Veiled motives

Personal law cannot override civil rights in a modern state

Last week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s announcement backing a ban by her party members on full-face veils, or the burqa, drew fulsome praise from most Germans, sharp criticism from refugee rights groups and cynical reactions from the commentariat. Though the move can certainly be interpreted as a sop to popular prejudice ahead of national elections next year — Ms Merkel’s open-door policy towards West Asian migrants cost her party votes in recent local elections to an anti-immigration rival — it deserves endorsement for reasons that have nothing to do with pandering to xenophobia, as her critics allege.

It is true that Ms Merkel spoke in idioms that conservative Germans would recognise. The burqa hindered assimilation, she said to wide applause, “it does not belong to us”, an uncharacteristic expression of “the other” on the part of someone who overrode widespread protest to admit almost 900,000 West Asian refugees into Germany last year. Although Ms Merkel refrained from doing so, she could also well have referred to the practical security issues that arise when people are hidden behind full-face veils, a circumstance that has undeniably magnified the popular narrative of a rise in crime rates as a result of the influx of refugees.

In a sense, Ms Merkel has done the right thing, even if it is for the “wrong” reasons.  Unlike the hijab, which, like the turban worn by Sikh men, is a personal expression of faith, the burqa is a uniquely disempowering garment for women. The hijab can be defended; the burqa emphatically cannot. It renders women invisible in public life, implicitly relegating them within society and endorsing male prejudice — there are no equivalent sartorial strictures for men, after all — that has no place in modern global society. It is worth remembering that the re-imposition of the burqa was among the first fatwas of the Taliban leadership after it took power in Afghanistan, a country where women hitherto enjoyed an enviable degree of freedom among Islamic nations. Serious Islamic scholars suggest that the burqa is less a Quranic stricture and more a cultural imposition adopted from widespread practices in West Asia around the seventh century.  

In Europe, where the issue of accommodating migrants has threatened the future of the European Union, the presence of burqa-clad women represents the very worst face of a religion that unfairly faces so much opprobrium in the popular discourse. They add to the growing alienation within a cultural milieu that rightly places a huge premium on gender equality. Thus, the protests of refugee rights groups on this score are specious; on the contrary, they would have done better to endorse Ms Merkel's move to end a reactionary convention. There is surely much gain to be had by leveraging this issue to promote the cause of the rights of West Asian women within a secular paradigm. Insisting on the burqa plays to bigotry no less than France’s absurd and short-lived ban on the burkini, which must surely be the first time women have been ordered to uncover rather than cover themselves in public.

The same arguments apply to the current debate over triple talaq (or divorce) in India. Though the issue has been raised within the template of an unabashedly communal agenda, it is difficult to defend the practice on any grounds. The Allahabad High Court has rightly pointed to the regressive nature of the practice that has no basis in modern society and no endorsement in the Quran. In striking down the petition, the judge made the valid point that personal law could not override civil rights in a modern state. That is a truth leaders of the world’s many religions urgently need to assimilate more thoroughly.