Sarkozy's ban on burqas in France has many lauding his admirable steps toward the liberation of oppressed Muslim women. I have my doubts as to whether this ban is entirely altruistic in it's roots. This is the same Nicholas Sarkozy who Lilian Thuram accused of fueling the 2005 Paris riots. As Minister of the Interior, his hardline approach to immigration contributed greatly to poverty and unemployment among immigrants, many of whom were West African and/or Muslim.
For a culture so quick to denounce racial stereotypes and profiling, we seem to assume that every Muslim man beats his wife, and every burqa has a black eye behind the veil. The truth is, some women choose to wear the burqa as an expression of her religious convictions. For many Muslims, there is no such thing as a secular life. What you believe is what you live. Certainly, I am not so naive as to believe that there aren't women forced to wear the veil. However, I fail to see a causal relationship between the garment and the subjugation of women.
The subjugation of any human being is an absolute wrong. However, Sarkozy offers no remedy to women forced into submission. There is no proposed education of the victim, or the aggressor. It's as if he expects the removal of the burqa to turn the most domineering brute into a Jon Gossling, cowering underneath the glare of his wife's naked face. The burqa is, at most, a symptom of the domination. And that is only some of the time.
Many people have been quick to point out that the subjugation is ingrained, the product of the culture. Neither submission nor spousal abuse is culturally exclusive. If banning the burqa is such a huge leap in women's rights, perhaps we should follow suit here in the United States. For example, we could ban trailer parks, mullets, tank tops for men & domestic beer. Surely that will liberate many of our abused American sisters! And can we say that every woman who choses to handle the cooking & cleaning has been programmed to submit? Or could it be that, even when exposed to alternative gender roles, they have chosen the path of their mothers?
I think that we, as westerners, are very presumptuous to assume that we know better about how an Islamic woman should dress herself than she does. They are not all abused, nor are they so weak-minded as to need legislation regarding their dress. What they may need - what perhaps all women need- is an accessible remedy for domestic violence.
