Again a new achievement of “feminism” as it is conceived by some groups in France: 4 young muslim women were excluded from their high school in La Réunion (a french colony département d’outre-mer, so under french law) because their wore a “veil” (I don’t know if that’s the right term in english, but that’s the most direct translation for the term used in french). Actually, six were initally excluded, but two of them eventually agreed to not wear it anymore.
This is due to an application of the law voted in 2004 concerning “ostensible religious symbols”, which is supposed to enforce “laicity” at school by forbidding to wear religious symbol; but its real focus was of course the “veil” (wearing a cross is not a reason for exclusion, and in Alsace-Lorraine region it is still okay to have classrooms with big crucifix).
In France we have the concept of “laicity”, of which we are quite proud: there is separation between state and religion. I think it is good and important. But when it comes to forbidding some individual to express his/her belief, I think it is going a bit too far.
This concern about laicity was mixed with some pseudo-feminism arguments to attack muslim women. Now, don’t get me wrong: I am myself quite critical of Islam, as I am of other religions, and I do think that it sucks that women are coerced or even educated into wearing the veil.
But the thing is, when “feminism” is actually attacking women, excluding them from school or deniyng them their right to obtain their nationality (recently a woman was denyed this because she wore a burqa) because they are oppressed ? Well, you’re doing it wrong.
My opinion of that is that “feminism” is used by the state for racist and colonial purposes (as are regularly human rights at broad in order to justifiy invading a country). The sad thing is that it is very difficult to express either a disagreement with this politics or a support for “veiled” muslim women, even inside leftist and feminist groups: for example in 2004 I was part of a group who participated to demonstrations against the law concerning “ostensible symbols”, and we were regularly treated of “anti-feminist”, “islamo-fascists”, and such.
(There are similar patterns concerning the way defense of sex workers is silenced, but it is another subject).
