhere!", he can then yell."
Fouad Alaoui doesn't see the point of that reasoning, at all: "Politicians sometimes make reproach me that we play into the hands of the extreme right. But we can't renounce our right to demonstrate because of that, can we? The popularity of the extreme right is your problem, is what I tell these politicians."
Alaoui is one of the most well-known Muslims of France - he is the Secretary-general of the UIOF, which is known as the most radical of the larger Muslim organisations. Their mosque is at a stone's throw distance from the Lycée Jacques Brel. It looks like a converted factory hall; the adjoining, tiny rooms in which Alaoui receives his guests are the headquarters of the UIOF. When one thinks about the riches of the other religions, one understands here why the Islam, the second religion of the country, feels disadvantaged.
Alaoui often sees that feeling confirmed in practice. Of course, he is taken in with the disapproval "the whole world" has expressed about the "anti-headscarf law". But, he says with an ironic laugh: "I thank the Brits and the Americans for their support to us, even though it is of course mostly part of the settling of scores with France."
In France, the Muslims are isolated in their resistance. The French media continuously want to know from Alaoui whether his people will adhere to the new law: "That question alone already indicates that they still see us as inferior citizens. I never hear them ask a question like that about any other subject, but it does come up when it's about us."
Unjustified, too, in his opinion, is how his organisation is branded as "fundamentalist". He knows why that is so: too often the UIOF does not agree with the political establishment. "Franch politicians have a colonial view of us. They want to push a button and get the desired answer. But if we would give it, we would lose our legitimacy with our constituency."
The frustration among Muslims about not being taken seriously as French citizens, even now that their country has the largest Muslim community of the EU and is home to third- and fourth-generation French Muslims, only seems to be exacerbated by the new law. That is exactly the opposite of what the commission-Stasi, which recommended the new law to president Chirac, intended.
One of the "wise people" in that commission is headmaster Ghislaine Hudson. She defends the law, which, to her mind, Muslims wrongly call "repressive": "Especially now, in these months, there is time for a dialogue with the students, they must be convinced. I expect that the overwhelming majority will go to school without headscarf in September."
What Hudson does take to heart, is that Muslims experience the law as stigmatising their community. "That bothers me much more than the question of the headscarf itself. Because it is never good, when a group feels excluded. I think we need to take many steps still in the field of combating racism."
She does admit that she has chosen for the weapon of the law with "mixed feelings". "I do stand behind it, but only in twenty years time will it be clear whether it was really the right decision."
