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Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

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Why the French don't like headscarves: Islam, the state and public space
Michael Merry a a Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Online Publication Date: 01 March 2009

To cite this Article Merry, Michael(2009)'Why the French don't like headscarves: Islam, the state and public space',Journal of

Multilingual and Multicultural Development,30:2,186 188

To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/01434630802597839 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01434630802597839

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Book Reviews

driven by Tonga nationalists. The Canadian school was much more independent in the way it managed itself. In Hellers research, nationalism is shown to be considerably weakened, whereas it is increasingly consolidated among the Tonga. Tonga nationalists were interested in creating a situation in which ethnicity and place were congruent. In Hellers school, the administrators acknowledged student linguistic and ethnic diversity, because they wanted to control it. Similarly, Tonga leaders have expressed great concern about the degree to which their children were being corrupted by English and through the influence of other African languages (such as Ndebele and Shona). While the main issue in Hellers study involved controlling the influence of English, the primary concerns for the Tonga were the mitigation of outside linguistic influences, and the standardisation of Tonga. (Incidentally, Hellers use of the term minority would be rejected by the Tonga, who insist it is derogatory, and who have argued for its replacement by indigenous.) In spite of the vast differences in material resources between the Canadian school and the Tonga ones, students language practices in both settings ran counter to the policies desired by school officials. In fact, the schools have more in common than one might first imagine: these include notions of control, the ideological impulse to create and police linguistic boundaries, and the fluid and counter-ideological linguistic practices of students.
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Reference Prah, K. 2008. Language, literacy and knowledge production in Africa. In Encyclopedia of language and education, volume 2: Literacy, ed. B. Street and N. Hornberger, 2939. New York: Springer.

doi: 10.1080/01434630802413680

Sinfree Makoni Department of Applied Linguistics, Pennyslvania State University, USA sbm12@psu.edu # 2009, Sinfree Makoni

Why the French dont like headscarves: Islam, the state and public space, by John Bowen, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2007, xii'290 pp., $27.95 (hardback), ISBN 978-0691-12506-0; 2008, $19.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-691-13839-8 As a social anthropologist, Bowen systematically examines a wide range of public reasoning in France, with particular regard to the requirements of the purported values of republicanism including individual liberty, human rights and gender equality. He weaves a complex web of ideas, influences and agendas, many of them at cross purposes, and he shows why there is more at stake than merely the prerogative to look different in public. The hullabaloo over headscarves in France culminated of course in the 2004 law imposed by Chirac that effectively banned ostentatious religious symbols from public space. Bowen unpacks the complicated reasons that underpin the legislation that implies that certain personal expressions of freedom in the public sphere unavoidably disrupt and contravene public order. But what does public space mean and what does it include? Bowen ably examines different conceptions of public, showing us just how tenuous the distinction between private and public really is, even in secular France. While these and other exigent tensions are a leitmotif in all liberal pluralistic democratic societies, Bowen helps us trace the precarious limits of liberal toleration and come to appreciate the extent to which pluralism in France is

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simultaneously celebrated and circumscribed in a manner arguably consistent with freedom and equality. Bowen explains the current obsession with social cohesion by carefully chronicling Frances philosophical and political genealogy. The reader is guided through a formidable amount of French history: the power struggles between church and state following the 1789 revolution; the Guizot law of 1833 requiring that all teachers pass a state-recognised exam; a portrait of Jules Ferry, the champion of republicanism in state education; a series of laws passed in the 1880s secularising the classroom; the Civil Code of 1905; the Debre law of 1959, granting religious schools the right to retain their distinctive character and also to receive state funds provided that they follow the national curriculum and promise not to discriminate against applicants; the outspoken and controversial Levy sisters; the Stasi Commission, and, finally, the controversial actions of then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, whose solicitations of particular Muslim representatives putatively aided in domesticating and assimilating French Islam. From his many interviews with journalists, academics and organisers both for and against the headscarf in public space, Bowen aims to reveal the ironies and contradictions surrounding the hijab. Among the tensions is a willingness on the part of some Muslims to be co-opted by the state, perhaps achieving legitimacy as French citizens but also risking compromising legitimacy of another sort within their own communities. Like the Islamic faith they symbolise, headscarves do not convey only one meaning. Different women cover in different ways, to different degrees, and with different often conflicting motivations. Bowen observes that wearing a headscarf in France today involves negotiations, anticipations, and weighing of benefits and costs. It is not simply an obligation or a choice, but a subtle dance among convictions and constraints (81). Muslim women often wear the hijab to avoid harassment from men in their own neighbourhoods; there may also be coercion in the form of family pressure or cultural expectation. And, of course, even seemingly self-selected meanings can be co-opted by others whose beliefs are inimical to the very notion of independence. But Bowens book reminds us that the hijab is not only about freedom of conscience, pluralism or cultural recognition. It is also, undeniably, about whether a womans appearance is deemed acceptable, and once again clothes (have) become the prime indexes of womens progress (227). Whatever the case, the reasons for wearing hijab and the meanings one attaches to it are complex, though they have frequently come to symbolise an alternative allegiance and identity even a form of protest that many French feel is a threat to what it means to be a citizen of the Republic. As Bowen puts it, regardless of what else a pupil does, in the very act of wearing a sign of her religion (the Muslim female) divides and disrupts (164). The reaction to headscarves in France is hardly unique. Disapproval ratings of the hijab in other European countries rival those in France, and in some traditionally Muslim societies (e.g. Tunisia, Turkey) opposition is even more intense. Discrimination against hijab-wearing women in the labour market does not look very different in, say, Germany or the Netherlands. Furthermore, one may find parallels to other European countries with respect to former colonialism and subsequent labour recruitment; ethnic segregation and concentrations of poverty; historically privileged and politically influential Christian institutions; schools established as the public socialising agent par excellence of the state; the manner in which media assist in fanning the flames of intolerance; and, finally, the public recognition of Islam (including state aid) in order to advance assimilation. Parallel cases can be found, for example, in Belgium, and the UK. Demands for Muslims to integrate are de rigueur across Europe, with stunningly little guidance or assistance concerning what this means or how to do it effectively. No doubt Bowen is alert to these parallel cases. Yet while in other countries there also has been conflict over religion in schools, home-grown terrorism, anxiety over lawlessness and cultural clashes with (and within) various immigrant groups, Bowen reminds us that France has gone to greater lengths than other European societies perhaps unsurprisingly, given its history not only to keep the Catholic church in check but also to severely limit its power and

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influence in the public sphere. His study also reveals a great deal of variation in French education, for while schools ostensibly aim to emancipate people from cultural, ethnic and gendered determinism, they also interpret and implement the 2004 law in various ways. In one municipality, for example, two lycees with similar student populations had opposite experiences: at both, several girls showed up initially with scarves, but one principal was able to convince them to remove the scarves, while her counterpart at a nearby high school denounced the girls and produced a public confrontation (151). Bowen provides a carefully documented and nuanced treatment of subject matter as disparate yet related as French feminism, the Union des Organisations Islamiques, the purported doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan, the repercussions of hijab-banning legislation on turban-wearing Sikhs, and the manner in which coercive action by the state that is perceived to be illegitimate and heavy-handed can have the unintended effect of intensifying resistance. Particularly illuminating is his handling of communalism, Islamism and sexism, each of which is unquestionably contentious in meaning but is also seen to violate French political ideals. Importantly, he makes us doubt whether protracted arguments and justifications for laws that appear to discriminate against an already vulnerable minority are not, in the final analysis, still discriminatory. Bowen articulates the reasoning behind lacite (often misleadingly translated as secularism) in current debates over whether religious symbols at least of a conspicuous sort have any place in the French Republic. He suggests that, like tolerance, respect and neutrality, lacite may simply be another shibboleth used to manufacture consent rather than to supply a reliable conceptual or legal framework onto which matters of contemporary importance and urgency can be put to rest. Yet Bowens study also demonstrates why the French case is worth considering on its own terms and, whatever its ambiguities, why an indefatigable defence of lacite continues to gather strength. Every book has its limitations, though I expected that institutional racism (and its corollaries of discrimination, police brutality and social exclusion) and the corresponding modes of resistance and identity-assertiveness to these phenomena (including Islam as an instrument of solidarity) would have received more than casual attention. Notwithstanding these omissions, however, Bowens book is extremely effective in having the reader ponder whether elaborate narratives such as those used to defend lacite will illumine or occlude the extent to which the French continue to debate and struggle over the role of religion in society. While its publicly acknowledged motives are to foster conditions necessary for freedom and equality, France appears to be demonstrating to a growing number of critics that its prerogative is ultimately to demand conformity through its institutional organs (like schools) by relegating integriste challengers to the private sphere. Because the headscarf is seen as a particularly aggressive expression of cultural/religious communalism and sectarianism, its acceptability will be debated for some time to come. Worries in France over sectarianism are real, as is the threat of religiously inspired violence, something to which the advocates of cultural recognition at times seem either oblivious or indifferent. Yet while there will continue to be many critics of the French law, this book should prevent any rush to judge the reaction to the headscarf without attention to the basic values of republicanism and to the role that schools in particular play in socialising the young into those values.

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doi: 10.1080/01434630802597839

Michael S. Merry Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Amsterdam m.s.merry@uva.nl # 2009, Michael S. Merry