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Will Banning the Burqa and the Niqab Also Thwart Women’s Rights?

The last issue of the Campus featured an article from The Peak, the Simon Fraser University newspaper, by Dan McPeake. It was titled “Being secular does not mean banning religion: French move to ban the burqa hurts religious freedom.” The editor’s note to the article pointed out that a similar ban is currently being debated in Quebec “with the introduction of Bill 94, which would require Muslim women to unveil their faces in government buildings, including public schools.” After reading McPeake’s article, I began thinking about female oppression, women’s rights and multiculturalism. Are the burqa and the niqab oppressive? Does banning these two versions of the Muslim veil thwart religious freedom and women’s rights? And, is this ban a positive move for Quebec and France?

Let me begin by discussing how the full-body Muslim veil is oppressive. In my opinion, although I am certainly not an expert in the Islam religion, these veils represent and reinforce a patriarchal appropriation of women’s bodies. They also repress female sexuality. Worn traditionally in Afghanistan and Iran, the burqa and the niqab “protect” women from the male gaze. Yet ironically, these veils were initially imposed to “protect” men from what is often considered unregulated female sexuality. Indeed, Muslim men are encouraged to control their sexual urges from female “temptresses.” It is thus the woman (and her body) who is blamed and punished—via “protection”—for male sexual desire.

But does the oppressive nature of the full-body veil mean that it should be banned? I very much agree with McPeake, who states that by banning the burqa, France also hinders religious freedom and women’s rights.  In his article, he wonders: “I thought having freedom meant having a choice: a choice to wear specific clothing, a choice to be a member of a specific religion, a choice to live however you choose.” McPeake also points out that these women are being discriminated against because they’re women. And thus I wonder: is the ban perhaps another way to target women, in particular, those women who abide to customs that Western society cannot fathom? Meeting a woman wearing a full-body veil may be socially challenging because it limits one’s ability to have a mutually engaged conversation with her, but does this mean that it should be banned? Women should have the right to choose if they want to wear the full-body veil, regardless of what may be its limitations. Although not all Muslims wear veils, it certainly isn’t fair to punish the ones that do.

Yet the issue becomes even more complex. Sheetal Pathak, a regular blogger, states that “the Muslim community itself is also divided on the issue of the niqab. Some suggest that a ban is necessary and others insist that wearing a niqab is a personal choice. I would personally like to hear more Muslim voices on this controversy.” I agree with Pathak. Instead of further alienating and marginalizing the Muslim community, Quebec and France should encourage and listen to the opinions of Muslim women. By doing this, they will also demonstrate that women, regardless of religion, can speak up and do have voices.

But is this really what they believe and want? Quebec and France demand that the burqa and the niqab be removed from their province but seem to show little, if any, interest in what Muslim women think about this decision. Their lack of interest in the Muslim point of view as well as French or Quebecois-Muslim experiences demonstrates (and promotes) a view of the Muslim minority as Other—as people not valuable enough to be heard. Accordingly, another blogger states: “it’s little wonder the Muslim population feels targeted.”

Nonetheless, many Muslim women are speaking up about the decision to ban the burqa and the niqab. Naïma Amed, for example, a woman who was asked by her CEGEP St-Laurent French teacher to remove her niqab, went so far as to file a human rights complaint against the province of Quebec.

According to Gavin Hewitt, a BBC Paris news reporter, “there is [also] a concern that some [Muslims] are pushing separate identities and that could lead to parallel rather than integrated communities.” This may be true; however, I think it is important to acknowledge that Quebec and France are also “pushing” away Muslim identities. France may not want a multicultural society, but Canada claims it does. In my opinion, a multicultural society is a hybrid society; it encourages, through a process of transculturation, a mutual exchange of and between cultures.

Yet integrated communities are only one issue among many involved in the banning of the burqa and the niqab. Another is the double bind that Muslim women are caught in. As Pathak notes, whether a Muslim woman wears the full-body veil or not, she will receive some kind of punishment and feel some kind of loss, either from her adopted country or her home country. This relates to the overriding question that I find myself asking: how can we, in countries with Muslim minorities, encourage equality without restricting religious freedom, but more specifically, women’s rights?

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