DR. S. AUSAF SAIED VASFI analyses the what and why of the recent blanket ban on burqua in France.
There are four countries in the world which have shown periodic but extraordinary enthusiasm in banning the niquab, hejab, burqua or veil. They are France, Italy, Belgium and Australia. But France tops in frenzy.
What is the demographic position of Muslims there? According to Pew Research Centre Report of Mapping the Global Muslim Population, which released its report on the subject in October 2009, the Muslim segment of the French population is 3,554,000. It is 6 per cent of the total population. Out of them only 2,000 women wear the niquab.
Italy’s Muslim population is 36,000. It is 0.1 per cent of the country’s populace. There are only 30 women who wear the hejab over there.
Belgium’s total population is 281,000. It is 3 per cent of the country’s populace. Out of them less than 1 per cent women wear the burqua.
Australia’s Muslim population is 365,000. It is 1.7 per cent of the total populace. Around the same figure of women wear the veil.
The commentators in Paris feel the right wing president, Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy is targeting one of France’s most vulnerable groups to signal to anti-immigration voters that he shares their “fear that Islam is a threat to the French culture.”
THREAT?
But suppose these commentators and critics of the president are wrong and he honestly feels Islam is a threat to the French culture. Can he, as a reasonable personage, cite a few concrete examples to prove relevance of his clumsy point? He must enlighten the world as to how many Christians or Jews, being impressed by the French Muslim women’s niquabs, have embraced Islam and renounced their parent religions and started proselytisation of the new ideology, resulting in conversions to Islam? Or how many non-Muslim citizens in France have now started feeling apologetic about the higher moral values given by the French Revolution (1789-1799), like liberty, equality and fraternity?
Many crooks in the western hemisphere feel their progress has transcended the boundaries of civilizations. We really fail to appreciate what greatness is there in the incessant pursuit of the ultimate joy, pseudo-nationalism like Pax-Americana, conspiracies to destabilise the foreign countries for the sake of contracts, running into billion dollars, and finally oil which runs the world machinery today. We also fail to see merit in the legitimisation of extra-marital relationships and unnatural sex.
CONSTERNATION
The avoidable provocation launched by the French president, followed by the arrest of veil-wearing French women on April 11 is yet another example of causing unnecessary hurt and consternation to the Muslim community.
Does the president of France know that inflicting his or his admirers’ peculiar sartorial taste on the French Muslim women is insulting to their intelligence and, decency and demeaning their persona?
What should they, or what should they not, wear is none the business of the president. It is beyond his domain. He is nobody to poke his nose into women’s business. He has no locus standi to advise the French Muslim women to wear this or not wear that.
In fact, the basic point involved in the debate is: Is France a plural, democratic and liberal state or a socialist straitjacket?
France is fortunate in having courageous Muslim ladies like the 32-year old Ms Kenza Drider from the southern city of Arignon, who said: “This law (dealing with hejab) infringes my European rights. I cannot but defend them, that is to say my freedom to come and go and my religious freedom.”
France is also fortunate in having businessmen and social activists like Mr. Richard Nekkaz, who announced to auction off his 1 million European property for veil-wearing women to pay off fines.
Both the motivated and sincere critics have often been found asking about the why and what of what they call “Islamic radicalism”. Mr Sarkozy’s irresponsible activism is just another instance of inciting feelings of bigotry. It is such irrational and indefensible acts which create home-grown terrorists.
To quote Mr. Akbar Ahmad, a professor of Islamic Studies at American University: “Adding to their sense of being unfairly singled out were commentators in the news media talking as if it were open season on Muslims. Bill O’Relly compared the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kempf, and Tom Tancredo, a Republican who was then a Congressman from Colarado, said the US could respond to a future terrorist attack by bombing Makkah.”
– The New York Times, March 10, 2011.
Read and re-read the threat of bombing Makkah and then ask why Muslims feel besieged here and there.
OUR VIEW
The world Muslim leadership genuinely feels the Muslim masses’ unsavoury reactions are usually grounded in the US foreign policy, whose cardinal principle appears to be demonisation of Islam and Muslims, particularly when it translates into death of unarmed women or children as we see in Palestine, or saw in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Afghan-Pakistan border.
The AFP has quoted the head of the Ikhwan al-Muslimeen in Jordan. His words have to be read in the unfortunate backdrop of gross provocation by Mr Sarkozy. To quote Mr Hammad Saied, the ban “is contrary to human rights principles” that France takes pride in and warned it was “the beginning of a dangerous battle.”