Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's '16 reasons to ban the burqa'

Following on from her debate with Salma Yaqoob in Saturday’s Guardian, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s column in today’s Independent dwells on the burqa ban that comes into force in France on April 11th. Alibhai-Brown runs through a preliminary list of sixteen objections (the rest is available on the website of British Muslims for Secular Democracy, for any who’s interested).

She writes:

“Here is a list of my main objections:

1. While modesty is required of Muslim men and women and men are asked to “lower their gazes”, there is no injunction to hide the hair, and the verses on coverings have different interpretations. The Prophet’s wives were veiled to stop harassers and supplicants. Saudis use big money to push their fanatically anti-woman Islam in this country. Each niqab is one more win in that assault on hearts and minds.

Displaying her total lack of scholarly credentials, Alibhai-Brown doesn’t cite the opinions of the four major Sunni schools of thought on the verses from Surah Noor that deal with modesty and covering. Choosing instead to label all juristic opinions on the matter as petro-dollar fatwas really is most ignorant. How many Muslim women who cover justify their choice through reference to Saudi scholars?

2. Iranian, Afghan, Saudi and other Muslim women are beaten and tortured for the smallest sartorial transgression. European Muslims donning the niqab are giving succour to the oppressors in those countries.

Are non-Muslim women living in Europe then responsible for the mass rape of Bosnian Muslims during the break up of the former Yugoslavia and the ensuing ethnic cleansing wars between the Croat, Serbian and Bosnian states as they sought to eradicate the “Muslim presence” in the Balkans? Is any individual responsible for crimes committed against another over which they have no power or authority? And is it proper to curtail the liberty of European Muslim women to dress as they please by benchmarking their freedoms against those adopted by authoritarian and oppressive states? What other lessons on liberty would Alibhai-Brown have us take from Iran, Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia?

3. They say it stops molestation and is a mark of respect. Oh yeah? So tell me why there are appalling levels of rape and violence in Muslim lands. And by implication do we, European women who don’t cover, therefore deserve molestation?

It is specious to invert the argument propounded by wearers of the face veil to presume that by their act of covering they determine the meaning of the choice made by others to not cover. When will Yasmin understand that those Muslim women who adopt the face veil are making a choice they feel is right for them, they’re not making a choice for all womankind, nor are their reasons for choosing to cover applicable or relevant to any other than themselves?

4. It is a form of female apartheid, of selected segregation tacitly saying non-veiled women are pollutants. There is such a thing as society and we connect with our faces. A veiled female withholds herself from that contact and reads our faces, thus gaining power over the rest of us.

The nature of society in an industrialized economy is not anywhere near as simple or rudimentary as “connect[ing] with our faces”. Visual contact is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition to facilitate interaction, communication and a sense of connection. People making use of telephones, Skype or other communication techniques are still able to feel a connection without requiring visual contact.

And since we all enjoy the power of speech, covered or uncovered, should we put stock in visual contact alone and ignore other, more meaningful, forms of interaction?

5. “Choice” cannot be the only consideration. And anyway, there is no evidence that all the women are making rational, independent decisions. As with forced marriages, they can’t refuse. Some are blackmailed and others obey because they are too scared to say what they really want. Some are convinced they will go to hell if they show themselves. Some bloody choice.

What evidence is there to suggest that these women don’t act out of choice? Alibhai-Brown fails to cite any. Can you argue against a proposition that has no basis or which is not substantiated?

And if “choice” cannot be the only consideration, what others are there? Why should a woman’s right to choose to cover be sidelined but her right to make choices in other regards, say work or politics, be championed? Just to be clear, is the argument being advanced that a woman’s right to choose is not absolute but contingent on the choices she exercises? And who determines which choices are the “right” ones? 

6. It sexualises girls and women in the same way as “erotic” garb does and is just as obscene.

An absurd suggestion as any will attest who has seen a woman in niqab and burqa. As for the “erotic garb” equivalence, will Alibhai-Brown also then advocate for the closure of Ann Summers’ shops on our high streets? Or take up a campaign against mainstream sexualisation of females through fashion?

7. When a woman is fully shrouded, how do we know if she is a victim of domestic violence?

Domestic violence is grossly under-reported in the UK with analysis from the British Crime Survey suggesting that between 23% and 35% domestic abuse cases are reported to local police forces. Intervention to assist women who are suspected of being victims of domestic violence rests not solely on the ability to see them but on relationships of trust. If we opt to demonise women who wear face veils can be seriously expect to be in a position to help them should they need someone to turn to in an hour of need?

8. God gave women femininity and individuality. Why should we bury those gifts? How grotesque to ask a woman to parcel herself up and be opened up by only her husband.

Are Muslim women to have their right to express femininity and individuality, these God given gifts, determined by those who fail to appreciate choices that don’t concur with their own? A strange argument advancing “individuality” when the option seems to be “this way is the only way”.

9. What an insult this is to Muslim men – the accusation that they will jump any woman not protected with a cloth. Are we to assume that sexuality snakes around every male-female contact, even between a surgeon and patient, bank clerk and customer, teacher and pupil?

It is an insult indeed to suggest that Muslim males would behave in such crude ways. But since Muslim women who wear face veils don’t believe this of Muslim males nor explain their choice of dress based on such a base definition of the male Muslim character, what exactly is her point?

10. When on hajj in Mecca, men and unveiled women pray together. The Saudis want to change that.

The rites governing Hajj and the non-veiling of women in the sacred precincts is not something the Saudis control but something determined by scripture and traditions. Or is Alibhai-Brown suggesting that the Saudis are re-writing religion for Muslims who are, all 1.6 billion of them, passive recipients of Saudi diktat.

11. The niqab is pre-Islamic, was worn b
y upper-class Byzantine women to keep away from riff-raff.

Are we to be constrained by historic precedents and the meanings ascribed in the past to forms or styles of dress today?  There are numerous examples of reinterpreted fashions, from jeans to tans, where the traditions or meanings ascribed to things in the past are debunked in favour of different meanings in the present.

And if the niqab really is pre-Islamic, wouldn’t the first people to dispute the practice be the “puritanical” scholars of Saudi Arabia?

12. Muslim women in the 1920s and 1930s threw off these garments to claim freedom – my mother’s generation. Their struggles are dishonoured by brainwashed females.

Aside from the disparaging reference to women who wear face veils as “brainwashed females”, were the struggles of women of the past for freedom really intended to engender another form of oppression with uncovered females dictating the terms of freedom for others? What is the greater dishonour to memory, replacing one form of cultural oppression with another, or respecting the rights of all women to choose, whether that be to cover or not?

13. Veil supporters say they are going back to the original Islamic texts and lives. But they don’t ride camels, and have mobile phones and computers. So they can embrace modernity but refuse to on this.

We would recommend Ms Alibhai-Brown read Joan Wallach-Scott’s “The Politics of the Veil”. She might learn a thing or two about the veil and its being an expression of modernity, not a rebellion against it.

14. These women who fight for their rights to veil do not fight for the rights of those of us who won’t.

Nonsense. Women who choose to wear face veils know very well that they exercise the right for themselves alone. They do not look to infer anything about the religiosity or otherwise of women who don’t. What sort of modesty would that be, to exercise humility in respect of oneself and hubris in regard of others?

15. They say it is free will, but in three private Muslim schools in Britain, girls have to wear niqab and are punished for not obeying. The same is true in many families and communities.

This perhaps refers to the Sunday Telegraph article stating that three Muslim schools in the UK require females to observe veiling as part of the school uniform. Coercing individuals to adopt the veil is as abhorrent as compelling women to remove them. Why then does Ms Alibhai-Brown rail against coercing women to wear veils but not champion the rights of those who freely choose to do so? Are women who wear face veils guilty of exercising the wrong sort of free choice?

16. Most importantly, all these cloth casings accept that females are dangerous and evil, that their presence only creates inner and outer havoc in men and public spaces. All religions believe that to some extent. Feminists must fight these prejudices.

A repetition of the argument (see 9) that Muslim males are sexual predators and that women must cover to placate their appetites. Such gross generalizations of the reasons why women choose to adopt face veils is unworthy of any educated individual. And if feminists are urged to fight prejudice, let them also fight the ignorance that lies at the root of it.

This research by Irene Zempi of Leicester University on the experiences of veiled women living in Leicester might be of interest to Ms Alibhai-Brown. Zempi states: “Persistent staring, spitting, calling names, throwing of eggs or stones, and pulling women’s veils off are the overwhelming types of anti-Muslim hostilities, yet rarely reported to the police. As a result, this victimisation remains ‘invisible’ for police and local authority.”

Will we hear Yasmin speak out against this victimisation or does she think these Muslim women bring it upon themselves? We’d welcome a response from British Muslims for Secular Democracy on just what sort of “democratic” society they’re working towards. And might we remind them of these words from President Obama’s Cairo speech:

“It is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practising religion as they see fit, for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We cannot disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism.”