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.