The Burqa Wars

By Jabeen Bhatti and Aida Alami

Burqa, niqab – loaded words in Europe these days – inspiring fear, revulsion and now even law. Belgium took the first steps toward banning these face-covering veils worn by Muslim women this spring. France followed soon after. Spurred on, lawmakers across the continent are considering similar measures as police and municipal officials take matters into their own hands: fining veiled women for driving (France), walking on the street (Italy) or barring them from public buildings (Spain).

What is it about a piece of fabric that has caused such an uproar?

"(The veils) are a symbol," said anthropologist Ruth Mandel of University College London and author of the book, Cosmopolitan Anxieties. "These (fights) are touchstones for more substantial debates on whether and how those still seen as outsiders fit into mainstream European society. But that sense of us vs. them is growing, particularly as Muslims become increasingly visible in (European) society.”

Scholars say the crucial integration debate – that second- and third-generation Muslims in Europe are actually Europeans now – is still bubbling under the surface and has yet to emerge. But what isn’t new is the fight over the Islamic headdress: Many European countries including France, Belgium and Germany have had restrictions on headscarves and face-covering veils for years for public sector employees and in state schools. What is different this time around is the criminalization of such mode of dress.

It started in Belgium after a bill making it a crime to wear a face veil in public passed unanimously in the lower house of parliament in April. The measure, which includes fines of €15 to €25 ($19 to $31) or one week imprisonment, is likely to become law by this fall, said lawmaker Denis Ducarme, co-author of the legislation. There is already a law that forbids the wearing of masks in public and bans on the veils in public sector jobs and in schools. But lawmakers said they wanted to enhance the security of the country, promote gender equality and send a signal to extremist elements among the country’s estimated 600,000 Muslims.

“Above all, this law was based around the question of security,” said Ducarme. “We think that it is important that all people must be able to be identified when in public. But we are also concerned over women forced to wear (the burqa/niqab). It isn’t the question of the numbers but also of (growth): If the state doesn’t say stop, the few wearing them today might be 2,000 in 10 years.”

Ducarme added that lawmakers are not concerned about Islam but over the minority in Muslim communities who hold extremist views: “This ideology doesn’t respect the secularism of European societies – it is really dangerous for our values in Europe.”

In France, which has Europe’s largest Muslim population, the cabinet approved a ban on face-covering veils in public areas in May. The legislation, currently being debated by the National Assembly or lower house of parliament and due to be voted on in mid-July, imposes fines of €150 ($186) and for some women, citizenship classes. Those convicted of forcing women to wear the burqa or niqab face up to €15,000 ($18,575) in penalties and a year in prison.

André Gerin, the Communist Party lawmaker who led a parliamentary commission studying the issue, says the law is necessary to combat Islamic fundamentalism in France and protect women. "There are extremist gurus out there and we must stop their influence and barbaric ideologies," he said. "It is a law that will protect women -- covering one’s face undermines one's identity, a woman's femininity and gender equality."

He adds that it’s pointless to argue over freedom of expression violations, one concern expressed by critics of the law. “We can’t talk about freedom when it involves wearing a walking coffin."

The debate over face-covering veils in France, a fiercely secular nation which banned all religious symbols including large crosses and headscarves from public classrooms and buildings in 2004, first started over women’s equality issues. That changed into one focusing on national identity and values – the draft law states that the French republic’s founding values of liberty, equality and fraternity are at stake.

"A veil that hides the face is detrimental to those values," President Nicolas Sarkozy told the cabinet in May. "Citizenship should be experienced with an uncovered face."

Despite being popular – a poll in the weekly Le Point magazine in January showed public support of a ban at 57 percent – criticism is mounting from all sides. French Catholic Church officials oppose a ban saying it places Christian minorities in Muslim countries at risk of retaliation. French police unions argue it is unenforceable and will cause problems on the streets of immigrant-dominated neighborhoods where distrust of the police runs high. They note that the issue is already causing increasing tension between the majority and minority communities with an increase of attacks on mosques and Muslim cemeteries and on veiled women themselves.

Meanwhile, legal experts are concerned over the law’s constitutionality: France’s Council of State, which advises the government on legislation, has warned “it is not in accordance with" the French constitution and international human rights standards.

It is such legal concerns that have kept lawmakers in countries such as Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands, who voice support for such bans, from enacting national legislation so far, legal experts say.

Muslim groups around the continent argue the laws are unnecessary, that only a tiny minority in their communities wear the burqa or niqab or support women doing so. They say it is just another attempt to use their communities to win anti-immigration votes.

“(Politicians) are using these women for their own political ends,” said Isabelle Praile, vice president of the Muslim Executive of Belgium, the largest association of Belgium Muslims, adding that the majority of Muslims in Europe don’t support the face veils. “Those imposing this ban are guilty of the same extremism as those forcing women to veil themselves.”

Others say such measures are further alienating Muslims communities around Europe, still reeling from last fall’s successful referendum to ban the building of minarets on mosques in Switzerland.

"Muslims in Europe feel that they are not welcome," said French political sociologist Jocelyne Cesari, author of the book, Muslims in the West after 9/11: Religion, Law and Politics. "They say, ‘we are French, we are German but no one sees us this way.’ The burqa ban just reinforces feelings that are already there."

The bans, meanwhile, only affect a tiny minority of the estimated 15 million Muslims in Europe: The Muslim Executive of Belgium estimates that between 30 and 100 women wear the burqa. In France, fewer than 2,000 women cover their faces, according to the Interior Ministry: About 90 percent of those in France are under 40, two-thirds are French nationals and nearly one-quarter are Muslim converts.

There are numerous reasons that Muslim women wear headscarves and veils, scholars say: Out of piety, modesty, a sense of liberation, politics, even as a banner of one’s differentness. Many at whom these bans are directed call these measures misguided, saying that it is a personal choice to cover up.

“(The niqab) symbolizes my freedom of expressing my religion,” said Kenza Drider, 31, of Avignon in southern France, a French national of Moroccan heritage.” The niqab is my dignity, my spirituality and my submission to God.”

Drider, who wasn’t raised in a religious household, says she donned the niqab 11 years ago to delve deeper into her religion. She is outraged at the French state for the “dictatorial” law that she says violates her “right to liberty.”

“I will continue to go out the way I do, wearing the niqab,” she said. “If they give a €150 fine, I will accept it with pleasure because that is what I will take to the Constitutional Council and the European Court of Human Rights. I will continue to wear the niqab and nothing, I repeat nothing, will stop me.”

Others like Zeina (whose real identity is protected for her security), have been traumatized by the veil, an experience detailed in a book recently published in France, Under My Niqab: I Wear It Out of Fear for My Life.

Zeina grew up in a religious Muslim family in France and married a man who wasn’t particularly devout. Soon, he changed. First, he forced her to cover her hair. Then, she says, he threatened and beat her until she covered up completely. She wore the niqab for a few years until a neighbor who saw her bruised body helped her and her child to escape.

“The first time I wore the niqab, I was taking my child to school, I looked down and I never looked up again,” she said. “I became nothing. I, Zeina, didn't exist anymore.”

She opposes the plan to ban the full face veil, though, saying will have terrible consequences for those it intends to liberate. “Looking at women in a niqab might bother you but you forget there is a woman under it,” she said. “The majority of women are forced to wear it and the law will make them prisoners at home.”

What is needed, say clergy, historians and sociologists, are not bans but dialogue, debate and education, across both the majority and minority communities.

"We need a massive coordinated campaign (against burqas and niqabs) just like the one we have to stop people smoking," said Taj Hargey, chairman of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford and a British imam, who opposes the bans. "The veil is not a requirement of Islam but a cultural one and once you cut the theological legs, it starts to crumble."

Many Muslim leaders in Europe also speak about cutting the ties to more radical interpretations of Islam from Saudi Arabia and Iran which also call for the full-veiling of women. Hargey says Muslims need to “indigenize” their religion and culture, integrate them more effectively into the host culture. He argues that they need to demonstrate that being European and Muslim are not mutually exclusive, by being productive and responsible members of society, upholding its values and taking full part in its democracy.

"Islam is not here to impose minarets or ninjas (burqa-clad women) on this society but to assimilate to it," said Hargey. "We don’t do enough to show that we aren’t a threat."

European societies have a responsibility as well, to fight an ubiquitous "Islamophobia," that has grown since 9/11, says Cesari. She argues that these governments need to ease citizenship laws that have been based on the notion of blood instead of civil definitions. They need to take measures against other forms of discrimination, promote education and social mobility and sell the idea that European Muslims of migrant background – many now in the third generation – are an integral part of society.

"Islam has always been seen as incompatible with human rights, equality, democracy and modernity," said Cesari. "Islam is the typical ‘other’ and that goes way back in Europe. We have to rewrite the narrative."

German politician Cem Özdemir, is trying to do that. A German born to Turkish immigrant parents is one of the few with such a heritage to join the ranks of the German political elite. He says that the endgame is for those with migrant backgrounds to take part as equals in society. 

“What we need to tell people is to adapt to mainstream society, get an education, get into the ‘German Dream,’” said, Özdemir, co-leader of the opposition Green Party and a member of the European Parliament. “On the other hand, we need to develop a constitutional patriotism, one that everyone can take part in.”

He says it isn’t easy, though, that many still question whether one can be both German and Muslim: “If my name were Hans, I wouldn’t get tons of emails questioning my loyalty to this country when I speak on television on national issues such as the financial crisis. It is clear where my loyalties lie but there are always questions.”

back to reprints