Will Chirac Fight Facism?

[igloo]

WILL CHIRAC FIGHT FACISM?

By AMIR TAHERI

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December 14, 2003 -- ANYONE following the French media these days might get the impression that we are heading for "a war of values" and a "clash of civilizations" over what is known as "le foulard islamique."

The controversial foulard is a special headgear, inspired by the hood worn by Capuchin monks, and designed to cover a woman's head, leaving only her face exposed.

The issue has divided French society across religious and cultural fault-lines that few would have acknowledged a decade ago: Should the government forbid girls from wearing the foulard at state schools?

A special committee, set up by President Jacques Chirac last summer, has just submitted its report on the subject, suggesting that the foulard be banned from public schools along with other "ostensible signs of religion" such as Jewish skullcaps and large crosses. The president is scheduled to unveil his conclusions in a televised address this week.

Some secularists insist that the foulard should be banned from schools, hospitals and other public institutions by a special law because it represents "an ostentatious religious sign" in spaces that should remain neutral as far as religion is concerned. Others believe that an outright ban could be seen as an attack on individual beliefs, and force girls who wish to wear the foulard to switch to private Koranic schools.

All this may well be a result of a misunderstanding. To start with, the term "foulard islamique" is inaccurate because it assumes that the controversial headscarf is an article of Islamic faith, which it emphatically is not. It is a political symbol shared by several radical movements that, each in its own way, tries to transform Islam from a religion into a political ideology.

One could describe these movements as Islamist, but not Islamic. A new word has been coined in Arabic to describe them: Mutuasslim. Its equivalent in Persian is Islamgara.

The foulard should be seen as a political symbol in the same way as Nazi casquettes, Mao Zedong caps and Che Guevara berets were in their times. It has never been sanctioned by any Islamic religious authority and is worn by a tiny minority of Muslim women.

It was first created in Lebanon in 1975 by Imam Mussa Sadr, an Iranian mullah who had become leader of the Shi'ite community there. Sadr wanted the foulard to mark out Shi'ite girls so that they would not be molested by the Palestinians who controlled southern Lebanon at the time.

In 1982, the Lebanese-designed headgear was imposed by law on all Iranian girls and women, including non-Muslims, aged six years and above. Thus, Iranian Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian women are also forced to wear a headgear that is supposed to be an Islamic symbol. The Khomeinist claim is that women's hair has to be covered because it emits rays that turn men "wild with sex."

From the mid 1980s, the foulard appeared in North Africa and Egypt before moving east to the Persian Gulf, the Indo-Pakistani Subcontinent and Southeast Asia. It made its first appearance in France in 1984, brought in by Iranian Mujahedin asylum seekers. Today, thousands of women, especially new converts, wear it in Europe and North America.

That the foulard did not exist before 1975 is easy to verify. Muslim women could refer to their family albums to see that none of their female parents and ancestors ever wore it.

Megawati Sukarnoputri, President of Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation, does not wear it. Nor does Khalidah Zia, prime minister of Bangladesh, the world's second most populous country. Shirin Ebadi, the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, does not wear it, except inside Iran - where she would go to jail if she did not.

That the foulard is a political invention can be ascertained in two other ways. First, there is the Iranian law of 1982 that specifies the shape, size and even the "authorized" colors of the headscarf.

Second, the various Islamist movements have developed specific color schemes to assert their identity. The Khomeinists wear dark blue or brown. The Sunni Salafis, who sympathize with al Qaeda and the Taliban, prefer black. Supporters of Abu-Sayyaf and other Southeast Asian radical groups wear white or yellow. Supporters of Palestinian radical groups don checkered foulards.

Islamism is a totalitarian ideology like Communism and Fascism. And like them it loves uniforms. While it forces, or brainwashes, women into wearing the foulard, it also presses men to grow beards as an advertisement of piety.

Like people of other faiths and cultures, Muslim men and women often covered their heads. But the headgear used had no political significance and reflected local cultural, tribal and folkloric traditions. No one ever claimed that donning any particular headgear, whether for men or women, was a religious duty.

In any case Islam, with its rich tradition of iconoclasm, is not a religion of symbols. It also abhors any advertisement of piety which, known as tajallow (showing off), is regarded as a sin.

By trying to turn the issue of the foulard into a duel between Islam and secularism, the French may be missing the point. The real problem is posed by organized and well-funded efforts of Fascist groups to develop a form of apartheid in which Muslims in France, now numbering almost 6 million, will not be protected by the French political system and the laws that sustain it.

As things are, the foulard concerns a small number of Muslim women in France. The French Interior Ministry's latest report says that only an estimated 11,200, out of some 1.8 million Muslim schoolgirls, wore the "foulard" at schools last year.

The same report says that only 1,253 of those who wore the foulard were involved in incidents provoked by their attempts to force other girls to cover their heads.

A survey by a group of Muslim women in the Paris suburb of Courneuve last May shows that 77 per cent of the girls who wore the foulard did so because they feared that if they did not they would be beaten up or even disfigured by Islamist vigilantes. Girls refusing the foulard are often followed by gangs of youth shouting "putain" (whore) at them.

In some suburbs, the Islamist Fascists have appointed an Emir al-Momeneen (Commander of the Faithful) and set up armed units that the French state fears to confront. These groups tell Muslims not to allow their womenfolk to be examined by male doctors, not to donate blood or receive blood from Jews or Christians, and to prevent girls from studying science, swimming or taking part in group sports.

What the French state needs to do is to protect Muslims on its territory, especially women, against the Fascists who are setting up "emirates" around major French cities, notably Paris.

What France is witnessing is not a clash of civilization between Islam and the West. It is a clash between a new form of fascism and democracy. Islamism must be exposed and opposed politically. To give it any religious credentials is not only unjust but also bad politics.

[jamiroguy1]

I'm more worried about facism in our media and society than France.

[igloo]

Originally posted by jamiroguy1

I'm more worried about facism in our media and society than France.

c'mon....a bit of an alarmist