Remember all the talk about France banning the burqa and niqab Muslim veils for women a few months ago? That project is now in the parliamentary inquiry phase, a six-month fact-finding mission expected to wind up late this year and produce a draft bill to outlaw them. That’s the way France handled it in 2003 when it wanted to stop Muslim girls from wearing headscarves to state schools. But the process seems more complex this time around. There’s less passion and more hesitation in the debate. A smooth progression from the inquiry to the ban and to its implementation no longer looks assured.

(Photo: Woman in a niqab outside a public library in Ronchin, northern France, 9 Aug 2009/Farid Alouache)

To get a feel for the debate, I dropped by the panel’s latest open hearing late on Tuesday and listened to the arguments being made. Five mayors from suburbs with Muslim minorities were due to speak to the panel, which is led by a Communist deputy named André Gerin who makes no bones about his view that a ban is needed. Mayors like these men play a key role in an issue like this, because they are on the front lines dealing with social change and are taken seriously when they clamour for change. Several are also deputies in the National Assembly - France allows them to occupy multiple offices - so they can easily lobby at the national level for something they want.

Sitting alone at the press table in the committee room, I soon saw why the drive towards a ban seems to be hitting some bumps. The mayors don’t know what they want. All think something has to be done, but most are worried that an outright ban wouldn’t work. Here’s my news story on the session.

This was the fifth of 16 hearings planned by the panel, which is officially called the Mission d’information sur la pratique du port du voile intégral sur le territoire national (Fact-finding mission on the practice of wearing the full veil on national territory). They’ve already heard representatives of women’s right groups, spokespeople of associations defending France’s secular system, a Muslim women’s rights advocate and two Muslim intellectuals and they plan to visit the ethnically mixed suburbs of Paris, Lyon, Lille and Marseille. You can often predict what will be said, but not always - some of the militant secularists turned out to be against a burqa ban because it meant the state interfered with personal choice.

(Photo: A televised session of the panel/National Assembly)

To give you a better feel for the debate, here’s a summary of my notes and quotes from the session:

*Claude Dilain, mayor of Clichy-sous-Bois and chairman of the Association of Mayors of French Cities and Suburbs, said “the veil concerns the issue of women’s dignity and it’s clearly a brake on integration”. Within his association, though, “views (about a ban) are divided. Lots of officials are talking about the risks of passing a law. They’re concerned about political and civic risks.”

“Who’ll be responsible for enforcing this law? There’s a lot of concern about this.” France did not necessarily need a law, he said, but “it’s important that the Republic reasserts its values in a strong symbolic manner … It would be a mistake to look at the full veil just from the religious angle. There are socio-economic causes as well.  People are taking refuge in identities.”

“We’d have lots of difficulty trying to enforce a law on the ground. Now, the police in Clichy-sous-Bois don’t even issue parking tickets in some areas at some times… There has been a strong rise in religious demands. We mayors can’t be left alone with this. This is happening several times a day. You can’t make a strong statement defending the Republic now without being called an Islamophobe.”

*Jean-Pierre Blazy, mayor of Gonesse north of Paris, admitted: “I’m hesitant. I can’t say today that we need a law. But we shouldn’t just dump the problem on the mayors. We need a firm dialogue to make secularism come alive in this country.” He stressed that he supported the 2004 headscarf ban and was concerned about growing religious demands by Muslims for exceptions to the usual municipal services. “If we have a law, we have to have accompanying measures with it,” he said, to make the measure more palatable to Muslims. One measure he suggested was to teach Arabic in state schools.

(Photo: Veiled woman shopping in Roubaix, near Lille, 9 Aug 2009/Farid Alouache)

*Renaud Gauquelin, mayor of Rillieux-La-Pape near Lyon, said there were very few veiled women in his town but growing problems with Muslim demands in pools, hospitals and schools. On veils, he said: “Is this a regression for the rights of women in France? Certainly. Is there a parallel development for men? No.”

“I’m tending towards a law,” he said, noting that laïcité, the legal separation of church and state, was written into the constitution, as were women’s rights, and failing to ban the veil would amount to a failure to defend those rights. “What sign would we give to women around the world? To Iranian women fighting for their freedom? To Saudi women who want to be able to drive a car?”

*Jean-Yves Le Bouillonnec, mayor of Cachan south of Paris, thought existing laws would be enough to deal with the burqa issue. “If we pass a law, how would we enforce it? What would the sanctions be for violating it? There could be no worse message to send than to pass a law and tell people to obey it without saying they will be punished for not obeying it… I can’t see a ban working. It’s extremely complex and almost completely inapplicable.”

He suggested the National Assembly might want to pass a strong resolution reaffirming republican principles.

*Xavier Lemoine, mayor of Montfermeil east of Paris, said some Muslims in his town were becoming “reislamised” and this was visible in a rise in veil wearing and pressure some Muslims put on co-religionists who don’t fast during Ramadan. “It’s not always in the poorer areas, but also in the middle class areas that you see these demands,” he said. He noted that the full veil was not required by the Koran “but it’s in the Sunnah”, France had to take a strong position against the veil and understand how Islam was different from Western traditions. “In Judeo-Christian society, the individual is predominant. In the Muslim world, the individual exists through belonging to a community. The weight of the community is terrible.” At the same time, officials should separate Islam from its fundamentalist fringe when analysing religious issues.

(Photo: Woman in a niqab walks near Eiffel Tower in Paris, 24 June 2009/Gonzalo Fuentes)

Still, he was also hesitant about voting for a ban. “I prefer to do nothing for a good reason than something for a bad reason.”

Several panel members had questions or observations for the invited mayors.

*André Gerin, a Communist deputy, head of the fact-finding panel and former mayor of Venissieux suburb of Lyon, called full veils “medieval customs spread by salafists”. The veil was the I in an Islamisation drive by radical Muslims. Gerin said France should not only consider a ban on full veils but also go after “the gurus” who are not in these neighbourhoods but are spoiling everything”. (BTW Gerin gave no details about who he meant by “gurus”, a term usually used by Hindus and Sikhs. But they call all full veils burqas, using the Afghan term, even though almost all of them worn here are Arab-style niqabs. Go figure.)

*Jean Glavany, a Socialist deputy, said fundamentalism was part of all religions these days. “This idea of separating the fundamentalists from the religion doesn’t work. To say that fundamentalist excesses have nothing to do with the religion is like saying hooliganism has nothing to do with football or doping has nothing to do with the Tour de France.”

“We should refuse to make legislators into exegetists.”

*Jacques Myard, conservative UMP deputy and mayor of Maisons-Lafitte northwest of Paris, warned against turning into a  “soft democracy” that could not stand up for its own values. He argued for a ban with punishments for violators. “Sanctions have to be rehabilitated. Not cutting off of heads and hands, of course.  But this is the order of things in a structured society with its own values. It has to be respected. They can’t impose their personal order.”

“Is Islam compatible with laïcité? That’s not my problem.  It’s not for us to decide if it’s compatible, it’s up to them. In the Muslim world, you find all kinds of interpretations. It’s not our role to solve this.”

Understanding the French approach to its Muslim minority has often proved difficult for outsiders. Does this make it any clearer?

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(Photo: Muslim women with Belgian flag protest against headscarf bans, 4 Feb 2004/Yves Herman)

A Belgian court is due to rule next week on a ban on the Muslim headscarf at two schools in Dutch-speaking Flanders, an issue that has led to a death threat for one school principal and graffiti sprayed on walls. The schools in Antwerp and nearby Hoboken introduced the ban at the start of the school year last week, arguing that Muslim girls were being pressured to wear headscarves by their families and peers.

Angry pupils have staged protests outside the school and one girl filed a complaint with the Belgian Council of State to contest the ban. The court will rule on the matter next week and one of its chief advocates has already advised it to overturn the ban. The advocate’s advice is followed in 90 percent of cases.

“The advocate said that such a ban is not lawful, and that only the umbrella organisation of state schools can decide on whether or not to introduce such a measure,” a court spokesman said.

The protests with banners reading “No headscarf, no pupils” and “Everybody free except us” have been headline news in Belgium. One of the schools was vandalised and had slogans sprayed on its walls and its director has received a death threat.

Neighbouring France passed a law in 2004 banning pupils from wearing conspicuous signs of their religion at school after a decade of bitter debate about Muslim girls wearing headscarves in class. Such a measure would be difficult to introduce across the region of Flanders, where most of the schools are private Catholic institutions. Those that have introduced headscarf bans are “community schools.”

UPDATE: School officials announced later on Friday that about one fifth of all schools in Belgium’s Dutch-speaking Flanders region would ban pupils from wearing Muslim headscarves.  “This decision promotes the feeling of equality and prevents group formation or segregation on the basis of external symbols of life philosophy,” said a statement from the schools.

Here is a Reuters TV video on the story:

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(Photo: Minaret of Zurich’s Mahmud Mosque, 23 May 2007/Christian Hartmann)

The Swiss Council of Religions, which is composed of leaders from the country’s Christian, Jewish and Islamic organisations, has issued a statement rejecting a proposed ban on minarets. A group of right-wing anti-immigrant politicians has gathered more than 100,000 signatures to support the so-called Minaret Initiative, saying the minarets threaten law and order. The vote is due on November 29.

The Swiss federal government has warned that the referendum vote was organised legally but a ban would violate international human rights and the country’s constitution. “Such a ban would endanger peace between religions and would not help to prevent the spread of fundamentalist Islamic beliefs,” its Department of Justice and Police said in late August.

The Council statement, the first it has made on a political issue since it was formed in 2006 to foster interfaith dialogue, denounces the bid as an affront to the tradition of diversity in the multilingual Alpine country. Here are some excerpts from the statement:

“The Swiss Council of Religions decisively rejects the Minaret Initiative. The Council, which consists of leaders from the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities, is dedicated to protecting religious peace in Switzerland and to strengthening trust among the churches and religious communities. The Minaret Initiative would bring about just the opposite. It instrumentalizes religion for political aims and engenders mistrust among the populace…

“Switzerland has known cultural diversity for a long time. It is part of its history and characteristic of the Swiss identity. The people of this country have developed rules and systems of coexistence in the course of a long common history. The resulting rules are such an integral part of the cultural tradition of the country that its people are hardly aware of them in explicit terms; and at the center of this democratic self-image lies in the recognition of the freedom of each individual within the framework of a legal order that is equally binding for all…”

(Photo: Steeple and minaret in Wangen bei Olten, 7 August 2009/Michael Buholzer)

“The dialogue among the churches and religious communities of Switzerland shows that differences of religion, culture, tradition, and social-political views do not preclude a deep common belief that all people share the same inalienable dignity. The fundamental rights to the freedom of belief and conscience apply equally to all. The right to construct mosques and minarets can therefore not be made to depend on whether religious minorities enjoy the same religious freedoms in other countries. Answering injustice with further injustice would be a betrayal of Swiss values…

“The minaret initiative does not solve any problems. On the contrary, it only contributes to suspicion, mistrust, and aggression against people of Muslim faith…

“The signatures gathered for the referendum initiative lend expression to the people’s fears and concerns. What messages will be preached in the mosques? Is Islam more than just a religion? What significance do human rights, democracy and rule of law, and the equality of men and women have from a Muslim point of view? Does Islam seek the status of an exception in Switzerland due to its religious precepts? These questions and others like them will be asked and require discussion…”

Swissinfo.ch has an interesting interview with Council Secretary Markus Sahli that starts right off with the question — what does this interpretation of religious freedom mean for the debate over women wearing Muslim headscarves?  “The headscarf issue is a difficult one. The Council has come to the conviction that one cannot give an overall answer to this question. One must respond to it case by case…”

According to the Basler Zeitung, the Swiss government is concerned that the November 29 referendum could spark protests in the Muslim world and is preparing an information campaign to explain it abroad. The issue has not aroused much interest in Muslim countries so far, it says, so there are no plans now to start an information campaign that might only draw attention to the issue.

(Photo: Istanbul protest against Swiss publication of Prophet Mohammad cartoons, 10 Feb 2006/Ahmet Ada)

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The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the author’s alone. Sarah Sayeed is a Program Associate at the Interfaith Center of New York and a board member of Women In Islam, Inc.

By Sarah Sayeed

As an American Muslim woman who adheres to religious guidelines on modest dress, I find it ironic that such remarkably different nations as Sudan and France seem similarly preoccupied with legislating Muslim women’s dress.   The Sudanese government recently arrested and whipped women, including Christian women, for wearing trousers.  The French banned a woman wearing a head-to-toe Muslim bathing suit (a “burkini”) from entering a town pool.

(Photo: Australian lifeguard Mecca Laalaa in her burkini, 13 Jan 2007/Tim Wimborne)

Even if we were to give credence to an argument that pants are immodest for women, there is no injunction in the Quran or any example from Prophet Muhammad which demands corporeal punishment for “inappropriate” dress. Such a harsh practice completely contradicts the justice and compassion that Islam mandates.

Likewise, the French ban on burkinis is outrageous.  Wearing the burkini has given me the freedom to enjoy water sports with my son; it has not limited me, but rather enhanced the quality of my life.  But now, I worry that other public pools will follow suit.  In recent years, France banned religious symbols in public schools, including the headscarf, and denied citizenship to a Muslim woman who wears a face veil.  Will this disturbing trend spread across other democratic nations?

France and Sudan are miles apart geographically, politically, and culturally.   Yet both countries have imposed on the personal freedom of Muslim women to dress as they choose, and ultimately, to participate in the public sphere.  Sudan’s choice to impose corporeal punishment is far more egregious, relative to banning a woman from entering a pool.  For the average person, Sudan’s actions seem barbaric, but in a way, unsurprising because they conform to a prevailing stereotype about Islamic law as harsh and oppressive to women.

But because French laws are enacted in a context which purports more openness, plurality and freedom, they could be more harmful to the cause of global freedom and democracy.  France perceives itself as a free country that allows its citizens to practice the religion of their choice.  France, like other Western European countries or the United States, would want Muslim nations to “look up to it,” to learn from its example how to separate religion and state.  However, the French ban on head covers, face covers, and now on pool attire suggests that religious freedom is bounded, even within a democratic context.

It is true that the ban on headscarves emerged out of a debate among French Muslims.  Specifically, one group of Muslims felt that their freedom of choice and conscience were imposed upon when other Muslims insulted and physically harassed girls who were not wearing a scarf.  The former turned to the government for assistance.  Out of its sense of responsibility to maintain public order, the government banned all religious symbols in public schools.  But preserving the freedom of conscience of one party need not come at the expense of freedom of religious practice of another.  There are other methods of resolving such conflicts, including prosecuting harassment and attacks as hate crimes, imposing strict penalties on perpetrators, and even community mediation.

(Photo: Palestinian girls play beach volleyball at Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip, 20 \june 2009/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa)

French authorities also voiced a concern that loose fitting swim gear that “can be worn in public may carry molecules and viruses that can be transmitted to other bathers.”  Even though most Muslim women are unlikely to wear the burkini anywhere else, surely a shower before entering the water and the chlorine of a public pool can be counted upon to take care of these dangerous “molecules and viruses!”  A deeper mistrust of Muslims emerges in Mayor Kelyor’s statement that to permit the burkini is to “go back in civilization.”  Muslim women’s practice of modesty poses a threat to French notions of progress just as Sudanese Muslim women’s choice to wear pants was also deemed threatening.

Ultimately, authorities in Sudan and France conveyed a parallel message.  To democracy’s nay-sayers in the Muslim world, France communicated that those who practice Islam will be marginalized.  To Islam’s nay-sayers Sudan confirmed the interpretation that Islamic law is an oppressive and restrictive.  Both have infringed upon the rights of minority groups within their respective contexts.

Governments and political movements worldwide, from Turkey to Afghanistan, from France to the U.K, from Sudan to Saudi Arabia, all are inappropriately focused on controlling Muslim women’s dress. It is surprising that even within nations that uphold individual freedom, democracy and the separation of religion and state, governments seem to be anxious about Muslim women’s attire. Would governments ever legislate that men who wear beards may not become citizens and those who wear fitted pants should be whipped?  I say to these governments: get out of our hair, and stay away from our pants! Instead, what government must do is to protect the freedom of Muslim women to choose our dress.  Protecting choice guarantees human dignity and maintains fairness.  Ultimately, the preservation of democracy as well as the practice of Islam depends on it.

———————

The burkini (aka “burqini”), which first appeared in Australia, has also been banned in at least one Dutch swimming pool.

Following is a Reuters video report on the recent “burkini ban” in France –

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The French love a rousing political debate, all the more so if it leads to a parliamentary inquiry and is topped off with a new law. Paris set the stage this week for just such a debate on whether Muslim women should be allowed to cover their faces in public in burqas or niqabs. By deciding this week to launch a six-month inquiry into the issue, parliament has ensured it will stay in the headlines until year’s end as 32 politicians from the left and right hold weekly hearings to consider banning these veils.

(Photo: Woman in a niqab walks near Eiffel Tower in Paris, 24 June 2009/Gonzalo Fuentes)

A few politicians have been proposing a ban on full facial veils ever since France outlawed headscarves from its state schools in 2004. The issue came up recently when 58 politicians signed a petition for an inquiry into whether burqa wearing should be outlawed in France. But it finally took off on June 22 when President Nicolas Sarkozy declared these veils “unwelcome in France” as a symbol of the subjugation of women and backed the call for an inquiry.

Few women in France actually wear these veils, either the Afghan-style burqa covering the face completely or the Arabian niqab with space open for the woman’s eyes. It is perhaps telling that the French say burqa for both of them, even though the full veils occasionally spotted in minority neighbourhoods outside Paris or Lyon are niqabs. Pictures of burqas in French media are usually from Afghanistan. Anyway, the politicians who petitioned for the commission say the numbers of fully veiled women are rising and that seems to be true. But the evidence is always anecdotal and there are no statistics to support this argument.

One might be tempted to call the inquiry a “fact-finding mission” but, if past practice is anything to go by, we may not get many facts in the final report anyway. France has been through this exercise before. In mid to late 2003, the so-called Stasi Commission studied the state of laïcité (separation of church and state) in six months of work including 100 open and 40 closed hearings. Many of these sessions were covered by the media. The final report had long and eloquent sections on French law, history and laïcité. But it had no empirical survey data on how many schoolgirls wore hijab headscarves or how often women refused to be treated by male doctors in hospitals.

Nobody seemed surprised at the lack of data at the time because this was not a “fact-finding mission.” The exercise was meant to find arguments to ban the Muslim headscarf in state schools. This was confirmed when the report was finished and then President Jacques Chirac promptly picked one of the commission’s 26 proposals — the veil ban — and quickly had a law passed to enforce it. There was a wave of protests by some Muslim groups but they did not last long.

(Photo: Protest in Strasbourg against the headscarf ban, 20 Dec 2003. The banner reads “A law against the headscarf or against Islam”/stringer)

The inquiry and the public debate surrounding it showed that defending laïcité and upholding basic rights such as gender equality and freedom of expression enjoy wide support across the political spectrum in France. In an age of advancing globalisation and Europeanisation of so many other political issues, these have become key identity issues for the French. They’re what are known in American political slang as “motherhood and apple pie” issues that most people agree on. The burqa inquiry petition, for example, was launched by a communist deputy but 40 of its 58 signatories are from Sarkozy’s centre-right UMP party.

The timing of the petition suited Sarkozy’s political calender well. Elections in France’s 26 regions, now almost all run by the opposition Socialist Party, are due around March of next year. By that time, the burqa commission should have finished its job and the government might be ready to present a burqa ban law bound to be popular . As my colleague Paul Taylor wrote here, the issue also fit into Sarkozy’s plan to relaunch his drive for some far-reaching reforms: “The aim was clear — to distract attention from less crowd-pleasing but more significant proposals to ease taxes on labour and production, raise a big loan from the public to finance key spending priorities, slim down France’s bloated regional and local government and debate raising the legal retirement age.” It’s useful to remember that, back in 2004, Sarkozy didn’t like the headscarf ban idea and only went along with it reluctantly.

As France heads into this debate, two questions stand out:

• If the commission really wants to find out about burqa and niqab wearing in France, it should provide solid statistics to back up its claim that it is important and growing. Will the fact-finding panel come up with any facts?
• Masked people present a problem of identity and security in an open society. Faces are a natural identity card and a rough indicator of a person’s mood. Covering them hides the wearer’s most indentifying feature and denies to the rest of the public sphere — especially the police — the ability to see the others in their midst. Hijabs present no such problem because they leave the face uncovered. Why do politicians opt for the arguments about laïcité and women’s equality when the broader question of identity and security in an open society also confronts them?

My guess is that no statistical surveys will be made because the results would show the actual number of women involved is very small and this could undercut arguments for a ban. The question of identity and security will probably also not be asked because it would involve a deeper debate about what is and is not admissible in the public sphere. We had a post earlier this year about this debate in North America and how difficult it is to decide this.

Why bother with a more complex debate when laïcité and women’s equality are sure-fire winning arguments?

(Photo: Women shop for clothes at Muslim fair in northern Paris, 14 April 2007/Benoit Tessier)

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Pakistani Islamist women activists in Lahore, 5 Feb 2009/Mohsin Raza

French politicians seem ready once again to make a political issue out of Muslim women’s clothes. A group of 58 legislators has called for a parliamentary enquiry into what they said was a growing number of women wearing “the burqa and the niqab on the national territory.“ Their initiative comes five years after France banned the Muslim headscarf from French state schools. President Nicolas Sarkozy hasn’t tipped his hand yet, but his government’s spokesman, Luc Chatel, said on Friday that Paris could opt for a law “if, after this enquiry, we see that burqa wearing was forced, which is to say it was contrary to our republican principles.”

“There are people in this country who are walking around in portable prisons,” said André Gerin, a Communist legislator who was behind the initiative. More than 40 legislators from Sarkozy’s ruling centre-right party were also signatories. “We have to be able to open a loyal and frank dialogue with all Muslims about the question of the place of Islam in this country … taking into account the slide towards fundamentalism (of some Muslims),” Gerin told France Info radio.

The politicians’ appeal argued that burqas and niqabs violated the principle of gender equality: “If the Islamic headscarf amounted to a distinctive sign of belonging to a religion, here we have the extreme stage of this practice. It is no longer just an ostentatious show of religion, but an attack on women’s freedom and the affirmation of femininity. Clothed in a burqa or niqab, she is in a situation of reclusion, exclusion and inadmissible humiliation. Her very existence is negated.”

Saudi woman pharmacist in Jeddah, 4 June 2007/Susan Baaghil

Mohammed Moussaoui, head of the French Council of the Muslim faith (CFCM), said he was shocked by the proposal and asked why politicians wanted to focus on what he called a marginal phenomenon when they had bigger economic problems to deal with. “Bringing up the subject in this way, through the creation of a parliamentary commission, amounts to a stigmatisation of Islam and the Muslims of France,” he said.

No estimates exist for the total number of women wearing the all-encompassing garments in France and whether their number has been on the rise. Gerin said the commission would try to establish these facts. There are reasons to question just how widespread the practice really is. In previous public debates in France about Muslim headscarves or Muslim demands for hospitals to respect Islamic traditions (no men doctors to examine women, etc), some politicians and media seemed to assume the word “anecdote” was the singular of “data” and present a few stories as proof of a worrying trend.

Reactions have been mixed within Sarkozy’s government. State secretary for urban affairs Fadela Amara,  one of three cabinet members of Muslim background, has advocated a law against burqas and niqabs while Immigration Minister Eric Besson says France should oppose this clothing “but it has to do it by education, by teaching, by dialogue. A law would be ineffective and would create tensions we don’t need right now.”

Fadela Amara in the National Assembly, 14 Feb 2009/Jacky Naegelen

Sociologist Jean Bauberot, one of the leading specialists on France’s system of laïcité, or separation of church and state, told Libération this debate was similar to the headscarf controversy of 2003-2004 in that both showed a French tendency to think the state can know what’s best for its citizens. But there was an important difference in that facial veils could pose “practical problems for recognising the identity of the person standing in front of you.” We’ve discussed a similar argument in Canada on this blog.

“Of course, one may regret that women wear a burqa, but one cannot liberate people despite themselves,” he remarked.

Do you think there’s a difference between women covering their hair and covering their faces? Are both religious traditions that western countries should respect? Or do the practical problem Bauberot mentions mean a country could say yes to hijabs but no to niqabs?

The 700 children who have come to Turkey for the Turkish Language Olympics — an annual event described in my feature “Turkish language fest shows preacher’s global reach” — will know little if anything about the controversy here over the powerful socio-religious community behind their schools.

(Photo:School girls sing at Turkish Language Olympics in Istanbul, 3 June 2009/Halit Omer Camci)

Getting ready to perform in a huge auditorium in Istanbul more often used for international conferences, the 30-odd signing competition entrants appear giggly and excited, fussing over their elaborate folk costumes. Most are visiting for the first time and have been completely charmed by Turkey - just as Turkey has been charmed by them.

The children attend schools run by individuals or associations inspired by the teachings of Muslim preacher Fethullah Gülen. He is revered by many Turks as a tolerant, moderating force in Islam, but suspected by some secularist Turks of harbouring a covert political agenda. Gülen groups are active in publishing, inter-faith dialogue, charity and above all education.

A look at the invited audience here to watch the Olympics reveals where the Gülen community fits in the social fabric of Turkey. The vast majority of the women wear the Muslim headscarf and elegant ankle-length coats. These are the same observant professionals who vote for the ruling AK Party.

Turkey’s ardent secularists are suspicious of the Gülen community, but some concede the Turkish Language Olympics have put the international schools in an excellent light. The youngsters, often with full scholarships, are given chances they might never have had in local state education. When you speak to the children they are ambitious and confident and communicate in excellent Turkish, even though not all are from Turkish backgrounds. This helps stir nationalist hearts in Turkey.

While some of the most critical claims about Gülen schools assert he wants to train a new cadre of youngsters to lead a future Islamic Turkish state, what comes across most strongly from watching the finals is that this is a group of smart, spirited children relishing their experience abroad.

When French President Jacques Chirac ’s government wanted to ban Muslim headscarves in state schools back in 2004, it had to find a way to (1) make the ban look fair and (2) avoid a backlash from the majority Catholic electorate.  A ban had to target all religions, but couldn’t be absolute because that could violate international rights norms. It also risked alienating some Catholic voters because because many Catholic girls wore necklaces with small gold crosses. So Paris came up with a ban on “conspicuous religious symbols” that would bar  Muslim headscarves, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses. That only bishops actually wore large crosses did not seem to matter.

(Photo: Sikhs in France protest against turban ban, 31 Jan 2004/Charles Platiau)

In the haste to pass and apply the law, the government overlooked a religious group that would also be hit by the new restrictions — the Sikhs. There are about 10,000 of them, mostly living in the Paris area, easily identifiable by the distinctive turbans the men wear. When local Sikh community leaders and Sikh activists from London protested that a turban is not a religious symbol, they were given a polite hearing and ignored. The Sikhs said the turban was simply a practical way of covering the real religious symbol, their uncut hair, so taking it off would expose the religious symbol the ban was meant to bar from state schools. It was a clever argument — one that, as the cynical French quip puts it, had the additional merit of being true — but the government was not going to allow any exceptions that could leave a back door open for Muslim girls to squeeze some kind of  headscarf through.

The uproar over the ban has long since calmed down, but the Sikhs continue to campaign to overturn it. A group called United Sikhs asked a U.N. human rights committee on Monday to declare that France had violated a student’s rights by expelling him for wearing a turban and to recommend repealing the law that led to it.

The outlook for this initiative is not bright. Last month, the European Court of Human Rights dismissed an appeal by a Sikh who had been told he could not get his driving license renewed unless he took off his turban for the picture. Earlier this month, it threw out a complaint by two French Muslim girls who were expelled from their school for refusing to remove their headscarves during sports lessons.

(Photo: Sikhs in New Delhi protest against French ban, 20 Feb 2006/Adnan Abidi)

Several other countries have made exceptions for Sikhs to allow them to continue wearing their turbans, but those countries are also more flexible than France about Muslim headscarves. Do you think France should make an exception for them too?

It’s already been a big theme in Germany, France, Turkey and the Netherlands, and now the Austrian far right is asking: Should public employees be allowed to wear Muslim headscarves at work?

Two women have become the first schoolteachers in Vienna to wear headscarves while teaching.

One is also a local centre-left Social Democrat politician.

Teachers in other parts of the country already wear headscarves, and there is no law banning public employees from wearing such items as there is in some other European countries.  

But the two women have now found themselves featured on the front page of the Austrian daily Oesterreich and have drawn criticism from the resurgent far right, which won a combined one-third of the vote in a parliamentary election several weeks ago.

“Headscarves are a symbol of Islamism and female oppression. They have no place in Austria,” says Heinz-Christian Strache, head of the far-right Freedom Party, which has now become Austria’s third most powerful.

The director of the state schools in that part of Vienna fully supports the women — one-third of the school children come from Turkish families so the women “break down linguistic and cultural barriers”, she says.

But some feel a division between religion and state is more important.

“Something that would be unthinkable in Turkey is a reality in red (left-leaning) Vienna,” says Martin Strutz, the general secretary of the right-wing Alliance for Austria’s Future.

“The (Vienna) Social Democrats don’t value the separation between church and state any more,” he adds, calling for a complete ban on headscarves and veils in public office.

While Freedom and Alliance call for symbols of Islam to be removed from state schools, they do not seem to object to symbols of Christianity in Austria, which is predominantly Roman Catholic.

The ban on religious symbols in France, on the other hand, covers all faiths in a strict separation of religion and state. The arguments to uphold the ban there also focused more on women’s rights, rather than equating the veil with Islamism.

By targeting Muslims specifically and raising fears about Islam, the Austrian far-right parties can touch on the kind of themes that helped them win so many votes in September 

It started as a women’s protest for the right to wear Muslim headscarves at university, in this case at Marmara University in Istanbul. Then the men showed up with their banners and megaphones, lined up in front of the cameras and began speaking in place of the women. That left the ladies standing demurely on the sidelines or in the crowd, all decked out with their bright silk scarves with nothing to do but clap at what the men said.

It was just another case of what women here often complain about — that the headscarf has been hijacked by politics for decades, leaving ordinary women to suffer the consequences. Some have sacrificed an education for their faith, preferring not to go to university if it means uncovering, and they feel like little more than a political football in this very masculine power struggle.

Check out our video from Marmara University, especially the protester who says “We want freedom to wear headscarves!” Hmmm … do you think he’ll ever wear one?

Turkish politics is deeply divided over whether women should be allowed to wear the headscarf at university and elsewhere in public life. Secularists, who fear that pious Turks are bent on curbing their right to live as they please, are trying to protect Turkey’s official secularism so fiercely that they are accused of restricting religious freedom. Pious Muslims are clamouring for a change in the strict ban on headscarves as a human right. And, as in the video, it’s the men who do most of the talking.

“Some are trying to win votes by banning the headscarf, others by allowing it, and we’re stuck in the middle. For years they have been making politics over me and my headscarf,” one angry young woman told me at Marmara this week.

Turkey’s parliament in Ankara, dominated by the religious-leaning AK Party, has lifted a ban on the use of the headscarf at university. But the secularist establishment is rebelling. The reform has been challenged in court while some rectors refuse to let covered women into class until another law is passed. Secularist students have also protested against the reform, as in the photo to the right. The placard reads “The headscarf cannot liberate women.”

While the secularists accuse covered women of trying to undermine the secular republic, the women themselves deny any political agenda and appear to suffer deeply from what they consider restrictions on their personal freedom.

At the protest this week in Istanbul, one young woman whipped out a copy of the Koran to explain to me what it was all about. This was an order from God, she said, as she guided me patiently through the text. Others I spoke to kept using the word “humiliation” when they described how it felt to go to class “undressed.”

These women are now setting their sights on getting the ban lifted in other areas of public life — much to the horror of secularists — so they can put their degrees to use in the public sector. And that guarantees their wardrobe, whether they like it or not, will remain a political issue for years to come.

P.S. Whenever the headscarf issue comes back into the headlines, a wave of articles shows just how many aspects this story has. Here are a few of the most interesting recent ones:

• Al-Ahram Weekly reports on a beauty salon for covered women in a Cairo suburb.
• Turkish journalist Mustafa Akyol comments on which other reforms the government should introduce now that it has allowed the headscarf at universities.
• The New York Times describes how secularised urban Turks react to headscarves.
• The Washington Institute for Near East Policy discuss the foreign policy implications of the headscarf issue for Turkey and the U.S.
• An American anthropoligist argues in Sightings that the controversy veils what the headscarf really means.
• British writer Madeleine Bunting says secularists have nothing to fear from women wearing headscarves.