#face covering ban
The banning of face covering has become a hot topic in recent years. And in 2011France placed a ban on face covering, which specifically targeted the approximately 2000 Muslim women in France who wear burqas or niqabs. The ban was the result of an inquiry that occured after president Nicolas Sarkozystated:
“The full veil is not welcome in France because it runs contrary to our values and contrary to the idea we have of a woman’s dignity,” he said, while cautioning against an extreme move that would further alienate a section of society. Let us undertake not to give opponents of democracy, dignity and sexual equality the chance for a victory which would put our society in a very difficult situation,“ he said, adding it was "essential that no one felt stigmatised”.
So, apart from this ban being fueled by Islamophobia, what is the problem here?
1. France bans women from covering their faces in public.
2. The former Taliban regime in Afghanistan banned women from showing their faces in public.
They are both examples of patriarchal leaders limiting women’s freedoms.
Yeah, but isn’t France’s ban on face covering empowering Muslim women?
No, it’s still removing their freedom to choose. Though the burqa, niqab or hijab can be part of an oppression, they are not necessarily so. They can (OMG, really?) even be a manifestation of a woman’s freedom, because she has made the active choice to wear a Muslim veil as part of her cultural and religious identity. However, it has become a symbol of oppression, partly because of the women who have been forced to wear it,but also because non-Muslims have decided to define the Muslim woman’s liberation. .
(Finally, does it even sound probable that the sudden removal of an item of clothing would instantly free a woman from oppression in her community? If women’s rights, and not Islamophobia, was the real problem here, the French government would probably not have approached issue in this way.)
“For decades, in books, op-eds, and lectures, I stood firmly and unquestioningly against the veil and the hijab, the Islamic headscarf, viewing them as signs of women’s disempowerment. To me, and to my fellow Arab feminists, being told what to wear was just another form of tyranny. But in the course of researching and writing a new book on the history of the veil’s improbable comeback, I’ve had to radically rethink my assumptions. Where I once saw the veil as a symbol of intolerance, I now understand that for many women, it is a badge of individuality and justice.”
- Leila Ahmed
We need feminism to end all laws that dictate what a woman should or should not wear. We need feminism so Muslim women’s voices are heard.
