Current Events

France:
A Warped View of Women ...
And of Freedom!

by DEEPAK CHOPRA, et al

 

Below is an excerpt from "On Faith," an Internet feature sponsored by The Washington Post and Newsweek. Each week, more than 50 figures from the world of faith engage in a conversation about an aspect of religion.

This week's question: President Obama recently criticized a French law that prohibits Muslim girls and women from wearing body- and face-covering garments in public schools.

"It is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit," Obama said in Cairo, "for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear."

But French President Nicolas Sarkozy this week gave his support to attempts to bar Muslim women from wearing veils such as the burqa. "The burqa is not a religious sign," Sarkozy said. "It is a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement.

It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic." What's your view? Is this a private religious matter or a public/government one? Is the burqa welcome in America?

The French ban includes Sikh turbans, as well, for males and females! Here are some responses:

 

In America, some women like to dress in provocative, flesh-baring clothes. Many feminists would say that this sartorial choice reflects low self-esteem and perpetuates an imbalance between the sexes.

Yet we don't legislate against it.

Fashion models, like the one to whom Mr. Sarkozy is married, pose in magazine spreads showing bodies that are inhumanly thin and inhumanly blemish-free - and yet no one would legislate against scantily clothed fashion models on the basis that they debase womankind by holding up something completely unattainable as an example.

From the outside, all religious garb can appear eccentric, and deciding which religions are the worst offenders is not a game in which a democratic government should engage. Hasidic Jews dress in black suits and hats even in the hottest months of the summer. Some observers would say that this reflects a lack of common sense, a subverting of pragmatism in favor of ideology.

Sikhs wear turbans, some Roman Catholic nuns wear habits, most devout Mormons wear sacred underwear.

A secularist would say that all these choices reflect a triumph of religious hegemony over rationality, yet in a free country citizens are allowed to wear what they want.

- Lisa Miller, Senior Editor, Newsweek

 

The United States has done very well in letting people wear clothing that reflects their religious commitment. Americans are used to seeing fellow Americans wearing yarmulkes or crosses or headscarves or turbans and even burqas.

The more we become a religiously diverse nation, the more such clothing is appearing in public and the more Americans are becoming used to it. Religious pluralism is just that - a way for a society to cultivate acceptance of different faiths. The American Constitution shows the way. No religion is established (officially supported) over any other.

Being a person of faith, or a person of no faith, is of absolutely no concern to your government.

Leave it alone. We're doing fine.

The burqa is as welcome in America as my cross or my clerical collar.

- Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, Professor, Chicago Theological Seminary

 

And, Deepak Chopra - 

If France had a humane, democratic record in its treatment of Muslim immigrants, one might be bemused by President Sarkozy's attempt to suppress the burqa.

But the opposite is true. Arab immigrants are treated as second-class citizens, and the rightist politicians, including Sarkozy, are happy to keep them down. As a form of hyper-patriotism, controlling the dress of Muslim women is obviously unfair.

President Obama was right to criticize the policy.

Doesn't it seem strange that women in France have the right to wear mini-skirts but not burqas? Both costumes are about sexuality, or if that seems too judgmental, both are about the issue of modesty. In the Arab world, this is a religious issue, and it's not as though the Christian world is totally free of that perspective - as far as I know, a woman will not be permitted inside the Vatican without covering her head.

A secular society has no business making decisions based on religion, and that means in either direction. If God is neutral toward the mini-skirt, he is neutral toward the burqa and chador, or the wig and head covering of orthodox Jewish women.

As for the argument that the burqa stands for the abasement of women, that is certainly true under the Taliban in Afghanistan. But the abasement revolves around forcing women to dress a certain way, taking away their free choice. Isn't France doing the same thing? In the name of fighting abasement, they are actually imposing another sort.

Finally, there is the simmering social resentment that occurs when a Muslim woman stands out in the crowd by her dress. In decades past, she stood out in an exotic and even appealing way. Since 9/11, Muslim dress is interpreted as a hostile statement.

It's time we each become more mindful. The hostility is our own, a projection we impose on the innocent.

Let Muslim women be as free to choose as any Western girl with tattoos and piercings. Beauty in this case is in the eyes of the wearer.

 

June 29, 2009

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