Hijab and academic freedom

BBC2 has just shown a programme in its This World series about the efforts of the French to deny properly-dressed girls the education their parents have paid for in their taxes. The programme also showed the miserable and humiliating compromises the girls made in order to get an education, which they had been (wrongly) persuaded was some sort of religious obligation. The programme also showed the effect of the kidnapping of two French journalists by so-called Islamist gangsters in Iraq on the French Muslims’ campaign to protect their women from the new law against “conspicious religious symbols”.

I was planning to do a blog entry on the subject of the new so-called academic freedom laws which are being proposed in at least one American state, which appear to be the brainchild of the right-wing hack David Horowitz. Horowitz has complained that students who propose right-wing and politically incorrect opinions have been harrassed and humiliated in certain American universities, sometimes publically. The same right-wing cabal, of course, regularly taunts the French government with accusations of “dhimmitude” over its supposedly supine diplomatic dealings with Arabs (for an example see this despicable article). Horowitz calls himself a “lifelong civil rights activist”, but I don’t hear him complaining about the Jim Crow-style laws the French have been imposing on Muslims. They are, in some ways, worse than Jim Crow, because unlike Jim Crow, they are mainly aimed at women, rather than the whole community. Furthermore, veiled women have been harrassed in banks and other public buildings. We have seen British Muslim women refused entry to France for refusing to show their faces to male customs staff; we could see French Muslim women refused the documentation they need to leave France, or even travel within France unmolested.

I wonder what Horowitz would say to the headmaster of the “Eugene of the Cross” high school (which cross, I wonder – is this France’s Catholic secularism again?) who was shown lecturing his teachers about what will and won’t be acceptable from pupils. Among the unacceptable is the questioning of certain facts about French “civilisation”. He didn’t explain what civilisation that was – did he mean its bloody colonial history, particularly its record in Algeria, or its constant upheavals (France is on its fifth republic!), or its bizarre language, which it has stamped all over Provence, Languedoc (that name refers to the language which was formerly spoken there) and Brittany? Do they mean the legal traditions invented by that pathetic loser Napoleon? There are many essays out there which mention the use of rape by the French colonists in Algeria as a weapon against the local population (this one, published in Romania, was the first I came across, and it’s by no means an “Islamist” apology piece, and there’s a report here about a man conceived when his 16-year-old mother was raped by a French soldier getting compensation), and this present policy of theirs seems like a continuation of that contempt for Muslim women. Besides, your civilisation must be pretty useless if it feels threatened by a few hundred Muslim schoolgirls and health workers. And if any other enterprise took people’s money and refused to render the agreed services except on conditions to which they know full well they won’t agree, they would get busted pretty quickly by Trading Standards.

The programme-makers interviewed both a group of Muslim girls of north and west African origin, and a number of French school-teachers, some of whom supported and some of whom opposed the new law. One of them said that a colleague had pleaded for the girls who were forced by their families to wear the veil, and that she had asked in reply whether the colleague was prepared to sacrifice those who chose to wear it, and was told yes, without a doubt. It was made clear that friendships between teachers were split up because of this.

The argument about the veil supposedly making the woman “an object” and the similar effect of a lot of the clothing which was permitted – you know the sort – was also made, although from opposite sides. (By the way, the school shown doesn’t have a uniform.) The point was amply demonstrated by one of the female teachers shown, who had ample cleavage on display. Speaking as a man, nobody speculates on what might be wrong with my legs if I wear a long pair of trousers – which I always do – on a hot day. I don’t have to worry about doing up any part of my body which I cover – I just put my clothes on and go, which is a well-known advantage of the hijab. (My sister, who’s not Muslim, takes considerably longer than me to prepare herself to go out in the morning, and I remember how long it took her – and my mother – to prepare her hair in the morning even when she was a child.)

The programme heavily featured a group of young women, all of whom made compromises to ensure that they would get into school. They agreed that the girls could wear a bandanna, after a heated argument (involving the usual irrelevances about women ‘persecuted’ for refusing to wear the veil in Iran), but when the girls arrived, they were greeted by the headmaster who not only demanded that they also pull back their bandannas, but also that they not wear black or other supposedly conspicuous religious clothing (Chris at Crooked Timber called this “utterly, utterly humiliating for all concerned”). Some of the teachers were stricter still, and took girls to task after lessons about some detail or other of their clothing. One of the girls featured ended up leaving the school. The girls were also under pressure from their families, some of whom were in low-paid jobs. They were told that it was an Islamic duty to get an education, which is a somewhat stretched interpretation when applied to the sort of education provided by schools like that (this is the community’s responsiblity if the state refuses to provide an education). The girls were later shown swapping stories, and questioning whether they had made too many compromises; one of them said that if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile.

The wind was taken out of the Muslims’ sails somewhat when two French journalists were kidnapped in Iraq, and the gang demanded that the anti-hijab law be repealed. Of course, this attempt at blackmail didn’t work, and we were treated to a speech by an imam condemning the kidnapping of their “brothers”. While it should be made clear that this sort of action is against Islam, the pro-hijab campaigners should have made it clear that it was a separate issue and that they would not be swayed. I would have favoured a Malcolm X-type “chickens coming home” stance on this.

(About a week ago a sister asked me about why the UK doesn’t have the same hostility to Muslim women that the French had, and I replied that France has three constituencies with their own reasons to be hostile: a colonial population, which was rightfully expelled from Algeria which they tried to take for themselves, an ultra-conservative Catholic group, and a strong communist tendency which has major influence in the teachers’ unions. So they face attack from three fronts for being north African, Muslim, and religious. The UK, unlike France, has not faced a war within living memory with one of its Muslim colonial populations.)

We Muslims should be talking about what we can do to help these women keep their integrity and get their rights. The most obvious first step is a trust, to fund schools for Muslim girls and to help families who home-educate girls, and to lobby wealthy Muslims to contribute. It may also be possible to arrange fostering for girls in regions adjoining the borders of France, so that they may receive education there (which will lead to international pressure being put on France). More radically, there may need to be a kind of “underground railroad” arrangement, so that women who need to get out of France can evade any official restriction.

We should also use the same economic means to put pressure on the French as we do with the Israelis and as people did with South Africa. One of the favourite methods was to fill a supermarket trolley with South African goods, then examine each one at the checkout and tell the cashier, “oh no, it’s South African, I won’t buy that”. An organised campaign of this sort aimed at Citroen and Peugeot dealers (by the way, some French motor companies sell trucks, too!) will soon set the buzz going within these companies.

Perhaps I’m dreaming too much though, because despite the calls to boycott Israeli goods – a much longer-established movement – you can still see Carmel dates in Muslim-run shops in the Edgware Road in London. I once tried to make this point to a Sri Lankan Muslim shopkeeper by asking him if he’d sell fruit marked with Tamil Tiger insignia (the so-called Tigers are known for, among other things, extorting money from Muslims, who are largely on the side of the government despite being Tamil-speakers). He got the point, although I’m not sure if he changed his practices.

But we really need to recognise the nature of our enemies, and recognise why they sometimes act in ways which appear “friendly” to us. For example, the French used their veto to stop the UN sanctioning the invasion of Iraq, prompting a former FLN leader to cry “Vive la France!” to an anti-war rally in London. In fact, they wanted to keep Saddam there, which is precisely not why we were opposed to the war, and they then obstructed the lifting of the sanctions. Keeping secular dictators, who impose similar policies accompanied with Gestapo-style enforcement, in power suits them fine. We should not accept a repeat of Ben Bella’s performance in Hyde Park. If their republic is somehow threatened by our girls, damn their republic.