Politics, Religion and Gender

Sieglinde Rosenberger, Birgit Sauer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136589317
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Heated debates about Muslim women's veiling practices have regularly attracted the attention of European policymakers over the last decade. The headscarf has been both vehemently contested by national and/or regional governments, political parties and public intellectuals and passionately defended by veil wearing women and their supporters. Systematically applying a comparative perspective, this book addresses the question of why the headscarf tantalises and causes such controversy over issues about religious pluralism, secularism, neutrality of the state, gender oppression, citizenship, migration, and multiculturalism.

Seeking also to establish why the issue has become part of the disciplinary practices of some European countries but not of others, this work brings together an important collection of interpretative research regarding the current debates on the veil in Europe, offering an interdisciplinary scope and European-wide setting. Brought together through a common research methodology, the contributors focus on the different religious, political and cultural meanings of the veiling issue across eight countries and develop a comparative explanation of veiling regimes.

This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of religion & politics, gender studies and multiculturalism.

Part I

Frames and Framing

1 Veiled Debates

Gender and Gender Equality in European National Narratives

Rikke Andreassen and Doutje Lettinga

Introduction

This chapter sheds light on how gender is framed and negotiated in European debates on Muslim women’s head and body coverings, and analyses how gender and sexuality play into constructions of nationality and national identities. The chapter demonstrates that a wide variety of actors in all countries debates the headscarf and veil from a women’s rights perspective. Veiling is persistently framed as being a threat to universal values and principles of gender equality, autonomy, emancipation, secularism and tolerance. Our comparative analysis shows that these universal values are not only particular national interpretations and institutionalized applications thereof (Parekh 1992) but are even contested within the nation itself. By illustrating how categories of gender, race, ethnicity, religion and nationality intersect and influence one another within this frame, this chapter analyses how the headscarf and veil debate contributes to the exclusion of veiled Muslim women in certain national imaginaries (Anderson 1991). Furthermore, considering the conflicting views observed between feminists on the issue, the chapter also argues that the debates moreover reflect a struggle over who gets to define the values and strategies of feminism in a multicultural Europe.

This chapter is structured into three parts. The first illustrates how actors, especially feminists and politicians, in the eight countries analysed use arguments of gender and gender equality in their debates. In all countries, a prevalent view in the debates on potentially banning Muslim women from wearing veils is that covering is oppressive of women and a threat to gender equality. This chapter scrutinizes examples of this frame, which we labelled the ‘victimization frame’. It describes the similarities in these European debates with regard to norms and values expressed in this frame and the discourse coalitions of actors employing it (Hajer 1993). The second part of the chapter gives insight into national particularities within this frame. Debates, after all, do not emerge in a vacuum, but are shaped by particular national historical, cultural and political contexts (Hajer and Versteeg 2005; Bacchi 2005). This chapter shows how political actors in each country construct their specific national society as the preserver and securer of gender equality. The third and final part of this chapter reflects upon counter-arguments which contest the nationalized discourse of Muslim women in need of liberation by the white (Christian) majority. Here the chapter falls back on the conclusion that normative principles of gender equality and emancipation play a vital role in national constructions but that no agreement exists on the meaning of these terms, nor about the strategies they entail. The chapter concludes that the debate on veiling should be seen as an ongoing deliberation about the conditions of inclusion in and exclusion from the national community in which gender and sexuality play a vital role (Yuval-Davis 1997; Lutz et al. 1995). It also concludes that the debate represents an ongoing discussion among feminists about the content and strategies of their political project. The chapter underscores that the nationalizing of gender equality – by inscribing gender equality as an integrated part of a hegemonic national culture that is being threatened by the culturally ‘other’ – results in exclusionary and racialized understandings of gender equality and of the national community.

Gender and Gender Equality: Common Framing in All Countries

Victimization and Liberation from Religion

In the European debates that we studied for the VEIL project, the most common frame observed was that Muslim girls and women are oppressed by their community, culture and religion and in need of liberation. This victimization frame appeared in all countries’ documents, although it was not very salient in the British and Greek debates. However, establishing the strength of this frame in relation to the country-specific policy debates and regulatory regimes goes beyond the scope and possibilities of our chapter. As we will illustrate, the frame was taken up by various politicians to argue in favour of a ban that curtails girls’ and women’s right to cover (in various domains). It is interesting to note that feminists themselves have been ambivalent about the desirability of a ban to tackle Muslim women’s oppression. Moreover, various feminists contested the idea that the headscarf represents gender oppression and offered alternative interpretations of gender equality and autonomy.

One of the principal arguments presented in the victimization frame is that headscarves and veils conflict with the idea of gender equality, as these coverings are gender-specific types of clothing, and hence in their very nature mark a hierarchy between men and women. Veiling is seen as a structural problem of Islam (or in religion altogether), because the Qur’an prescribes this practice of gender differentiation. Another argument is that donning the headscarf and veil is a result of the internalization of gender discriminatory norms and that women can only become truly free and equal if they contest the oppressive nature of their religious culture by breaking with it. In the Netherlands, Germany, France and Denmark, various Second Wave feminists opposed the practice of veiling. They supported Muslim women who were critical of veiling and who were hesitant, if not opposed, to strategies of emancipation that remained within the framework of Islam.

In the Netherlands, the former editor-in-chief of the leading feminist magazine Opzij, Cisca Dresselhuys, used this victimization frame when she argued against the headscarf on International Women’s Day on 8 March 2001. Dresselhuys stated that she would refuse to hire editors who wore headscarves because this practice contradicts feminist ideals of equality. In her editorial in Opzij she explained her principled stance as follows:

The headscarf symbolizes a particular way of thinking about women being inferior to men. And this is exactly something that feminism has tried to contest. This started many years ago with the struggle against the biblical thought that women should not have any place in public life, have executive positions, have voting rights, wear male clothes, or – yes, all the time that hair! – cut their hair short rather than wearing hats. ... Now when we have finally overcome this battle [i.e. against the Christian Church], it would be unacceptable for me to accept similar fundamentalist, female oppressing doctrines. It would feel as justifying and submitting to an error.

(NL3)

Dresselhuys questions the persistent claim that Muslim women don the headscarf of their own personal choice. And even if they were, she considers it anti-feminist if women voluntarily submit to gender-unequal norms that sustain the patriarchal order. She compares the choice to wear the headscarf to the claim of women in the 1970s who maintained they were housewives out of free choice, even though no other alternatives existed at the time. In a similar vein to those who voluntarily submit to social roles of women as mothers and caretakers, veiled women would legitimize patriarchal ideas of women as virgins whose sexuality needs to be curtailed for men. Hence, the wearing of the headscarf is, according to Dresselhuys, not only a form of sex discrimination but also dangerous for women’s rights by condoning sexist ideas. Opzij has therefore frequently criticized the Dutch Commission of Equal Treatment, which has endorsed the right to cover in various domains for reasons of non-discrimination and freedom of religion.¹ Yet, Dresselhuys was against a ban on headscarves, as it would deprive vulnerable Muslim women and girls of their chances to education and economic independence.

Similar victimization framing can be found among feminists in other countries. In Denmark, a larger debate about headscarves emerged when a Danish Muslim woman wearing a hijab, Asmaa Abdol-Hamid, was appointed as a TV hostess at the public service station DR (Danmarks Radio; Denmark Broadcasting Corporation) in 2006. The hiring of Abdol-Hamid was met by an outcry from the feminist organization Women for Freedom, who demanded that DR should fire Abdol-Hamid. In their press release of 2 April 2006 they wrote:

Asmaa Abdol-Hamid is known as an Islamic fanatic and a supporter of Sharia ... DR is a public service station, and it is important that TV-hostesses are objective and do not become a space [sic] where fanatic attitudes can be expressed and honored. Attitudes that are a serious threat against women’s rights.

(DK19)

Similar to the views of former editor-in-chief Dresselhuys of Opzij magazine, the organization Women for Freedom expressed a dislike for Islam and headscarves interpreting the latter as being solely oppressive of women because it views headscarves as a general threat to all women and their gender equality.

Also in the United Kingdom, some feminists questioned that free choice within Islam (or any religious structure) is possible. In an open letter published in the British newspaper, the Guardian, in 2005, journalist Catherine Bennett criticized the wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Cherie Booth, for defending a schoolgirl’s right to veil. The female pupil, Shabina Begun, was forbidden to wear the jilbab as a substitute for her school uniform. Similar to Dresselhuys, Bennett locates the problem in religion by comparing Islam to Catholicism and argues that veiling is imposed upon young girls by men who interpret the Qur’an in the ‘medieval style–that their wives, sisters, and daughters should be viewed only in their entirety by the men they belong to’ (UK7). Bennett finds pro-headscarf feminists hypocrites who apply different standards to Muslim girls than to their own daughters, whom they would not like to see wearing the headscarf. She therefore argues that feminists should support Muslim girls’ struggle for liberation like any other girl. The government should not indulge itself with religion as it currently does in Britain (UK7). Bennett combines her claim against the headscarf with a critique of the British Anglo-Saxon state church, which also exists in Denmark. Dresselhuys, too, criticized Dutch traditions of institutionalized religious pluralism as being bad for women. Her claim to dismantle the remnants of Dutch pillarized multiculturalism found much support by liberal secular intellectuals such as law professors Afshin Ellian (NL15), Sylvian Ephimenco (NL16), Paul Scheffer and Herman Phillipse. In this frame, religion is clearly seen as the source of patriarchy and liberal secularism as the solution to tackle it, although Muslim men become the new culprits in a form of oppression that seems particular to Islam and Muslim culture.

Islamic Fundamentalism as a Threat to Gender Equality

The call to liberate Muslim girls grew louder when the headscarf was linked to the rise of a fundamentalist Islamism. Typical for the German, Turkish and French debate was the claim that the headscarf was not only a symbol of a patriarchal religious culture, but also of a dangerous political Islam. Not only family or community members exert pressure on the girls but also radical fundamentalists, who recruit them for their political ideology. If the state would not draw boundaries to religious claims of recognition like the headscarf or veil, socalled Islamist crusaders would use this space to introduce their political projects into Europe. Hence, not only the rights of Muslim women and girls are threatened but those of the whole society.

Interestingly, particularly secular Muslim feminists warned of the accommodation of the headscarf as a form of pseudo-tolerance that jeopardized Muslim girls’ rights to freedom and equality. In all countries we observed alliances between them and Second Wave feminist protagonists defending national achievements of women’s rights against multiculturalism or religious pluralism, as that would give leeway to Islamic fundamentalism. In Germany, for instance, Alice Schwarzer of the feminist magazine Emma argued together with German women of Turkish origin like Necla Kelek (G29) and Ekin Deligöz (G31) that people defending a teacher’s right to cover are cultural relativists that leave vulnerable girls to their oppressive communities. In 2003 Schwarzer argued in the weekly Der Spiegel that the headscarf is a political symbol used by Islamists, who are gradually trying to introduce Sharia law into Germany (G2). Three years later, in an interview in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, she compares the headscarf to the yellow star that Jews were forced to wear during the Nazi regime, to indicate that Muslim women can be considered second rate citizens who are forced to cover by Islamist fundamentalists (G28). In France, similar claims were made by feminists such as Elisabeth Badinter, Gisèle Halimi and Anne Zelenski along with women like Fadela Amara of the organization Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores, Nor Submissives) (Ezekiel 2006) ; and in the Netherlands by women like Seçil Arda (NL10), Ayaan Hirsi Ali (NL6) and Nahed Selim (NL13) along with Cisca Dresselhuys.²

The seriousness of this threat was often emphasized by references to Muslim countries or Islamic theocracies where women’s rights are violated. Islam is consequently represented as an oppressive religious culture, detached from the particular national, political and cultural context where it is practised. Seçil Arda, a Dutch feminist of Turkish origin, argues in a column in Volkskrant newspaper in 2001 for instance: ‘Fundamentalists in countries like Iran, Egypt, Afghanistan, Turkey, and various Arabic states use liquidation, intimidation, and threats against feminists in order to ban their thoughts’ (NL10).

Originating from countries with a Muslim majority, women like Arda often were given voice in the debate to speak out against gender inequality and fundamentalism in Islam. The media producers and politicians who invited them to policy debates apparently reasoned they knew best what Islam entails for women. While this allowed them to put the (precarious) position of minority women on the political agenda, the fact that these women were represented as the ‘authentic’ Muslim voice also silenced other veiled women whose claims were seen as stemming from a false consciousness and Islamist manipulation. In the final part of this chapter, we will address those other Muslim women’s voices who claimed their own right to speak. Moreover, by emphasizing the danger of a fundamentalist and patriarchal Islam encroaching upon a Europe marked by values of gender equality, patriarchy increasingly turned into a cultural problem of the ‘other’. This not only rendered invisible the continuing gender inequality and sexism in European societies or the discrimination and social economic marginalization that intersect with immigrant women’s emancipation, it also fed a nationalist discourse that counterposed a backward and dangerous Islam vis-àvis an enlightened, egalitarian and modern Europe. The next section will illustrate how this enabled anti-immigrant politicians to co-opt and monopolize the feminist agenda for their own interests.

Instrumentalizing the Feminist Agenda

Not only feminists but also politicians use the victimization frame in congruence with Islam as a threat frame to plead for a ban on headscarves. Some clearly link their claims against veiling with demands for cultural assimilation or even expulsion. In Austria, for instance, Richard Heis, the leader of the rightwing nationalist party FPÖ (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs; Freedom Party of Austria) in Innsbruck, Tyrol, launched a motion to prohibit headscarves in public schools in 2006. He quotes the above-mentioned Necla Kelek in his argument that the headscarf is a political symbol of radical Islam and that a ban would therefore help Muslim girls against unwanted pressure to cover. Furthermore, he argues that headscarves are a sign of disintegration because they conflict with Western values. According to him, teachers with headscarves are incorrect role models for immigrant children and unable to pass Western values on to these children, and hence hinder their integration into Austrian society. He supports his argument with a national claim by saying that ‘real Tyroleans’ do not want headscarves (A18).

This use of feminist gender equality arguments for assimilative and antiimmigrant agendas can also be observed in Denmark. Peter Skaarup, Member of Parliament (MP) for the populist and right-wing Danish People’s Party, has for instance argued:

According to Danish norms it is discriminatory...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Framing and regulating the veil: an introduction
• Part I: Frames and framing
• Part II: Regulations and actors
• Conclusion: the veil as a case of value diversity and European values
• Appendix 1: list of cited documents
• Appendix 2: list of major frames and subframes of the VEIL project’s frame analysis
• Index