With all the furore about a French parliamentary committee recommending a ban on Muslim women wearing Islamic face veils in public, I thought it was a good time to bring up France’s long-standing history of banning items of clothing…

Historically religion isn’t the only area to fall victim to the fashion police in France, sartorial expressions of gender-bending have also been under threat. Apparently there is a still-current law in Paris which prevents French women from dressing like men. Introduced in 1800 by a Paris police chief, the law says it’s only ok for women to wear trousers if they are holding the reins of a horse or on a bicycle.

Although it has lain dormant for years, the law has never been repealed despite many opportunities to do so. There’s still nothing to stop it being enforced – although it would have to be enforced by a policeman as the uniform for Parisianpolicewomen includes trousers (what a winning instance of “do as I say and not as I do” that would be…). I’ve never understood why women who dress as men have traditionally been seen as a moral danger or a bit risqué (even in panto), but men who dress as women are the focus of hilarity on both sides of the channel. It’s a humour I will never understand, much like Benny Hill.

It may seem hilariously archaic now but when the ‘sanscullotes’ law was introduced, a reason was given which we often hear being used in the arguments for banning the veil – fear of displays (or non-displays in the case of the veil) which transgress ‘the norms’ of society. The veil is certainly an affront to the liberal secular view.

European politicians often speak of the veil as making them feel uncomfortable, suspicious or disconnected from the wearer. People who appear visually different evoke an old fear in Western society, particularly those who wear masks or conceal their faces – a mask allows you to lose inhibitions and commit transgressions without fear of being identified. As Shakespeare writes in Measure for Measure – a play where a central character is a woman about to take the veil and become a nun:

“To speak so indirectly I am loath… to veil full purpose.” (Act 4: Scene 6)

We worry about this for practical reasons of security. However, if France were banning the veil for this reason only then hard hats, motorcycle helmets and hoodies would also be banned.

It’s worth remembering that at the time the Parisian law was introduced (shortly after the revolution), women in trousers were seen as threatening to the fragile status quo. The law was meant as a reminder that the promise of egalité of the revolution was only to be extended to the fraternity, not the sorority. Ironically, now the veil stands accused of representing exactly the same kind of sexual inequality. Plus ça change.

Guest post by Carl Packman

Islam is enemy No. 1 of much contemporary criticism, either by the angry EDL men on the street, to new atheists asserting that Islam is incompatible with Enlightenment societies, to critics such as Nick Cohen and David Aaranovitch’s’ with their claims to present Islamic bad boys (and girls) as the real threat to leftist sentimentalities.

But many of the targets taken by the above miss the mark, leaving the perception that Islam itself is the enemy. But this shortfall does not render left wing opposition to Islamism impossible.

It seems at first an odd place to start but our solution here can be found with Freud. At a time of massive vulnerability for European Jews, it would have been easy for many to resign themselves to victimhood and group together under the pretext of their hitherto shared history. However in 1939, between being robbed and forced to emigrate from occupied Vienna by the Nazi’s for being Jewish and partaking in one of the disciplines they referred to as ‘Jewish science’ (psychoanalysis), Freud decided to pursue the subject of the historical arrival of monotheism (which he attributes to Moses’ being an Egyptian priest of Akhenaten, and not, as is commonly assumed, his being originally Hebrew). As such, in a letter he told Arnold Zweig “Moses created the Jews” and, in his last substantial book Moses and Monotheism stated that “it was not God who chose the Jews … but Moses”. Matthew Sharpe, author of the book Slavoj Žižek: a little piece of the real noted that ‘Freud did not attempt to restore or reassert the ‘purity’ of Judaism against its detractors. He offered a demonstration that Moses, Judaism’s law-giving Father, was already impure: an Egyptian stranger’ (p. 246). By doing this, Freud observed that everything we thought we knew about Jewish history grounded inaccurately. Freud enjoyed the benefit of achieving two things, firstly producing a philosophically adept justification for the mental utility and historical genesis of monotheism (for Freud, monotheism revealed the end of object worship, and the beginning in belief in the absent, an astonishing mental accomplishment), and secondly undercutting everything the Nazi’s thought they knew about Judaism, even if this was to undercut the knowledge of the Jews themselves. And after all there is no better tool for defeating critics than to show that everything they know is wrong.

The way in which to utilise this tool for Islam is clear. In order to undercut criticism of Islam from the unpalatable voices, while maintaining an opposition to Islamic fascism, one must champion Islam’s alternative, forgotten or disavowed history, and then ask questions as to why this has been disavowed, and by whom.

Professor Ali A. Allawi in his LSE seminar In Search of Islam’s Civilisation noted that political Islam post-1976 (a time of relative freedom in Iraq he states) disavowed its ethical dimension, preferring to appease the status-quo by being rules based and not ethics based. A compulsion for corruption soon crept in to fill the gap, attempting to predicate itself on purely Islamic measures. The relationship between Islam and capitalism, for example, had to overcome some treacherous boundaries with regards to what was ethically sound in the religious system. The result being that Islam dressed elements usually frowned upon – the banking system for example – into palatable products (halal banking). Ironic, really, that what Allawi situates as the genesis of Islamism – rules based Islam and not an ethics based Islam – was the attempt to forge an Islamic version of a model many would attribute to US-styled capitalism. Strange to think that the Middle Eastern anti-Imperialist movement might have been grounded by a sly attempt to create capitalism with an Islamic face.

The events of the 1970’s in the Middle East changed Islam in a way that has not been significantly altered ever since (which is rather hard to accept given the severity of events that have since taken place, but what I mean is simply Islam has continuously been on the defensive since the seventies – after Iraq/Afghanistan nothing has changed, only maintained), and it is worth remembering this point when promoting a counter-hegemonic version of Islam, though this merely satisfies the political body of Islam. Where are we to address Koranic issues? Crucial information should be sought from Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, Sudanese liberal reform figure and believer in a version of progressive Islam, expressed in his book “The Second Message of Islam”. For Taha, we should be reminded that the Koran had been revealed in two locations, firstly in Mecca where Muhammad and his followers were minorities, and in Medina where the city was brimming with Jews and Pagans. During his verses in Mecca, Muhammad promulgated a “peaceful persuasion,” whereas in Medina the verses are filled with rules and intimidations. The Medinan verses, the first message(s) of Islam, were directed to a whole community of early believers and not Muhammad alone, according to Taha. These messages were a sort of ‘historical postponement’ as George Packer puts it in his New Yorker article on Taha. It was the Meccan verses, the second message of Islam that would represent, for Taha in his revisionism, the perfect religion, an acceptance of equality and freedom that, in seventh-century Arabia, Muslims were ready for. This provided his grounds for a progressive Islam, or at least a return to Islam in its truest form, since disavowed in its Medinian emphasis on rules based Islam.

Examples of Taha’s revisionist spirit can be found in today’s Iran; one particular person held in high regard is Grand Ayatollah Sanei who recently called Ahmadinejad’s presidency ‘illegitimate’ and ‘against Islam’. He is outspoken on matters such as the prohibition of nuclear weaponry in Islam, equal status for women (which, surely, must include not banning them for being too good at motor car racing), equality for non-Muslims and well known for issuing a fatwa against suicide bombing. Another well known example is Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montarezi, recently described in the New York Times as ‘an adversary the state has been unable to silence or jail because of his religious credentials and seminal role in the founding of the republic.’ He too questions use of the term Islamic government when it is referred to the one in his homeland.

What might initially be problematic about this counter-hegemonic revision is that it seeks to find the best in Islam and disavow the bad bits. The question remains; are the bad bits Islam’s problem? The answer is of course yes, but the way around it is not to simply bracket what is good and bad Islam, but, rather, what is and is not Islam. What has been said about Freud’s work on Moses is that it is largely speculative. Where the Islamic counter-hegemonic history does not fall short to this problem is that it has legitimacy both in its textual revision, and in its ethical methodology (that is to say both historically and practically).

Why might this be helpful for critics of Islamism? Simple, what Freud did show with his work on Moses is that the enemy cannot have reasonable grounds of criticism without a reasonable understanding of their enemy. By restoring a lost history for the Jews, Freud was able to throw off course Nazi criticism of Judaism. Equally, the way in which we are legitimately allowed to criticise Islamism is by taking a fuller understanding of what Islam actually is. This is where cohorts of New Atheism, particularly Sam Harris in his book The End of Faith, fall short. His arguments tend to perceive the true expression of Islam to be in Islamism, and very often purposefully conflates the two, describing good Muslims as not practising their religion to its proper end. Another example in Michel Onfray’s book The Atheist Manifesto, he waxes that ‘Islam is fundamentally incompatible with societies that arose from the Enlightenment’. How do these criticisms stand up with the ideas printed above? They describe an Islam that is rules based, which itself has erroneous groundwork, and so are by no means prepared for the counter-hegemonic history of Islam, which is not merely equal in its legitimacy to fundamentalist Islam, but rather destroys any legitimacy fundamentalist Islam claims to hold.

Carefully applied, the counter-hegemonic history of Islam may well be the vital tool needed for the left to maintain their opposition to Islamic fundamentalism, enemies of Islam who conflate Islam with Islamism, and portions of the left who sing about moral relativism with their fingers in their ears.

The Government has a problem. It is obsessed with integration, yet seeks to deligitimise one of the greatest examples of genuine intregration of recent  decades. I was reminded of this fact when I came across the above photo  from the recent Troops Out demonstration in London. This picture shows a number of things, the least important of which is that I’m getting a bit old for this sort of thing. It shows students from Essex University, of a range of ages and from diverse backgrounds, united in  their rage at what is happening in Afghanistan. The reality is we would not have known each other had we not been collectively involved in anti-war campaigning. I would not have discovered that one of the people pictured is an incredible political organiser, who half-filled a coach to the demonstration on his own. The fact is that over the past 7 years the anti-war movement has given me the opportunity for genuine engagement with the muslim community.

But the Government wants to suggest that what is happening here is the very opposite of integration. Rather, me and the other white people in the photo are ‘domestic extremists’, and the others are ‘radicalised’. For them the anger against injustice which unites us is something to mistrust. Obsession with defending their wars has meant Labour has sought to delegitimise the movements that have brought young Muslims and non-Muslims closest together. This is very sad.

The integration of minority communities, particularly Muslim minorities, into majority British society has been a hotly contested subject in recent years. For all the attention it has received in the press since 7/7, however, the role of faith schools in hindering integration in multicultural societies has been overlooked too long. Last year, the NUT finally took note of this in arguing for multi-faith religious instruction in schools. They could, however, have gone much further. They could have made the case for removing religious instruction from schools entirely, followed the French ends, if not their means, of having schools as secular public spaces free from overt religious influence beyond the neutral study of world religions and cultural traditions. What is most significant about the French case, however, is that France recognised decades before Britain the importance of the state in social integration.

France has long held a very different philosophy to Britain in regards to the integration of the diverse immigrant communities it inherited as a former colonial power. Historically, the British model has been the more decentralised of the two (Layton-Henry & Joly, 2001). Under this market-orientated philosophy, the social integration of immigrant communities has been, until recently, a secondary concern. The emphasis has instead been on leaving immigrants to their own devices provided they come to do ‘good business’, integrating vertically and economically rather than horizontally and socially. The decline of manufacturing industry and an organised, homogenous working class has been mirrored, however, by the rise of Generation X, second generation immigrants cut off from the homeland of their parents and alienated from British society where integration of communities has taken a back seat. Where this has been a causal factor widely attributed to the development of religious extremism, which has served to fill the identity-vacuum of some young Muslims, authorities have increasingly, since 7/7, come to recognise the importance of social integration and France’s more centralised model.

France’s approach to religion in schools came under the spotlight of the international media through the decision in 2004 to ban the wearing of conspicuous symbols of religious affiliation, particularly the Muslim hijab, in schools. This ostensibly heavy-handed measure – falsely justified in the name of women’s rights and using the language of secularism – stemmed not merely from a commitment to laïcité, but from a recognition of a need to better integrate France’s five million-strong Muslim community for whom religion had long been intrinsic to personal identity in a way that it was not amongst the majority non-Muslim population.  As such, the assimilation of Muslims represents a challenge to the secular state operating under the idea of laïcité. The question of how to integrate this minority and to ensure their identity as citizens of the Republic first and Muslims second has plagued French governments for decades. Where up until the mid-1980s the state’s policy towards immigrant communities was a socio-economic approach to assimilating the marginalised into the national society through welfare, unionisation and anti-poverty measures, this has been replaced by a more rigid idea of political integration as interventionist social democratic policies lost favour to the rise of a global neo-liberal consensus. The rise and electoral success of Le Pen’s Front National forced mainstream politicians to take on board some of the concerns of the far-right over immigration. As a result, the assimilation of the Muslim community into citizens of the Republic was placed squarely at the centre of the agenda.

The new philosophy that emerged emphasised the need for citizens to identify and engage with French nationality above individual cultural origins. Taking schools as neutral public spaces in which people learn citizenship, the removal of religion from these spaces was seen to be a key method of integration that went hand in hand with other methods to incorporate Muslims into national politics, such as the French Council for the Muslim Religion, established in 2003. The headscarf was not only treated as though it were a viral form of proselytising, encouraging others to identify themselves as Muslims before citizens of the Republic, but as a crucial symbol of difference undermining the unity of citizens.
The French approach, in banning the hijab, has been, of course, too rigid, too inflexible to the demands of multiculturalism and too insistent on stamping a seal of national identity on its citizens. Within reason, the sphere of state intervention into society should probably not include what is permissible for the individual to wear. Moreover, the beauty of multiculturalism is precisely in difference. Diversity without division. However, despite the controversial means it has employed, the ends recognised by the French state, and largely ignored by the British until recent years, are crucial here. How do you successfully integrate significant minority communities holding a distinct, powerful, totalising, self-defining belief system into wider society? Combined with growing radicalism, the Generation X factor, alienation and anger amongst Muslims over British foreign policy, and the war in Iraq in particular, the question of social integration has never been more significant. It can no longer simply be about doing good business.

Faith schools, by their very nature, are antithetical to the integration of communities. And whilst there are those on the left who will, quite fairly, argue in favour of faith schools on the basis of parity with Church of England state schools, I would make the case for their abolition. Individual faith cannot take priority over the pursuit of the very laudable aim of a diverse, but cohesive multicultural society. Schools, primary sites of early socialisation, should, as in the French case, be neutral public spaces in which people of all faiths and none can learn together without directed religious instruction. This is not an argument for the assimilation of minority communities into a hegemonic body or an attack on privately held or even publicly expressed belief. Rather it is an argument for public spaces where people from diverse backgrounds can come together from an early age without certain sections of the community being bracketed from the rest of society. The NUT’s case for multi-faith instruction in state schools is, perhaps, a step in the right direction. But the ideal, serving the causes of religious parity and integration, would be a disestablished church, a liberal form of laïcité in Britain and the abolition of faith schools.

Reference:

Layton-Henry, Z & Joly, D (2001) Philosophies of integration Basingstoke: Palgrave