Burqas, Bans and Feeble Women

Farah

I was a bit reluctant to add my voice to the “Do we ban the burqa?” debate considering the excellent stuff that’s been written, including Sahar’s response and Shakira Hussein’s post at new site South Asian Masala. I’m also aware of the dangers of endless debate on the burqa – Islam and Muslims are lot more diverse than a single item of clothing. But the debate took on a distinct Australian tone when a number of Australian journalists voiced their opinions. Jill Singer (journalist at Herald Sun) put in her 2 cents – falling in favour of a ban. She writes that the burqa is “all such a load of male supremacist tosh… the burka sends all sorts of messages that are anathema to ideals of freedom and gender equality.” I then found this op-ed by Australian journalist Virginia Haussegger “Ban the unAustralian burka” she writes. The Australian National University then hosted a public debate featuring Haussegger, Julie Posetti, and Shakira Hussein – the latter two arguing against a ban.

A lot of writers (including Posetti and Hussein) against a ban point out that a number of women actively choose to wear the burqa or niqab. While the burqa has been used by groups to subjugate women, these writers highlight the need to identify the agency of these Muslim women, rather than denying them that agency which a ban would do. But Haussegger quickly dismisses this argument. She writes:

“I abhor the burka, and the niqab. I hate what it does to women … I am furious that some women will continue to choose to wear it. But then, throughout history, feeble women who are afraid of modernity, have always been complicit in their own oppression.”

Feeble women complicit in their own oppression? Gee Haussegger the respect you have for your fellow women really shines through your writing. She disregards the experience of the individual woman wearing the burqa; it is less important than what the burqa symbolises. She continues:

“The burka … and the niqab … [are] … tool[s] of patriarchy used to subjugate women. This shroud of cloth thrown over women defies freedom. It is a symbol of control. Wearing it signifies an acceptance of segregation of the sexes.”

My problem is that her argument it’s too simplistic; burqa = subjection and oppression, no burqa = freedom. And I don’t remember when stark dichotomies that replicated Orientalist assumptions actually helped anyone. When analysing a burqa it’s important to keep in mind that it’s a powerful, loaded symbol and operates within a broader discourse. In Mythologies Roland Barthes’s suggested that signs could be used as signifiers for other concepts; those concepts he identified as mythologies formed to perpetuate an idea of society. The myths are artificial constructions, adding a new layer of meaning over text and speech. He highlights that what we accept as being a natural, inductive relationship between the text and the myth is in fact an illusory reality constructed in order to mask the real structure of power.

In her approach Haussegger uses the burka as a loaded symbolic text for an idea – the oppression and subjugation of women. And like Barthes notes, to symbolize is to be. So, even if a garment does not literally restrict, if it signifies restriction then the garment restricts all those who wear it, freely chosen or not. But the myth of oppression constructed around the burqa deprives the burqa of substance; the burqa is distorted to suit the needs of the myth. Though it remains within the concept, it is “half-amputated … deprived of memory … [it is] speech wholly at the service of the concept. The concept, literally, deforms, but does not abolish the meaning … it alienates it.”

Another important point to acknowledge is that Haussegger assumes that all those oppressed Muslim will tear of their burqa’s and proclaim liberation were a ban in place. Unfortunately not many pro-ban writers acknowledge that forced removal of a vital part of a woman’s identity will see those women further retreat from the public into the home. We are all too aware of the “women need to be liberated” rhetoric adopted by the Bush regime in order to justify the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. Well the Taliban are gone and the Afghan women are liberated – they no longer need to wear their burqas! And yet, Taliban or not the situation of women has barely improved – the majority of women (including Malalai Joya whom Hausseggar loves to cite as supporting her argument) continue to wear the burqa for security reasons. Similarly, at crikey Durkhanai Ayubi writes, “If a ban on the “unAustralian” burqah were to be accepted, women who choose to wear one will be further alienated from society.” It also reminds me of a post Faith wrote over at MMW regarding a Dutch anti-discrimination ad campaign. And as Hussein points out in the ANU public debate, you can’t force liberation onto women.

I’m not denying the use of the burqa to oppress and subjugate women. But to then deny that the burqa inhabits a number of uses and roles along with oppression is to deny the inherent dynamism of the burqa. Linking it to one myth and generalising that experience to the whole of Muslim women is patronising and smacks of neo-colonialism. As Nazish Brohi argues in her article “At the Altar of Subalternity: The Quest for Muslim Women in the War on Terror Pakistan after 9/11″, “this selective invocation is reducing spaces for women’s personal identity formation and its political articulation, and by coopting the very language of women’s rights and empowerment and investing in it political strategies, has rendered it ineffective.” And the lingering question remains: banning a garment, a single piece of clothing, doesn’t necessarily combat the ideology that is used when the burqa is forced onto women. A ban would be an empty, symbolic gesture perpetuating another myth and another power structure: Australia’s control over the Others in our midst, dictating that “we” know about democracy, Australian-ness and compassion while “they” do not.

During the debate Haussegger referred to French minister Fadela Amara and her organisation Ni putes ni soumises, “Neither Whores Nor Submissives”, arguing that Amara is a Muslim feminist who also supports the ban on the burqa. In a second post written after the public debate Haussegger also highlights Mona Eltahawy’s anti-burqa stance published at the New York Times. Sahar’s already responded to Eltahawy a couple of weeks ago, and it’s enough to note here that Amara’s organisation and her views have come under fire for supporting a racist, essentialised construction of women and Islam. What I wanted to highlight is the way in which Haussegger is using Amara and Eltahawy opinions as native informers. In her article “Should I Go and Pull Her Burqa Off? Feminist Compulsions, Insider Consent, and a Return to Kandahar” Usamah Ansari analyses the role of the native informer within the context of the documentary “Return to Kandahar”. She argues that women like Eltahawy and Amara are “Orientalized insider subject[s] who mediate the audience’s encounter with the Other… [they are] positioned within a supposedly traditional society and yet also exposed enough to modernity to speak to the audience.” Their voices are legitimised by Haussegger more so than Rabiah Hutchinson, an Australian Muslim convert who freely choses to wear the burqa but whose choice is dismissed by Haussegger because “not all choices are good choices.” Haussegger also states that Hutchinson has also made several bad choices in the past, so we can’t really rely on her as providing an alternative approach to the burqa. The inherent danger with relying on the views of Eltahawy and Amara is that it obscures the multitude of Muslim women who speak out in favour of a more dynamic construct of the burqa. Instead of relying on Eltahawy and Amara’s voices as being an ‘authentic’ view of how things should change ‘over there’, we must interrogate how their views relate to and contribute to the reductive approach to Islam and women’s experiences. And as Ansari concludes, “this interrogation helps challenge the essentialist notion that, by virtue of her insider status [their] testimony ‘‘rightly’’ provides a picture of how [the] community should be. Thus, by questioning the authentic insider we challenge the very foundations of consents to imperialism.”

The last op-ed I’d like to point you to is one by Australia’s biggest neo-con journalist – Andrew Bolt. I stopped reading the pseudo-journalism he churns out a long time ago but I find myself in the uneasy position of for once not thinking he’s a complete tosser. In his op-ed he notes, “I’d say I agreed the burqa was offensive, oppressive and divisive. I’d be very glad if it were removed from Australia, but I’d rather wage that battle with opinions than bans.” Andrew Bold not arguing in favour of a ban?? Admittedly, there are still shades of idiocy but for once he’s not acting like a COMPLETE tool. Maybe Haussegger (and the rest of the pro-ban writers) should take note of two things, firstly, read up on how to deconstruct semiological systems which perpetuate the creation of modern myths (rather than contribute to such systems) and secondly, if ANDREW BOLT doesn’t argue for a ban then maybe a ban is a lost cause.

A feminist blog?

Sahar

A lot of people describe Nuseiba as a feminist blog because it focuses on Muslim women and attempts to express their voice on multiple issues.  However, I don’t really like the idea of Nuseiba being understood as a feminist blog, because my intentions for it are part of a broader project of Islamic revivalism. So I was pleased to come across the writings and work of Nadia Yassine, who is the founder and head of the woman’s branch of the Moroccan Islamist movement Al Adl Wa Al Ihsanne (Justice and Charity). Yassine highlights her position as a politically active Muslim woman who is  conscious of the  issues plaguing her community, especially that of women. Her vision, expressed in the following quote,  is similar to what I see for Nuseiba.

If you mean by feminism pleading the cause of women, then I am a feminist; but better yet, I’m activist for the restoring of the rights granted to women by Islam. But I am very cautious regarding labels. Mine is not the feminism of Simone de Beauvoir, the Western style feminism. I have my very own Islamic references.

The thing is the West got rid of the idea of God, at least in the public sphere. Its endeavors are purely materialistic. They thus automatically exclude any idea of spirituality or return to God. My struggle, on the other hand, is essentially spiritual, not a struggle between men and women for material entitlements. God has given rights to women in Islam; these inalienable rights are far greater than any rights enjoyed by other women anywhere else at any given time. With that said, the rights of women in Islam have unfortunately eroded over the course of Islamic history. This malaise that has steadily eroded the rights of women in Islam has taken its toll on men too. It is an endeavor to restore the rightful place of women in a society that can never be revived without their real participation.

New blog

I’ll be writing for a new blog called The Granada Blog . It is part of a broader project of intellectual revivalism. I think any Muslim who is interested in the current state of our community and wanting to understand it should check out the blog. The writers are highly educated, informed and genuinely passionate about such issues.   The following is a brief description of the aims and objectives of the Granada Project.

The Granada Project represents a core of students and professionals that are currently attempting to introduce cultures into the Muslim community that have the ability to empower its members. By cultures, we mean modalities of ‘thinking in practice’ that reflect both our principles and the contexts we are a part of.

The first culture we are trying to create and sustain is one of critical movement. That is, we are striving to generate community movement that incorporates a critical and insightful understanding of our society.

It is our hope that out of this culture a movement will emerge that will be able to service our community by providing it with an experienced understanding of our society.

Europe, Islamophobia and Lone Wolves

Farah

Marwa al-Sherbini was a 31-year old Egyptian wife, mother, daughter and sister. She was stabbed in court by a German man identified as Axel W. They were in court at Alex W’s appeal against a fine for insulting her in 2008. He called her a terrorist and Islamist while she was playing with her three-year-old son in a park. The prosecutor of Alex W’s impending murder charge, Christian Avenarius, said: “It was very clearly a xenophobic attack of a fanatical lone wolf.” But as Sobia over at MMW points out in her response, “[Alex W’s] hate of Muslims and derogatory views of Muslims were not his own creation, but rather a creation of the world he lives in. His actions were not that of a lone wolf, but rather of one living in a society full of Islamophobia.”

While running the risk of my voice drowning in a sea of other blog posts, an interesting discussion has developed in response to Sobia’s post. Is the “lone wolf argument” valid, or is his attack symptomatic of a wider, deeper racist Islam and Muslims gripping Europe and America? More importantly, is it valid to analyse Alex W’s actions within a broader context (systematic Islamophobia) while denying context to violence that occurs within Muslim communities and/or by Muslims?

Nesrine Malik at the Guardian also asks the same question. “Muslims … constantly protest that the actions of a few extremists should not be allowed to denigrate Islam and its adherents as a whole – but this is exactly what they are doing themselves in connection with Europeans and the actions of Axel W.” The problem I have with this argument is that it’s simplistic. Manifestations of racism within Europe and America must be understood within a history of institutionalised racism not only against Muslims but other minority groups like gypsies and slaves. You can’t then flip the position and argue to understand extremism in the same way. Attributing acts of violence committed by Muslims to a broader context of “Islam” to me suggests that such acts are justified by Islam. It also ignores other potent issues which must also be looked at when analysing such acts. The other problem I have is that when acts of extremism or domestic violence occur by Muslims or within Muslim communities, the default reaction everyone has is to firstly, blame the whole of Islam and then secondly ask every Muslim to explain what happened. Every single time! It’s like a never ending car trip, you know, “are we there yet are we there yet?”

Take Aasiya Hassan’s murder. Some of the first headlines that started emerging involved some form of the words honour killing, Islam and wife-bashing Muslim husband, and included with immediate comparisons to the usual three countries (Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia) and the oppression of women there. Never mind the fact that there was a history of domestic violence in the marriage or that both weren’t actually from Afghanistan, Iran OR Saudi Arabia. And don’t even mention the fact that both actually grew up in the US, because that would suggest that something other than Islam (say, something like diaspora or alienation in a foreign land) actually contributed to the husband’s mental instability ( but note I say “contribute” not “justify”.) This isn’t to undermine the oppression of women in those countries, but the misogyny in say Saudi Arabia isn’t really comparable to case of domestic violence in the USA – different analyses are required.*

So racism in Europe and America must be understood within a historical context. The ideological justification for racism has been maintained for centuries. The Enlightenment provided the colonial powers with an explicitly racist justification for the colonial project. The period allowed the colonial powers to justify the dehumanization of colonial subjects. And that they did extremely well. Racism today might not be so strictly ‘race-based’ anymore, but like John Solomos and Les Beck point out race today is “coded as culture.” This is the new racism – defined by George Fredrickson as “a way of thinking about difference that reifies and essentializes culture rather than genetic endowment, or in other words, makes culture do the work of race.” The institutionalized structures of racist ideology remain operative, but they now stigmatize cultural or religious groups as dangerous and foreign. And the fact remains: hostility and discrimination against Muslims “represent a reversion to the way that the differences between ethnoracial groups could be made to seem indelible and unbridgeable.”

While writing this post, I found this article courtesy of the BBC. Neo-Nazi convicted of terror plan?? The poor misunderstood neo-Nazis! Seriously though guys, we should consider his acts to be of a lone-wolf style, his opinions not attributable to other neo-Nazis, and not an extension of Nazism in the 1930s. Otherwise, we could erroneously blame the neo-Nazi community and contribute to a culture of fear and hate towards … neo-Nazis… wait, what’s my argument again? I think I’m confused.

Yes, all violence must be understood contextually. So too must the rise of anti-Muslim sentiment and Islamophobia around Europe and America be understood. But that context is born out of the Enlightenment, has a history of colonialism and the subjugation and domination over the subaltern Other.

*The idea of a ‘global sisterhood’ of women and the so-called ‘universal’ female experience won’t be discussed here, mostly because I think such claims are a load of bull used to justify the ability of Western feminists to talk about issues affecting subaltern women in a way totally divorced from any real context.

Mona Eltahawy on the burqa

Sahar

It seems that Mona Eltahawy has joined the vocal liberal camp in Europe (particular France) that wishes to either discourage or entirely ban the burqa. The New York Times published her response to the burqa debate raging in France. Eltahawy begins her article stating her ideological position as a Muslim feminist and asserts, “I detest the full-body veil, known as a niqab or burqa. It erases women from society and has nothing to do with Islam but everything to do with the hatred for women at the heart of the extremist ideology that preaches it”.

I also disagree with the burqa and don’t see any explicit justification for it in Islam apart from a matter of interpreting what is modest dress.  But Eltahawy goes to as far to reduce the burqa to a symbol of misogyny– which sounds quite familiar. During the 2004 banning of the headscarf in state schools and government institutions, many French feminists actually used the same explanation to describe the headscarf along similar lines. The headscarf was described as oppressive and a symbol of Islam’s hatred for women. But I’m sure Eltahawy would find this conflation problematic yet difficult in distinguishing when she admits she concurs with Sarkozy when he stated that the burqa is a sign of submission of women and subjugation. Instead, Eltahawy believes that the best way to support Muslim women is to “say we oppose both racist Islamophobes and the burqa”, and claims, “We’ve been silent on too many things out of fear we’ll arm the right wing”.

However, the best way to support Muslim women is to respect their choice in how they express their religion and culture. It is not to impose what we think is good for them.  I find it ironic that Eltahawy who claims to be a feminist is ignoring the importance of choice, agency and the lived experiences of these women— which are essential factors in understanding women in feminist analysis.

Nor do we all agree with Eltahawy who, perhaps due to her socially privileged position is detached from the social, political and religious motivations for wearing burqa, and can’t comprehend how it can be a vehicle of success for some or a proud reinforcement of Muslim identity for others. The burqa can be understood as a symbol of the outrage Muslims are feeling as they are exposed to an increasingly xenophobic Europe.  It’s symbolic of an attempt to cling on to an identity that is being eroded in a hostile environment. I write this piece now after just reading about an Egyptian woman who was stabbed in a German court 18 times by the man she was suing for harassing her for wearing a headscarf.  It is not the burqa alone that is being undermined and discredited but Islamic dress entirely. Therefore, the call to remove the burqa cannot be devoid of such a context and for Eltahawy to think that divorcing her criticism from such a context as viable is politically naïve.

As I noted in my previous piece on the burqa in France, many of the women who wear it are converts to Islam and willingly wear it as a proud show of their Muslim identity. At university, I witnessed women who wore burqa for two fundamental reasons: they felt it was their best way of expressing their modesty and/or wished to express their Muslim identity as they saw fit. These women were very intelligent, pursuing impressive degrees, and did not all come from conservative families. Eltahawy seems to reinforce the Western assumption that it is Islamic fundamentalism that is motivating these women to wear it. There is no room to factor in the preservation of a particular identity or expression of faith.

Though Eltahawy does make a brief reference to the influence of identity politics, she discounts it with her passionate claim that the burqa is undermining women’s freedom. Whilst making this claim, she assumes a Saidian permission to narrate– in which these women are constructed as having no agency of their own, needing ‘protection’ and so must be spoken for.  However, her narration inaptly imposes a single meaning.

She then writes, “It’s one thing to argue about the burqa in a country like Saudi Arabia — where I lived for six years and where women are treated like children — but it is utterly dispiriting to have those same arguments in a country where women’s rights have long been enshrined. When I first saw a woman in a burqa in Copenhagen I was horrified”.

Eltahawy here reinforces the dichotomy of women oppressed in Muslim countries (Saudi Arabia) and the liberated woman of the West (Copenhagen and France). It’s shocking for her to have witnessed the barbarity and oppression of the Muslim world (veiling) present in the land of freedom (unveiling). She should know that such hermetic and simplistic divisions rely on historical stereotypes tied closely with power but are remote in explaining the social and political realities.  I’m sure there would be many Saudi women who would not appreciate having their existence reduced to something so demeaning—though I do not deny the suffering of those in Saudi Arabia, but my point is women’s oppression should not be a problem restricted to Saudi Arabia. Nor should it be associated with the burqa alone, rather, we should recognise the dangers in such totalising discourses which demote experience.  

Eltahawy further points out how the burqa deprives women of identity and is symbolic of the “erasure of women”.  So a woman’s identity is solely based on physical appearance now? Must a woman define herself based on how much people see of her? She is a non-person, unintelligible, unless she exposes herself. Conversely, many women who wear headscarf and burqa argue that the lack of emphasis they have to put on their appearance makes them more aware of improving their minds rather than looking at fashion attire or physical beauty to understand themselves.

Moreover, the call to remove the burqa (and other Islamic dress) is part of an insatiable desire of the Western gaze to penetrate what is hidden and appropriate it for its own. This is done so in the guise of emancipation but also in the attempt to assimilate Muslim women into a type of ‘woman’. We’re told that the burqa dehumanizes women, so it must be removed in order to put a human face to these women. In actuality, unveiling occurs so they become comprehensible to the Western eye. According to Mina Moallem, they must signify what she calls ‘white femininity’ which, ironically in this context, entails exposing the female body to objectification. In other words, removing the burqa is part of a mimetic process.  Thus, Eltahawy’s dichotomy of the liberating West and the oppressive Muslim world is problematised further in how she ignores the objectification in which woman’s identity, role and importance is contingent upon her market value. Is not a woman erased when she wears a bikini or wears the latest fashion attire, hair done, her face painted like a doll? She becomes meaningless and one can fairly argue, erased.

Eltahawy and Sarkozy’s call to remove the burqa may have different motivations but the implications are similar: undermining women’s choice, violating cultural and religious freedom ( in doing so exposing the contradictions in Western liberalism and its notion of freedom). Moreover, both are operating within a homogenizing framework that is ethnocentrically bias, and contributing to an insidious campaign to undermine and eradicate any manifestation of Islam.

A one-year-old blog

Wow. It was around this time last year when I decided to start Nuseiba , admittedly with low expectations.  One year on and it’s still alive and active, alhamdullilah. Thanks everyone!

The ‘enemy’ within: Muslims in France

Sahar

It seems France hasn’t had sufficient amount of negative attention. News has been buzzing on the latest debate over dress in the country. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has set up a commission to study the wearing of burqa in France—a long garment that covers the entire body including the face. According to Sarkozy, the burqa “deprived women of identity” and believes it is unacceptable to have women in France as “prisoners behind netting”.

Nor is Sarkozy alone in such sentiments. French feminists have been particularly vocal about the burqa and like Sarkozy see it as a symbol of subservience. According to Silhem Habchi from the women’s rights group ‘Ni Putes, Ni Soumises’ (Neither Whores Nor Subjected), it is a symbol of fascism and “the Talibanisation of religion.” More than 50 MPs from across the political spectrum have called for restrictions on wearing burqa which they describe as a “coffin”.

Yet the actual number of burqa and niqaab (with eye-slit) wearers in France is low. Muslim groups estimate that there are perhaps only a few hundred women fully covering themselves out of a Muslim population of over 5 million. Ironically, many of those who fully cover are converts.

Underneath the language of laicite and paternalism bares a history that only partly explains the fetishistic approach on the part of the state to maintain a particular French identity that is secular, European and homogeneous.

France’s past attests to a long struggle between the state and church which culminated in French laicite (secularism)—the strict division between the state and church. The 1905 law of secularity is enforced militantly but relevant to the current context, the law was founded on a homogeneous France that no longer exists today.

Since the 1970s, France has been growing in cultural diversity with the presence of cheap labour workers from its former colonies in the Maghreb. However, French attitude toward cultural diversity would suggest little has changed in the demographic makeup of the country. The state does not recognise minority rights and enforces a colonial-style assimilation model on its immigrants whereby they’re expected to assimilate into a French abstraction. Thus, religious and cultural rights are only approved in consideration of a particular French secularism and mainly relegated to the private. In the case of Islam, this has been hugely problematic considering the private and public aren’t divided as such in matters of religious practice.  The hijab has become symbolic of this contention.

An interesting debate occurred on Al Jazeera between director of Human Rights Watch in Paris Jean-Marie Fardeau, writer Anne Elizabeth Moutet and Saudi media personality in the Middle East, Muna Abdulsulayman. I’m in agreement with Abdulsulayman that the burqa isn’t obligatory in Islam and shouldn’t be defended as such, but I think she should have really stressed the right for a woman to choose to wear it. I’ve blogged about the burqa in France here and here  in note of this, however, I pointed out in my post that I do believe that a woman’s right to choose how to express her religion (her interpretation of what modesty is) or her culture as she sees fit is fundamental to her dignity and should be protected. So, it is a matter of choice—whether we agree with it or not is irrelevant.

My other main objection to the proposed ban of the burqa is within the context of the 2004 legislation which prohibits the wearing of “ostentatious religious symbols” in public schools and government offices. Though it was claimed it was not specifically targeting any religious group, it mainly affected the wearing of headscarves for young Muslim women. Like they have been with the burqa issue, French feminists were equally as vocal and supported the ban. Well known French feminists like Anne Vigerie, the leader of a feminist think tank and Elisabeth Badinter reinforced the media’s theme of associating the hijab with Islamic extremism, viewing the headscarf as ‘le drapeu sur la tete” (flag on the head) that confirms the underdeveloped status of women in radical Islam.

The ban too was justified with the claim it was to ‘protect’ women from religious misogyny. In actuality, these debates are emphatically demonstrating the state’s attempt to eradicate the presence of Islam in public.

In its attempt to justify the violation of basic religious and cultural freedoms, France has vehemently responded to criticism explaining that it is  for the state’s security. From what exactly? A type of dress worn by a ridiculously small minority of women? It’s interesting to note that at the time of the 2004 ban, the number of women wearing it was small in proportion to the total Muslim population. But in both cases the hysteria that the headscarf and burqa has whipped up would suggest that it is worn by millions striving to dominate French society.

French philosopher Alain Badiou writes that it is fear that drives such criticism of ‘foreign’ (Muslim) dress. The justification for protecting a secular identity is a front to undermine Islam in France, and this is closely tied with another part of France’s history:  the French conquest of Algeria in 1830. The country suffers from a pathological fear of a ‘Muslim threat’ born in the Algerian revolutionary struggle against French colonialism. The hijab in its haik form was used as a form of national assertion and a reclaiming of a Muslim and cultural identity. Thus, the same French mission to civilise Muslim women persists today. French Muslim women are being ‘unveiled’ as part of a contemporary French colonial mission civilisatrice, in order to ‘teach’ the Muslim Other the superiority of Western knowledge and culture.

Today,  the presence of the hijab in whatever form is one that offends. This is because it’s a symbol of the failure to ‘civilise’ the Algerian and by extension, Muslims. The burqa’s presence awakens a French fear and humiliation of the ‘loss’ of Algeria and the historical defeat to Islam. It is also symbolic of the irreducible difference and thus the unassimilability of Islam. Europeans –in this case French– identity is conveniently constructed to contrast with the other (Muslim) who do not belong in Europe. 

These fears are accentuated further in the post 911 context in which Islam and Muslims have become victims of a bogeyman mindset which has had  major implications on Muslims:  They are the ‘enemy within’–dehumanised to the point of irrelevance.

So the current burqa issue can only be understood in its proper context which recognises Europe’s history with the Muslim world, France’s colonisation of the Maghreb and the current 911 political climate where Islamophobia has permeated all levels of European society.