To ban or not to ban: the French and the face-veil

“In our country, we cannot accept that women are prisoners behind netting, cut off from all social life, deprived of an identity.”

– President Nicholas Sarkozy, June 22, 2009

Last April, a law banning the Islamic face-veil (known as the niqab) came into force in France, which bans French Muslim women from wearing the face-veil in public spaces, which includes streets, schools, courts, and so on. Historically, France has always had a sizable Muslim population – in fact, one of the largest in the EU – estimated at 4.5 million, however; out of that figure, it is estimated that only 2,000 women wear the face-veil. The issue of the face-veil has long been contested in Western countries, as well as several Arab states, but France is the first country to enforce a ban on the aforementioned article of clothing. Supporters of the ban cite a) French protectionism of secular values and separation of church and state, which has already been seen in other laws such as the banning of all religious symbols in schools b) security concerns and lack of identification and c) the ban is aimed at liberating women who are being forced into wearing it by fundamentalist Muslims. Critics on the other hand, argue that the government a) is interfering with a citizen's right to practice his/her belief b) cannot regulate what people should or should not wear, and c) by enforcing the ban, is further stigmatizing the already-isolated minority as well as “disguising hostility towards…religion behind the pretense of liberalism.”

The main area of knowledge concerned with this real-life issue is, of course, Ethics. Ethics is defined as the collective set of principles held by a group of people and/or a culture; as with the face-veil issue, there is a clash between two distinct set of moral principles, one held by the state (i.e. the government and the majority of the people), and the other held by the religious minority. Should the majority in a society set the limits on what people can or cannot wear, or should exemptions be made for certain groups? In accordance with classical (interpretations of) democracy, supporters of the ban adopt a utilitarian approach, arguing that the majority do have the right to dictate what people should or should not wear for the greater good. In a recent Doha Debates organized by the Qatar Foundation, member of the French National Assembly Jacques Myard argued that the face veil is a “breach of the common will” of the French people, and that face-veil wearers exclude themselves from the common will “to live together” in a “common society.” That being said, how does one define “common will”? How ubiquitous does a particular moral standard have to be in order for it to be officially incorporated into the law? What happens when these moral standards impinge on the individual rights every citizen has i.e. the right to wear whatever one wants? Opponents of the ban argue that not only is the ban a flawed and heavy-handed interpretation of secularism; they also state that it goes against the “common” French adage of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” (lit. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity) that is supposed to protect a citizen’s equal rights of wearing a particular article of clothing, despite whatever the “common society” perceives it to be.

Thus, the issue at hand is the conflict of individual liberty versus the common, greater good, of egalitarianism and utilitarianism – an issue that has been reiterated throughout history. In the United States, for example, the Constitution allows for the creation of a federal government that aims to establish the law in order to protect the common good within the union, after the failure of Articles of the Confederation that proved to be too weak due to its emphasis on individual state rights. However, while there was a general consensus among the Founding Fathers about the lack of a central power, some of them were concerned about the “tyranny of the masses" in democracy, where the federal government may override the state rights and establish a dictatorial system. Thus, the Bill of Rights were proposed as the First Ten Amendments, thereby preventing the federal government from encroaching on sacrosanct individual rights, ensuring a balance between the common good and the individual liberty (though, there have been instances in history where this is not the case). Another more relevant example of this conflict is the issue of women's rights in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Arabian government absolutely bans women from driving (among many things), citing religious grounds and security concerns — having lived in Saudi Arabia before, the security “concern" is not about what the women would do when given the right to drive, but what the men would do to the women when given the right to drive. In short, the security concern is none other than a prevalent cultural norm disguised under pretense of security. Though the French would never go to this level of misinterpretation of the law (hopefully), here again is another example where the limit on women's rights is dictated by the "common will"; that an article of clothing, or the fact that women driving could somehow be (perceived as) a breach of the common, greater good. It seems to me that Khalid Hosseini, author of A Thousand Splendid Suns, was onto something when he said, “A man's accusing finger always finds the woman."

As for my own opinion about the French ban, I perceive that, underneath all the arguments being made for and against, the women don't have any real say on the matter. Sure, there are some women who are being forced to wear the face-veil, but what about the women who wear it out of their own free will? If they are really being forced to wear it, why do they have to be forced to remove it?

References:
Peter Allen, The Telegraph. French burka ban: police arrest two veiled women. 11 April 2011.
Angelique Chrisafis, The Guardian. French begins ban on niqab and burqa. 11 April 2011.
Carla Power, TIME Magazine. The Politics of Women's Head Coverings. 13 July 2009.