France’s Burqa Ban – A Sexist and Racist Law

Lisbeth Latham

The French Senate on September 14 passed the legislation that will make the wearing of either a Burqa or Niqab in public illegal. The ban was motivated by President Nicolas Sarkozy as an important step in the equality of women. The ban has accused of being racist, but equally importantly it is fundamentally sexist.

The legislation, which will go to the Constitutional Council for a final determination, will come into effect in six months time. Once in effect, any women wearing a Burqa, Niqab or other full faced veil in a public place will face a fine of €150 and the possibility of having to attend an education course in Republican values. Any individual found to have forced a woman to wear a veil will face a €30, 000 fine and up to a year in prison.

The legislation was passed overwhelmingly with a vote of 246 to 1 against. The only senator to vote against was Anne-Marie Payet from the Centrist Union. The senators of the Socialist Party (PS), Communist Party (PCF), predominantly abstained on the vote with 46 of the PS’s 116 senators voting in favour. The Left Party’s two senators voted in favour of the ban, with Agnes Marie La Barre, explaining in an article on the PG’s website on September 16 that “nobody is fooled by the xenophobic context in which the law is passed. However our senators felt that the struggle for women’s rights requires the passing of the law”. The decision by the majority of PS and the PCF to abstain reflects that both parties support restrictions on the Burqa, with PS supporting a ban that would be limited to public services and shopping centres. The PCF have raised concerns that a specific law would further stigmatise Muslims and that the law is an attempt by Sarkozy to win the support of the far-right.

The Sarkozy government, and supporters of the ban have argued that the legislation is necessary to free women form what Sarkozy labelled as “a sign of subjugation, of the submission of women” and to defend republican values. At the same time Sarkozy has argued that the ban is not attack on Islam, he told a cabinet meeting in May “I’m thinking in particular of our Muslim compatriots, who have their place in the republic and should feel respected".

The ban is obviously is clearly about Islam. While only immediately affecting a small group of France’s Islamic community – less than 1900 women, out of an estimated 5 million Muslims living in France, the law is aimed at targeting the insecurity felt by many in France over the economic situation and directing this fear at a scapegoat other than the government. Just as Sarkozy has also done with proposals to strip migrants of their citizenship if they are convicted of deliberately endangering the life of a public official or police officer.

The ban is clearly sexist on a number of levels. First it robs women of agency, by saying that the state can determine what women cannot wear; women are stripped of the right to say what they want to wear. While it is undoubtedly true that women are forced to wear Burqas and Niqabs as a result of threats of violence or exclusion by their fathers, husbands, brothers or other members of their communities, it ignores that some women would freely choose to wear it (a fact that is actually anticipated by the law in that it is women who are the primary target of as they are the ones who will be fined in the first instance). Thirdly, the law which is supposedly aimed at the liberation and integration of women is likely to result in greater levels of exclusion of a section of the women who wear it. Finally the law is both sexist and racist as it locates sexist behaviour within a small marginal section French society, hiding the broader experience of sexism by women in France, and also the extent to which women in France’s Islamic community experience oppression as a consequence of the sexist and racist character of broader French society – which results in higher levels of poverty and unemployment throughout the community.

With the passage of the legislation through the Senate, other countries are set to pass similar legislation. Beligium’s lower passed a similar bill in April, while in July, the Lower Chamber of Spain rejected a resolution banning Burqa (the Senate subsequently passed a motion calling for a ban of the Burqa). With similar debates likely to develop in other countries, it is important that opponents of sexism in supporting the right of women to not wear the Burqa recognise the broader sexist character of the society in which we live and that the struggle against racist scapegoating of migrant communities, particularly Islamic community is essential to that struggle.

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France, Belgium to ban burqa

By Lisbeth Latham & Fox Smoulder

Ilham Moussaid, New Anti-Capitalist Party activist and Muslim, attacked for wearing hte hijab. Laws punishing women for wearing the burqa and the niqab in public were passed by the Belgian lower house of parliament on April 29. A similar law has been discussed by French President Nicholas Sarkozy, and the French National Assembly passed a non-binding resolution in favour of a ban on May 11.

These laws have been pushed by right-wing governments on the basis of security needs and protecting national identity, but the laws have also been justified as promoting equality for women. On this basis, the laws have received support from sections of the left and the feminist movement.

The Belgium legislation states no one can appear in public “with the face fully or partly covered so as to render them no longer recognisable”. The new law, which replaces existing bans under regional bylaws, would impose a fine of up to €25 Euros or one to seven days’ jail.

It was passed almost unanimously and just two members of the house abstained.

Its passage in the upper house has been held up by the collapse of the government, but is expected to pass once a new government is formed after June 13 elections.

Sarkozy told the French parliament in June 2009: “It will not be welcome on French soil. We cannot accept, in our country, women imprisoned behind a mesh, cut off from society, deprived of all identity. That is not the French republic's idea of women's dignity.”

The May 11 French National Assembly resolution was supported 434 to nil (there are 577 seats) — 30 Communist deputies walked out of the chamber prior to the vote in protest.

t is unclear what the legislation expected to go to the National Assembly in July will include. However, the April 30 Connexion reported that there would be a €150 fine for wearing a burqa and a fine of €15,000 and a year in jail for anyone who “imposes the burqa on someone through violence or threats”.

The move to ban the burqa is part of a wave of measures by European countries to “defend their national identity” against Islam.

These include the ban on minarets on mosques imposed in Switzerland in February, the ban on wearing the hijab in French public schools in 2004 and similar bans in several German states.

In 2004, the French parliament passed the Law on Secularity and Conspicuous Religious Symbols in Schools, which banned the wearing of ostentatious religious symbols in French public schools. This included yarmulkes worn by Jewish boys, turbans worn by Sikh boys and hijabs.

However, the ban primarily targets young women wearing hijabs. The legislation was passed by a large majority (494 for, 36 against, 31 abstentions). Support also came from sections of the French far-left.

The ban was justified on the grounds of both liberating women and defending the secular character of French society.

The impact of the law means women who refuse to stop wearing the hijab could be excluded from the French public education system. In the first semester of its operation, 48 students were expelled from public schools for not complying with the ban. All were expelled for wearing the hijab, except for three Sikh boys, and a Muslim woman who refused to stop wearing a bandana she wore for aesthetic reasons, but which was deemed a religious symbol.

The decision of the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) in Vaucluse to stand Ilham Moussaid, a 21-year-old feminist activist who wears a hijab, as a candidate in the 2010 regional elections caused a major controversy across the whole spectrum of French politics.

The NPA was accused by the right seeking to cause a controversy to obtain publicity during the election campaign. Criticisms also came from other left parties and from within the NPA itself.

Left Party leader Jean-Luc Melenchon said: “You can’t call yourself a feminist while showing off a sign of submission to the patriarchy.”

Moussaid told the March Socialist Review: “These feminists say that it’s a symbol of oppression, of submission. For my part, I’m not submissive: it’s a personal choice. I'm a feminist. I fight for women's rights with my women comrades.

“I fight for equality between men and women. I fight for the right to abortion, the right to contraception. It’s true they see it as a symbol of oppression, but unfortunately they forget that there are women who wear it out of choice.

“A certain number of women are obliged to wear it, of course, I don’t deny that, and I’ll fight for these women.”

In locating the decision to wear a burqa entirely in the domain of men, proponents of the ban strip women of all agency and pose the solution in terms of who should have the right to control what women wear, their “patriarchal husbands, fathers or brothers” or an enlightened state.

Moreover the focus on banning the burqa also tends to promote racism and undermine the struggle for women’s oppression.

The focus on the burqa as a source of oppression results in the broader oppression faced by migrant women in France — oppression with its roots in the poverty pf the communities in which they live — being ignored. Furthermore, attributing sexism to Islam allows the sexism of French society to be ignored.

This article was published in Green Left Weekly #837

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