French Not the Only Offenders on Hijab

The proposed French law banning the hijab in that country’s public school system has outraged Canada’s Muslim community and many civil liberty activists. Considering that France has been vocal in its support of the Muslim world in international affairs, many Muslims are bewildered by President Jacques Chirac’s ill-advised initiative.

Last Saturday, anger against the French proposal brought about a hundred Toronto Muslims to the streets. In freezing temperatures, they stood outside the French consulate waving placards and raising slogans to register their protest.

However, as I marched in solidarity with my fellow Muslims, I couldn’t help but realize that our reaction to the French initiative was not based on universal principles.

The French law may be foolish - if not outright racist - but our outrage against it leaves the door open for others to accuse us of double standards. If Muslim Canadians feel governments have no business dictating what their citizens should, or should not wear, then we need to apply this principle to all governments, not just the French.

If we consider the French law against the hijab offensive, then the Saudi and Iranian laws enforcing compulsory wearing of the hijab should also be condemned because they take away a woman’s right to choose.

While the proposed French law would ban Muslim women from wearing the hijab in school, the Saudi and Iranian laws ban women from appearing in public without the hijab. In the worst application of the Saudi law, 15 schoolgirls perished in March, 2002, when they were not permitted to flee their burning school in Mecca because they were not "wearing correct Islamic dress."

Why then are we not questioning the hijab laws of Saudi Arabia and Iran?

Why is our anger directed against the French alone?

Is it because Saudi Arabia and Iran are Muslim countries?

I asked a number of people at Saturday’s demonstration whether they were willing to stage a similar protest against Saudi Arabia and Iran. While some agreed with my rationale, many more answered my questions with empty stares or a flat refusal to even entertain such a discussion.

Considering the fact that the situation of Muslim women in Saudi Arabia far outweighs the problems facing them in France, the inability of the young Muslim protesters to see the obvious parallels, was disappointing.

Mouna Naim, a respected journalist with the French newspaper Le Monde, in a report from Saudi Arabia last month wrote of a 13-year-old Saudi girl who asked, "Why was I born a girl? This is a country of men, and I wish I was one."

The Le Monde correspondent wrote that while many Saudi women voluntarily wear the head cover, many others "find the wearing of the garment intolerable because they see it as embodying the raft of restrictions they have to endure, which include the requirement that the slightest patch of flesh must remain covered, reducing women to formless, uniform shadows."

In the days leading up to the Saturday demonstration outside the French consulate, there was considerable debate on the Internet on whether the French and Saudi laws were flip sides of the same argument, that is, state enforcement of citizen’s dress codes.

Judy Rebick, former head of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, and currently a professor at Ryerson, while supporting the protest outside the French consulate, addressed the concerns that demonstrating only against France without at the same time criticizing Saudi Arabia would send the wrong message. She wrote:

"I have heard similar concerns expressed by women’s groups from the Middle East. If we lived in France it would be a different story but since we are protesting the action of a foreign government, I think we should protest both sides of the problem.

"I think if we are going to protest against a state forcing women not to wear the hijab we should also protest forcing women to wear the hijab."

Rebick went on to say, "In France, it is racism and Islamophobia. In Saudi Arabia, it is fundamentalism and sexism. I think it is a good time to make the point that we are for freedom from oppression everywhere."

Muslim Canadians will be well served if they took Rebick’s suggestion to heart. Failure to apply the principle of universality, and refusal to double-critique our positions, could seriously hurt our credibility. When we Muslims demand that others respect our human rights, we need to be courageous and honest enough to recognize the oppression within our own community and speak out against it.