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Veil, Burqa and Burkini

Reader comment on item: ISIS Imposes a Partial Ban on Burqas
in response to reader comment: Veil, burqa, burkini etc.

Submitted by Iftikhar Ahmad (United Kingdom), Sep 7, 2016 at 12:38

For many today, French secularism is an anti-human rights ideology, a kind of moral deformity close to racism.

How can a free country, they ask, even think of doing such a thing as trying to ban a veil or a burkini -- the full body covering for women to wear on the beach? How, they ask, can the French Republic call itself free and remain free when many of its citizens would like to rob Muslim women, peacefully obeying their own religion, of the freedom to choose their own clothes?

The current radicalization in France is not like that of the recent migration of Muslims to other European countries. Muslims have been coming to France in large numbers since the French left Algeria in 1962. The French never made any distinction between the French of "Gaul" and the French of North Africa. The current radicalization is not of those who came then, but of the younger generation -- of French Muslims. They were born in France, speak French, were schooled in France -- but they are not at ease with the values of France.

For more than 25 years, the French Republic, right and left, has been trying to disentangle the country from the "Muslim textile problem" (hijab, niqab, burka, burkini and so on). When the problem began back in 1989, the head of Creil College expelled three Muslim girls for wearing the Muslim veil, the hijab. A strong debate followed: pro-veil vs. anti-veil. Same arguments: as usual, tolerance, freedom of choice, and freedom of religion were on one side, secularism and respect for rules on the other side.

In June 2004, Jean-Pierre Obin, General Inspector of the National Education, gave the Minister of Education a written report, entitled, "The signs and manifestations of religious beliefs in schools of the Republic". The report was mostly about the behaviour of Muslim secondary school students. In every school where Muslims were dominant in number, according to the report, boys refused to mix with girls in the classroom and at sports. The Muslim students understandably refused non-halal food at school cafeterias, did not come to school when there were Muslim holidays, such as Eid el Kabir, Eid el Fitr, Ramadan -- and virtually all of the students displayed a virulent anti-Semitism.

More problematic was that many of the Muslims in secondary schools began objecting to the school curriculum, according what is halal (permitted) or haram (forbidden):

"Very frequently there is a refusal or an objection to certain kinds of literary works. Philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment, especially Voltaire and Rousseau, and all the philosophical works who submit religion to rational examination. 'Rousseau is contrary to my religion,' explained one student while leaving the class before the end. Molière and especially "Le Tartuffe" -- a satire of religious bigotry -- were the most popular targets: there was refusal to study, refusal to play, refusal to attend or else disturbances when actors were on stage. The same rejection applied to literary works that many considered licentious, (example, "Cyrano de Bergerac"), free-thinking or in favor of the freedom of women (Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert). They also refuse to study authors such as Chretien de Troyes because they believe the goal of that teaching is to promote Catholicism... There is every indication that students are encouraged from the outside to distrust everything the teacher can teach them, and to distrust any food proposed to them at school's cafeteria. They are encouraged to select what they want to learn according the religious categories of halal and haram".

In trying to teach history, the problems -- perhaps not for everyone but for many -- were worse:

"On a general matter, everything that is connected to history of Christianity and Judaism is a matter to be contested. There are many examples, some surprising: refusal to learn about the construction of cathedrals, or to open the history book on a page where there is a reproduction of Byzantine church. They also refuse to learn about pre-Islamic religions in Egypt or the Sumerian origin of writing. Sacred history is continuously opposed to factual history. The objection becomes the norm and can escalate to radicalization when the program addresses sensitive issues such as the Crusades, the genocide of the Jews (they negate the reality of the Holocaust), Israeli-Arab wars and the Palestinian problem. In civic education, secularism is considered anti-religious".

The Obin report was so frightening for politicians that it was buried for many months and put online as discreetly as possible on the website of the ministry of education. In an interview given to the French magazine l'Express in 2015 , Jean-Pierre Obin said:

"Many of the young people are conducting a secession from the French nation. This secession expresses itself in clothes (the veil, or full Islamic dress), the requirement of halal food, and absenteeism for religious reasons. In certain schools, some students were introducing carpets for praying, or protesting noisily to have a mosque inside the school. (...) More than ten years later, we can say the situation is worse. Our education system is unable to integrate people from different origins, and this difficulty is bigger for low income families"

What is the connection between the burkini at the beach and Islamism at school?

What seems to stand out is that although many of the burkini women may, of course, just be enjoying the beach in accordance with the precepts of their religion, many others appear to be Islamist militants who want to plant Islamic markings on all levels of society. The problem, as the philosopher Catherine Kintzler writes in Marianne, is that:

"The tolerance level is decreasing inside the country. The collective condemnation of the burkini is so fast and so unanimous that it becomes a problem of public order... Public opinion accepts less and less a closed religious affiliation, the marking of bodies and territories, the control of values, campaigns to make preferred practices uniform on behalf of a religion, which is in reality a policy".

Submitting....

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Reader comments (21) on this item

Title Commenter Date Thread
2ISIS partial ban on Burkha [84 words]PrashantSep 10, 2016 12:02232516
Optimism [56 words]a6zSep 8, 2016 15:17232431
Stop Micromanaging women [168 words]Lynn MSep 7, 2016 14:22232405
Veil, burqa, burkini etc. [24 words]stevenlSep 7, 2016 00:21232373
1Veil, Burqa and Burkini [1000 words]Iftikhar AhmadSep 7, 2016 12:38232373
From Hassan II of Maroc in French. [10 words]stevenlSep 10, 2016 01:18232373
What to Wear? [67 words]Iftikhar AhmadSep 11, 2016 17:35232373
Hijra, Islamic Migration: Bill Warner [63 words]stevenlSep 14, 2016 11:08232373
Stop wondering why Burkini is protested more than Burkha [126 words]PrashantSep 6, 2016 21:38232370
Facekini [479 words]iftikhar AhmadSep 7, 2016 12:41232370
Human right is a very general term [135 words]PrashantSep 10, 2016 12:37232370
1See, ISIS Really Has Nothing To Do With Islam [173 words]
w/response from Daniel Pipes
DaveSep 6, 2016 18:53232364
Matters of "more" assaults, "more" time' [66 words]BUSep 6, 2016 18:51232363
WOMEN ARE FIGHTING [69 words]Celine LeducSep 6, 2016 17:06232362
2The Even More Clueless side of "Politically Correct" [96 words]Mike RamirezSep 6, 2016 13:28232354
3Burqa can be compared to Nazi regalia [99 words]
w/response from Daniel Pipes
Michael SSep 6, 2016 12:58232352
Burqa [1431 words]Iftikhar AhmadSep 6, 2016 12:04232345
1Biggest defenders of Muslim womens "right" to wear Burkha are ... [144 words]PrashantSep 7, 2016 07:59232345
2Islamic societies must be obligated to be democratic [295 words]PrashantSep 7, 2016 08:24232345
1Public peace and safety, and the rule of law, are paramount [711 words]Michael S.Sep 7, 2016 08:38232345
1"The Bitter Lament of a Muslim Woman" [2630 words]Mike RamirezSep 7, 2016 14:09232345

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