Rokhaya Diallo is a French journalist, TV personality, and activist. In an op-ed in the Washington Post lamenting the passage of a French law limiting the wearing of hijabs and even banning their being worn in certain circumstances she observes:
The new version of the law creates new reasons to surveil Muslim citizens and restricts their freedom of religion in a way that has never been seen before.
While the secular law in place bans hijabs in schools and for civil servants only, the senate decided to ban religious signs for parents who take part in extracurricular activities, which basically means the exclusion of Muslim hijab-wearing mothers from school life.
Lawmakers also decided to forbid burkinis in swimming pools and to exclude any person wearing religious signs from taking part in a sporting event or a competition hosted by a federation or sport association. In a context where the French Football Federation is the only international body to restrict women with hijabs from participating in sport, the senate is amplifying the pressure on Muslim women who constantly face exclusion.
concluding:
France has been discussing the outfits of Muslim women for at least three decades. In 1989, girls were excluded from middle school for wearing headscarves. Since then, France has singled itself out for an incredible number of controversies over Muslim women daring to appear covered in public. Women have been attacked and dismissed for leading a student union, being nannies, being part of a television singing contest, running for office, participating in a news show, attending a public hearing, volunteering in a charity, wearing a long skirt at school, applying for a job, being provided adequate sporting equipment, and in so many other situations. This article would not be able to name all the times when Muslim women’s choices have been violently debated without them.
The provisions received unfavorable opinions from the current government and the law commission, and French President Emmanuel Macron’s majority party in the National Assembly will probably not vote for them. But the fact that they have been approved by one of the two legislative chambers says a lot about how far lawmakers are ready to go to erase Muslim women from the public sphere. The debate, taking place without the participation of the main parties concerned, itself normalizes the exclusion of the community.
Muslim women are reclaiming their freedom over their bodies. Pretending to save them from oppression while banning them from activities is nothing more than denying them agency.
As you know it is not my practice to criticize the decisions about their own affairs of people in countries other than my own and, indeed, I hesitate before remarking about such decisions in states other than my own. I believe the French have an absolute right to determine what it means to be French as they see fit. Laïcisme has been one of the foundational doctrines of the French nation for more than 200 years and in France it extends to the public wearing of religious symbols. Similarly, égalité, equality, has been one of the foundations of the French nation for more than 200 years and goes so far as to prohibit categorizing French citizens by race. How many people of sub-Saharan African descent are there in France? Officially, the French do not know because it is illegal for such records to be kept or such a tally to be made.
Contrary to whatever impressions you might have the wearing of hijabs by Muslim women is not a religious requirement under Islam. It is a custom and a religious and political statement. If the French decide that such customs and statements are contrary to being French, that’s up to them.
And as I have said before France and the other ethnic states of Europe have a decision before them. They may continue to remain the ethnic states with more or less uniform cultures that they been for centuries or they can try to remold themselves into multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-confessional states. Each of those alternatives has consequences. It’s not up to me to decide their choice for them.
The French can do what they want and I don’t much care. As commentary I would say that I don’t think I could identify a French person walking down the street by the way they dress or their hairstyle. Been years since I was in France bit I would still expect to see the kids wearing all of the weird stuff kids in the US wear. So they are defining a few things as not French. Their right, just a little odd I think.
Steve
In France, it is illegal to display Nazi flags, uniforms and insignia in public, unless for the purpose of a historical film, show, filmmaking or spectacle.
This means peace loving hardworking French Nazis are marginalized and treated as second class citizens, simply because of their beliefs.
You know where I’m going with this.
If the Nazis had won the war, Truman and Eisenhower would have been tried for war crimes.
What we call today the Holocaust
would be unsubstantiated rumor and we would probably all be required to wear swastikas.
If Muslims want to write the rules let them first win the war.
I think the French made their decision decades ago actually.
France is a member of the EU; whose core mission is that there be “neither French or German, Italian or Pole; but European only”. The EU is a multi-confessional, multi-ethnic super-state committed to “ever closer union”, and its laws have supremacy over French laws.
Which actually brings an interesting question. France, Israel, India all consider themselves liberal democracies, yet they have very different interpretations of it from American ones. Should they be welcomed to the so-called “summit of democracies”?