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ShareThe needless controversy over the burkha stirred up by French president Nicolas Sarkozy did serve two useful purposes: one is to reaffirm the importance of the liberal ethos; the other is to remind us that even democracies may not be all that liberal when we scratch a bit below the surface.
Sarkozy's comment that burkhas are not welcome in his country shows that even in a democracy as old as France, majoritarianism rules. Bigotry and narrow-mindedness are not the monopoly of Saudi Arabia or the Taliban. It is alive and kicking in the republic that gave us the slogan of liberty, equality and fraternity. The French are diehard holdouts against multi-culturalism, and this could be their swansong. Sarkozy should know that multi-culturalism is the future if it wants to survive in the nuclear age. Any country that fails to affirm this reality is doomed to internal strife and warfare. At a time when US president Obama says the hijab is not unAmerican, Sarkozy's comments are downright reactionary.
Two broad principles are at war here: one is the right of countries to impose the laws they want. The other is the universal right of the individual to live the life she wants to lead as long as it does not interfere with anyone else's right to do the same. It is a long-settled principle of liberalism that the rights of states to impose laws should not transgress areas that involve personal choices. Wearing a hijab or burkha in no way threatens state security or the rights of others.
The more important fallout of the Sarkozy comment is that it has enabled many Muslims to openly embrace liberalism. When told that the burkha is a sign of subservience to men, many women wearing the hijab (or burkha) said they did it by choice. However, if this incipient liberalism is to flower, Muslim intellectuals have to embrace a wider truth. True liberalism demands more from those who use its arguments.
Let's say you use the hijab by choice. It's a personal decision that has to be respected. But, when you say it's a personal choice, you are bound to respect other people's personal choices. Wearers of the hijab are thus morally bound to support the rights of those who don't want to wear it. When we take this principle forward, it means even Saudi Arabia or any Muslim nation has to respect the free choices of individuals. You can't clobber Sarkozy and then turn silent about the scores of illiberal societies in the Muslim world.
Once you use the free choice argument, Muslims have to extend it to more fundamental things: if you have a right to religious belief, you have a right to apostasy. If you have a right to read the Koran, others have the right to read Rushdie's Satanic Verses. If Muslims have the right to practice their beliefs wherever they live, this right should extend to non-Muslims who live in Muslim majority countries. Ideally, this means no country should choose a state religion, for this violates other people's rights. This is where the liberal argument on the right to wear the hijab ultimately leads.
One Muslim woman in Canada offers an interesting explanation on why she wears the hijab. Naheed Mustafa equates the hijab with freedom. She says: "Women are taught from early childhood that their worth is proportional to their attractiveness. We feel compelled to pursue abstract notions of beauty, half realising that such a pursuit is futile... When women reject this form of oppression, they face ridicule and contempt. Whether it's women who refuse to wear makeup or to shave their legs, or to expose their bodies, society, both men and women, have trouble dealing with them."
She goes on: "Women are not going to achieve equality with the right to bare their breasts in public, as some people would like to have you believe. That would only make us party to our own objectification. True equality will be had only when women don't need to display themselves to get attention and won't need to defend their decision to keep their bodies to themselves."
Now one can legitimately question whether hiding yourself behind a burkha, and male eyes, is going to bring true liberation. I would even argue the opposite: a completely nudist society is less likely to produce perversions than a fully covered one, for this will end the obsessive male curiosity about women's bodies. Unclothed animals are less obsessed with sex than clothed humans.
But that's another subject. There is, however, little doubt that the burkha can provide at least temporary relief to some women from debilitating male scrutiny in a patriarchal world. Behind the veil, they can be themselves. They are welcome to it.
