Secularism Aboard the Titanic: Feminists and the Debate over the Hijab in France

Abstract

OVER APPROXIMATELY THE LAST fifteen years, in countries as diverse as Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Turkey, Algeria, Singapore, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Canada, the hijab and other aspects of Islamic female attire and the interpretation and application of Islamic personal law have increasingly become the focus not only of political debate and legal battles but also, in a number of cases, of political violence. Examples of the latter include not only ongoing attacks against women in countries such as Afghanistan and Algeria but also the taking of French hostages in Iraq in August 2004, ostensibly in protest against the new French law banning conspicuous religious insignia in schools, and the November 2004 assassination in the Netherlands of filmmaker Theo van Gogh and threats against Somalian refugee and (then) Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who together had made a documentary about vio lence against women.' I am using the term Islamist here to refer to fun damentalist extremists who impose or attempt to impose ultraconservative interpretations of the Qur'an and the Shari'a, particularly on women, and whose tactics include the use of some level of physical or psychological vio lence, not to mention political blackmail (using antiracism or anti Westernism as a vehicle).2