TO BE OR NOT TO BE: MUSLIMS IN THE WEST

It’s the hijab again. This time the controversy is in Scotland, about playing soccer in the Muslim hijab (here). This is but the latest link in the chain of controversies on hijab in the West (See England, France, Italy, Germany, and in the West supported regimes of supposedly ‘modernized’ Turkey, Tunisia (also here), Morocco, and Egypt). All of these cases raise some very fundamental questions. Questions that need to be resolved first in order to reach a plausible and agreeable solution(s).

First, there is a need to understand that the hijab controversies are much deeper than a ’simple’ issue of dressing. ‘Simple’ they may be for those Muslim apologists who suggest that Muslims should be ‘flexible’ regarding cultural adoption in the Western countries, compromising even on issues that may be fundamental to their identity, values, sentiments, and practices. Hence, similar suggestions of ‘cultural adoption’ and ‘tolerance’ were given on the Danish Cartoons publications, the Rushdie Knighthood, and the Minarets controversy in Switzerland (I comment on the last one in my “The Swiss Minarets” post here).

However, what is at stake here is not (just) a particular form of dressing, a certain Muslim practice, or the style of Muslim building. It is the Muslim question itself. That is, the question of the existence and recognition of Muslims as a community and as an identity in the West.

The fundamental question here is this: The tolerance and pluralism that is supposedly extended to all individual citizens in the Western secular-liberal polities (and for that matter, in the secular-liberal Muslim states, too), why are they not extended to their collective identities, their collective practices, values, and sentiments too?

Why do Muslims find themselves in situations where their only choices are either “exclusion” or “assimilation”? Why is there an increasing feeling among Muslims in the West that they are tolerated only as long as they remain invisible?

Two considerations: One on a theoretical level. Other on the political.

Theoretical Consideration

The above question points to some fundamental contradictions within the available secular-liberal political framework(s), which, for example, grants the freedom of belief but does not protect the right of religious practice (compromising them in the name of “law” (’rule is rule’), “order” (’uniformity’, ‘discipline’), and even “public morality” and “progress of the nation”). The religious identity in the secular-liberal framework is understood as somehow separate (or separable) from the individual self. Thus the Mormon polygamy in the US and the Muslim hijab in France were banned through applying none other than the same secular-liberal rationality. Arguing, for instance, that the outward religious practices and display of religious symbols are not fundamental to an individual’s ‘private’ beliefs.

Similar contradictions and bias in the secular-liberal principles have contributed to the controversies over the Danish Cartoons publication all over Europe, the Minaret controversy in Switzerland, and the Rushdie Knighthood in England, by giving a false sense of superiority and justification to hurt religious sentiments and rights of other religious/ethnic groups.

I am not saying that the above controversies could have been the only possible outcome of the secular-liberal political principles given their internal theoretical contradictions. That, outcomes favorable to Muslims (and for that matter to any other religious/ethnic minorities) were not possible in the Western polities. No. For we know that many secular-liberal polities in the West punish Holocaust deniers, the Armenian genocide deniers, and the racist bigots through a variety of institutional and informal methods (here).

My emphasis above has been on the need to understand, on a theoretical level, how do these contradictions permit aggression against Muslims in the West, through conscious efforts by bigots or through unconscious prejudice embedded in the popular imagination, both of which could be understood as part of the “Islamophobia” in the West (here). That theoretical examination would require an understanding of the convoluted, contradictory, and uneven realities/histories of secular-liberalism, which is, ironically, so often promoted by its adherents in an ideal-typical form, emptied of its uneven past, as a solution to all “problems” relating to religion and intolerance/extremism/fundamentalism. Just think about the comments you hear on the Western mainstream media criticizing the Muslim reactions, even the peaceful ones, against the Danish cartoons publications or the Rushdie Knighthood.

What we need today is to think about the possibility of having plural collectivities/communities (not just individuals from diverse backgrounds) in the Western societies. (See a related discussion by Saba Mahmood here). And no doubt, all sides need to make efforts in this regard.

State/Politics

For practical advocacy and research purposes, it also may be useful to locate the Hijab controversies in the politics of different groups in each of the states mentioned above. As a starting point, it should be noted that ‘State’ is not a monolithic entity; it often does not represent the interests of all the people; that does not happen even in the secular-liberal polities of the West. Rather ’state’ is often a ‘field’ of political contestation among various groups vying for power, benefits, and political and ideological interests. The hold and domination of groups keep shifting, so do the politics and policies of the state as a result. In short, the state is not above politics and influence of different competing groups. It would be too naive to expect from Muslims to yield to bigoted demands of certain dominant groups in the name of keeping a good face and becoming good citizens.

As an illustration of these bigoted demands, consider the article that the famous Samuel Huntington (of “clash of civilizations“) published in the Foreign Policy magazine in March/April 2004. His targeted community this time was explicitly named in the title, “The Hispanic Challenge” (here). In the article, Samuel Huntington was concerned that the Hispanic immigrants are threatening “to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages” and that the “United States ignores this challenge at its peril.” He obviously presumed a monolithic “United States” with a unified ideology, culture, and nation, and that his concerns (and interests) were the concerns of the entire people in the US. That is far from the realities on the ground. In an earlier book, Huntington declared that Mexicans pose the same problem in the United States that Muslims pose in Europe.

That parallels are clear. The larger issues should be obvious now. The hijab controversies, the Swiss minarets, the Danish Cartoons, the Rushdie Knighthood should all be understood in this larger framework: a) Of the Muslim question in the West, (and related, of the interaction of the ‘East’ and the ‘West’, see Mamdani and Bulliet for useful discussions), and in general, b) Of the question of minority and community identity in the secular-liberal framework.

And, that cannot be done without factoring in politics and power of different groups in the analysis: Who defines what it means to be Swiss, American, Canadian (and for that matter, Turkish and Tunisian), who defines what is good for people, what are the limits of religious expression, on what grounds, and on what authority within the secular-liberal framework? And how the apparently charming secular-liberal slogans of liberty, freedom, and rights are used toward achieving political ends. For example, the obsession with Hijab as a form of oppression on Muslim woman in the Western imagination since the colonial time. That obsession was effectively used in justifying the Bush invasion on Afghanistan, to liberate the oppressed Muslim women, forced to wear burqa and removed from schools and work under the Taliban rule in Afghanistan. The Taliban are now gone, but Muslim women have not thrown off their hijab, because the issue was not the hijab in the first place. The real concerns are still there. The women are still deprived of their basic rights of access to education and social and economic opportunities under Bush’s favored current government.

See RAWA’s statement on Bush invasion here. Also see a very insightful article by Lila Abu-Lughod (Columbia Univ), “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?” here or here.

PS. Another important and related question is, of course, to understand why and how do female bodies become a ‘field’ of political contestation, in wars, in mass rapes, in genocides, in honor claims and protection, and relating to the present discussion, in liberal and religious politics?