The Burqa and Individual Rights: It’s Complicated
“Burqa bans” are arising throughout Europe, with France voting their approval this past Tuesday. But many are concerned that the prohibitions limit the individual rights of Muslims.
It’s complicated.
First, the garment itself limits individual rights – women’s. Second, to what extent is the burqa wearer exercising actual choice? Finally, is a ban the best way to go?
Let’s start with the question of women’s choice.
When a society’s way of seeing becomes our own – even when it harms us – the belief is “internalized.” My interest in this phenomenon was sparked by my upbringing. In the early years of the feminist movement women from my church were bused to various conventions to vote down things like equal pay for equal work. I spent afternoons listening to women in my church talk about keeping battered women’s shelters from opening. They were against women receiving priesthood authority, and they were for male leadership in the home.
I didn’t understand why they worked so hard to disempower themselves, their daughters, and other women. But people don’t tend to question the taken-for-granted notions of their culture. It’s simply what you do. So choice disappears.
The same phenomenon arises in other settings. Saudi women say they don’t want to vote or drive. Many 19th Century American women didn’t want the vote, either. In North Africa women defend the genital mutilations that kill and cripple them.
Burqas limit women’s autonomy and power. Yet some women voluntarily don them, keeping with their culture.
Burqas – or niqabs (face coverings) – prevent wearers from gaining driver’s licenses when they are strictly worn, since identity can’t be confirmed via picture ID. When a city or village lacks public transportation it is hard to get around without a car. That makes it tough to get a job.
Even with transportation it’s not easy finding work in a facemask. The mask seems dehumanizing and eerie, as does the subjugation it represents.
But ethnocentrism is thought weightier than sexism. “Isms” that affect men seem more important than those that affect women – even when women are harmed, as when a female German judge denied a Muslim woman’s appeal for divorce, claiming that being beaten was part of her culture.
Did women have equal power to create the cultures that harm them?
Some women do resist, but feel pressured, as one of my Muslim students told me when we discussed the matter of covering.
But bans may not be the best way to deal with burqas or niqabs. Bans can backfire since people cling more tightly to their groups when they feel persecuted. As restrictions go into effect more women might actually embrace the burqas that limit them.
A better way may lie in creating conversation so that different cultures can consider a variety of perspectives. I am sure that Westerners and Muslims can learn from each other and our different ways of seeing.
Georgia Platts
Also see: Early Islam’s Feminist Air Did Women Create Burqa Culture? Cultural Relativism: Must We Be Nazis to Criticize Them? Why Are We More Offended By Racism Than Sexism?
Posted on September 16, 2010, in feminism, gender, men, race/ethnicity, sexism, women and tagged culture, ethnicity, feminism, French burqa ban, gender, human rights, individual rights, internalization, Islam, niqab, religion, sexism, women's rights. Bookmark the permalink. 9 Comments.
You’re right…it is complicated. Do the laws banning burqas limit the freedom of muslim women to choose what they want? Or do they protect soiecty’s interests? Are there culture’s beliefs more important than society’s laws? Indeed, do these laws lead to more terrorism because they give weight to the Islamist view that the West seeks to persecute them.
I particularly liked your comment. “But people don’t tend to question the taken-for-granted notions of their culture. It’s simply what you do. So choice disappears.”, and to your examples that that principle has arisen so many times in our own past history. And of course, there are always defenders of the status quo who make it very hard for change to occur. It becomes clear that the process of evolving our (local, national, and global) cultures and laws inherently is a long and slow process, filled with many perceptions, vested interests, and past histories.
I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on this:
Do the laws banning burqas limit the freedom of Muslim women to choose what they want? Or do they protect soiecty’s interests? Are there culture’s beliefs more important than society’s laws? Indeed, do these laws lead to more terrorism because they give weight to the Islamist view that the West seeks to persecute them.
What I can’t get over is how the French appear to be escaping the media frenzy and all the fringe element rants, demonstrations and demonizing that would have SURELY been directed towards the U.S. if they had made such a decision. ESPECIALLY in today’s political climate. Where are all those people who were shouting about freedom of religion, biogtry and hatred??? (pertaining to the proposed Islamic center in Manhattan, and the wack job that wanted to burn the Quran)
Seriously.
But the larger issue may be about WHY the French banned the burqa, and I think there is an issue much larger than the feminist one at stake.
To quote one source, ” France’s government has insisted that assimilation is the only path for immigrants and minorities, and last year it launched a grand nationwide debate on what it means to be French. The country has had difficulty integrating generations of immigrants and their children, as witnessed by weeks of rioting by youths, many of them minorities, in troubled neighborhoods in 2005.”
Here, then, seems to be the attempt to completely homogenize a society. “Assimilation is the only path”. THAT’s the scary part to me. “What it means to be French”.
Who will be deciding this? And what criteria will be used? What will happen to those that don’t fit the criteria? It doesn’t sound very ‘inclusive’ to me…
Just saying.
Interesting perspective. Thanks.
While the degree to which women are oppressed in many cultures saddens me greatly, I am more bothered by the idea of legislating women’s clothing choices. I grew up in an era where cultural norms dictated that women wore only dresses in certain public and business settings. There were those who actually proposed rules and even laws to prevent women from wearing trousers in certain venues. Telling women what to wear seems no less paternalistic to me when it is the state doing the telling rather than one’s culture. I do understand and support the need for exposing the face at least at times for ID in the interest of state security.
I found this very interesting, and I agree, it is complicated.
First of all, I find very unfortunate the ideal of internalization (in this particular case). It’s a shame when there is such an obviously wrong and hurtful standard that is being perpetuated throughout a society. When something like the idea to cover women up from head to toe is known throughout society as something widely accepted and revered, people, even the women, begin to accept it as okay. These women are blinded by society and their values, so bad that they can’t even see that the very things that they are accepting are the same things that are limiting and oppressing them. Society has crippled minorities (and in particular cultures a female is a minority) to think that the way the world views them is correct. In many cases they aren’t correct. It isn’t correct to FORCE a woman to cover her body, in order to make men feel more comfortable. It isn’t correct to prohibit women from doing all of the same things that men do. However, in many cultures these ideals are so deeply embedded that women begin to abide, both in fear of being outcasted, and in fear of even worse.
Is it right, though, to ban the burqua? That is hard to say. While I would like to jump up and say yes right away, I stop myself, for I know that, while I personally see it as wrong, I can not speak for the women of that culture. I would love to see all women unprohibited and free, but I don’t think it’s neccessarily right for us to decide things for these women anymore. While I find it curious, I’m sure there are Muslim women who enjoy the burqua. Because of this, if we were to ban the burqua, we would be doing just what we’re doing when we force them to wear one: treating a woman as a being who is incapable of making her own choices.
I agree, it is complicated. There has been a debate as to whether “western ideals” are being pushed upon Muslim women when asking them to stop wearing the burqa or niqab. What if some Muslim women prefer to wear the coverings? Does anyone question the garb or practices of Orthodox women of other faiths? I think the largest driving force behind these bans is the belief that “the West” and Islam are at war. Setting up the bans makes a statement that Islam is the enemy, even to its own women. More importantly, these bans provide a way to control how Muslim women are allowed to behave–women being controlled once again.
And I believe that Grace’s comment is spot on. The French government may be setting up the ban because of immigration politics versus any real concern over the treatment of Muslim women.
No doubt many women WANT to wear a burqa. But I also grew up with a lot of women in my church who WANTED to stop equality for women.
I don’t know how much the burqa is a bad thing in and of itself. Except that women who wear it can’t feel the sun or the wind. It’s restricting. And burqa cultures are generally aimed at limiting women, whether in clothing or whether they can work, drive or vote, and being blamed for sexual assault (a bit of ankle was shown, and no man can resist that).
My concern is when women learn to want things that limit them.
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