CAIRO, 24 December 2003 — Arab and Muslim countries are voicing growing outrage at French President Jacques Chirac’s support for a ban on the headscarf even if a few intellectuals dispute claims Muslim women are bound by duty to wear it.
Weighing in on the issue of the headscarf, or hijab, are Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, influential Qatari-based cleric Yussef Al-Qaradawi and the muftis of Syria, Egypt and Lebanon.
“I hope the French government, which claims to be avant-garde in liberty, equality and fraternity, will cancel this wrong decision,” Khatami told reporters in Tehran. He said the “hijab is a religious necessity and its restriction is a sign of a kind of extreme nationalistic tendency.”
“This decision is wrong and not only against the principles of freedom but also against democratic norms,” Khatami said. “The French government which claims to be a front-runner of freedom, equality and fraternity should revise this nationalistic decision,” the Iranian president said.
Khatami said the Islamic headscarf was a basic right of Muslims to which they should not be deprived. All women in Iran including foreign, non-Muslim women are obliged to follow the Islamic dress code and wear long gowns and headscarves to hide body contours and hair. Offenders face arrests and cash fines.
“This decision is not final yet and I hope that our Parliament gives a message to the Parliament in France not to approve this law, which is against liberty and the guidelines of democracy,” he added.
On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Iran criticized Chirac’s “extremist decision.” “We regard this as an extremist decision aimed at preventing the development of Islamic values” in France.
After months of heated debate, a committee of French experts last week recommended banning “conspicuous” religious insignia — including the hijab, the Jewish kippa, or skullcap, and large crucifixes — from state schools, which are secular.
In a speech on Dec. 17, Chirac came out in favor of the ban, which he wants written into law by the start of the next academic year.
Sheikh Qaradawi, an Egyptian who has lived in Qatar for several years, urged Muslims during prayers last Friday to petition Chirac to “reverse his decision”.
Syria’s mufti, the highest Sunni Muslim figure in the country, wrote to Chirac expressing his “surprise at the ban”.
“The Muslim nation sees the veil as one of the foundations of its religion,” Sheikh Ahmad Kaftaro wrote, asking the French president to reverse his support for the ban in order to be “in harmony with the glorious history of France.”
In neighboring Lebanon, female members of the Hezbollah movement criticized Chirac in a statement that said the headscarf was an act of faith rather than an act of political defiance.
Lebanon’s Sunni Mufti, Sheikh Muhammad Rashid Qabbani, described the French move as amounting to “hatred of Islam”, after saying the hijab is “a religious duty mentioned in the Koran.”
The French leader’s move also brought a denunciation from one of Lebanon’s leading Shiite figures, Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, who called it an “attack on Muslim human rights.” He praised France for its record in supporting human rights, and Chirac in particular for his stand on behalf of Arab and Lebanese causes, but said banning the veil “confiscates the freedom of Muslim women”.
The Mufti of Egypt, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual guide, Maamoun Al-Hodeiby, also criticized Chirac’s move. “The headscarf is a religious duty and not a simple insignia,” Sheikh Gomaa said in remarks published in Egyptian newspapers.
The Muslim Brotherhood, some of whose activities are tolerated despite a ban in Egypt, elevated the hijab to the importance of fundamental duties such as fasting during the holy month of Ramadan.
However, some Muslim intellectuals denied it was a duty. Gamal Banna, brother of the Brotherhood’s founder, Hassan Al-Banna, and author of several works on the rights of Muslim women, was categorical. “The headscarf is not an obligation,” he told AFP.
However, Banna did not support the French president. “Chirac is a courageous man who has taken favorable stands toward the Arabs but I think he was wrong because the issue of dress is a very personal affair,” he said. “Whether a woman wears a scarf or a mini-skirt is a matter of individual liberty,” Banna said.
