Foreign Policy Blogs

Inane burqa controversy attracts more press attention

President of France Nicholas Sarkozy’s new initiative – to outlaw the wearing of a burqa in public in France – has sparked quite a debate over the past week. Adding to it on the New York Times op-ed page is self-identified Muslim feminist Mona Eltahaway, agreeing earnestly with Sarkozy that the burqa in fact constitutes erasure for the women who wear it. She cannily references her own history of wearing a headscarf, and then her decision to remove it later in her life, as a means of justifying her opinion that as long as women wear burqas they are deprived of any identity.

I find this argument quite silly, honestly. If burqas are in fact indicative of oppression in 100% of cases, which I find extremely difficult to believe, then presumably there is some other means of characterizing this oppression that has nothing to do with clothes. Domestic violence, maybe. Economic dependence on their husbands. Illiteracy. Limited access to health services. All of the above. Maybe, if the French government or Muslim feminists or any party interested in “rescuing” these women wanted to empower them to raise their voices and end their imposed silence, they could start by tackling one of these issues rather than mocking what they are wearing. But initiatives of that nature would lack a convenient visual marker for the targeted groups …