With France legislating to ban Muslim women from covering their face and hair, the European debate on Islamic veiling has taken a new and significant turn, expert Christian Joppke tells David Tresilian When German academic Christian Joppke published Veil: Mirror of Identity, a survey of European attitudes to the Islamic headscarf, or hijab, late last year, this year's debate in France, Switzerland and other European countries about banning the wearing by Muslim women of the so-called burqa, the niqab -type veil that typically covers the face and hair and leaves only the eyes showing, was only on the horizon. Debate until then had focussed on the wearing of the hijab alone, usually in certain defined contexts such as schools or places of work, with only limited interest being taken in the full, or niqab -type, veil worn by a tiny minority of European Muslim women. France banned the wearing of the Islamic headscarf by Muslim girls in state schools in 2004 in legislation that appealed to the laïcité, or secularism, of state institutions, considering the obvious display of signs of religious belonging to be inappropriate in notionally neutral public space. Legislation passed by several German Lönder, the states making up the country's federal system, took a similar turn in banning the wearing of the hijab by civil servants, notably school teachers in the neutral environment of state schools, at around the same time. Similar arguments were used to those employed in France, though, as Joppke explains, there were also significant differences that reflected Germany's different legal and constitutional traditions. Only in Britain had the wearing of the niqab been a source of public debate, with the matter being treated on a local level and within the context of employment law and only occasionally becoming part of a debate about the character of the state and state institutions, as had tended to be the case with continental European debates about the wearing of the hijab. However, the recent passage of legislation through the French parliament that makes it an offence to cover the face in public places has altered the terms of the debate, as Joppke explained in an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly. The legislation, passed by the French Assemblée nationale, the lower house of the country's parliament, in July and by the upper house, the Sénat, in September, extends the ban on forms of dress outside the context of certain state institutions and into public space as a whole, and the reasoning behind such a ban has also changed. Covering the face in public places could be considered an offence under French law for reasons of public order under the legislation, and not, as had been the case under the earlier law banning the wearing of the hijab in schools, because of these institutions' secular and neutral character. According to the legislation, which comes into force in a few months' time, "no one may wear clothing designed to conceal the face in public space," defined as "public roads, places open to the public or places used for public services," except "if the dress is prescribed or authorised by legislation or regulations, if it is justified for reasons of health of for professional reasons, or if it is worn within the framework of sports, festivities, or artistic or traditional performances." Contravention of the law could result in a fine or an obligatory "citizenship training course". Anyone convicted of "forcing one or more persons to hide their face because of their sex by threats, violence, constraints, or the abuse of power or authority" could risk one year in prison or a fine of 30,000 euros under the law. Should this concern forcing someone under the age of 16, fines could reach 60,000 euros with the possibility of two years in prison. While the law does not specifically mention the Islamic niqab or other similar veiling practices, it has been dubbed the "burqa ban" by the French media. Article 4 of the law, which concerns the "forced hiding of the face", makes it clear that certain cases are particularly targeted, notably should a person in authority, perhaps a father within the context of a family, oblige a girl to wear the niqab "because of her sex". Before the law's passage through the Assemblée nationale in July the legislation was submitted to the French Conseil d'état, the country's highest constitutional court, for an opinion on the "legal possibility of banning the wearing of the full veil." In its opinion, published in March, the Conseil stated that there was no "incontestable legal basis" for a ban on the wearing of the full veil in public. The only occasions on which such a ban could be legally justified, the Conseil's lawyers wrote, would be either within the framework of the existing law on laïcité, which obliges civil servants not to display signs of religious allegiance or belonging, or for reasons of public order or security, such as identity checks at airports or elsewhere. However, "a general ban on the wearing of the full veil as such, or of any form of hiding the face in public space as a whole, would be open to serious risk for constitutional reasons and for reasons related to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms," the lawyers wrote. Article 9 of the European Convention, dedicated to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, says that "everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes the freedom to change his religion or belief, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance." "Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others." Reasons of public order, the Conseil's lawyers wrote in March, "could not be the basis for a general ban of the complete veil alone, since no particular problem is associated with it as such." Nevertheless, the French parliament has gone ahead with the legislation despite the constitutional and other concerns, as Christian Joppke explained. In your recent book on the subject, you compare the approaches taken by three European countries, France, Germany and Britain, to the wearing of the hijab , or headscarf, by Muslim women. How would you compare European attitudes in the light of legislation to ban the wearing of the full veil, or so- called burqa ? There are countries in which there is no perceived need for any kind of legislation or prohibition and others, the rest, in which such a need is seen. In all the countries that fall into the latter category there is the same attempt to outlaw this style of dress in all public spaces. Initially, before this latest round of conflict, if there was an emphasis on banning the wearing of the full veil in public space it was limited to public institutions, say, or to spaces where there was a security question involved, such as when someone goes to an airport to get on a plane and their identity cannot be easily verified because they are wearing a full veil. In fact, there was a case in England in which a wanted man escaped from the country wearing a burqa. However, these limitations are no longer in place in countries engaging in legislative attempts to prohibit the wearing of the full veil. There are now attempts across the board to outlaw the burqa, being shorthand for the full veil, and this marks a newly radical attitude in moves that have been spearheaded by France, the country that opened the floodgates and seemed to make it legitimate to consider such moves in other countries. Technically, the first country to legislate against the wearing of the full veil was Belgium, which did so shortly before the French legislation was passed, about six months earlier. However, the Belgium ban was very much cognisant of the debate in France and particularly of the findings of the French Burqa Commission in 2009. Interestingly, the results of the latter Commission were very cautious and very qualified, and there was no majority for an across-the- board prohibition of the wearing of the burqa in public spaces simply because the legal obstacles seemed to be too high. Every single lawyer who testified to the Commission, and I have read the entire file, said that a ban was not legally possible, since it would contravene national or European or international law that enshrines certain individual rights and that the wearing of the full veil fell under the right of religious liberty or freedom of conscience. In Belgium, the politicians who debated the issue, and who were fully aware of the debate in France, argued that 'we know of all these legal constraints, but we are politicians and we have to take risks. We have to assume responsibility -- responsibility as the democratically elected representatives of the people.' And it is this idea -- I don't know if it was copied from Belgium -- that can be found among other European politicians despite the cautious opinions of the lawyers. There has been the same political rhetoric of risk-taking, of shouldering responsibility. So, the differences on the European scene are that some countries see absolutely no need for a ban on the wearing of the full veil in public spaces, whereas others do, and those that do are going in the radical direction opened up by France. In Germany, there has so far been no such discussion, and there have been statements by politicians saying that there is no need for such a ban. It has to be said that those countries that are going in this direction of a complete ban on the wearing of the full veil are all under the influence of extreme right-wing movements and parties. You don't have these in Germany for historical reasons, and in Germany the extreme right is a very marginal, non-agenda- setting phenomenon. This isn't the case in France, and it isn't the case in Holland, Switzerland, Denmark, or in Belgium, in terms of the Flemish bloc. In all these countries more radical moves to ban the wearing of the full veil in public are being entertained, I think because of the agenda-setting force of the extreme right- wing parties in these countries. Going back to the earlier debate over the hijab , in your book you talk about the different emphases to be found in various European countries. How would you characterise these differences? The problem is that today you don't see the same refinements. I think you can make a perfectly plausible argument to prohibit obvious religious symbols, if we qualify the headscarf as a very visible symbol, from schools, much as you might want to prohibit the wearing of certain brands of goods in schools, Nike or whatever, because of the factionalism among the students that these can give rise to. You want to clear schools of disturbances that are not functional to the educational enterprise, and you can make a plausible argument to justify the prohibition of religious dress in schools for this reason. However, the new moves against the full veil lack this kind of refinement. They are clearly populist moves, even though they speak the language of women's equality. There are no longer distinct approaches in different European countries as a result, and in fact I see only two approaches: either you go in this direction or you do not. I think you can explain this in terms of the absence or the presence of the far right in the country, and this is the national variation that you now find. In the book, I argue that there were different varieties of liberalism in play in earlier policies regarding the wearing of the hijab, or headscarf, with the French approach seeing liberalism as an ethical project aiming to form a person in the image of certain liberal, Enlightenment values, and the British version being a modus vivendi approach, a kind of let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom version of liberalism that does not involve strong views about how an individual should behave or dress. I also point out that in Germany the argument in some Lönder moved outside the liberal mould in that these allowed Catholic nuns to wear Catholic dress in some state schools while at the same time explicitly prohibiting Islamic dress on the grounds that this was not part of 'our culture' and that the German state had an obligation to reproduce and reinforce the national culture. I criticise the German Lönder for this double standard in the book because it has clearly exclusionary implications for Muslims, who are not seen as members of 'our culture' because of their religion. Whatever you might want to say about the British and French approaches, they are both varieties of liberalism since there is one rule or standard for all irrespective of group distinctions, which is not the case in Germany. On the other hand, thus far Germany has taken a very moderate line on the wearing of the full veil or burqa. I think I was too harsh in my book on Germany, which is still a rather 'liberal' environment for religious Muslims. How far would you say that moves to ban the wearing of the full veil in France are continuous with earlier French policy? How far do they represent a break with previous legislation? The French were the first Europeans to have problems with the wearing of the Islamic headscarf. These started in 1989 with the famous foulard [headscarf] affair, in which three students were expelled from school for wearing the headscarf to class. There then followed a long debate, culminating in the 2004 law that prohibits the wearing of the hijab or headscarf in state schools. However, all this debate was conducted in terms of laïcité and the need to emphasise the neutrality of the state and state institutions. Of course, the French have a very expansive notion of this neutrality as being something that involves not only teachers, but also students and anyone else who participates in state institutions. Yet, laïcité is no longer the concept that is being used to justify the present burqa ban, and there has been an interesting reinterpretation of what the full veil signifies. The idea now is that the full veil is not an expression of religion at all, and as a result it does not fall under rules that regulate religious expression. Instead, the wearing of the full veil is being seen as an expression of politically motivated fundamentalism, or sectarianism, and there seems to be a consensus among those pushing for a burqa ban in France that takes it out of the orbit of laicité. Laïcité was a key term in the older debate over the wearing of the hijab in state institutions such as schools in France. But now there has been a shift in discourse, as it were. There is continuity in that the full veil is seen as being profoundly unFrench and an expression of what the French call communautarisme, or sectarianism, and of a desire to withdraw from the national community and to exclude oneself from it. There is a strand of opinion that wants to ensure that France's five million Muslims are truly French at heart and that they share French republican values. That is the continuity in my view, which is stronger than the technical shifts in how to justify the prohibition on the wearing of the full veil. How do these shifts in the terms of the debate relate to the ways in which national identity is conceptualised in different European countries and the ways in which different countries understand the concept of multiculturalism? In the earlier debate about the hijab or headscarf, multiculturalism was still very much the framing discourse, and it was not questioned that all groups in society have a right to follow their own paths. There was little interventionism, and there was little concern that there could be moves towards segregation in the long term. There was somehow a trust that all would be included over the long term. However, I think that since the events of 2001 that trust or confidence has somehow withered, if not disappeared, and that there has been a radical questioning of the tolerant attitude implied by the multicultural framework that most European countries followed, some more explicitly and some more implicitly than others. Instead, there is now an attempt on the part of public policy-making to integrate newcomers and their offspring into society, in order to ensure that they share the same civic values as, presumably, the rest of the population. There is a whole new policy thrust towards what one might call civic integration and an attempt to instill liberalism as a shared value system among all members of society, particularly among newcomers and particularly among Muslims. This kind of attempt to 'streamline' newcomers in these terms was not present in the earlier debates surrounding the wearing of the hijab, and the discussion was not as radical as it is today. In all European countries the present debate on the wearing of the full veil by Muslim women in public space touches on the question of 'who we are.' There have been moves to redefine or reinforce Britishness, Dutchness, Germaness, or whatever it may be. These moves have all been in terms of liberal self-definitions in which Muslims are seen as a kind of non- liberal other. I myself had underestimated the harshness of the exclusion that can occur even along liberal lines. You touched on the opinion of a ban on the wearing of the full veil in public that was issued by the Conseil d'état in France. Would legislation of this sort be workable and could it come to pass? Well, it has come to pass. There is a moratorium at the moment, but this will only last six months, and then we will see whether the legislation is workable. The real question is what the Conseil constitutionnel, or French constitutional court, will have to say about the legality of the legislation if it is asked for an opinion. In fact, I have been really surprised, having read the opinions of the lawyers who appeared before the 2009 Commission on the matter, that there has been no outcry against the legislation. Even the Conseil d'état, in its opinion of March 2010, said that the legislation would be against the constitution and against European law. I am curious to see how the courts will react when the legislation comes into force. Will they toe the government line, given the political pressure not to block it, or will they stick to their earlier opinions on the dubious legal status of the ban? Legally speaking, the ban will be based on a new understanding of public order. In the past, public order in France meant public health and tranquility and the absence of trouble in the streets. But now public order is being defined differently, taking it into the realm of morals and giving it a societal component. It is illegal to walk naked in the streets, so now it is considered illegal within a concept of public morality to appear completely covered up in public, such that your identity cannot be established and you are seen as withdrawing from the life of the community. This is a new definition of what public order entails. Some lawyers have provided the clues to it, and we will have to see whether the judges accept it. There are questions about whether a ban on the wearing of the full veil in all public spaces could work in practice. Does the experience of previous legislation on the banning of the wearing of the hijab in schools tell us anything? There hasn't been much written on how particular conflicts in schools have been settled. But it is known anecdotally how this has been done. Within the terms of the older debate on the hijab, either the hijab -wearing pupils gave in and unveiled in school, or there were local compromises. Those pupils who did not unveil went to private Catholic schools, which welcomed veiled Muslim pupils. As a result, the debate over the wearing of the hijab in French schools has been defused, and the 2004 law has brought peace to state schools. However, the new law is a completely different matter. One can imagine what will happen if burqa -wearing women are surrounded by journalists as policemen try to establish their identity in order to fine them, as the new law requires. There is also the question of tourists or visitors to the country. There has been talk of exempting tourists from the ban, though I don't think this has made it into the final law. In Switzerland, if there will be no 'burqa ban' as in France, it is precisely in consideration of the tourist factor. What has been the attitude of French Muslims to the legislation banning the wearing of the full veil? My impression is that the majority of French Muslims are against the law, since it marks out Muslims whether they wear the full veil or not. However, at the same time the representatives of French Muslim organisations who were invited to give evidence in the lead up to the legislation said that they did not condone the wearing of the full veil, seeing it as an extreme or marginal practice. So there has been a closing of ranks in terms of ethno-religious solidarity, but at the same time no Muslim intellectual or representative defended the wearing of the full veil before the preparatory commission. [French Muslim intellectual] Tariq Ramadan, for example, told the commission that he did not support the wearing of the full veil. In your book you comment that every European country has had an issue with the wearing of the hijab , and now we are seeing issues with the wearing of the full veil and perhaps even an anxiety about seeing fully veiled women in the streets of European cities. Well, as I said earlier, multiculturalism as a framing discourse is now being seen in many European countries as somehow belonging to the past, though this is more the case in some countries than in others. In Britain, there has been a kind of 'moderation' of multiculturalism, replacing it with talk of Britishness, for example, whereas in Holland there has been almost a complete abandonment of multiculturalism. There is a new concern in Europe about the common core values that define 'who we are.' We are living through a period of rapid change, and the closedness of societies has become a thing of the past. Societies are now wide open to new ideas and to new people, and as a response there is a scramble for self-definition. I don't really have a ready-made answer to such a general question. However, to me the current moves against the wearing of the full veil cannot be understood without reference to the events of 2001 and to the general rise of Political Islam. This has established itself as a challenge to western modernity and as a global movement that sees itself as being something that is apart from the West and that does not necessarily share western values.
