More like this
Sarkozy’s attack on the burka leaves French left reeling
A proposed ban on the all-enveloping Islamic veil is another vote-winner for Nicolas Sarkozy. How can a divided left tackle the issue?
They said that a short-assed, half-Hungarian Frenchman with Jewish roots who openly admired America would never become the President of France. Then they said his Presidency would prove disastrous and his popularity would soon plummet.
But in the Euro elections earlier this month, Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP party trounced the Socialist opposition, becoming the first French ruling party to come out top in European parliament elections since 1979.
The secret of Sarkozy's success is that he knows how to spot a vote winner. While the left sought to focus on the underlying causes of the riots which plagued Paris in the autumn of 2005, Sarkozy, as Minister of the Interior, simply sent in the riot police and denounced the rioters as racaille or 'rabble'.
The burka is not mentioned in the Koran, but is merely traditional dress in Pakistan
Faced with the impact of the global recession, he ditched his flirtation with Anglo-Saxon capitalism and adopted more traditional dirigiste Gaullist policies - in the process completely wrong-footing the left.
Now it seems he's played another trump card by announcing on Monday the establishment of a commission to consider banning the wearing in public of the burka - the garment worn by some Muslim women which covers the entire body, including the face.
His argument for doing so is not just that the burka represents an assault on French secularism, but that it is degrading to women. By championing the rights of women, Sarkozy is able to pose as the defender of the founding principles of the Republic. He also gains kudos for dealing with a hyper-sensitive political issue head-on. And here's the really clever part: he manages at the same time to expose divisions on the left.
Consider these opposing views. Andre Gerin, the Communist MP who tabled the Parliamentary motion last week calling for the establishment of a commission, and who is to lead the inquiry, has likened burkas to "mobile prisons". But Martine Aubry, leader of the Socialist Party, says: "If a law bans the burka, these women will still have it but will remain at home; they will no longer be seen."
The fact is that the left - not just in France, but in Europe generally - is in a dilemma over the issues raised by large-scale Islamic immigration to the continent. For some leftists, civil liberties, a strong belief in multiculturalism and a determination to fight the rising tide of Islamophobia come first. For others, defending Enlightenment values and the rights of women are paramount.
While in Britain a 2006 opinion poll showed 77 per cent to be against a ban on the veil, in Republican France, officially and proudly secular, there are undoubtedly more votes to be had in taking a tougher stance. Wearing the burka in state schools has already been banned, as the result of a 2004 law which prohibits students from wearing any ostensible religious symbols.
While the French Council for the Muslim Religion is against a general ban, the head of the Paris Grand Mosque, Dalil Boubakeur, supports such a move, saying that Islam in France must be an "open Islam".
There is, in fact, a compelling Islamic case for a ban, on the grounds that wearing a burka has nothing to do with religious belief (it is not mentioned in the Koran, but is merely traditional dress in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This could - and should - provide the French left's get-out clause. It gives them the chance to adopt a position consistent both with their opposition to Islamophobia and their belief in progressive values, instead of rushing to defend an oppressive and degrading practice which surely has no place in a modern European state (Gordon Brown please note).
If not, they will be handing Sarkozy, their wily and unashamedly populist bete noir, yet another strategic victory. ·
Comments are now closed on this article
Comments
Could not agree more ,well said.
'The burka is not mentioned in the Koran, but is merely traditional dress in Pakistan.'
IT IS IN THE QURAN. IF YOU HAVE NO KNOWLEDGE ASK AND IT SHALL BE GIVEN
These nonsensical and clumsy attempts by the French authorities to ban the burka are both insidious and superfluous.
They are insidious because, as anyone can tell, this proposal represents an attempt by Mr Sarkozy to curry favour with right wing sections of French society who openly detest immigrants and consider their culture and identity to be non grata. Mr Sarkozy is apparently far too interested in appeasing xenophobic voters than he is with improving the lot of Muslim women in his country.
They are superfluous because according to one article written in the Guardian by a French activist, the number of women wearing the burka in the whole of France is a piddling 100. So the proposed law would not affect the vast majority of French women, immigrant or otherwise.
The proposed laws do not take into consideration the fact that the biggest obstacles to empowerment of French Arab women are not some garment worn by a tiny number of them, but the undisputable fact that French minorities face discrimination, hostility and prejudice in virtually every section of French society. If Mr Sarkozy has any semblance of concern from immigrant women, he would try to address the fact that these women find it very difficult to find jobs - France has been dissing its minorities for decades and this proposed burka ban serves its purpose by deflected attention away from far greater and more pressing problems faced by French immigrant communities.
In my opinion, if one wishes to immigrate to a new country they should be prepared to adopt the new country's customs, language and laws. If one is not willing to adopt these things, but wish to maintain all that was from the "old" country, why then even bother to immigrate? If those of us who are native to a country wish to adopt all that is from another country, we'd move to that other country. Please leave the old ways behind when coming, we already have our own ways.
L Eisenstein Sharia law doesn't operate in Europe, and never will.
You don't have the problem is the US as Europe is targeted by immigrants, has historical ties with countries from which immigrants come, and has always insisted on immigrants becoming Americans, while in Europe a cult of multiculturalism has encouraged ethnic communities to be formed which basically despise their host culture - these people don't want to be British, they just want to help themselves to what we have.
Nothing to do with 9/11 either.
The burka is dangerous in that is it a mask, so can hide much including the person's emotional responses. We communicate with our facial expressions. This is why it is not just backward, undeveloped and dangerous, but is an insult to anyone who values women's freedom; it is in effect a portable prison in which a woman must conduct her life. A bit like the prisoner in the iron mask! I feel outraged and insulted whenever I see one. There's usually a man a few steps ahead, and it offends me, as a man, that any man should treat a woman like that. Excusing it as 'freeing women from male stares' is about as stupid and ignorant as you can get, and as has been pointed out, it comes not from Islam but from several backward countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, where women have no rights, no respect and no independence from men, who control and beat them as of right. To have ever allowed this in Europe is shameful, they should have been told on entry 'we do not allow masks of any kind that hide a person's identity'.
Now it seems Muslims who wish to continue this barbaric practice are leaving France for the UK! The sooner we act the better.
We don't seem to have that problem in the US. Maybe its because the Muslim Population here, very small indeed, has no influence on what the Government does. In Europe you are being overwhelmed by Muslim Imigrants, and they seem to have intimidated you to such a point you have to ban ME dress to show you are still in control. Better to ban Shira Law and other manifistations of collapse that many in Europe are heading for.
Wish Sarkozy had taken this stand as what is right for European Countries rather then for Political Expediency. Could be that 9/11 has set America apart in their attitude toward the inherent danger that a large minority of Muslims present.
I'm sure some nameless bureaucrat within the EU could come up with a reason for banning the burka "under 'ealth & safety" grounds.
I have the dubious pleasure of finding myself in agreement with Nicolas Sarkozy. Face-covering (not head-covering, but face-covering) is incompatible with the conduct of British, as of French, social and cultural life.
Onwards in sympathy for opposition to usury, but also in total opposition to any according of legal status to Sharia law, to Muslim schools here (where my own Catholic schools have existed since a good thousand years before any other kind did), to polygamy, to male no less than female genital mutilation, and to the building of mosques with domes and minarets, which are triumphalistic manifestations of an Islamised society, culture and polity, and which were in that spirit added to former churches during Islam's forcible overrunning of the Eastern Roman Empire. But halal meat is a serviceable weapon in the armoury against the hunting ban.
Will Sarkozy, among so very many others, now also see the light over Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Xinjiang, Turkey...?
Yes, well done Sarko! It has already been shown in Britain that the burqa has been used by at least one male terrorist suspect to escape from the country and has also been used in a jewel robbery in Glasgow. There are therefore compelling reasons - national security, Mr Brown? - why Britain should follow Sarkozy's lead, especially since the burqa is not mentioned in the Koran.
"The burka is not mentioned in the Koran, but is merely traditional dress in Pakistan" Err..no Neil,when the mad meccans overran the remnants of the persian empire in the 6&7thC to dominate the ME, like most conquerers of older, decadent cultures, they wallowed in the ruin of what they'd destroyed and adopted the burka, purda, harem and eunuchs - who should, theologically, be anathema to true muslims.
If women choose to wear a burka we should not try to stop them. I wonder how many really choose, as a matter of free will, to wear one? It may be that this restriction of freedom increases freedom in the long run. For all I see seemingly honest Islamic scholars on our TV's telling us women are not subservient to men under Islam, what I see tells me otherwise.
"While in Britain a 2006 opinion poll showed 77 per cent to be against a ban on the veil".....
Where & by whom was this poll conducted. I do not believe 77% of the total would be against such a ban.