Ban the Burkha and Bin our Freedoms

international | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Thursday June 25, 2009 02:57 by Nick Folley - none

Is banning the burkha really about liberating women?

So Sarkozy – and others in the UK – cry ‘Ban the burkha!’

What do they have against it? I picked up a copy of the Daily Express (Wednesday 24th June 2009) which carried the loud headline “Ban the Burkha here in Britain” (all in capitals in the original, of course) with my morning coffee, hoping to shed some light on the answer.

What I found was a curious mix of anti-religion and anti-pluralism dressed up as feminism. Sarkozy had demanded that Muslim women ‘be freed from being prisoners behind a screen’ as the Daily Express quoted him. Islamic experts were quoted on the Koran to debunk the idea that the burkha is a religious necessity. We were presented instead with the idea that conservative and chauvanistic Muslim men had misused religion and dreamed up the burkha as a means of dominating women. There was a token nod to the fact that the burkha originated in a place and time when it was a practical garment, a protection against the sands of the desert, but that was no longer a practical necessity.

It was amusing to read the comments of the few – Western – women who were asked their views. They found the burka ‘really scary…intimidating…a sign of oppression’. The first interviewee admitted she rarely if ever saw burkhas in her native Germany. That might partially help to explain why she found them ‘scary’ – lack of familiarity, maybe. An alternative – if rather obvious - solution here would be to help these women understand their own views might in fact be prejudiced by the culture in which they were raised. And if ‘scariness’ and ‘intimidating’ are criteria to be used in banning items of clothing, where does that leave body-piercings, tattoos, mohicans, skinheads and so on? There are plenty of people who – rightly or wrongly - find all of these things either repulsive or downright scary. Maybe we should all be obliged to wear a simple green, non-threatening boiler suit like Chinese communists of old. Don’t laugh… it might not be as far off or impossible as you think!

As for ‘oppressive’, surely that depends on your perspective too? For women used to wearing what they want and uncovering almost as much of their bodies as they want, the burkha might seem monotonous or excessive. But another way of looking at this is to consider for a moment the oppressivness of Western fashions that cause eating-disorders and mental health issues in many Western women trying to live up to its dictates. How often have we heard a female colleague / partner / friend complain about the trend to Size Zero, the dread of ‘having to’ uncover in the warmer summer months with all the attendant anxiety of “am I too fat / hairy / cellulite-ridden?” and so on. Those of us who think Western fashion is ‘liberating’ for women might do well to read John Berger’s book “Ways of Seeing”. Women in burkhas are, at least, liberated from such immediate worries. But is it a price worth paying? We can only know that by asking the burkha-wearers and there was little about this aspect in the pages of the Daily Express. A second consideration is that wearing a mask of some sort might be liberating in itself. If you’re used to wearing one, I can think of all kinds of situations when a mask would be highly useful – such as hiding a yawn during a boring buisness meeting, covering up our sense of irony as an acquaintance brags yet again about their weekend and so on. I remember reading somewhere – I don’t have the reference to hand – of one Muslim burkha-wearer making just such a point. She also commented on how wearing a burkha released her from the usual worry of most women of having to fret over make up and not looking their best in the morning while rushing to work. That's not to say there isn't a middle road either - not having to go to either extreme, but simply to try and put ourselves in the mindset of someone who perhaps actually wants to wear a burkha.

It is instructive in this context to consider a historical precedent – and a European one at that – where having your face covered was considered quite normal. We are all familiar to some extent with the Venice carnival and the strange masks worn during that period of the year. But there was a time in Venice’s history when masks were worn by almost everyone for a greater part of the time. The typical mask was called a Volto or Larva – a kind of white mask covering half the face leaving the mouth free for speaking and eating. This was topped up by a kind of cloak or hood, the whole being known as the Bautta. Venetians found this disguise tremendously liberating, blurring as it did, the class distinctions of the time and allowing everyone a degree of anonymity we can only dream of in this CCTV-riddled era. If I may quote a line from Marion Kaminski’s excellent book 'Art & Architecture – Venice': “The Venetian fashion of wearing masks brought with it many advantages and freedoms which must have seemed close to paradise for many foreigners”

Thirdly, taking another quote from the Daily Express on the ‘opression theme’ – “There is no more promient sign of female oppression by men than the burkha” according to one businesswoman interviewed. I beg to differ. Again, there is another way of looking at this. Could it be instead that the Western commercialisation and objectification of the female form is the surest sign of the true oppression of the woman in Western society? Women’s bodies are exposed and used to sell just about everything manufacturers and advertisers can dream up. They are more directly exploited in forms such as pornography and lap-dancing. Surely it makes sense that in a society dominated by men and their ‘wants’ that the tendency is to de-clothe women and towards nakedness? Is it really a ‘freedom’ to be able to reduce your body to an object for sale? And further, to be convinced that this is actually what you wish to do yourself? In the Screwtape Letters, C.S Lewis argued that the most potent form of social control is to persuade people that what you want them to do is actually what they want to do for themselves. I have always thought the argument that religions were invented by male chauvinists to control women rather odd. Yes, it is true that many of the precepts in some religions seem like a list of ‘Dos’ and ‘Don’ts’ for women. But I have long thought that if men were to sit down and invent a religion to subordinate women they would probably include a rule that claimed God (or the Gods) demanded that all women parade around in bikins, whatever the weather! In fact a few of the fake Christian cults with a male-guru type figure and that sprang up in the 1960s and 1970s treated women in this way.

Conspicuously absent were the views of the Muslim women who wear the burkhas. The paper did cleverly attempt to suggest it had tried to portray their viewpoint, but without success and entirely through no fault of its own: “groups of Muslim women dressed in the restrictive robes refused to comment…most refused to be seen engaging with a non-Muslim man in public” (the journalist was a man). One might argue that the newspaper – if genuinely interested in seeking their views – could have displayed more cultural sensitivity and sent a woman, at least, to interview the burkha-wearers. Instead, by choosing to send a man – and surely conscious of the unease this would create among the very women whose opinion they wished to obtain – they can cleverly guarantee the exclusion of those voices while simultaneously framing the situation in a way that favours the Western cultural perspective: that these women are supposedly afraid of their own chauvanistic menfolk and unwilling to speak to strange men on the street.

A more subtle factor is the use of qualifying adjectives such as ‘the restrictve robes’. This is of course a very subjective opinion. What is ‘restrictive’ about these robes? It is possible to argue they restrict movement – it can’t be easy to run in them, for example. Apart from saying it limits the kinds of jobs a woman can do the paper doesn’t elaborate so we can let our imaginations run away with us and end up regarding these ‘robes’ as a synonm for a set of convict’s chains. But let us take a much-prized item of western clothing: the business suit. One could easily argue this is ‘restrictive clothing’. What could be more restrictive than a dull, conservative three-piece that echoes Henry Ford’s dictum ‘you can have any colour you like as long as it’s black”? A set of clothes designed to supresses our individuality, to reduce us to drones in the corporate anthill? There is even symbolism to be found in a shirt and tie – a dog’s collar and lead, perhaps? Has anyone ever tried climbing a tree in a business suit, or doing tricks on a skateboard?

But frivolity aside, it wasn’t too difficult to discern the real concerns behind the burkha: cultural assimilation. As one woman was quoted “whenever I see these women hiding themselves away my blood reaches boiling point and I just want to scream at them”… “Leeds has a fast-growing Muslim population… an increase in the number of women choosing to wear the burkha, much to the anger of many of the city’s inhabitants’ (!)

In what seems to amount to an admission that the Great Experiment of Pluralism has failed, the emphasis is now again on conformity. I would not be the first person to suggest this of course. In ‘The Totalitarian Temptation’ Jean Francois Revel argued that true pluralism is only ever a temporary state or condition. There always arises at some point in any society a group or paradigm that is able to force itself on all others as the only acceptable paradigm. I see an increasing trend towards this in Western society today, for all its lip-service to liberal pluralism. What is at issue here is not the burkha, or even women’s ‘freedom’ (it’s an odd form of ‘freedom’ that prohibits women from wearing a garment even if they wish to) but the fact that in certain Western countries there are large ethnic groups who do not seem to have ‘converted’ to the societal model that has been traditional in those countries. They dress differently, they perhaps speak differently, eat different foods, may have different religions and so on. Above all, they are present in numbers too large to be a novelty or ignore, and so they move to presenting a ‘threat’. I use the word in inverted commas as the ‘threat’ may be real or imagined. I believe it operates on two levels: the native inhabitants of the country (be it France or the UK) have created an identity for themselves that they are comfortable and familiar with. Thus we have the stereotypes that for example, British people like cricket, bangers and mash, the Queen (generally!), have a certain sense of humour and whose social life mainly revolves around the pub and so on. Obviously this is a stereotype and a very superficial one at that, but it is simply to illustrate the point that a people can hold an idea of what it means to belong to their ‘country’ or geographic boundaries. A certain degree of tolerance for difference of skin colour or custom is allowed as long as these ‘aliens’ agree to buy into the main apects of the local culture and values. Now what we see happening is a challenge to that: here are a very large group of people who DON’T fit neatly into that model and instead seem to keep apart from it. This has two effects: one one level it can create unease in some people as they begin to wonder (perhaps subconsciously) if a two parallel societies will develop in the same geographic area. Thus their ‘country’ will effectively shrink. A second effect is the worry that their familiar concepts of what it means to be ‘British’ or ‘French’ may be superseded, that they may find themselves effectively strangers in their own land. At best, they may be forced to re-evaluate what being British means, and re-evaluating and updating our cherished assumptions is generally a discomforting thing. At worst, they may find themselves a minority in the future, living under cultural paradigms and even laws alien to them – especially as it has become fashionable to have smaller families in the West and birthrates have fallen. Thus, faced with these unknowns, there is a defensive tendency to want to force adaptation on the ‘alien’ aspects of the ‘other’ culture in their midst. After centuries of imposing their own cultural norms on civilisations around the world (both France and Britain were once large colonial powers) now everyone will be forced to become a kind of ‘standard Briton’ if they want to live in the UK, or a ‘standard French person’ if they want to live in France. Holland has already gone down this route, obliging immigrants to pass exams of sorts on Dutch culture and langauge. Again, it would not be the first time in history – many European cities in the middle ages imposed all kinds of restrictions on non-natives to limit their numbers and influence, while medieval Spain under Isabella and Ferdinand went as far as expelling all Jews and Muslims for much the same reasons.

But apart from the ‘siege mentality’ of countries now experiencing a distinct, large and different group in their midst, there is another possible factor discernable here: anti-religionism. Part of the problem seems to stem from the fact that the burkha – along with the niquab (headscarf worn by Muslim women) – announce one’s allegiance to a religion, a set of beliefs. It is interesting that the same paper carries a story on p. 19 of Nurse Helen Slater who felt compelled to quit her job on account of being forbidden by her employers from wearing a small crucifix on a neckchain. Among the rather spurious reasons given by the NHS bosses were that the crucifix represented a possible hygiene hazard (in which case so would wedding rings, or even more so shoes and clothes in general with their far greater surface area) or as a weapon which could be used by a patient. This last reason beggars belief. What is a pateient going to do with a three-quarter inch blunt crucifix that they could not far more easily achieve with readily available hypodermic syringes?

In short, the move to ‘ban the burkha’ can be seen as a wider drive to ban all reference to religion from the public sphere. The reason for this is often given as an attempt to promote tolerance and respect for ‘other religions’ Once again, it’s a strange kind of ‘respect’ that tries to add a dimension of suppression to religious expression. The reason can far more easily be found in the modern secular states desire to have the undivided allegiance of its citizens. Religion presents a challenge – most of the world’s principal religions hold allegiance to a higher, non-wordly Power (call it God if you will) whose demands and expectations may – and often do – clash with the ‘wants’ of the secular state. A simple way to understand this is to consider Penal times in Ireland when Catholics were suspect as their loyalties were believed – rightly or wrongly – to lie with an overseas Pope rather than with the British Crown. A large number of highly restrictive laws came into force to disable Catholics from public life, and these laws were only eased when the loyalty in main –whether through desire or force – could be assured. (For more on this see Joseph McVeigh “A Wounded Church”) Modern parallels can be found in atheistic and communist China where all religions are frowned upon unless explicitly vetted and approved by the Communist Party and authorities for their assured loyalty. Thus there is an officially-approved form of Catholicism permitted in China, but Falun Gong is widely described as being akin to terrorism because it does not owe its ultimate obedience to the State. Soviet Russia and Pol Pot’s Cambodia both suppressed religion and tried to indoctrinate those not already born into a Church because of the desire that the secular State alone should be the ultimate authority, and have the ultimate claim on the loyalty of its citizens. The ideal for the secular state would be to ban religion completely, and this did indeed happen in Pol Pot’s Cambodia and to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union. But where that’s not (yet) possible, a satisfactory step is to curtail the public expression of religion and to reduce its influence on public life as far as possible. Thus religion – in an argument I’m sure familiar to many reading this article – becomes something ‘for behind closed doors in the privacy of your own home’ – and where it can’t get in the way of the ‘wants’ of the secular state. The Daily Express even gives an example - “Turkey, a secular Muslim country, has banned headscarves in schools, universities and public offices” I wonder if ‘secular Muslim’ is not something of an oxymoron?

I haven’t mentioned the so-called ‘security aspect’ of the burkha, and maybe I should. The Daily Express presented the view that wearing a burkha presents a security problem as it could hide terrorist intentions. I believe these ‘security reasons’ are – as often - suspect if not downright spurious. If I am correct, there is no prohibition on another woman seeing a veiled face – the veil is there to block the unwanted gaze of men – so a female security officer could easily check identities if required. Nor will a veil block the x-rays of scanning machines or we’d all have to go naked at the airport. Dark sunglasses also hide the eyes – and thus, to an extent, the immediate intentions of the wearer, one reason they are favoured by ‘security services’. Perhaps they too should be banned.

Finally, I should point out that I am neither for nor against the burkha. I believe it should be a matter of choice. If a woman wants to wear a burkha, that’s up to her. If she feels it’s a religious obligation, surely she should not be forced to act against her conscience? If it’s not and is being abused by men to subjugate women– as is argued by the Daily Express – then this is a matter for the religious instructors to sort out. But I AM against thinly-veiled attempts to socially engineer us into being obedient citizens, with the secular State as our sole God, especially when it’s dressed up and sold to us as ‘freedom’.