'Burqa ban' in France: housewife vows to face jail rather than submit

Comment: Islamawareness absolutely does not consider niqab to be an obligation, however realises it is a matter of faith and sisters wish to wear it to emulate the Mothers of the Believers (there are many other ways to emulate them too ofcourse). Therefore I strongly condemn the odious Niqab ban thats comes into force in France tommorrow. This is just another way for the Islamophobic French government to marginalise and oppress its Muslim citizens. There is no Egality, Fraternity or Liberty in France, in fact when it comes to Muslims there never really was.


Kenza Drider, a respectable mother-of-four, will leave her home in Avignon's Place de la Résistance on Monday with the intention of committing a crime. If the police are waiting for her – and they have had more than enough warning – she will be cautioned, perhaps be asked to accompany officers to the local station, possibly face a fine and, perhaps, will leave with a criminal record.

It is unlikely she will end up in jail, but who knows? It is a risk she is willing to take. Drider is not only determined to become a miscreant; she sees it as her absolute duty to do so.

This 32-year-old French housewife has become the face of the country's "burqa brigade", the women in France who cover themselves from head to toe in full veils. She will fall foul of a law that comes into effect on Monday 11 April tomorrow and forbids French citizens from covering their faces in public places; despite the ban's deliberately general wording, there is no doubt that its target is very specific: Muslim women.

Drider's first offence will be to set foot inside Avignon's TGV rail station where she is due to take a train to Paris. For this she risks a €150 fine and, if she repeats the offence, being sent on a "citizenship course".

"I will be going about my business in my full veil as I have for the last 12 years and nothing and nobody is going to stop me," she declares, swathed in the material she refuses to take off even while speaking to a female journalist in her own home.

Like most of the women concerned by this law, Drider wears a niqab veil that reveals only her eyes, as opposed to a burqa, the full body covering worn by Afghan women.

For all the political energy President Nicolas Sarkozy's right-of-centre government has expended on this law, it will affect a relative tiny number of women; estimates range from 350 to a maximum 2,000 full-veil wearers out of France's population of roughly 64 million. One group of women it is unlikely to disturb unduly are the wives of visiting oil sheikhs and rich Arab businessmen: only if a luxury shop insists they remove their veils might they be challenged.

It is not the potential effectiveness – or otherwise – of the ban that bothers Drider, however. It is the principle. "This whole law makes France look ridiculous," she says. "I never thought I'd see the day when France, my France, the country I was born in and I love, the country of liberté, égalité, fraternité, would do something that so obviously violates people's freedom.

"I'll be getting on with my life and if they want to send me to prison for wearing the niqab then so be it. One thing's for sure: I'm not taking it off."

A succession of journalists have traipsed through the Drider family's modest home since the law was mooted a couple of years ago. Reporters from the BBC, CNN, CBS, Time, the Sun, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, as well as journalists from Brazil, Spain, Turkey, Indonesia and Japan, have all sat here on the sofas that line the walls of the neat but simple living room.

The Observer has been given a slot following Friday prayers, after a journalist from a local Marseille newspaper and before a television team from Al-Jazeera.

Drider admits she is "very tired", but is nothing less than polite and charming, even when she is answering questions that she has been asked a dozen times before. The publicity drive, it seems, is a question of duty.

The St Jean estate, not far from Avignon's medieval ramparts and the celebrated bridge, is not so much impoverished as uniform and unimaginative, a maze of apartment blocks painted various shades of beige. Washing hangs from open windows and satellite TV dishes sprout from buff-coloured balconies like urban fungi, but the children's playground nearby is free of litter and graffiti. There are no children playing truant; in fact, there are so few people it is like a ghost town.

Locals, many of them from France's immigrant communities, do not draw attention to themselves. A woman in a headscarf shrugs, apologises and hurries off when I ask her about the burqa law.

Drider's husband Allal, 40, who works in a soup factory ("but only in winter when people eat soup") says that, unlike other urban housing estates, the area is not "chaud" (hot) and there is little trouble.

Allal is jolly and smiling with a neatly trimmed beard. He jokes that perhaps he should grow it longer and bushier, as Islamophobes think he and his wife are extremists.

Parliamentarians and feminists in France have argued that the full veil is a symbol of male oppression and that niqab-wearing women are bullied into it by their husbands. In Drider's case, this seems unlikely. In fact, Allal describes his shock when, without any warning, his wife emerged from the bedroom to go shopping one day wearing her niqab.

"Are you really going out dressed like that?" he asked.

"I didn't even know she had bought one," he tells me.

Drider, whose parents were immigrants from Morocco, says wearing the niqab was her own personal choice. In this, according to a study by the At Home in Europe project of the Open Society Foundations, she is not unusual: nearly all of the 32 French women interviewed for the project say that they – and no one else – made the decision that they would wear the niqab.

"There was no mosque involved, no pressure from anyone. It is not a religious constraint since it is not laid down in Islam or the Qur'an that I have to wear a full veil. It is my personal choice," she says.

"I would never encourage others to do it just because I do. That is their choice. My daughters can do what they like. As I tell them, this is my choice, not theirs."

She adds: "I never covered my head when I was young. I came from a family of practising Muslims, but we were not expected to even wear a headscarf.

"Then I began looking into Islam and what it meant to be a Muslim and decided to wear a headscarf. Afterwards in my research into the wives of the Prophet I saw they wore the full veil and I liked this idea and decided to wear it. Before, I had felt something was missing. Then I put it on and I felt serene and complete. It pleased me and it has become a part of me."

Drider says it is only since Sarkozy's government began discussing the veil ban that she has been subject to insults, harassment and death threats. "When President Sarkozy said: 'The burqa is not welcome in France', the president, my president, opened the door for racism, aggression and attacks on Islam. This is an attempt to stigmatise Islam and it has created enormous racism and Islamophobia that wasn't there before."

Drider says the issue is bigger than her, bigger than a "piece of material", and laughs at the threat of "citizenship courses" and fines, which she says she will not pay. "This is about basic fundamental human rights and freedoms. I will go out in my full veil and I will fight. I'm prepared to go all the way to the European court of human rights and I will fight for my liberty.

"Fines? They don't bother me. What is the state going to do, send a policeman outside my front door to give me a ticket every time I go out? For me this is women's liberty, the liberty to wear what I wish and not be punished for it.

"If women want to walk around half-naked I don't object to them doing so. If they want to wear tight jeans where you can see their underwear or walk around with their breasts hanging out, I don't give a damn. But if they are allowed to do that, why should I not be allowed to cover up?"

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Veil debate divides Bangladesh

When a Bangladeshi government official told Sultana Arjuman Banu she was an "uncultured prostitute" for not wearing a burqa, the outraged headmistress took him to court.

In a landmark verdict, Bangladesh's High Court ruled that "attempts to coerce or impose a dress code on women clearly amount to a form of sexual harassment".

A woman's right not to wear the Islamic veil has become a hot topic in Bangladesh, with three high court rulings in less than six months banning "forced veiling" in the Muslim-majority country.

The veil is neither compulsory nor customary in Bangladesh, but public opinion is divided on the politically charged issue, and even as the courts affirm a women's right to go bare-headed, more women are opting to cover up.

"My hijab is my freedom," 19-year-old television presenter Fahmida Islam, who reads the news on the privately owned, conservative Diganta Channel and wears a full-length veil, told AFP.

"Bangladesh should embrace its Islamic heritage more," she said.

Bangladeshi women traditionally wear saris or salwar kameez, and the Islamic veil is a relatively new arrival - which some credit to the influence of the Bangladeshi diaspora, particularly the millions of migrant workers in the Gulf.

Burqa-clad women are an increasingly common sight both in the capital Dhaka and in rural areas, though Fahmida said "many people have the wrong concept of the veil. Some girls wear burqas but take them off to go to parties".

The veil has become a new front in the battle - fought in the courts, in parliament and the education system - to keep the Bangladeshi state officially secular, despite the country's predominantly conservative population.

In March, the high court banned police from "hassling women" who do not wear the full-face veil after police in northern Rangpur district arrested nine teenage couples in a public park and ordered the girls to wear burqas.

"A girl can only be arrested if there is a criminal case against her, not because of what she is wearing," the country's deputy attorney general, Rajik Al Jalil, said at the time.

In April, the court banned forced veiling of female workers after an official insulted Sultana Arjuman Banu, trying to force her and fifty other female teachers at the school in Kurigram district to wear headscarves.

"How an educated man could utter the word prostitute to a headmistress of a government primary school is not comprehensible," the court said in its ruling, before ordering the official to make an unqualified apology.

Last month, the high court issued a ruling banning the imposition of any religious clothing on students, following reports that a principal at a state-run college in northern Bangladesh has forced students to wear veils.

"No girl should be repressed, harassed or punished for not wearing burqa or religious attire," education secretary Syed Ataur Rahman said in a Ministry of Education order issued to support the court verdict.

"Forcing a girl to wear veil or any religious wear or barring her from sports and cultural activities will be considered an offence," he said.

Bangladesh was created as a secular democracy in 1971 after a bloody battle for independence from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

A series of constitutional amendments in the 1970s and 1980s made Islam the state religion and legalised religion-based political parties.

The Awami League government, which came to power in December 2008 elections, is committed to protecting the secular status of the state - moving to ban religious political parties and launching an overhaul of the education system.

But Bangladesh is also a deeply patriarchal society, experts say, where the idea that a woman should dress modestly to prevent sexual harassment is accepted across the social spectrum.

"It is a justification often used in ordinary conversations as well as policy rhetoric: 'Oh, well, women really ask for it, they should be modestly dressed,'" said barrister Sara Hossain.

"Ultimately, this can get pushed to an extreme where women feel safest if they are covered up," said Hossain, a petitioner on headmistress Sultana Arjuman Banu's case.

The recent court rulings are a step towards turning this situation around, by "creating safer, securer spaces and putting the burden on others to make sure that they don't assault women", Hossain said.

"The rulings will give space and strength to women who do not want to observe these kind of [Islamic] dress codes or who want to be freer in the way that they want to conduct themselves," she said.

But many women, like Samia Islam - who started wearing the veil a few years ago, after her husband completed the Hajj pilgrimage - argue the Islamic veil is the best way for women to stay safe.

"When I started wearing the veil properly, it changed my experience of my own country," Samia said, adding "irritating, insulting rough talk," she used to hear from men had transformed into polite compliments about her veil.

"Most women wear the veil because of their family - this was all me, willingly I've embraced the veil as a Muslim woman. I think all women should do this. It protects them from all types of unwanted attention," she said.

Mehtab Khanom, a psychologist who teaches at Dhaka University, warns the recent court rulings will have a limited impact on women's rights.

There is significant pressure on young Bangladeshi girls to dress modestly and behave politely, she said, and in the family and even in official quarters, women's misconduct is still seen as the main driver of sexual harassment.

"It is always the girls being blamed in this country," Khanom said.

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Israeli rabbis clamp down on burka

At the insistence of the husbands of some burka-wearing women, a leading rabbinical authority is to issue an edict declaring burka wearing a sexual fetish that is as promiscuous as wearing too little.

A small group of ultra-orthodox Jews in the town of Beit Shemesh chose to don the burka, usually associated with women in repressive Islamist regimes, three years ago in a bid to protect their modesty.

Since then, the habit has spread to five other Israeli towns causing alarm among ultra-orthodox religious leaders who once saw it as a relatively harmless eccentricity – even though the number of Jewish burka wearers is not thought to be more than a few hundred.

“There is a real danger that by exaggerating, you are doing the opposite of what is intended [resulting in] severe transgressions in sexual matters,” Shlomo Pappenheim, a member of the rabbinical authority preparing to make the edict, was quoted as saying.

Ultra-Orthodox women are required to dress conservatively and keep their heads covered with a scarf, hat or wig when in public.

But even that was not enough for some, who insisted that only by covering their faces and wearing multiple layers of clothes to hide the shape of their bodies can they really be chaste.

"At first, I just wore a wig," one burka-wearing woman told the Haaretz newspaper. "Now when I see a woman with a wig, I pray to God to forgive her for wearing that thing on her head."

Since donning the burka, the woman said she had been taunted by neighbours who called her a "smelly Arab" and that Israeli soldiers had asked to see her identification papers to prove she was not a Muslim. They backed down, she said, when she showed them that her children were clearly Jewish.

The trend has also caused tensions in family life. One man went to a rabbinical court in an attempt to get a ruling to force his wife to stop wearing the burka.

The plan backfired, however. The court ruled that that woman's behaviour was so "extreme" that it ordered the couple to undergo an immediate religious divorce.

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How Western journalists reported the ban on burqa

Two weeks ago I was interviewed on an Australian television news program about the wave of proposed burqa bans in Europe, Canada, and now, apparently, in Australia. No one should be surprised about my opinion of the whole thing: It’s dumb.

My argument to George Negus, the interviewer at SBS, was simply that someone in a position of authority should have the wherewithal to ask a woman who wears the burqa whether she is forced to wear it and if she feels oppressed. If she is forced to do something that she doesn’t want to do, then it’s a symptom of possible domestic violence and there are existing laws to deal with that.

I also noted I didn’t see much difference between the Taliban forcing women to wear the burqa and some old white guys passing laws forcing women not to wear it. It’s all the same to me.

Mr. Negus, much to my surprise, had a good grasp of the burqa issue. Except for the briefest of moments when his staff asked me to if it is possible to wear the abaya and niqab for my appearance – as if it were some sort of costume I put on and take off when it suits my mood – I must say they didn’t have hint of Western bias in the way the interview was conducted.

This made an impression because the following week I attended a journalism workshop sponsored by the United Nations’ Alliance of Civilizations and Search for Common Ground in Beirut. Search for Common Ground is a group that’s been around for nearly 30 years with the goal of dealing with global conflict though collaborative problem-solving instead of taking an adversarial approach. The group uses the media, specifically print, television and radio, to resolve conflict in a constructive manner.

Many of the attendees at the workshop were journalists from Lebanon, Morocco, Yemen, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Oman and Saudi Arabia. Although the burqa ban was not discussed specifically at the workshop, the SBS interview could have been held up as an example for Western media of intelligent reporting. The engine that drives the issue of the burqa is the Western press.

European and North American journalists, mostly white males with a sprinkling of their non-hijabi Muslim sycophants, are shaping the public debate surrounding the issue of whether the burqa is an oppressive symbol of Islam.

Commenting and reporting based solely on the Western concept of freedom (and forgetting the basics, such as freedom of choice), pundits and columnists have molded the issue into a battle between civilizations, Christian versus Muslim values, and modern ideals versus culture and tradition. Who’s going to win this argument?

Western media, of course. The West has the resources to use as a sledgehammer to make their point, while the Arab media shrink from the thought of confrontation.

But here’s a thought: The only journalist lazier than an Arab is a Westerner. I can’t think of a single reported instance of a Western newsperson asking a burqa-clad woman her opinion until someone bothered to ask Afghan lawmaker Shinkai Karokhail for a comment. Not surprisingly, she said the only thing she finds more “appalling” at being forced to wear a burqa is a law banning it.

All of this brings me back to the Beirut journalism workshop, which was filled with young, university-educated Muslim women. Many of these ladies wore hijabs and many wore the burqa, or abaya, in their native countries.

These women are visible and have an opinion worth considering. Yet they are virtually ignored by the media. These women simply don’t exist when lawmakers consider punitive laws affecting them and the cultural traditions they hold close to their heart.
The nature of journalism is to tell a story of conflict. No better example can be served than the burqa ban. Yet journalists can serve the international community better if it employed just a few of the goals of Search for Common Ground by seeking collaborative solutions to issues, and at the same time hold lawmakers and the Taliban accountable for the oppressive measures they force on Muslim women.

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