The Janus Political Union at Brown University brought together two speakers on April 6 for a discussion called "Banning the Burqa: French Law and Religious Symbols." Francois Briand, an urbane and dapper legal mind from France spoke for the ban. While Michael Paulsen, a Bush administration official and Professor of Law at The University of St. Thomas, spoke about what he called "religious freedom," which would allow the burqa to be worn.
If the fawning mutual admiration left me more than a bit bored, the arguments--one too state-centered and the other too nihilistic--left me agitated. Briand argued that the French Republic respects religious freedom, relied on the law's overwhelming popularity and passage, denied being a "clueless bourgeois" (he was raised in Muslim Algeria), and said the French law was not about religion, it was about "face concealment."
Horsefeathers.
The French Republic is not worried about pre-Lent revelers wearing masks. This is about a direct attack on the notion of "Fraternity" (I would call it sorority) that demands equal treatment under the law. While Briand said that the Republic "cannot except people excluding themselves and breaking the social agreement" of revealing their faces, his arguments were backward, urging state power to compel rather than liberate. He said that women wearing burqas and hiding their faces defied Western norms and went "beyond free speech." He later argued that naked rowdies or fools in Nazi uniforms would also be impermissible given France's checkered history.
Oh, Francois, remember the ladies! By ignoring the religious argument (where in the Koran does it say women must cover their face?) Briand is side-stepping the crucial issue: If women are not yet equal in the post-Christian "West" than at least this inequality can openly be discussed, argued, and challenged. How do we know when a woman does or does not want to wear her burqa? With blowzy acid-throwing virgins energized and deluded, it would take a brave woman indeed to risk disfigurement in a patriarchal immigrant neighborhood in, say,West London. Has Briand not read Maps for Lost Lovers, the haunting and beautiful account of women beaten, intimidated, and killed by their families for even the slightest gesture of free expression? Muslims should not be exempted from the social contract of a free society with equality before the law because of their faith in the authoritarian gospel of a desert faith.
The most wrenching experience of the night was listening to Michael Paulsen speak. If his self-professed "personal faith" as an evangelical Christian wasn't enough to get my gorge up, the feaux folksy lingo and foot-on-the-chair musings were condescending at best. This is a guy went to Yale and was acting like a 7th grade guidance counselor. Like all creepy evangelicals, Paulsen operates in a realm of relativism disguised as "absolute truth." He spoke repeatedly about his belief in absolutes but interestingly, he ignored any absolute rights as described by Mr. Briand's discussion of Declaration of Human Rights. Such documents in this world of original sin and political Anarchy were mere wasted reams! 'Merican law--grounded, successful, practical--was his topic de jure and religious "tolerance" was his muse. (By the way, I find it delicious when right-wing conservatives use 'multicultural tolerance' to advance Christian fundamentalism and reactionary politics. Clarence Thomas, Alberto Gonzales, and Condoleeza Rice come to mind. )
Paulsen spoke about the need for groups to form"moral-based communities" after he told the audience he had just returned from six months in Kenya. And what exactly was he doing there? Admiring the scenery? The indigenous and Muslim minorities, perhaps? He didn't specify, but I'm sure it was a tolerant voyage of multicultural dialogue.
Regarding the burqa, Paulsen argued that the neutral but "not necessarily agnostic state" does not reliably know what constitutes true religion and thus cannot be trusted to get these things right." He argued against the notion that religion should be "tolerated" and "gently condescended to," but accepted the argument as being on his side. Finally, he rejected what he called "religious intolerance" which he argued is when a state assumes that "religious truth does not exist and that it is affirmatively harmful to secular society to permit the free exercise of such views."
Say what?
If religious truth does not exist how could it possibly be "harmful?" No matter. As well as being a bad argument and a straw man it is misses the point. Our Constitution demands that we have freedom from religion in this country as well as freedom for religion. Check out the phonebook. Paulsen can go to any church, tabernacle, or goat-worship that makes him feel better with the caveat that I don't have to hear about it or have its nonsensical beliefs inflicted on me. But as a fundamentalist, Paulsen secretly hopes to smuggle through customs the notion that religion is not separate from the state and that we are a "Christian nation."
So regarding the burqas Paulsen agreed to them being worn by women, being worn in public schools, and being worn by young girls. He is willing to allow cowed and fearful women--many times the chattel of their husbands--to be subjected to the depravations of human contact, light, and social acknowledgement for his own perverse faith. Disgraceful. How do school teachers and social workers know whether "Muslim children" wanted to wear such tents? What alternative would these fledgling ladies have if they chose not to where such awful getups? Honor-killing? A paternal beating? Paulsen said he rejects forcing religion and supports punishment for those who force others to practice as they do. But he ignores the closed and tight-knit nature of Muslim immigrant communities and, as Orhan Pamuk has illustrated in his novel Snow, the symbolic power of the burqa for adherents of the faith. Has he not read Maps for Lost Lovers? How do we know, in a faith with such a despicable record on women's rights, who is promoting this symbol?
It's not a debate Paulsen wanted. He argued Briand's stance against the burqa was "very close" to Saudi Arabia's type of authoritarianism. His vision of the world is one of the worst kind of religious control merged with a sloppy relativism under the euphemistic title "freedom of religion." Freedom for whom? Freedom from what?
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