Wash. U. professor John Bowen has been asked by the French government to testify before a panel on the burqas often worn by Muslim women. (WUSTL Images)

The burqa debate is back on in France, and a Washington University anthropologist has become part of it.

The French government has asked anthropology professor John Bowen to testify on the matter, as a parliamentary commission is investigating a possible ban on burqas in public places. France banned burqas in public schools in 2004.

The burqa differs from the headscarf in that it is a “complete cover” for Muslim women that “shows only the eyes, and sometimes not even the eyes,” according to Pascal Ifri, director of graduate studies in French.

There are different styles of what the French government collectively refers to as “burqas,” Bowen said. While the burqa covers the entire face including the eyes, Bowen added, the niqab leaves the eyes exposed. The potential ban would prohibit both the burqa and the niqab, although the French government refers to both styles as “burqas.”

“The assumption is that women who wear burqas are somehow oppressed,” Ifri said. “It’s not always a sign of oppression, but that is the assumption.”

The French commission investigating the potential ban rationalizes that “in a republic, where everybody is equal, there shouldn’t be obvious signs of oppression,” Ifri said.

Bowen said that none of the French Muslim women who have been interviewed on the matter have indicated that they wear burqas because they feel forced to do so, although he recognized the possibility that those women exist and simply have not provided interviews.

Most women who have been interviewed “said that they decided to put it on as part of an effort to discover what true Islam is,” Bowen said. “Some said they might wear it for a while and then decide whether to continue or to stop wearing it, but nobody reports they were forced to do it.”

Having the choice to wear a burqa ensures “that women have the freedom to explore their religiosity without being forced to do one thing or the other,” Bowen added.

“Some of them say, ‘I want to wear it. I feel better. I feel protected. I don’t feel like a target,’” Ifri said.

Sophomore Kelly Diabagate, who practices Islam, said that wearing the burqa “is a matter of modesty.” She added that in her experience, most women wear the burqa because of a personal choice, seeing it as a means of “expressing liberty and personal rights.”

Bowen said that only a few hundred women in France wear burqas. A ban, though, could potentially have a profound impact on some of those women.

If women who wear burqas are no longer allowed to wear them in public, “they may disappear from public view. It may be worse for them. They won’t go out anymore. That’s the danger,” Ifri said. “That’s one of the reasons why it may not pass.”

Diabagate said that she “would imagine it would be very difficult” for French women who wear burqas if the ban were to come to fruition.

“I can see a lot of people trying to leave” and moving somewhere where “they are given the right to exert their religion the way they see it,” Diabagate said. “Because obviously no one can stay home all day.”

“I feel like a lot of people will not be willing to compromise,” Diabagate added.

The issue of Muslim religious symbols in French public spaces gained prominence in 1989, when a public middle school expelled three Muslim girls for wearing head coverings, Bowen explained in his 2004 article “Muslims and Citizens: France’s headscarf controversy.”

While forbidding headscarves in public schools was initially at the discretion of individual principals, in 2004 the French government passed a law that officially banned headscarves in public schools, Ifri said.

The French government values laïcité, or public secularism, Ifri added.

“French politicians…don’t want obvious signs of religion if it offends some people,” he said.

While public secularism formed the basis of the headscarf ban, more practical reasons contributed as well.

Some public school students wore not only headscarves but also coverings that concealed their arms and legs, “and you cannot do gym if your legs and arms are covered,” Ifri said. “It’s not so much that it’s a religious sign, but can you be like every other kid, meaning can you do gym…when your legs and arms are covered?”

Ifri added that “there are very few cases of girls who don’t want to go to school” because of the headscarf ban, and “school is compulsory.” If a Muslim girl does decide not to attend public school because of the headscarf ban, she can “go to private school” or “have private tutoring,” he said.

Diabagate said that she would consider a burqa ban to be a constraint on religious expression. Bowen, though, said that the French government “protects organized religion…which refers to activities that take place in churches, temples, mosques, etcetera, and not to the behaviors of individuals outside of those places.” Religious protection, then, does not apply to the public spaces that the potential ban would include.

Ifri noted that right now the issue is simply a debate, and the French government is not close to passing a law banning the burqa. Bowen considers it highly unlikely that a ban would ever pass.

“What they really wanted to do was have a public discussion and debate about the issue and not necessarily propose a law,” Bowen said. “I think that French politicians will find that it would be absurd to create a set of clothing police to decide whether what a woman is wearing on the street counts as a burqa or a niqab…or just a headscarf.”

Diabagate does not think that the government should have the authority to ban religious dress.

“It’s your personal freedom,” she said. “No one can tell you how to practice your religion, especially if they’re not Muslims and they don’t know the rules of Islam.”

Additional reading:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/world/europe/01france.html

Bosnia is not a nation of historic validity, but a disputed buffer region between the competing Serbian and Croatian nations, each of whom have legitimate claims to substantial portions of the land. Accordingly, it has been of a multi-ethnic character for centuries, and remains so today. However, this fuels substantial conflict in a region where multi-ethnic states have often proven themselves to be breeding grounds for violence and genocide, the overwhelming majority of which has always been directed against the Serbs. In a half-baked effort to pacify this battleground nation, the Dayton Accords created a federal system wherein there is a relatively weak national government, and two much stronger state governments. Republika Srpska hosts the nation’s sizable Serbian population, while the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina hosts the remaining Bosniak and Croat populations.

After many years of brutal warfare and chaos, both sides set national ambitions aside and worked together to rebuild. But, as seemed fairly obvious to any individual with a grasp of the true nature of the Balkans, this was short lived. Though we have not yet seen war, the rhetoric has become increasingly polarized. Those in the Federation have been pushing for drastic reforms that would shift all of the power into a strong central government, where they would make up the majority of the population and could thus run roughshod over the rights of the Serbian minority. In turn, this has inspired the highly moderate government of Republika Srpska to extend legitimacy to the idea of ending Bosnia, by way of becoming independent (or more reasonably merging with Serbia), should the need arise.

As the nation exists today, it is a tense union between two unlike factions with highly divergent agendas and interests. So why continue to prop it up? If the only justification is Balkans stability then the answer is not to add to the hasty patchwork keeping Bosnia as one nation, but to proactively develop and implement a more rational and permanent solution. That means separating Republika Srpska from the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina immediately, merging the former with Serbia. But what to do with the latter? Allowing it to become independent as is would be dangerous, since quite naturally the Croats would seek reunion with the motherland, and inspire yet another bloody conflict. As it happens, the ethnic divisions are presently such that the Croatian-dominated portions could be given to Croatia without much issue, allowing the Bosniaks to have a new state of their own. Wedged between the powers of the region, it would be kept in check, and its ability to provide a breeding ground for jihad and Islamism would be reduced by threat of invasion from the concerned neighbor states (this will be elaborated on in a future column).

With the major parties unwilling to defend the national interest and stand up against radical Islam, that role has fallen to fringe parties on the far right wing of the political spectrum. A number of parties have gained greatly from this. Some, such as Vlaams Belang (Belgium) and Partij voor de Vrijheid (Denmark), are guilty of nothing other than poor PR efforts. But many of the parties making gains, such as the British National Party (UK) and the National Front (France) are populist hate machines who, in between their occasionally legitimate complaints about the EU, spew some of the most racist bile in the Western world. This was illustrated quite recently when Austria held elections on September 28 for the National Council. Together, Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs and the Bündnis Zukunft Österreich earned almost a third of the vote. Both of these parties are of the racist variety, BZO especially.

In recent days, this has again made headlines because BZO leader Jörg Haider died in a car accident this past Saturday. His party is, not surprisingly, in great distress since he was the most iconic bigot in European politics, and helped make extremism socially acceptable in Austria. Of course, for that very same reason, there aren’t many people elsewhere shedding tears over it. What matters is not so much the exact policy goals of his now mainstream racist party, but what allowed it to gain so much ground. And that is the unwillingness of the mainstream to take up the great issue of our lifetime: violent political Islam.

While our two-party system will prevent against a hardline xenophobic party from gaining serious political clout, both of the main parties in our nation have generally been ignoring the underlying issue. There are, of course, a few vigilant individuals, such as Senator McConnell and Senator Brownback, who deserve praise for their strong and factually-supported positions. But sadly, senators like them are too few and far between. To make sure that this grave international security issue is not highjacked by bigots, but is instead part of the standard political discourse of the mainstream, greater awareness must be raised.