Behind the Burqa Ban: The Problem with France’s Muslim Feminists

July 20, 2011 By Guest Contributor

This article was written by Peter Gray.

France’s decision to outlaw face veils sparked a robust debate about religion and women’s rights. In response to concerns that the law will negatively impact Muslim women, its advocates frequently mention that it enjoys the approval of several prominent French Muslim feminists. What is not mentioned, however, is that behind their feminist façade, these women have a troubling record of harassing the women they claim to speak for.

Discussions of Muslim feminism in France tend to focus on one woman: Fadela Amara. Born to Algerian immigrants in the 1960s, Amara grew up on the margins of French society. Disillusioned by racism and inequality, she found her voice as an activist in the 1980s. Amara entered the national spotlight in 2004 after founding Ni Putes Ni Soumises (“Neither Whores Nor Submissives”), an organization that raises awareness about gendered violence in France’s suburbs. She later left the group to serve in Nicolas Sarkozy’s government, first as Secretary of State for Urban Policies, and currently as Inspector General for Social Affairs.

Ni Putes Ni Soumises (NPNS) rose to prominence in 2003 and 2004 with a mission to speak out against misogyny in France’s suburban, largely Arab “ghettoes.” The group’s rhetoric was deliberately provocative, and some accused its activists of going too far, and unfairly stereotyping suburban (Muslim) men as thugs and rapists. Fadela Amara actually confessed that this was true, but she claimed the organization had changed. While she and NPNS may (or may not) have stopped demonizing Muslim men, their obsession with women’s clothing has only intensified.

Banning the face veil, or niqab, has been a priority for Amara. According to her, the garment “represents not a piece of fabric but the political manipulation of a religion that enslaves women and disputes the principle of equality between men and women.” NPNS takes the same position, and argues that the ban will “liberate” French Muslims.

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Burqa Woman Blunder? Saad Haroon’s Parody

December 30, 2010 By merium

Parts of the blogosphere appear to be in a tizzy over a recent parody of Roy Orbison’s classic “Oh, Pretty Woman.” Now a hit on YouTube, Saad Haroon’s “Burqa Woman,” tells the story of a young man’s fumbling attempt to woo a woman in abaya and niqab, who, after much cajoling, reciprocates amorously via text message. Modern technology appears to connect the two lovers in a country where public displays of affection and mixed social gatherings are generally frowned upon.

Saad Haroon is a Pakistani comedian, actor, writer and the creator of two improvisational comedy troupes “BlackFish” and “SHARK.” He is also the brain behind “The Real News,” a satiric news show for Pakistani audiences. “Burqa Woman” is meant to be a precursor to an upcoming TV show about stand-up comedians, which will likely help the freshman show draw viewers if all the controversy surrounding the video is right, content notwithstanding.

The music video, in which Haroon parodies a man in love, makes several tongue-in-cheek comments about the value of the niqab in a society burdened by vapid Talibanization and (as the video attempts to show) the ensuing hypocrisy of those who appear “devoid of sin.” As a result, the video has received hoards of comments online (669 on last count), both in favor and against.

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The Doha Debates on The Burqa Ban: Filling in the Gaps

December 8, 2010 By Guest Contributor

This is a guest post, written by Layla in response to our Doha Debates Roundtable.

I’m a Muslim woman by birth and cultural affiliation that has lived in the U.S., the Middle East, and most recently, France. For a year and a half now, since President Sarkozy first began advocating the ban on the face veil, I’ve had mixed feelings about this issue. So I was very excited to watch the Doha Debates on this subject, thinking that I’d finally hear an echo of how the two sides of this debate have been playing out in my own head for so many months.

But while the side I always verbalize when discussing this topic with supporters of the ban was very well articulated by Mehdi Hassan and Nabila Ramdani, the other side, which I have long kept bottled up for fear of adding fuel to the fire of opportunistic right-wing politicking here, was very poorly expressed by Jacques Myard and Farzana Hassan. He came across as a bumbling old man and she was extremely scattered in her argument, relying on hypothetical possibilities and projections vs. on available facts and statistics. As Sana points out at the recent roundtable discussion of the debates here on MMW, you could tell there was a bias simply in the selection of more competent speakers who rejected the motion over the two who supported it.

So, I figure that here on MMW is as good a place as any to try and fill this gap, and finally break my own silence on this issue. Quickly, then, let me sum up the points against the motion that I most strongly agree with before turning to the other side of the coin.

I agree that the niqab, as a symbol, has been opportunistically used by the French government to appeal to the far right and to distract voters from more urgent matters.

I agree that simply taking off a piece of fabric will not automatically liberate women from abusive or controlling husbands or result in their social integration.

I also agree that the way Sarkozy has approached this issue is more divisive than unifying. He’s clearly not interested in having a real dialogue with the Muslim community, or addressing the many social problems (unemployment, discrimination, etc.) Muslim minorities in France face. I also doubt he’s interested in dealing with more pressing women’s issues in this country (such as wage discrepancies, and the low numbers of women in high-ranking positions in government and industry, as evoked by Hasan in the debate).

On the other hand, I feel that there were legitimate issues raised in defense of the motion, which were not sufficiently discussed or well argued by Myard and Hassan. Some of these issues include the following: (more…)

The Doha Debates on The Burqa Ban

November 25, 2010 By fatemeh

Last month, the Qatar Foundation’s Doha Debates took on the French niqab ban, discussing the motion: “This House believes France is right to ban the face veil.” Since the niqab ban (or the “burqa ban,” and we’ve dubbed it) has been a big media issue on MMW, a few of MMW’s ladies decided to get together to talk about this edition of the Debates.

You can read the transcript or watch video at the website.

Yusra: Was it just me or were the most recent Doha Debates the best installment so far? Series Seven tackled France’s ban on the face veil and free elections and democracy. The House voted in favor of the face veil, which in my opinion sends a signal to repressive Arab regimes in the region. In a free society women shouldn’t cover their face, so what does it say about the women in the Gulf who do?

Nicole: As a longtime Francophile who is used to typically French points of view on all things headgear, I had my bingo card out and ready for Jacques Myard to mark off the tired old excuses: from “In Britain, Sikh people have to take off their turbans to wear helmets because it’s the law” to defining the showing one’s face as a “common standard of French citizenship (i.e., how to retrofit Frenchness),” he did not disappoint in his weak and overused justifications against face veils. My biggest LOL was when Mehdi Hasan shut down both Myard and Farzana Hassan in asking them if, since you need to see someone’s face in order for everyone to be part of society, how they felt about sunglasses.

Yusra: I may not be in favor of banning the face veil in France or anywhere else, but I am in favor of the House’s ruling on this issue, solely because it pushes Muslims with archaic views on Islam and women toward retrospection: it’s not about covering up, it’s about waking up!

Sana: Mehdi Hasan and Nabila Ramdani are on point. And then some. They not only offer the most substantial challenges to the debate, but are able to completely undermine the already self-undermined arguments brought forward by Farzana Hassan and Jacques Myard. In a way, I am curious as to why Hassan and Myard were chosen when their points repeatedly proven to be weak and completely dismissed even by the moderator, Tim Sebastien.

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Does NiqaBitch Enrich the Burqa Ban Debate?

October 5, 2010 By fatemeh

With articles in Der Spiegel, Rue89, The Telegraph, and a YouTube video in recent weeks, the two self-described web-activists called Niqabitch are making a splash in the French (and European) media landscape. As they said themselves in the Rue89 article, throwing on a burqa in protest of France’s burqa ban would be “too simple.” They wanted to see what would happen by mixing things up a bit and throwing together a niqab with a miniskirt.

So the ladies of MMW got together and discussed our feelings on Niqabitch:

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A Little Old Lady vs. A Burqa-Clad Mob: The Sweden Democrats’ Banned Campaign Ad

September 30, 2010 By tasnim

A political ad that portrays a pensioner hobbling forward for a share of the national budget only to be overtaken by a crowd of burqa-clad women pushing baby carriages has been rejected by a Swedish TV channel on the grounds that it promotes religious hatred.

The campaign ad for the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD) party begins with a number signifying Sweden’s national budget rapidly decreases onscreen, while a female voice over notes that “all policies are about prioritizing.” As the number approaches a critical red, a klaxon sounds, and the voice continues: “Now you have a choice.” The lone pensioner and the burqa-clad women begin to race forward. As the crowd overtakes the elderly woman, the voice over tells voters that “On September 19, you can choose to cut immigration or cut pensions.” The elderly woman’s lone hand reaches for a red handle labeled “immigration”, the burqa-clad women’s hands reach for the handle labeled “pensions,” and the ad ends with a slogan promising to safeguard pension funding at the expense of immigration.

From a visual perspective, the sinister and slightly bizarre aspect of this ad is effective, tapping into fears about immigrants through the threatening facelessness of the crowd, which obscures the huge variety of immigrant groups in Sweden and turns them into a collective alien mass. Aside from the brief glimpse of the cashiers, the only really identifiable person in the ad is the pensioner. The single suggestion of individuality in the immigrants is a close up of a hand wearing a ring, which is an interesting detail which builds on ideas of immigrants taking advantage of Sweden’s welfare system, helping to stage the question of budget expenditure as a crime. Essentially, the scene represents a mugging of a little old lady, which the voter can prevent.

Interestingly, the baby carriages the women are pushing appear to be empty. The progeny of these faceless women clearly represent the threat of mass immigration in generations to come, yet they are as invisible as the women, they are a dark army of baby carriages. How do you make a baby look threatening, anyway?

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Your Complete Guide To Bad Burqa Puns

July 21, 2010 By Guest Contributor

This post was written by Noorain Khan, and originally published at Jezebel.

Every time news about another hijab/niqab/burqa ban hits the press, editors rejoice: this is their chance to coin THE ultimate veil pun. Problem is, there’s simply no such thing as a good veil pun.

Plays on words that seemed clever in 1996 (or rather, in colonial discourse from 1959) have become even more trite and cringeworthy after years of headline-grabbing headscarf-ban debates and “encounters” with women in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the sub-par puns don’t stop, and some would make even Carrie Bradshaw roll her eyes (we acknowledge our own lame contributions to this canon). As someone who wore the “veil” for twelve years, I’ve endured their unpunny ubiquity in all their various forms and it gets less and less amusing. But it doesn’t take years of wearing the hijab to see just how bad and pervasive “the bad veil pun” really is.

Unveiling the Truth! Unveiling the Myths!
A simple Google search reveals that the “unveiling the truth” is perhaps the most popular veil pun. In today’s world of Muslim-female-otherness, we demand the truth about the mysterious, mythical creatures of the East… When it comes to discussions about Islam, war, and Muslim women, we don’t just find the truth, folks, we unveil it!

“Unveiling the truth behind Shariah” [Toronto Sun]
“Unveiling the Truth” [Daily Times (Pakistan)]
“Unveiling the Truth” [10/19/06, New York Sun]
“Unveiling the truth about burqa bans” [Orange County Register]
“Muslim Women Uncover Myths about Hijab” [CNN.com]
“Help to unveil Muslim myths” [Illawarra Mercury (Australia)]

Unveiling Other Stuff!
And it turns out, you can (and very well should) unveil all sorts of Islam-related things.

“Burqa bans unveil a debate” [Sunshine Coast Daily (Australia)]
“Dutch unveil the toughest face in Europe with a ban on the burka” [Sunday Times]
“Sarkozy unveils ‘burka ban’ plan” [5/20/10, Brockville Recorder and Times (Canada)]
“Nile unveils bill to ban people hiding their faces” [Sydney Morning Herald]
“France is unveiling a new policy on Muslim attire: No veils for you!” (article lede) [New York Daily News]
“Unveiling Muslim way of life” [7/27/09, The Advertiser (Australia)]
“Women Unveil Why They Marry Faith With Dress” [The Age (Australia)]
“Platform ‘unveiled’; McGuinty says Muslim women can vote wearing their burkas” [The Toronto Sun]
“The Swiss Minaret Ban: Anxieties, Unveiled” [LA Times]

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