A French court has denied a woman citizenship because she wears a burqa — a veil covering the entire body — according to a July 11 Reuters report.
Faiza Silmi, a 32-year-old Moroccan, moved to France in 2000. Her husband, who is of Algerian descent, and the couple's three children all have French citizenship. Silmi speaks fluent French.
Silmi applied for citizenship in 2004 because she wanted to have the same nationality as her husband and children. However she was denied on the grounds that she had "failed to assimilate".
When Silmi appealed the decision to France's highest court, on the basis of religious freedom, the court ruled against her, arguing that by wearing a burqa she "adopted a radical practice of her religion, incompatible with the essential values of the French community, and particularly with the principle of sexual equality".
According a government report, "She has no idea about the secular state or the right to vote. She lives in total submission to her male relatives. She seems to find this normal and the idea of challenging it has never crossed her mind."
Government representative Emmanuelle Prada-Bordenave said that, "From her own declarations, she lives an almost reclusive life, cut off from French society".
However, Silmi has denied the accusations in a July 19 New York Times interview with Katrin Bennhold. "They say I wear the niqab because my husband told me so", she said. "I want to tell them: It is my choice. I take care of my children, and I leave the house when I please. I have my own car. I do the shopping on my own.
"Yes, I am a practising Muslim, I am orthodox. But is that not my right?"
While the basis for the court's decision theoretically applies to all religions, it has been most heavily imposed on young Muslim women in France. Not only do they have to remove their hijabs (veils) during school hours, but are often forced to wear more revealing clothing (as covering clothing can also be interpreted by schools as a religious symbol) on threat of expulsion.
At the time, French president Jacques Chirac even went as far as to describe wearing a veil as "a kind of aggression".
The burqa has also come under attack in parts of Belgium and in the Netherlands, where it was banned completely in 2006. Turkey recently banned the wearing of hijabs in universities.
The decision has been hailed by a number French politicians as a victory for women's rights. For instance, urban affairs minister Fadela Amara, who is a Muslim of Algerian descent, told the July 16 Le Parisien that the burqa "is not a religious sign but the visible sign of a totalitarian political project preaching sexual inequality ..."
However, it is hard to see how this decision could possibly promote women's rights.
If, in fact, Silmi had been forced by her husband to wear the burqa then in what way would punishing her by denying her citizenship — including all the rights that her husband has as a French citizen — help or encourage her to liberate herself?
As Daniele Lochak, a law professor and immigrants rights lawyer, told Le Monde, "If you follow that to its logical conclusion, it means that women whose partners beat them are also not worthy of being French".
And if what Silmi says is true, that she chooses to wear the burqa because of her own personal beliefs, how then does it advance the liberation of women for a court to discriminate against a woman because of her choice in clothing?
And can it be considered any more liberating to attempt to force a woman to wear clothing that is more revealing than it is to force the opposite?
A more honest assessment of the motivations behind the decision was given by James Button in a July 25 article in the Melbourne Age. Agreeing with the decision, he argued that, "In effect, the court has said that Mrs Silmi's rights are outweighed by the rights of others to see her".
According to Katrin Bennhold, in the July 18 International Herald Tribune, "In one sign of the nature of some of the criteria used to evaluate Silmi's fitness to become French, the government commissioner approvingly noted in her report that she was treated by a male gynecologist during her pregnancies".
In putting the (male) public's right to view a woman's body over her rights to decide what she wears, the French decision deals a blow to one of the most fundamental principles of women's liberation.
Even if Silmi had been forced to wear the burqa, as alleged, it doesn't alter the hypocrisy of the decision. Forcing women to cover themselves in public is one way fundamentalist and medievalist regimes, such as the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan or the current Western-backed Saudi Arabian dictatorship, subjugate women
However, the hypocrisy of singling out the wearing of a burqa as unacceptable for a citizen of a Western country is striking when Western culture features TV shows, such as Extreme Makeover, that promote women starving themselves or being carved up by plastic surgery.
Although the justification that the decision to deny Silmi citizenship includes women's rights, the fact that the court also justified it on grounds of "failing to assimilate" reveals the Islamaphobic and anti-immigrant racism behind the decision.
Anti-immigrant, and especially anti-Muslim, sentiments and government polices have been on the rise throughout Europe, including in France. In June, the European Union passed the racist anti-immigrant "return directive" that would allow European countries to detain in camps without charge non-documented migrants, followed by deportation.
In France, the systematic discrimination and second-class status of those of African and Arab descent boiled over in 2005, with the anger of immigrant youths exploding into riots.
The decision to deny Silmi citizenship is underpinned by the racist position that followers of Islam are not truly "French" and are therefore less deserving of the rights granted to other citizens.
Shayma Hasan, from the Federation of Australian Muslim Students and Youth, told Green Left Weekly that Silma is "guilty of being Muslim" and that it is "peculiar that a body as mighty as the government stands in the way of a young woman whose only demand is to practice her religion".
"She is not attacking other citizens, she is causing no harm whatsoever and she certainly has no previous criminal record", Hasan noted. "The basic right of freedom of religion has been stripped away from Faiza and many more ...
"I don't think a nun will be banned from entering [France] because of her outfit, nor will a Jew be told to go away because of the cap he hangs on the back of his head."
Hassan concluded: "I'm sure there are many people like myself who aspire to see the day where humans will respect one another with total equality without having class, gender, religion and democratic rights get in the way."