France has banned the burqa. The Minister for Justice justified the action by appealing to two principles: ‘democracy’, which I guess here means either equal treatment or equal rights – or both – and the ‘values of the Republic’, that accommodating idea.
Nicolas Sarkozy a year ago, in a speech:
In this country we cannot accept women imprisoned behind a grill, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity. This is not the idea of the dignity of women endorsed by the French Republic.
Unless we believe that the values of the Republic were engraved on a stone by the Spirit of 1789, we must conceive of them as a developing set, largely implicit, and of course created, to some extent, by such an edict from the President. France is right about this matter, and despite bully-supporters like Cory Bernardi, we would do well to emulate the French.
We won’t. The arguments from ‘human rights’ will prevail. That is, we will defend the tribal – not the religious – practice of hiding women from men’s eyes because, allegedly, the sight of any portion of their bodies will incite sexual desire. The argument that women are cut off from social life is just fine with tribal men: that’s what they want. The argument from equality doesn’t cut it either.
By the way, when someone is stoned to death in Iran and elsewhere, a man is buried up to the waist, but a woman up to the neck. This is so the men killing her will not see her breasts.
By taking their stand on the equality and dignity of women, the French have avoided the more controversial issue of religious freedom. If we accept the idea that total coverage is a religious practice, it could still be outlawed, but the arguments are much more difficult and divisive.
They are put with thoroughness and care in the NYT by Martha Nussbaum. Greatly though I respect her, I believe her to be mistaken. Her main mistake is to see the burqa as a religious practice. There is any amount of publicly-available material in which Muslims themselves deny this and condemn the garment. Nussbaum also seems to think that the meaning of the practice is somehow hidden, available only to experts. Well, consider Iran, where after 1989 the regime forced women into the garment by arrest, imprisonment and flogging. Nothing very mysterious about that.
In respect to aboriginal people, Australian decisions have consistently re-affirmed that where tribal law conflicts with the law of the land, tribal law must give way. We are dealing here with a tribal practice and we should apply the same reasoning – or else give up canting about equal opportunity.