Angela Shanahan | Saturday, 6 February 2010
In an opening article on this issue an Australian journalist says veils are a security risk in the West and should be banned in public.
The reports that a French parliamentary committee wants to ban the full face veil in certain circumstances has caused outrage among not only Muslims, but some respected Christian commentators as well. As an opinion writer who has closely followed issues of human rights and freedom of religion for The Australian newspaper, I too received a flurry of emails when the news broke.
One friend and colleague — the editor of Mercatornet, actually – seeking my opinion expressed his own: “To me, it seems crazy, a violation of freedoms, a victory for a certain brand of feminism, etc. But obviously, many respectable people take a different approach.â€
Well, I am one of the “respectable†people to whom he refers (I hope). I do not agree with the wearing of a full face and body veil in the West. In these insecure times there are good reasons for banning it in government offices. I do not see this as a feminist issue. I do not see this as religious issue, despite the intervention of the Catholic church which has wrongly compared it to freedom for Christians in Muslim nations, most of which do not allow Christians any freedom to wear any symbols or practice their faith at all. No rather, this is a political issue.
The French have a huge problem. Due to a combination of their Francophone immigration laws and Muslim fertility rates, which are about four times the average in France, they have a Muslim population of about six million. However it is important to remember that this population comprises various types and streams of Islam, and this ban is really only aimed at the type of Islam which might encourage the wearing of the full face and body veil. In other words, it is aimed at the most fanatical and fundamental stream of Islam. And within that so called fundamentalist stream the full face veil is a lot more than a traditional religious symbol of modesty. It is a political symbol.
It is very important to remember this in any discussion of the veil. (See BBC graphic on this page for variations on the veil.) It is often very confusing for women in the West, because we see the veil as a form of sexual oppression. However, our Muslim sisters often see it quite differently. For them it can indeed be oppressive, in the sense of impractical, but that is unimportant compared with its symbolic value. For them it is a symbol of political freedom, not oppression. It was for this reason that it was embraced so fervently in Iran during the revolution, after being completely banned under the rule of the Shah Reza Pahlavi. The more it was banned the more the daughters of the Iranian revolution embraced it.
However, it is also true that there is a small minority of Islamic women for whom the full face veil is simply part of a cultural tradition. Many women wear it in parts of North Africa and it is absolutely mandatory in Saudi Arabia. If these women want to reside in France, they have to accept the other symbolism of the veil, and are unfortunately stuck in the middle of this. The latest proposals would prevent them from gaining residency. This is where the argument tends to shift, and subtle problems of what we in Australia call multiculturalism intrude into the argument.
Some people in Australia, and I admit that I have felt like this, think the current French approach towards any form of religious symbolism too heavy-handed, the result of an historically aggressively secular political tradition; a matter of cutting off the nose to spite the face, so to speak. Some years ago the French tried banning the hijab in schools, along with all other religious symbols. Recently they have had to compromise a bit, and although they will not allow the hijab , which is not the full face veil, they will allow scarfs. In Australia we do allow the hijab to be worn in most places, including schools.
Watching my former neighbours and my pupils in a Sydney girls school 20 years ago it seemed that one could get around quite well in a hijab, although it is awkward and many girls had started to give them up, especially when they went on to work or higher education.
More recently, however, a combination of political awareness and ethnic tensions in Sydney, and the particularly strident contribution of a particularly strident Mullah in western Sydney, has meant that to speak against the hijab is no longer merely to speculate on the future of an awkward garment. Suddenly girls and their families feel victimized. They can become aggressively anti the educational establishment (which doesn’t do girl’s education much good) and start deliberately wearing it — even to Bulldogs football games.
Australia’s problems, however, are as nothing compared with Europe’s. We have had an immigrant culture for our entire history of only 200 years; in Europe immigrant cultures, principally the new Muslim culture has quite suddenly intruded upon a nation steeped in ancient western traditions as well as juggling modern political realities. So the French have decided to draw the line. The line they have drawn is at the full face veil as a political symbol. Hence the recommendation that women who persist in wearing it will not have residency visas.
It seems glaringly obvious that since September 11 and the subsequent London bombings that we should go beyond the politically correct multiculturalism of a former, less insecure time. There are now definite Muslim enclaves in western urban centres where fundamentalist Islam can and does flourish. At the same time, the French government has a security obligation to all its citizens. This means encouraging religious freedom and tolerance, while at the same time discouraging political symbolism which encourages fanaticism under the guise of religious tolerance.
It is a new high-wire act we have avoided in Australia. The Europeans are not so fortunate. Blithely denying that this is a political issue, trying to turn it into a feminist issue or an issue of religious freedom, is really quite a blinkered view — a view which does not grasp modern cultural, demographic and political realities.
Angela Shanahan is an Australian newspaper columnist.
Brethren,
In case you do not know this horrible twist – “If you were counting on a robust offensive (or even a mild defense) from U.S. churches to stop in its tracks the incursion of Islamism in America, perhaps you should save up to pay your jizya (tax imposed on non-Muslims, dhimmis, for the right to exist). Many churches in America are neither willing nor prepared to counter the influence and infiltration of Islamism in their own congregations, let alone in the wider civil society. Rather than fear the judgment of the Almighty, these churches fear the label “Islamophobic.â€
Particularly in the left-leaning mainline denominations, but disturbingly more and more common with formerly conservative evangelicals as well, many churches are obsessed with making themselves likeable to Islamists. All in the name of peace and reconciliation, such churches opt for sessions of feel-good dialogue with the local mosque, gushing about how much Christianity and Islam have in common, and never challenging Muslims to serious debate on those so-called commonalities such as peace and brotherhood, the Muslim belief in the return to the earth of Jesus (Isa) and their devotion to Jesus’ mother, Mary (Maryam).
The Islamic interpretation of all of these is about as convoluted as the English translations in a Monty Python Hungarian Phrasebook. But most Christians don’t know that the Koran teaches that Isa was a prophet of Islam (Surah Âl ‘Imran 3:84) or that the Hadiths declare that Isa will return to earth to destroy Christianity and establish Islam. One tradition of Muhammad says that Isa will break the cross (abolish Christianity), kill pigs (infidels), and abolish the poll-tax (stop accepting the jizya and wage Jihad again). (Sunan Abu Dawud, 37:4310) Nor do they know that in the Koran, Muhammad pretty obviously confused Maryam, the mother of Isa, with the centuries’ older Miriam, the sister of Moses.
Eager to accept at face value expressions of peace and brotherhood, Christian/Muslim dialogues ignore these errors, as well as the many troubling statements about Christians, Jews, and other “unbelievers†in the Koran and the Hadiths. The Christian participants accept the claim of their Muslim guest speaker – usually a professor of Islamic studies at some Saudi-endowed university trained to present a perfectly palatable version of Islam to Christians – that the Shari’a is quite compatible with democracy.
Another display of eagerness to engage in fantasy was the sycophantic Loving God and Neighbor Together. In this statement, Yale theologians-and-friends naively responded to A Common Word Between Us and You, a letter from international Muslim leaders inviting Christians to embrace Islam. The Yale response’s ‘bold’ insertion of Christianity into the conversation references Jesus’ admonition to the Pharisee to remove the log from his own eye before attempting to deal with the splinter in his neighbor’s eye (Matthew 7:5). But they cite Christ’s words in order to apologize for such Christian “logs†as the Crusades and the War on Terrorism.
This was a strategic blunder according to theologian and author the Rev. Dr. Mark Durie, since “it sends the signal to Muslims that whatever the problems with Islam, and whatever the sins of Muslims, they are but a ‘speck’ compared to the collective crimes of Christians.†It was also a moral failure, because it betrays Christians in the Islamic world who are being slaughtered.
Durie explains that the Yale response, “adopts a self-humbling, grateful tone.†This is disturbing, he says, because it fits right in with the classic Islamic understanding that Christians are dhimmis who should be grateful “for the generosity of having their lives spared†and humble, because their condition as dhimmis is contemptible. “It is regrettable that the Yale theologians have shown themselves so ready to adopt a tone of grateful self-humiliation,†Durie reproves, since A Common Word “did not offer awareness of, or any apology for, Muslims’ crimes, past and present, against non-Muslims.â€
Such a scenario is sure to be played out next week when the Washington National Cathedral of the Episcopal Church hosts a “Christian-Muslim Summit,†March 1-3, 2010. There will be four main speakers and twenty other participants at this “gathering of high-ranking Christian and Muslim leaders for a candid discussion of matters affecting Christian-Muslim relations and peacemaking efforts worldwide†But if this summit is true to form and to all such past events, it will just be another exercise in dhimmitude for most, if not all, of the Christian participants as they fall all over themselves in their efforts to be inoffensive to Islam.
On a website page seemingly designed as an ‘homage’ to Islamic/Arabic art, the participants of the summit are introduced in the typically solemn and self-important tones which the National Cathedral reserves for interfaith events. There are “The Principals,†including two Muslims, Ayatollah Dr. Seyyed Mostafa Mohaghegh Damad Ahmadabadi, professor of law at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran (once known as the National University of Iran, now “Martyr Universityâ€), and Professor Dr. Ahmad Mohamed El Tayeb, president of Al-Azhar University in Cairo.
This home to such interesting fatwas as death to apostates who leave Islam and approval of adult suckling was recently referred to by President Barack Obama as “a beacon of Islamic learning.â€
His Eminence Jean-Louis Cardinal Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, and ultra-liberal John Bryson Chane, D.D., the Episcopal Church’s bishop of Washington are the Christian “Principals†in the Summit. One can only hope that Cardinal Tauran might show the same courageous and forthright spirit as when he criticized the Archbishop of Canterbury for suggesting that some aspects of Shari’a in Britain were unavoidable and when in an interview he declared the world to be “obsessed with Islam.â€
The other participants, referred to as “The Twenty,†include eight other Muslims along with Anglicans/Episcopalians, Catholics, and two Jewish observers. (So nice that they let another Abrahmic faith be semi-included!) All of the Muslim participants in the summit are considered “moderate.†But even a little research raises questions about the truth of their commitment to peace and religious freedom as we would define these concepts.
It is admirable to desire to “influence governments to promote peace and reconciliation efforts worldwide.†But this description of the summit on the National Cathedral’s website does not take seriously the differences between Christianity and Islam. It portrays them as morally equivalent.
“These initiatives must be taken,†the cathedral urges, “to engage leaders across faiths and nations in the search for what Jesus called “the Peace of God that passes all understanding†and what the Qur’an teaches: “O ye who believe! Enter into Peace whole-heartedly†(Surah 2:208).
Well, it was actually St. Paul, and not Jesus, that referenced “the peace of God that passes all understanding,†(Philippians 4: 7). Jesus offered His peace in John 14: 27, which he contrasted to the peace offered by the world. But one can forgive the National Cathedral for the error since they don’t quote Jesus all that much.
And whether or not the folks at the National Cathedral know it and made a deliberate omission, or were ignorant of the fact, when Surah 2: 208 speaks of “ye who believe,†the believers do not include non-Muslims.
“Enter into Peace†it says. It’s that tricky “peace†as in “Religion of Peace†that really means “submission†to Islam. Ironically, the verse undermines and contradicts the whole premise of a Christian-Muslim summit.
The March 1-3 summit will consist of private meetings, ending with a Wednesday evening public dialogue between the participants. The dialogue, moderated by Washington Post associate editor David Ignatius, is only open to invited guests and to selected members of the media who possess White House, Capitol Hill, Department of State, or Department of Defense press credentials. The website assures that “anyone may participate in the forum by watching it online†and submitting a question for consideration.
But just as in 2006, when the cathedral hosted the former president of Iran, Sayyid Mohammed Khatami, the far side of the street across from the cathedral may be lined with Iranian Americans, and possibly this time with Coptic Americans, Pakistani Christians, and others who have been marginalized by Islamist regimes, as well. At the 2006 event, hundreds of Iranian Americans and other advocates for freedom and democracy in Iran carried flags, banners, and posters. Some posters featured photos of young Iranian dissidents who were in prison or had been killed. Others excoriated Khatami and the Episcopal Church. The Chosen Ones, the guests invited to the public dialogue at the 2006 meeting, received an earful as angry and energetic protestors shouted, “Shame, shame Episcopal Church!†and directed both Khatami and the denomination to go to a location which many Episcopalians no longer believe exists!
At this coming summit, there is all the more reason for a multi-national demonstration. In addition to last summer’s slaughter of Iranian protestors and dissidents, American Copts are mourning the recent murders of Egyptian Christians. Christians in Pakistan continue to suffer injustice and violent, murderous attacks. And most Sudanese are extremely angry with Egypt because of its attempts to force a postponement of this year’s national election in Sudan, its complicity in Khartoum’s Arab Islamist racist agenda, and its brutal treatment of Sudanese refugees trying to flee to Israel.
Dhimmitude stops at the doors of the Washington National Cathedral. The doors that are painted bright red to remind worshippers not only of Christ’s sacrifice, but of the blood of the martyrs who have gone before them. The sidewalk demonstration will be a summit for those who have experienced that other side of Christian-Muslim relations, the martyrdom side. It will be a far sight more candid than what goes on inside the cathedral.”
Irene
@Irene,
The Koran is not the only Anti Christian book out there.The Talmud says more heinous things about Christianity and Jesus Christ specifically.I am not defending the Koran.It is a bad book,but the Jewish Talmud is also despicable.Please read it for your self.I personally believe,bothJews and Muslim have Anti-Christ spirit .