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What
If Hijab Is Banned in France?
Hadi
Yahmed, IOL Paris Correspondent
Translated By Abdelazim R.
Abdelazim
“What will we do
if legislation banning hijab (Islamic headscarf) in schools is
issued?” This question is asked by many veiled French women
and pondered by the different leaders of the Muslim community. The
pressing need for an answer to this question is intensified
whenever the Stasi Commission, which observes compliance with
secularity in France , interviews a new guest about whether they
support legislation barring girls from wearing hijab in schools.
Unprecedented media coverage is being given to the views of the
commission’s guests on hijab, secularism, religious signs,
and the consequences of passing the ban law.
The Tough Task
Finding an Islamic juridical gateway for dealing with the
ban reality in schools and for adapting it to the situation of the
Muslim community in France seems to be a tough task for French
Muslim leaders. Dr. Abdul-Majid Al-Naggar, chairman of the Studies
and Research Institute, subsidiary to the European Institute for
Anthropology in Paris , states that answering a legislative
question on whether it is possible to religiously put up with the
ban reality is only the job of the European Council for Fatwa and
Research.
Al-Naggar, who is one of the few specialists in the
jurisprudence of Muslim minorities, stated to IslamOnline.net
that, in answering exceptional questions concerning the special
reality of Muslim communities in the West, the jurisprudence of
minorities does not transgress the general measures, limits, and
conditions necessary for issuing every fatwa (religious ruling).
The hijab-ban reality has to be juridically dealt with by the
supreme fatwa authority in Europe , the European Council for Fatwa
and Research, whose president is Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi.
It
is hoped that the hijab issue will be on the council’s
agenda in the next December meeting, as calls to introduce laws
banning hijab in France and many other European countries are on
the increase. Dr. Hassan Halawa, commissioner to the council,
informed IslamOnline that the issue had been raised before and
that the council forwarded a message last year to the French
government asking it to respect the right of Muslim girls in
France to practice their religious right to wear the Islamic
headgear. Dr. Halawa affirms that not only is it a religious
right, but it also represents compliance of the French politics
with the maxims of the French Revolution and the international
conventions of human rights. On the possibility of religiously
bearing with the legislative ban, Halawa said that the council can
provide a decisive judgment in this respect only if fatwa requests
were received. Mr. Halawa considers that wearing hijab is a
religious obligation, not a supererogatory practice that may be
dealt with leniently without seeking an official fatwa issued by
the European Council for Fatwa and Research.
The Religious
Purpose
The leaders of the Muslim community have expressed
many times their repudiation of the introduction of such ban
legislation. Even the most liberal of leaders, Mr. Dalil Abu Bakr,
head of the French Council for the Islamic Faith, explicitly
declared before the Stasi Commission last September that he was
against a law banning hijab in schools despite his reservations
toward exploiting the issue by political Islam in France . On the
far left of Dalil Abu Bakr, Mr. Ammar Al-Asfar, one of the most
outstanding Muslim leaders in France and imam of the Lille Mosque
in northern France, expressed his belief that hijab has been a
scapegoat for what has really been happening and that the Muslim
community would condemn such legislation if issued and would
behave freely and democratically to express its denunciation of a
law denying the simplest of human rights, the right of a person to
wear whatever costumes he or she feels appropriate. Mr. Al-Asfar
explained to IslamOnline that hijab is not a religious sign like
the crucifix or the Jewish skullcap because the religious purpose
of the Islamic dress is to protect women.
Facing the Secular
Extremism
On the possibility of reaching a compromise
satisfying both the French laws and Muslim creed, Al-Asfar pointed
out those Muslim females had ironically been banned from wearing
hijab in some schools even without official legislation requiring
so. Secular extremism, he added, has not accepted any compromises,
though French Muslims have proved, on several occasions, that they
were capable of getting out of the troubles and difficulties they
faced by wise methods that preserved their religious rights. The
search for a compromise, he said, has, however, become the job of
many Muslim leaders in France .
Mr. Al-Tohami Ibriz, head of
the Union of Islamic Organizations in France, which won the
majority of seats in the local elections, indicated that Muslims
in France feel victimized because they have been drawn into a
debate whose background is chiefly political. Ibriz elucidated to
IslamOnline that if Muslims were forced to comply with a hijab-ban
law, Muslim girls would take off their headscarves at school gates
and put them on after the end of the school day, a reality already
maintained at schools banning the headscarf even without a
ban-legislation. The truth is that the Council of State, the
highest juridical authority in France , has not banned the Muslim
headgear since the first hijab issue raised in 1989. Al-Tohami
Ibriz explained that many parties had tried to undermine the
efforts of Nicolas Sarkozy, Minister of the Interior, especially
after the establishment of the French Council for the Muslim Faith
this year. Some, Ibriz added, had wanted to embarrass Sarkozy, who
had previously promised that no law banning hijab in schools would
be introduced.
Mr. Ibriz has also called for a dialogue among
representatives of France ’s religions to discuss whether
hijab really represents a problem in schools. The real problem, in
fact, Ibriz elaborates, lies in misinterpreting secularism which,
in its essence, protects and tolerates religious creeds. Ibriz
also said that Muslims in France would convince the government not
to issue the ban-legislation and that, if such a law were
introduced, they would obey it but with a continuous demand for
change because they would consider it unjust. They would be forced
to comply with any law issued in France so that they would not
become a source of disturbance in this country, he resumed.
In
fact, taking hijab off at school gates is an adopted practice in
many countries, such as Turkey , which banned the Islamic headgear
by legislation or decree. It is a solution that is neither ideal
nor comfortable but is adopted under coercion to obey the law and
satisfy fundamental secularism.
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