Why the burqa ban makes no sense
July 10, 2010 Leave a comment
As France convenes to vote on the burqa ban this week, one can only congratulate the country on having rid itself of all its other problems — for example, crime, unemployment, the impact of the global recession on the French economy — because surely only a nation freed from all other societal ailments would find a woman’s headgear a vital enough issue for legislative concern.
Let us for one moment attempt to suspend our disbelief for long enough to consider that Nicolas Sarkozy’s fixation with the burqa ban isn’t in fact a desperate attempt on his part to cash in on nationalistic Islamophobia. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, it is after all possible that Sarkozy’s desire to liberate Muslim women from their veils is not, in fact, a cheap gimmick to grant him a quick shot of popularity amongst an electorate who, judging by recent opinion polls, are all out to get shorty. If the French president honestly believes he’s doing his bit for women’s lib, then one can only express one’s sympathy at how he’s managed to miss the wood for the trees and how the end result of his actions will do French women, Muslim or otherwise, a great and lasting disservice. For the assumption that the burqa is attire that automatically degrades women is as ludicrous as a certain strain of Pakistani belief, which imagines that a black cloth tent somehow confers honour, dignity and respectability upon women.
Both are dead wrong and, as is the case with fascists, even those who stand on entirely different ends of the same issue, Sarkozy has far more in common with our morality police than he’d care to admit. Neither of them can quite come to terms with the fact that a woman is more complex than mere physical appearance, greater than the sum of her parts. Read more of this post
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