Living Together v. Living Well Together: A Normative Examination of the SAS Case

Lori G Beaman

doi:10.17645/si.v4i2.504

Abstract

The European Court of Human Rights decision in SAS from France illustrates how a policy and national mantra that ostensibly aims to enhance inclusiveness, ‘living together’, is legally deployed in a manner that may have the opposite effect. In essence, despite acknowledging the sincerity of SAS’s religious practice of wearing the niqab, and her agency in making the decision to do so, the Court focuses on radicalism and women’s oppression amongst Muslims. Taking the notion of living together as the beginning point, the paper explores the normative assumptions underlying this notion as illustrated in the judgment of the Court. An alternative approach, drawing on the work of Derrida for the notion of ‘living well together’ will be proposed and its implications for social inclusion explicated. The paper’s aim is to move beyond the specific example of SAS and France to argue that the SAS pattern of identifying particular values as ‘national values’, the deployment of those values through law, policy and public discourse, and their exclusionary effects is playing out in a number of Western democracies, including Canada, the country with which the author is most familiar. Because of this widespread dissemination of values and their framing as representative of who ‘we’ are, there is a pressing need to consider the potentially alienating effects of a specific manifestation of ‘living together’ and an alternative model of ‘living well together’.

Highlights

I admit to being both weary and wary of hijab/niqab conversations, but the SAS case raises a key issue in the conceptualization of religion by law, which is shared in some measure by social science: there is a deep divide between religion as it is imagined and religion as it is practiced
For example, a large body of research that finds minimal evidence for the notion that women are forced to wear head coverings, and in many cases their husbands/fathers ask and in some cases beg them not to,10 the notion that Muslim women are forced by their male relatives to cover their heads and faces persists in public discourse
The specifics of SAS and her implied spiritual whimsy22 mark a stark contrast with the oppressed Muslim woman who must be rescued by society and the state and who poses a threat to social cohesion

Summary

Introduction

The SAS v France decision by the European Court of Human Rights is one of many high profile cases involving Muslim women and their dress. To describe the preoccupation with Muslim women’s dress as ‘Western’ would unduly simplify a complex issue: the ‘veil’ has been a site of contention in Canada, France, Tur-. I admit to being both weary and wary of hijab/niqab conversations, but the SAS case raises a key issue in the conceptualization of religion by law, which is shared in some measure by social science: there is a deep divide between religion as it is imagined and religion as it is practiced The emphasis on the equality of men and women in current policy, legal, and public debates is one manifestation of the way this belief circulates and is integrated in the regulation of religion.8 These notions of agency are pervasive in the SAS case, (and we will return to them shortly) and others like it, in which the nuance of religion in everyday life is flattened and broader patterns between religions are rendered invisible. For example, the ‘equality of men and women’ is a major component of public discourse about the limits on publically acceptable religious practices, and is integral to the idea of living together

The Facts

Fuzzy Religion in the Everyday

Religious Women and Agency

Conclusion