PARIS, 22 December 2003 — The question of the Muslim women’s headscarf in schools has been troubling the French; what Muslims can do is to reiterate their right to religious freedom. Their behavior, however, is contradictory. How can you convince people that your daughter is exercising her right of free expression when others choose not to do so? Many of them complain loudly of mistreatment and being held at home in order to force them into covering their hair. How credible is the husband who screams in the face of a male doctor that only a female doctor may examine his wife — and the the woman in question stands quietly and submissively several steps behind her husband? What of the two French youths with a Middle-Eastern appearance who were beaten for eating sandwiches during daylight hours in Ramadan? How many dark-skinned young girls have been harassed for no other reason than that they look Arab? Is this what freedom is all about?
A committee of judges charged with preparing a report for President Jacques Chirac heard many such stories from some 150 witnesses. The witnesses spoke of what goes on in Muslim areas, in hospitals, in schools and in houses of worship. For the French, the number of transgressions have become intolerable, exceeding their wildest imagination was the Muslim girl who was burned alive in a dumpster. This is not even to mention the statements, articles and books that cry out to the authorities to free these oppressed women from their prisons.
Life is all about different points of view. Muslim men consider themselves responsible for the women who live in their house, even if the women are eighty years old. The men make a grave error, however, when they oppress their wives and daughters and yet simultaneously tell the French to respect the women’s decision to cover their hair. As is usual, Muslims have allowed themselves to be cornered and for more important issues to be dwarfed by the issue of the veil. Discussions of the rights of Muslim women in the community — and there are plenty of them — have been reduced to a single question: Are you for or against the veil?
For those seeking the truth, away from the noise and craziness, the long and detailed report by the committee, upon which final decisions will be made, is very important. If read with care, it contains a clear confession that French society has, in the last hundred years or so, ceased to be purely Christian, and that there are other communities with their own characteristics — clearly referring to Muslims. The report points out that these groups have been wronged on a number of issues. Their integration into society requires inquiries into their social grievances. Putting the French house in order will thankfully not be done by war, but by consultations with all groups, allowing them to participate in the dialogue in order to lead the flock back to the stable of citizenship and the principles of republicanism.
In what is being called a historic speech, last Wednesday Chirac appeared tougher, firmer and less lenient with those desirous of harming French values. He couched his speech in secularism terms from start to finish. Women, in fact, were at the core of his speech “because the progress of society is measured by the status of women in it and it is necessary to be cautious and strict in the face of menaces that wish to drive us back many years.”
Things will take a different course if the Muslims will recognize that what is happening carries its own seeds which need careful tending rather than impulsive and arbitrary reactions. The battle is long and tricky, and despite Sept. 11, France today for Arabs is different from what it was ten years ago. Now there is real talk of political representation for Arabs; they have roles in films and they appear regularly on television programs. At the same time, there are Israeli philosophers with their political allies, dancing on and off the TV screens, theorizing about the security of their pampered country and its unique democracy without ever being confronted by Arabs demanding that rationality return to the dialogue. There stands a French deputy talking about his district being surrounded by Arabs. He describes his constituency as similar to Israeli settlements on occupied land; the result was that Arab youths called for an intifada against him. Six hundred thousand Jews, compared to some 5 million Muslims in France, means they are a minority. If only Muslims knew how to use their voices and their weight to support their issues in a country that looks first and foremost for national security.
The fall-out from the Arab-Israeli war has spread to France; both communities are engaged in exchanging insults and putting France at the heart of the conflict instead of being merely an onlooker. Believe it or not, the feeling is that what lies behind the veil is France’s whole future — should we be respectable or free? The question is addressed to both men and women and forms the crux of the matter.
