When the French government invaded Algeria, in 1830, it started a vast campaign of military “pacification,” which was quickly followed by the imposition of French laws deemed necessary for the civilizing mission to succeed. Women were crucial to that enterprise. In articles, stories and novels of the day, Algerian women were universally depicted as oppressed, and so in order for civilization truly to penetrate Algeria, the argument went, the women had to cast off their veils. General Bugeaud, who was charged with administering the territory in the 1840s, declared, “The Arabs elude us because they conceal their women from our gaze.” Algerian men, meanwhile, were perceived to be sexual predators who could not control their urges unless their womenfolk were draped in veils. Colonization would solve this by bringing the light of European civilization to Arab males, who, after a few generations of French rule, would learn to control their urges. The governor-general of Algeria remarked in 1898 that “the Arab man’s, the native Jew’s and the Arab woman’s physiology, as well as tolerance for pederasty, and typically oriental ways of procreating and relating to one another are so different from the European man’s that it is necessary to take appropriate measures.” As late as 1958, French wives of military officers, desperate to stop support for the FLN, which spearheaded the war of liberation against France, staged a symbolic “unveiling” of Algerian women at a pro-France rally in the capital of Algiers.
Decades later, millions of French citizens with ancestral roots in North Africa are being told much the same thing: in order to be French, they must “integrate” by giving up that which makes them different–Islam. The religion, however, is not regarded as a set of beliefs that adherents can adjust to suit the demands of their everyday lives but rather as an innate and unbridgeable attribute. It is easy to see how racism can take hold in such a context. During the foulard controversies, it did not appear to matter that 95 percent of French Muslims do not attend mosque, that more than 80 percent of Muslim women in France do not wear the headscarf or even that the number of schoolgirls in headscarves has never been more than a few hundred. The racist notion of innate differences between French citizens of North African origin and those of European origin defined the debate. For instance, the Lévy sisters were sometimes referred to in the press as Alma and Lila Lévy-Omari, thus making their ancestral link to North Africa (on their mother’s side) clearer to the reader.
Do read more of Leila Lalami’s excellent review of The Politics of the Veil, but the point highlighted above as always struck me as extremely important. Unfortunately, French authorities — notably Nicolas Sarkozy when he was minister of the interior — have chosen to empower religious fundamentalists and depict them as representative of the Muslim community at large.
Very good article, thanks for the link. I wish I could read the same arguments in a big French newspaper or magazine. But there is such a (shameful) consensus in favour of the law that it is very unlikely.
You’re absolutely right. The real people who represent Islam are the ones who don’t give a shit about practicing it, right?
Cosmic, if you look into the politics of the Muslim community in France, you’ll see that traditionally it’s infiltrated by the Moroccan and Algerian governments, which support rival Islamist factions. Secondly, I absolutely don’t think that Islamists are representative of Muslims. This is what we are talking about here, because political Islamists are being appointed to these positions of influence where they represent the entire community.
One can be Muslim, and pious, without being Islamist. The Islamist project is a recent development and there are plenty of of practicing Muslims in the Arab world and in the Arab diaspora that don’t feel like they need to make their religion the center of everything that they are about. I think that most French Muslims are probably at least a little religious and that the completely non-religious ones are a minority. But even they deserve to be represented if the government is going to decide to address their community, and right now it is addressing them through a fringe on the official level.
The government is going to address the ones that don’t go to the mosque (or participate in other external signs of religiosity) through a minority of the ones that do. (And frankly, so many mosques in Europe have been more or less taken over by Islamists that it’s no wonder people aren’t going there.)
This idea that Islamists are the only ones who can represent Muslims is, well, a typically Islamist conceit. Muslims were fine being themselves for a long time before Islamists came along.
Given that you seem to be conflating “women who wear the veil” with Islamists, no, it’s not what we’re talking about here.
Yes, I’m familiar with your perspectives on being Muslim and pious. I recall our discussions about prayer in the office.
Which perhaps suggests that your faux-liberal ilk are not necessarily the best representatives of Muslim interests, as with people like you representing me, I’d probably be banned from praying outside my house, with some self-righteous french official assuring everyone it’s not a violation of my rights, because their liberals Islamists told him it’s not an issue for “normal” Muslims.
Yes, the “Islamist project” is recent. So what? It’s a phenomenon born out of a host of equally recent factors that I’m sure you can preach extensively about. It’s beside the point.
I don’t think having practicing Muslims (oh wait, they’re Islamists to you) representing Muslims in France means Muslim women will be forced to wear the veil or people herded into mosques. Alternatively, the type you favor will not give a crap if practicing Muslims find themselves, well, incapable of practicing properly.
[…] Lalami: Beyond the Veil Beyond the Veil: When the French government invaded Algeria, in 1830, it started a vast campaign of military “pacification,â€� which was quickly followed by the imposition of French laws deemed necessary for the civilizing mission to succeed. Women were crucial to that enterprise. In articles, … […]
I am not conflating veiled women and Islamists — I am referring to the Islamists who have been appointed at the Conseil Francais du Culte Musulman, the institution that the government interacts with and is largely stacked with Islamists.
Why would I endorse Lalami’s article, which defends veiled women and calls French hysteria over them a type of racism, if I was so anti-religious? I am not claiming to be the best person to represent Muslims at all (“born” Muslim, I am an atheist and stand by it.) But I don’t think generally speaking that people involved in political Islam are either, since they are a minority of the wider population. And in a country like France, the government is dealing with the entire Muslim-origin community through these jokers. Besides I think you can be of Muslim culture and background without being particularly devout (but this kind of shift, as happened with Christianity in Europe, scares Islamists.)
As for the old “praying in the office” argument I have, I still think it’s extremely unprofessional for people to pray in the middle of an office. Prayer rooms should be provided when employees desire it.
If you read Olivier Roy’s chapter on the CFCM (he also discusses its British counterpart, but don’t remember that part too clearly) in his book Globalizing Islam, he lays out a lot of facts and figures and empirical reasons for why these institutions are in the worst corporatist tradition and don’t have the support of a majority of French Muslims. I don’t know that they’re Islamists, but they definitely represent a certain conservative, ‘establishment’ Islam coming out of the Middle East, with a particularly strange closeness to the Moroccan religious establishment, and it seems that the French government would rather just treat the most conservative religious leaders as representatives of French Muslims instead of engaging French Muslims themselves on what they want (and of course denying their religious freedom in all sorts of ways, esp the right to wear hijab). Having the CFCM as a tokenistic partner allows the French govt to ignore a lot of more important demands from the French Muslim community. I wonder how many believing, practising French Muslims are actually happy with what the CFCM has done for them.
As for the mosques and the CFCM, I think that you’re both missing on something: the CFCM has as its task to organise and represent Islam as a religious cult – organising worshipping services at mosques, determining the calendar of religious holidays, including the ramdan, supervising activities such as halal slaughtering, and so on. It is by definition an organisation that has to look after practising muslims’ religious activities and interests; it can hardly be faulted for not representing non-practising muslims, and these can hardly request to have a say regarding a cult they do not practise.
As for other demands of the French muslim community, not pertaining to religion, I don’t see how these could be raised by the CFCM if you affirm the validity of the laïcité-principle.
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