From its official tweeter account, UN Women tweeted an article posted online on Jun 29 2017, 4:17pm [1].

The floor is given to two young women wearing a hijab in France, who rant and rave at length about their plea, and in so doing, propagate false information regarding the laws in France. It is unfortunate that no one at UN women – which relayed the article (from (@UN_women) on their official twitter account) – took the time to check on the evidence in legal texts, that can be so easily verified.

The first paragraph of this article already contains several factual ‘mistakes’ – which I would rather call lies and deliberate disinformation, as they reproduce the distortion of facts that have been displayed on fundamentalist sites for several years. Let’s go over this first paragraph :
“In 2004, the French National Assembly voted to ban all overt symbols of religion in public school and government buildings. Many considered the move—which became colloquially known as the”headscarf ban“—a covert attack on the hijab and Muslim women specifically. In the years since, France has effectively banned the burka and niqab (Islamic headscarves that cover the face and head)”

It is not in 2004 that France voted a law forbidding political and religious signs in specific circumstances: it is in 1906.

Please note in passing that, at the time, the law could not possibly be ‘against Muslims’ as such immigration did not exist, it started slowly during and after WWI.

Article 1 of the law establishes that the secular Republic of France guarantees all citizens the right to freedom of belief and practice; and Article 2 establishes that the secular Republic does not recognize any cult and therefore will not entertain any kind of links with representatives of religions, nor will it fund them. It is crystal clear: citizens as individuals can believe and practice what they want, religions as institutions are not recognized partners in government.

Most articles in the international media relay erroneous information on the law on secularism in France without taking the pain to check on facts. Laziness prevails. For a thorough exposé, in English, on the founding principles of French secularism, see: ‘the Secularity and the Republic, a secular recasting of the state: principles and foundations’ by Henri Pena Ruiz, a leading French philosopher and expert on French secularism [2]

Indeed, according the 1906 law, in spaces that are emblematic of the secular French Republic, there should be no display of religious or political affiliation: people are there as equal citizens, they are not there as representatives of a specific community.
This includes state secular schools, and the ban affects everyone in the premises: teaching staff, administrative staff or pupils. France gives special importance to the fact that children should be educated as equal citizens, – whatever their origin, religion, etc…

Please note that in France, schooling is compulsory – all children have a right to education and must be educated, until age 16 – and education is free; from nursery school to university. This is a privilege that the secular Republic extends to citizens and to non-citizens as well. Students who repay their loans for decades in the USA will appreciate this…

Of course, like everywhere, there are also numerous private schools, including confessional ones, and everyone is free to avoid secular schools and to pay for their education.

The law that was passed in 2004, under President Sarkozy, actually weakens the 1906 law: from ‘no sign’ of religious or political affiliation, the text mellows to ‘no ostentatious religious sign’ (without defining what would be considered ‘ostentation’; it is wrongly translated as ‘overt’ in the article reproduced by UN Women). This is already a compromise, addressed to vocal Muslim fundamentalists. Far from being ‘a covert attack on the hijab and Muslim women specifically’, the law attempts to pander to their demands, without destroying too obviously a founding principle of the French Republic. Moreover, by using the ‘colloquially known’ concept invented and propagated by Muslim fundamentalist groups the world over: the “headscarf ban”, the author of the article shows her sources of inspiration.

And finally, still in the same first paragraph (!), we note the deliberate confusion between two laws, grounded in very different sources of law.

In the years since, France has effectively banned the burka and niqab (Islamic headscarves that cover the face and head.

This is presented as a second step after the ban of the veil in secular schools, as a consequence of secular principles. It is not. The law that bans face covering is not grounded in secularism. It is not applicable exclusively in specific locations that are emblematic of the secular Republic, but everywhere in France; it is based on security restrictions which started after the rise of attacks by Muslim fundamentalists. Everyone is concerned and not Muslims specifically: helmets worn when not on a motor bike, scarves hiding the lower half of the face or masks outside the time of Carnival are also targeted by this law.

Incidentally these are security provisions that have been passed in several countries in the Middle East and in South East Asia, – for just the same reasons and at the same time. Does the author conclude that these predominantly Muslim countries are ‘anti-Muslim’ too?

As the article entertains so much confusion in so many respects, let me reiterate that no one is prevented to wear a veil in France (it is part of the rights guaranteed under article 1 of the 1906 law: freedom of belief, freedom of practice), except in specific circumstances (in secular schools and Republic buildings when civil servants are in contact with the public and should represent secularism and equal treatment for all citizens). These two young women wearing hijabs are very obviously photographed in the street, not in a studio; anyone walking the streets in France will see hundreds of veiled women.

And as adults, after age 18, they attend university with their veil. No law forbids it. For those who doubt this fact, please check that National Front extreme right party has been, for years, precisely trying to impose a ban on the veil in universities – so far, in vain. Nor it is banned in hospitals.

Misinformation is a powerful tool at the service of Muslim fundamentalism.

Having gone through the first paragraph in great detail, I will spare readers a similar approach to the rest of the article which contains innumerable factual ‘mistakes’, all aimed at wrongly describing ‘Muslims’ as victims of secular France.

Let me end with this ironical remark: since both these young ‘victims’ intend to study medicine (gynaecology and obstetrics for one and neurosurgery for the other – i.e. 6 years in university to become a General Practioneer, followed by at least three years of specialization – which amounts to, at minimum, a total of ten years in university) it should be appreciated that their entire schooling has been for free, thanks to the secular Republic of France. How many European and North American countries offer the same facilities to every child? This comes in contradiction to the following – unfounded – statement:
‘as they get older the ban will prevent them from accomplishing far more important goals’

Finally, the article tries to get legitimacy from the fact that their ‘families are both from Algeria — a country with a long history of French colonization.’

As an Algerian citizen, I appreciate the acknowledgement that we fought a long 7 ½ year-long liberation struggle against French colonialism, for our independence.

I would like to remind readers that Algeria is also a country that fought Muslim fundamentalism for ten years, throughout the nineties, a war that made about 200 000 victims, most of them at the hands of fundamentalist armed groups, with a vast majority of women among them. Many of these women were slaughtered in most horrendous ways, like Daesh is doing now in the Middle East, for not accepting to wear the veil. They were beheaded, their heads paraded in the streets, they were tortured, burnt alive, mutilated, kidnapped as domestic and sexual slaves, etc…They did not give up and it is ultimately thanks to their resistance and popular resistance that fundamentalist armed groups were defeated and that we do not live under their rule in Algeria.
In their name, I demand some decency from the UN bodies that are supposed to defend women’s rights.

Source : siawi.org
 
 

The post UN unveils – “UN women”, France, hijab and misinformation appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Today, I receive in rapid succession two articles against the Charlie Hebdo editorial (March 30, 2016), one from friends in Africa and another from friends in Asia; both articles attacked Charlie Hebdo as racist, and, from the little I have seen, they both twist facts to fit into their analysis. I do not intend to waste my time responding to these bad-faith articles.

However I took pains to read the translation into English of the Charlie Hebdo editorial. I have not read the original in French but I assume it is the 'official' translation. You can read it too, below:

“How did we end up here?   Par Charlie Hebdo – March 30, 2016

What does it say?
 
In substance, it says what WE, the networkers in the 'Women Living Under Muslim Laws' (WLUML) solidarity network, have been saying for three decades and more, i.e. that there are warning signs of the rise of Muslim fundamentalism; and that if one does not want to end up facing terrorist actions, one should try and control it beforehand, at the level of the early warning signs.

Or, in the words of several Algerian women interviewed by Karima Bennoune in her book on the internal resistance to Muslim fundamentalism ( "Your fatwa does not apply here"), that fighting terrorism should go hand in hand with fighting the ideology that brings about, at a later stage, the terrorist actions, i.e. the ideology of "Islamism". Please note: not "Islam": "Islamism" (A concept I never use, precisely because it may lead to confusion).

Were we "Islamophobic" when we worked on the warning signs? When we listed the restrictions on freedom of thought, of movement, on women's rights, the change in dress codes, etc…(See: 'Warning Signs of Fundamentalisms', 2004, WLUML Publications)
 
Were the (Muslim) women interviewed by Karima Bennoune "Islamophobic" when they denounced the ideology of Islamism?
 
I still hope that you will say that no, we were not "Islamophobic", we were warning our sisters that when these signs first appear in their countries – as they already did in some our our countries -, they should know how it is likely to end… Remember? We worked on the warning signs AFTER  the terrible assault on democrats and feminists in Algeria in the nineties that made 200 000 victims who died horrible deaths, just like the ones who die now at the hands of Daesh or Boko Haram…

This is exactly what Charlie is doing: warning the French people that it is too late to lament about terrorist actions, if one does not  also limit "Islamist" propaganda; Charlie is warning the French people of the consequences of bending to the various limitations that one silently accepts in the name of respect of the Other; Charlie gives the example of the fundamentalist speaker Tariq Ramadan , – and Ramadan is far from being the only one – who is, again and again, invited to speak in universities and other public functions. Let me ask you: why him?
 
 Why not Professor Karima Bennoune? Why not Dr Fatou Sow? Why not our pro-secularism former Great Mufti of Marseilles Soheib Bencheikh who is far more knowledgeable about Islam than Ramadan is? Why not any of us, feminists in Muslim countries and communities who for decades have been standing against the Muslim fundamentalist far-right?

This is the question that is raised by Charlie Hebdo: it points at the French people's own responsibility regarding Muslim fundamentalism rising in France and in Europe. Anything wrong with that?

Charlie Hebdo also points at the example of the increasing use of Saudi-style veiling in Europe, something which has already happened in our countries. We always had some veiled women in our countries, but the warning sign of fundamentalism is when so many women at the same time start adopting the veil at a fast multiplying pace, and when this veil is not even the traditional indigenous one of their fore-mothers but a foreign imported one.

What I find appalling is that what we, women from Muslim background, have said for so long – for decades – is seen, when it is said by Charlie Hebdo, in their own words and in their own national context,  is immediately branded racist. And what is even more dangerous is that the critics are circulated by our friends in Asia and in Africa, even without having looked at the incriminated text.
 
We do not need to ' be Charlie' to understand that, whether or not we like their style, they address a burning question. And that we are all in the same boat, facing the rise of religious fascists that curtail rights, put women 'in their place', assassinate opponents and all those who do not share their interpretation of Islam, including deeply believing Muslims.

Beware of getting rid of the last few honest allies we have on this planet.
 
(The writer, an Algerian sociologist, is the founder and former international coordinator of the international solidarity network, Women Living Under Muslim Laws. Editors of SabrangIndia had sent the author a critique of the Charlie Hebdo editorial dated March 30, 2016 to which this is a response)

References:
1. Myopia on Muslim Fundamentalism
2. For freedom’s sake
3. The truth about Charlie: one year after the January 7 attacks
4. Racism, not Anti-Racist ‘Satire’
5. After the Charlie Hebdo’s massacre Support those who fight the religious-right
6. No to Daesh, No to Imperalism 

The post Understand Where They Are Coming From, Charlie Hebdo is Not Racist appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Related Story: Racism, not Anti-Racist ‘Satire’

Tahrir square in Europe
Facts
On New Year’s Eve 2015, simultaneous coordinated sexual attacks took place against women in public space in about 10 cities, mostly in Germany, but also in Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, and Finland. Several hundred women, to this day, filed a case for sexual attack, robbery, and rape. These attacks were perpetrated by young men of migrant descent (be they immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees, or other) from North Africa and the Middle East.

Reactions were predictable and unsurprising: there was a distinct misrepresentation of facts and dilution of the extent and spread of incidents across countries in Europe; this was done by governments, the police and even the media, for as long as it was possible to do. Women’s rights were sacrificed for social peace.

There was, what I would term as a preventive hullabaloo  from the Left, which includes a fair number of feminists, in order to defend foreigners, presumed to be ‘Muslim’ from racism. Please note: there was an intended shift of nomenclature. The attacked women described the attackers, on the basis of geographical location of identity, as ‘Arabs’ or ‘ North Africans’, in the pre-emptive discourse this was altered to ‘Muslims.’ There was a clamour for more security measures on the far Right. In Germany, the first indiscriminate pogrom against non-whites took place. In substance there was a denial of the gravity of the attacks on women that took place across Europe with the use of the slogan of ‘racism’ to prevent any soul-searching on the rise of a far right Muslim fundamentalism in Europe.

Memories
2011: At the heart of Tunis, a protest by secular feminists against Ben Ali: groups of young fundamentalists (there is evidence of their affiliation) surround the mostly women demonstrators, isolate them, attack them sexually, touch their sex and breasts, hit them violently, despite efforts to rescue them by male supporters who joined the meeting in solidarity. The Police is watching.

2012: Tahrir square, Cairo, the place where anti-government opposition meet: for the first time women in numbers take this opportunity to seize and exercise their citizenship rights. Groups of young men (were they part of the Muslim Brotherhood or manipulated by them?) sexually molest hundreds of women demonstrators (and foreign journalists), press photos show some of them partly undressed, there are attempts to register cases of rape. The police, too, get at women demonstrators, beating them up, forcing ‘virginity tests’ upon them, etc. This policy of sexual terror will go on for months in Cairo, to the point that women’s organizations develop an electronic emergency map of Cairo where attacks on women are registered in real time so that teams of male rescuers can rush to the trouble spot.

Summer 1969 An even older memory from Algiers: at the first Pan-African Cultural Festival: hundreds of women sit on the ground on the Main Post Office square which has been cleared of cars; they attend one of the many free public concerts that take place everyday from 5 pm to 4 am, cultural dates that women follow in masses; most of them wear the traditional white ‘haïk’ typical of the Algiers region and they have brought many children too. At dusk around 8.30 pm, a rallying cry sounds,  ‘En- nsa, l-ed-dar’, ‘women go home’, chanted by hundreds of men who also came to attend the concert. Slowly,  little group by little group, with much regret, the women and children leave the square. Men, triumphant and despising, laugh at them. The Nazis too, so defined women’s place: ‘church, kitchen and cradle’. Seven years after independence, the place assigned in public space to the celebrated revolutionary heroines of the glorious Algerian liberation struggle is now clearly defined. Patriarchy and fundamentalism, culture and religion, fly high together.

How strange that such links are not being made with the present attack, not even by feminists who supported the women of Tahrir Square when they were attacked there?

It seems Europe cannot learn anything from us and that nothing that happens or happened in our countries can be of any relevance to what goes on in Europe. By extension, an underlying racism, never yet so exposed in the radical Left, implicitly admits to an unbridgeable difference between ‘civilized’ and ‘under developed’ people, their behaviors, their cultures, their political situations. Under this essentialised otherness lies a hierarchy too shameful to mention: the radical Left’s blind defence of ‘Muslim’ reactionaries, implicitly condones the belief that, for non-Europeans, a far right response is a normal one to a situation of oppression; clearly, we are not seen as capable of either a revolutionary or a civilised response.

(I will not develop here, in this article, how this belief is exported even by Left elites in Asia and Africa).

Cassandras that no one listens to, that is us. We have been yelling, screaming and howling for three decades now. We have been pointing at the similarities, the dangerous authoritarian, proto-fascist trends, that could have led to a political enlightening. Algerian women especially, who fled fundamentalist terror in the nineties, have pointed relentlessly to similar, regressive steps taken in Algeria from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Within Europe and North America too there have attacks on the legal rights of women of Algerian, Arab, North African descent. There have been demands for a specific ‘Muslim’ law in family matters, sex segregation in hospitals, swimming pools and elsewhere; these have coincided with communalist demands for a non-secular education and syllabus. It is these demands that have been followed by physical, targeted attacks on individuals who do not bend to these demands. These have included girls being stoned and even burnt to death. Secularists have been branded as kofr ( these include journalists, actresses, and Charlie Hebdo). The culmination is indiscriminate attacks on anyone whose behavior does not fit with fundamentalist norms: remember Bataclan, café terraces, and attacks on football match, etc.? These attacks have steadily grown.

In Algeria from the 1970s until the 1990s, the fundamentalist attacks began with the targeted attacks on women’s rights and their very presence in public space. We have had long experience of governments who do not hesitate in trading women’s rights for a form of social contract with fundamentalists.

However, the European Left seems incapable of distancing itself from its own situation where people of migrant descent, among whom there are both ‘Muslims’ and others, do face discrimination. By not facing to the character and strategy of Muslim fundamentalists in societies within and those foreign to Europe, by not denouncing the attack of the Muslim right on women, in Europe and outside, the Left cedes the right to be moral arbiter. The terrain is then left free for the far Right within Europe that has now appropriated all discourse on the issue.

I fear, as many of us fear, more and more, that this denial to face what happened and condemn it for what it was, will or may now lead to indiscriminate ‘popular’ and ‘punitive’ actions. This will satisfy the desire for revenge on both sides. Of the traditional xenophobic extreme right of Europe as also the Muslim fundamentalist right that will feeding into these circumstances, recruit more to its fold within Europe. We have already witnessed the attempts by Mayors elected from French parties of the extreme right, who have begun to legitimise the creation of an armed popular militia to ‘protect’ French citizens. Granted, both the French Left and the Social Democrats have regularly objected to these moves. However, insofar as they refuse to confront Muslim fundamentalism and remain in denial mode, they de facto surrender the ideological terrain to the racist extreme Right.

How are we to ignore the many steps forward that fundamentalists have made in Europe? The recent brutal challenging of women’s presence in the public space on December 31, 2015 is only one more illustration of this phenomenon. A myopic Eurocentric vision prevents from seeing similarities with what took place, for instance, in North Africa and the Middle East over the decades, when the fundamentalists took over through democratic traditions and cultures.

In Europe, where ‘Muslims’ are seen as victims and oppressed minorities, this is apparently the justification for any aggressive and reactionary behavior from them. The European Left just needs to cross a few national borders to appreciate and understand what the nature of the political program and project of the fundamentalists is. What the fundamentalist worldview is regarding democracy, secularism, believers in other religions and women. What do fundamentalist regimes do when they are in a majority or when they come to power?  The absence of this much needed political analysis is what allows them to further their tentacles in Europe. Thanks also to capitalist and xenophobic oppression in Europe, the rank reactionary worldview of the Muslim fundamentalist extreme right is being white-washed. Is this not a dangerously Eurocentric approach?

In a self-defeating attitude that can only be understood in terms of the ‘theory of priorities’, both the Left and far too many feminists promote the exclusive defence of people of migrant origin (re-invented as ‘Muslims’) pitted against the capitalist western right. This is another deadly error that history will judge harshly. Progressive forces within societies battling fundamentalism are being abandoned to fight their battles alone. The implicit hierarchy of human rights and their priorities, in which categorisation women’s rights rank far behind minority rights, religious rights, and cultural rights enables this hypocrisy to continue.

Since 9.11 (2001) in the USA and the security measures that followed, the analysis of the debate for the Left and even human rights groups has centred around the ‘War against terror.’ Undeniably there have been gross abuses including the curtailment of civil liberties. In the France of 2014-2015, a similar situation now prevails. A state of emergency was imposed after the November attacks and there is legitimate fear that a Patriot Act of sorts could be developed in Europe.

‘Terror’ itself however is being pushed aside, out of the discourse. The reality of terror is made to fade and an illusion or a bogey-man for government’s freedom-killing actions is replaced. It is almost as if there is a ‘War on terror’, but actually no ‘terror’! In this worldview, terror is made to appear like the fantasy of the xenophobic extreme right; what this view ignores is that there were indeed human bombs that exploded in Paris. Yet there is no war in France? There are elaborate debates on what governments should and should not do, the intentions and motives of states are dubbed manipulative and detrimental to liberties.  A cause and a consequence system does now re- emerge, but in a reverse image. The traditional image of pulling the rabbit out of the hat in which it was made to disappear stands on its head: here we dig the hat out of the rabbit…

A worldwide phenomenon – the rise of a new brand of extreme right: i.e. Muslim fundamentalism – is not only being insidiously justified but quite literally ‘disappeared’ behind the critic of the reactions that its own actions engenders. We simply cannot let the phenomenon of extreme right-wing Muslim fundamentalism to be thus conjured away. Denial will not make the phenomenon disappear.

The emerging phenomenon that the world is experiencing is not simply a creature determined by western capitalism. It has emerged from within different regimes and spheres and cultural spaces. One thing is however clear. Over the past 30 years burying one’s head into the sand has not led to any diminishing of the demands of the extreme fundamentalist right, neither in Europe nor anywhere else. Far from that, fundamentalism has surfed on the occultation of its political nature and grown through its cynical exploitation of democratic freedoms and of human rights.

What is at stake here goes far beyond women’s rights; it is a project to establish a theocratic society in which, among many other rights, women’s rights will be severely curtailed. The concerted action on 31.12 (2015) all over Europe, the brute challenging of women’s place in public space(s) plays exactly the same role as the sudden invention of the so-called ‘Islamic veil’: it is a show of force and power, making visible the fundamentalist right.

This show of force may meet with success. This was exactly how the ‘Islamic veil’ was enforced on women: by force. The advice  so far given by some of the German authorities to the attacked women in Cologne attest to a similar ‘adjustment’ and compromise. Reportedly the women who were attacked on New Year’s Eve were told by German authorities:  adjust to the new situation, stay away from men (‘at arms length’), don’t go out on your own, etc… In short, submit or pay the price. If anything happens to you, it will be your fault, you have been warned.

This kind of advice is similar to what used to be said in court(s) not so long ago to women who had been raped. Why were you in ‘such and such’ place? What were you doing out at ‘such a time’?  Why were you wearing ‘such a dress’? Advice that Muslim fundamentalist preachers will definitely not disavow…

That the primary concern after the attacks on women all over Europe, was to protect the perpetrators and not  defend women victims is a slight variation on the usual defence of men’s violence against women. The questions that need to be asked, however, are this: to what extent is it a defense of patriarchy, or a defence of migrants, and of ethnic or religious minorities? The interests of patriarchy (that the Left does not dare defend officially anymore) merge with the noble defence of the ‘oppressed’ (the November 2015 Paris attacks dented the legitimacy of this argument, considerably). They become convenient bedfellows. 

Searching questions need still to be asked on the concerted, simultaneous attacks on women in over a dozen cities in five different countries of Europe. Not to do so is to perpetuate a blind political perversity.

(The writer is an Algerian sociologist, is the founder and former international coordinator of the international solidarity network, Women Living Under Muslim Laws. She is also the founder of Secularism is a Women’s Issue , SIAWI; The article was written on January 5 and updated on January 12, 2016)

The post Myopia on Muslim Fundamentalism appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Days after the enforcement of the French law that prohibits the full face-covering veil, and after the first women law-breakers have been fined, international media focus has been on ‘protesting Muslims’ while the voices of the vast majority of presumed Muslims in France are ignored. One is thus forced to question why the English language international media has failed to provide proper coverage of the public stands taken by French citizens of migrant Muslim descent.

Forces for and forces against

The new law received support from across the political spectrum as the right and centrist parties and a section of the Socialist Party approved of the ban. It is clear that Sarkozy chose to opt for a new controversial law – rather than making use of existing laws on public security that would have allowed him to legally curtail full face-covering – because he is courting the votes of the far-right National Front in view of the 2012 presidential elections.

In Europe today, right-wing parties cannot afford to dispense with the support of the traditional xenophobic far-right parties that are rising rapidly: they get about 15 per cent of the vote in France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Austria and Hungary and more than 30 per cent in Switzerland and Serbia.

But even more radical new organisations are now emerging to the right of the traditional far right. In their view, the French state has failed to adopt adequately tough measures with regard to ‘Muslims’, whether fundamentalist or otherwise. In France, for instance, such groups undertake provocative street actions against ‘Islam’ in response to provocative street actions by Muslim fundamentalist groups. Both sets of antagonists seek physical confrontation in order to rally and radicalise their troops. So far the state and its police have turned a blind eye to these illegal actions – a policy of laissez-faire that many fear will incite further violence.

The growing rapprochement between Sarkozy’s right-wing government and the various far-right organisations has disturbing consequences for secularism.

Denouncing the government’s manipulation of secularism in a statement issued on April 9, 2011, Sihem Habchi, president of Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores Nor Submissives), a leading women’s organisation in France, who actively supported the ban on the full-face veil, said: “Secularism is being eaten alive by a political power that cynically instrumentalises it, by a far-right heiress [a reference to Marine Le Pen, the newly elected president of the National Front and daughter of its founder] who attempts to privatise it in order to feed hatred, an often cowardly left wing that is guilty of being far too retreative, a worrying ‘holy alliance’ between religions that invite themselves into the debate under the pretext of defending secularism and editorialists who endlessly ethnicise secularism and form troubling alliances.”

Soheib Bencheikh, the former grand mufti of Marseille and director of its Institute of Higher Islamic Studies, has also criticised the French government which, he says, “supports communalism”. Speaking in Montreal in 2005, Bencheikh, a well-known French Islamic scholar and author of several books and articles, including groundbreaking work on Islam and secularism, stated: “Islam is a prey for politicians, not only in Muslim countries but also in democratic countries like France.”

Ranged against the government’s recent ban is an unholy alliance of the Muslim right, human rights groups and left and far-left parties, chorusing a simplistic defence of the religious rights of ‘Muslims’. And it is to them the international media gives full and nearly exclusive coverage. No wonder so many foreigners believe that ‘Muslims’ in France cannot practise their religion at all.

Some human rights organisations have gone even further and supported the full-face veil as an expression of political identity. On August 31, 2010 Amnesty International (AI) issued a press release opposing a proposed similar ban on face covering in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which followed previous appeals not to ban the full-face veil in France and Belgium. In response to the AI statement, on September 2 last year Secularism is a Women’s Issue (SIAWI) wrote: “For the first time AI is not just justifying its position only through the defence of religious rights, as it has done so far. Please note, in passing, that although several Muslim theologians have gone public in Europe to say that covering is not a religious duty, AI has repeatedly chosen to ignore their voices (on what grounds?) and given the floor to conservative and obscurantist voices instead. But it is the first time that AI supports ‘the right to veil’ as the expression of a political stand: [AI wrote]: ‘Such a law would violate the human rights of women who choose to wear a full-face veil as an expression of their religious, cultural, political or personal identity or beliefs.’ Hence AI is for the first time admitting to the fact that veiling in the heart of Europe in these days and times is a political stand. Isn’t it what we have been saying for many years? The veil in all its various forms, as a recent introduction in western life, is indeed the political flag of fundamentalist groups.”

The most recent migrants, many of whom have been victims of Muslim fundamentalists themselves, resent being labelled traitors or racists, as having sold out to the extreme right or to foreign imperialism, by many militant left-wingers and human rights activists. As journalist Malika Zouba points out, “It is the over-simplistic way of thinking that kills us.”

In her statement of April 9, Sihem Habchi argues that “Secularism is not a theme that belongs to the far right… There is a need to put an end to this dialectical folly that depicts as an ally of the far right anybody who hints at the problems that result under pressure from obscurantists, such as rejecting mixed presence of men and women in the public services, especially in hospitals, in schools, in swimming pools, in municipal services, etc.”

Addressing all those who “unwittingly use the same arguments as Islamists and their lackeys in the left”, H.A., a journalist who was active in a left-wing organisation in Algeria, makes an impassioned case: “In order for these two laws [2004 and 2011] to be passed, secularists and feminists, among them many Muslim women and men, had to fight bitter battles against Islamists and those who promote them in the left.”

Lalia Ducos, president of the Women’s Initiative for Citizenship and Universal Rights (WICUR), was equally disparaging. Ducos, who works with left-wing and women’s organisations in Algeria, said on April 11: “I am sick and tired of this manipulation of secularism by the government in order to snatch votes from the National Front and, of course, I am sick of the manipulation of secularism by Islamists and now even this has been toppled by its manipulation by extreme-right groups!”

Holding the fort for secularism

The most determined and outspoken defenders of secularism today are citizens of Muslim descent, among them numerous women. This is certainly no accident. As Sihem Habchi says, “Those of us who came from other countries benefited from secularism and this is why we are so deeply attached to it.” In recent years several individuals and groups of Muslim descent, many of them women, have come out publicly in support of secularism on three significant occasions.

They testified before the Stasi Commission (set up in 2003 to re-examine the application of secular laws in state schools, which was challenged by Muslim fundamentalists) and helped promote the 2004 law which reiterates the founding secular principles of the French republic as defined in the laws of 1905 and 1906. These century-old laws institute the separation of state and church (where ‘church’ referred to the Catholic church, as Islam was not in the picture at the time).

Article 1 of the 1906 law affirms the principle that the French secular state guarantees to all citizens the freedom of belief – or not to believe – and the right to practise their religion – or not to practise any. Article 2 states that beyond the religious freedom enshrined in Article 1, the secular state declares itself incompetent in religious matters: religions are beyond its mandate and hence it would not interfere with them, would not grant them any recognition and would not fund them. Matters within the state’s mandate, such as education, would be entirely secular and both teachers and pupils would abide by this rule while on school premises. Thus it follows that children are not allowed to wear any sign of their religious affiliation (i.e. neither cross, nor veil, nor kippa, etc) in state schools where education is compulsory, entirely free and secular. Ironically, the 2004 law is now erroneously labelled the world over as ‘the law against the veil’!

Speaking to the Liberal Islam Network in 2004, Soheib Bencheikh declared: “I have to emphasise that it is thanks to secularism that Islam [in France] can stand on an equal footing with Catholicism, in rights and duties.” And later, reiterating his support for the 2004 law, Bencheikh said in Canada in 2005: “Salvation for the young French Muslims in France, who are often confronted with poverty and exclusion, will come from a neutral non-confessional educational system.”

France’s definition of secularism is very different from what the Anglo-Saxons call secularism. Hence French secularism is poorly known and often hastily misjudged by ignorants. While in Britain and in many other European and North American countries the state is only supposed to treat all religions equally, in France, the state is not supposed to interfere with religions at all. In Britain, for instance, the state does interfere with religions, constructing them into organised political entities, a system which has indeed been breeding communalism.

In 2005, during the winter riots in the suburbs of Paris, French citizens of migrant Muslim descent picketed day and night to defend various public facilities such as schools, health centres, sports centres, public libraries, etc against the unemployed youth who were setting them on fire – thus teaching the youth the meaning of ‘res publica’ – commonwealth, something that belongs to all citizens.

In 2010 they testified in large numbers before the Guerin Commission (set up to advise the government on the issue of the full-face veil) and made public statements demanding that the full-face veil be curtailed in France.

Fadéla M’Rabet, who was a popular journalist with the progressive radio channel, Algiers Channel 3, in the 1970s, had to flee Algeria after being forced out of her job and gravely threatened. Now a well-known academic, scientist and author of several books on women in Algeria, M’Rabet says: “The veil is not, as they would like us to believe, a religious sign for Muslim women. This symbol of submission is the seal of humiliation for women and the marker of their lifelong status as underage minors that they try to impose on women… Only a law that will reaffirm these two indissociable principles – secularism and equality between the sexes – will protect the girls of the suburbs and further the status of women.”

These sentiments were endorsed by Meriem, a young lawyer who lived near Paris, in a statement made in 2004: “When I hear a girl say: the veil protects me, I respond: no, it is the republic that protects you.”

However, there was heated debate among women who agreed that the full-face veil was to be combated, on the strategy to be followed in achieving this objective. Many women favoured the use of existing public security regulations for doing so thus avoiding a new law that explicitly stigmatises ‘Muslims’. This option would also have spared them the over-simplistic accusation of backing Sarkozy’s rightist social agenda which in actual fact they do not support.

Why are French citizens of migrant Muslim descent capable of such complex political analysis which many media organisations and political parties seem incapable of?

North Africa, and within it Algeria, has been the main source of unskilled migrant workers in France, through economic migration that began in the period between the two world wars and grew rapidly after World War II. These workers put down political roots in workers’ trade unions and parties and became further politicised during Algeria’s struggle for liberation from French colonial rule.

Many of them, whose families have lived in France as French citizens for three or four generations, are just not religiously inclined: the overwhelming majority of them have never set foot in a mosque. But for those who are believers and support secular laws, secularism is beneficial to religion. Soheib Bencheikh believes that: “Separation between religion and politics will clarify the place of Islam as a divine spiritual doctrine, not as an instrument which can be misused to gain political power. Thanks to that, Islam can go back to its original stand, as promoting its teachings, not forcing them” (Interview given to the Liberal Islam Network in 2004). Speaking to the media in support of the 2004 law, Saoudia, a 23-year-old student from Nice, echoed Bencheikh’s views: “Religion is in the heart, not on the head.”

Still in touch with relatives living in Algeria, they received first-hand accounts of crimes committed against the – all-Muslim – population by armed fundamentalists during the 1990s which also led to the most recent wave of emigration. These new émigrés included intellectuals, artists, writers, feminists and others who fled Algeria to save themselves from both targeted assassinations and massacres perpetrated by armed fundamentalist groups such as the GIA (Armed Islamic Group), AIS (Islamic Salvation Army), FIDA (Islamic Front for Armed Defence) and so on.

They have first-hand experience of what it means to live under the boot of the Muslim right and they now identify early warning signs of its political growth in France. Inducing or imposing a culturally alien dress code on women has been one of the first warning signs of rising fundamentalism in most Muslim countries. Asma Guenifi, a psychologist who lives near Paris and current president of AFEMCI (Association of Euro-Mediterranean Women Against Fundamentalisms), has lived through the horror – her 19-year-old brother was assassinated by armed fundamentalists on her family’s doorstep in Algiers during the ‘dark decade’ of the 1990s. She testifies: “I was born in Algeria. I witnessed the rise of fundamentalism. Unemployed boys who force you to wear a headscarf, mosques popping up like mushrooms, the social discourse, the extremists posing as victims… they are doing the same thing in France.”

Covering women is also just a first step that leads to many other demands, in particular the demands for separate religious family laws and courts. Speaking in Montreal on May 13, 2005 against religious courts as a means to arbitrate family disputes among Muslims, Soheib Bencheikh supported the principle of one law for all: “Positive laws, conceived of by representatives of all the people, including Muslims, must be enforced on everyone, including Muslims.”

Despite the fact that the international community falsely used the defence of women’s rights as a proffered justification for the invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq, and despite the increasing ‘instrumentalisation’ of secularism, women of migrant Muslim descent in France continue to support secularism to this day and to denounce the rise of fundamentalist forces that physically target women and girls in the ‘suburbs’ (i.e. the underprivileged areas around Paris and other big cities).

Aicha, a social worker from a Paris suburb, said in 2004: “Today the little brothers are the ones who tell their mother: your daughter must be veiled. This is the culture of the suburbs. What upsets me? That the extremists monopolise the attention of the state and the media. Nobody listens to Muslims who do not create trouble, who practise their religion in the private sphere.” Fadoua, 25, a student living near Paris, averred: “In my suburb, the streets belong to boys, girls stay at home. The outside space, the right to speak, everything is limited. I do not want to be limited to that.”

On April 11 this year Sihem Habchi of Ni Putes Ni Soumises spoke to Europe 1 radio on the enforcement of the new law banning the full-face veil: “This law was necessary to safeguard and protect these women [in the suburbs]… I think it is crucial not to step back, especially while one is witnessing a protest demo in which one can identify notorious Islamic fundamentalist activists.” Three years earlier, in a 2008 essay entitled ‘The Law of the Republic versus the “Law of the Brothers”’, Karima Bennoune, an Algerian American law professor at Rutgers University, had said much the same thing.

Moulded by their individual and familial life experiences, these secular women and their organisations are especially, and politically, well equipped to combat the problems that specifically affect citizens of migrant descent, such as racism and discrimination in jobs and housing (unemployment among youth of migrant descent rises from an average of 10 per cent to 16 per cent, and is as high as 50 per cent in the ‘suburbs’ of Paris), and to simultaneously stand for secularism, firmly refusing that social and political problems be addressed through a religious lens. For them, it is not an either/or option: they have to fight on both fronts.

We must acknowledge their political courage and clarity and learn from their analyses. If we do not, we will witness the communalisation of France, and indeed of all of Europe, through the abandonment of the notion of citizenship and the ethnicising and religionising of laws. This process, against which French citizens of migrant Muslim descent have been repeatedly warning the world, is, unfortunately, already well underway.

Archived from Communalism Combat, June 2011. Year 17, No.158 – Forum

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