Burqa, Full Veil and Dérives Sectaires

Burqa, Full Veil and Dérives Sectaires

By Éric Bouzou of CICNS (January 2010)

The parliamentary information mission on the full veil, which unfolded during the second half of 2009 under the presidency of deputy André Gérin, its initiator, did not avoid the pitfalls which in France degrade every political debate touching the religious or the spiritual.

The mission’s objective was “to establish a state of play of the practice of wearing the full veil in France, endeavouring to understand the origins of this phenomenon, its extent and its evolution” (source). It was easy to foresee that this apparently circumscribed subject would, in the current context of the debate on national identity, overflow on every side, and that consequently the structure of the mission would not be suited to its treatment. That is what happened.

The impossible debate on a subject touching the religious or the spiritual

The polemic around the full veil, provoking a reflection on the integration of Islam into the French model, was treated differently from the questions relating to the spiritual minorities. The political stake linked to the risk of blacklisting an established religion (the second in France) bears no comparison with the consequences of blacklisting minority groups, which can be done amid general indifference. Respect for the adversarial principle was therefore observed. Nevertheless, many of the artifices used to orient the debate were similar to those practised during “inquiries” of the same type on the “cults”. That is not surprising, since the wearing of the full veil was qualified by many contributors as a “dérive sectaire” perpetrated by “gurus” of “cults” (we have moreover illustrated the hypocrisy which consisted in speaking of dérives sectaires without involving the MIVILUDES). On this ground it seems useful to us to highlight these artifices once again.

Frighten above all: The first ingredient of the debate was fear. By way of example, on 29 June 2009 on the France 2 programme “Mots croisés”, the philosopher Elizabeth Badinter declared that women wearing the “burqa” “no longer have anything human about them”, a statement Jean Baubérot found “nauseating” (source). The philosopher repeatedly compared fully veiled women to “Belphégors”, to “phantoms”, André Gérin using the terms “coffins, walking sarcophagi” (Là-bas si j’y suis, France Inter, 24 December 2009). There is no doubt either that the reference to the cults, a particularly anxiety-inducing angle of attack in France, contributed to this climate of fear.

The theme of the social scourge: André Gérin, in his summing-up of the hearings, claimed: “A means must be found to stop, indeed to push back, this reality which creates a terrible malaise in society (…) When one speaks of the full veil, one must see that it is the iceberg of a reality of Islamisation of social life in certain neighbourhoods” (France 5, C à dire, 17 December 2009), leading people to believe through this type of statement that the Republic is menaced by 1,900 veiled women (according to the latest available data) and that this subject is a major preoccupation of the French.

Non-existent or imprecise data: A few statistics were produced by Brice Hortefeux, Minister of the Interior, at his hearing. But in any event, these data are insufficient to apprehend the problem correctly, and in particular to answer the following essential question: how many women are forced to wear the full veil, and how many do so by personal choice? The reflection cannot be the same in these two cases, but the deputies contrived either to evade this sizeable nuance, or to suggest on numerous occasions that those “claiming” to make a personal choice were manipulated without their knowledge (a rhetoric typical of the anti-cult fight). The available information invites the conclusion that the number of those who wear the full veil to affirm an identity (thus voluntarily) is significant.

The principal persons concerned were absent: A portion of the veiled women were indirectly represented by women’s defence associations. But the deputies interviewed, in camera, only one Muslim woman wearing the full veil: Kenza Drider. It suffices to listen to her to recognise a lucid woman, clear in her positions (France 5, Revu et corrigé, 19 December 2009). André Gérin’s appreciation of her hearing needs no comment: “We received with difficulty a person who agreed to unveil herself in camera (…) a woman who had an answer for everything, a militant woman but who had only one relationship, and there you fall flat on your backside, ‘my relationship is God’. (…) She has the right, but if we want to live together in the 21st century, if we want to carry the values of women’s liberation, of mixed relations in this country, we cannot admit… I am not accusing this lady and I am convinced of one thing, that this lady is indoctrinated” (sic, ibid., C à dire).

Sophisms and other habitual approximations: In no particular order, we were treated by the deputies to peremptory assertions on what is or is not religious (in a country, let us recall, where the 1905 law affirms that the Republic recognises no religion), to the habitual confusion between “public domain” and “public space”, to the habitual error of aiming laïcité at the general public when it legally constrains only the institutions and the public authorities (in other words, the citizen has no obligation to be secular in his private life).

The tone of the exchanges

It is regrettable to note the lack of respect shown by certain parliamentarians towards the experts who did not go their way. Although the former affirmed loud and clear that the enactment of a law was not decided in advance, one is forced to note that all the contributors who criticised a possible legislation against the full veil got themselves more or less sharply “scolded”, the terms “intellectuals” or “jurists” becoming for the occasion terms of abuse. Jean Baubérot had to raise his voice to recall the deputies to a little more respect for the opinions of others (source). As for Tariq Ramadan (source), several deputies declared to him bluntly that they did not wish to see him speak. Our elected representatives have unfortunately accustomed us, within the National Assembly, to behaviour worthy of a primary-school playground, with unedifying lapses of language and conduct. To see them extend their lack of courtesy and of listening to qualified persons of civil society, whom they had invited, is distressing.

The substance of the exchanges

The central question the deputies wished to see treated was: how to prevent the wearing of the full veil as quickly as possible? A truly deep understanding, on their part, of the reasons that lead women to choose this garment was off topic in these conditions. Many jurist contributors were questioned on the openings the law offered for passing a law of prohibition. Their contributions were instructive; that of Guy Carcassonne seems to us to sum up the whole problematic.

For the constitutionalist, a law of prohibition could not rest on foundations he qualifies as “unacceptable”: 1- laïcité, because it applies to the public authorities and not to persons (a statement made before parliamentarians who seemed to be following their first lesson on laïcité…) and because that would open the door to any demand whatever for the prohibition of religious signs in public space in the name of that laïcité; 2- Dignity: “What does human dignity mean? It means that systems, regimes, cannot enslave the human person (…) It in no way means that the legislator would be qualified to make himself the judge of the human dignity of others. One cannot, one must not, and there is above all no reason to bring dignity and liberty into conflict. Nobody is the judge of my dignity; I am the sole judge of my dignity and I fully intend to forbid anyone, (…) the legislator himself, to tell me what is worthy of me and what is not worthy of me as a member of the human species (…). What becomes of liberty if a legislator, whoever he may be, can decide, in the place of individuals, what is worthy and what is not worthy of them?” (Deputy Jacques Myard then interrupted Guy Carcassonne to qualify his statements as “casuistry”); to link the prohibition of the full veil to the dignity of women, the jurist continued, is “extremely marshy terrain”, since many practices could be declared unworthy: prostitution, pornography, piercing, etc.; 3- The constraints imposed on women: “The finest law can offer only what it has (…) that is to say, establish norms. (…) If this problem, that of the constraints imposed on women, could be settled by a law, why has one not been adopted for decades? (…) How to judge constraint? Can one accept the idea of an exteriority in relation to constraint? A woman says she wears the full veil because it is her choice; who then is going to say (…) ‘in truth you are totally inhibited, you are subjugated, you are conditioned, you tell us it is your free choice, but we consider that it is not your free choice, that it is therefore a constraint and that this constraint is forbidden’? That does not seem reasonable to me; the judge, no more than the legislator, cannot substitute himself for the person, for the party concerned, for the citizen (…), to tell him how he must use his liberty and within what limits, so long as it does not harm others, it is fitting to do so.”

Let us note that Guy Carcassonne’s arguments indirectly invalidate the mental manipulation theses so commonly used against the spiritual minorities, and by the same token invalidate the About-Picard law worded against these same minorities.

The only “conceivable foundations” for prohibiting the wearing of the full veil are the “notions of public order and security”, for they make it possible to put in place a “non-discriminatory” legislation. “It would be a matter of prohibiting everything that conceals the face, (…) apart from exceptional cases. (…) I believe such a prohibition conforms to our values. (…) There exist social codes which mean it is unanimously admitted that there are things one hides and things one shows. Until now, one hides one’s sex, one shows one’s face. Perhaps in a thousand years it will be the reverse. (…) The fact that one shows one’s face is not intended to exercise surveillance, even if it can also serve that. (…) When article 4 says that liberty consists in doing everything that does not harm others, it seems to me one is entitled to consider that hiding one’s face from another does harm him. What is this system in which someone can say, to all the people he passes in the street: ‘You are not worthy of seeing my face’?”

The aspect of harm to others was also raised by Elisabeth Badinter (and others), asserting: “when one hides one’s face, one is a voyeur, it is unbearable” (France 2).

A curious intellectual procedure, which consisted in taking up the defence of these women wearing the full veil, Muslim women of whom it was quickly noticed that many had chosen it, to arrive at an inverse justification: “It harms others and for that reason it must be prohibited in the name of the prevailing habits and customs”.

Epilogue of the mission’s hearings

In all seriousness, André Gérin affirmed at the start of the hearings: “I want to recall it, this information mission does not decide its conclusions a priori” (source). But certain political figures, perhaps a little less hypocritical than others, had already concluded. François Baroin declared on 19 December 2009: “It is a question of principle. A single burqa would justify a law. (…) The burqa is not a religious prescription but a dérive sectaire, which must be condemned and fought” (Le Monde). As for Jean-François Copé, he took everyone by surprise (or was it just an anticipation?) by tabling a bill prohibiting the wearing of the full veil before the release of the parliamentary mission’s conclusions (Nouvel Obs).

Some reflections around the polemic on the full veil

The parliamentarians’ reflection on the question of the full veil ought to have established a clear distinction between the case of women forced to wear the veil (for whatever reasons) and those who have chosen to wear it.

In the first case, the problematic joins those of man-woman equality and of violence against women. Evidently, progress is laborious in these domains, and if new means of accelerating the process must be sought, recourse to the law is probably one of the worst, as Guy Carcassonne illustrated.

The question raised by the women choosing the full veil is different, the minimum being to try to understand their motivations instead of condemning them a priori. The positions systematically casting doubt on their free will, by evoking outside fundamentalist or indeed terrorist manipulations, are untenable in a State of law worthy of the name. They have a belief (whose religious character belongs to them and cannot be denied them) which determines their acts (see our article on this subject). If it is natural that a democratic society should put forward habits, customs and a conception of the social bond that are different from and incompatible with the practice of the full veil, that society should at least not begin by insulting these women by qualifying them as “inhuman”, as “sarcophagi” or “walking coffins” (this type of statement, pronounced by a few isolated but heavily mediatised persons - including the president of the ad hoc parliamentary mission -, has a significant impact on opinion).

The argument consisting in accusing them of voyeurism deserves reflection. It implies that, without a veil, everyone becomes “visible”. Is not an individualist society which dehumanises social bonds in the name of the laws of the market, of consumption, of competition, of yield, of profit, of success at any price, precisely a generator of all sorts of “social masks”? Do not the “competitors” (those who love this casino world) choose masks consolidating their dominant positions, and do not the “vulnerable” (the immense majority) hasten to don masks of protection in order to doze off, or on the contrary to show themselves, or to make others believe and make themselves believe that they are still on the starting line? Can one really “see” the other in these conditions? It is possible that our society may manage to convince these Muslim women that the veil is not necessary (it could moreover be seen as a garment of protection rather than as a “voyeur’s” artifice). But, having so little chance of seducing a great number of followers in a society of “appearances”, it is not the real problem. The “social mask”, which sticks to the skin and thus allows many to keep afloat in an environment where fraternal bonds are so tenuous - there is the surest mark of the malaise of our society.

The haste of our governors to stigmatise the spiritual minorities, or to seize on an epiphenomenon touching an established religion to make it a national problem, is the measure of their blindness or their impotence before the true problems confronting us. No matter: civil society can seize the occasion and take over.