Veiling Young Girls is Child Abuse Say Activists

In recent years the number of young women choosing not to wear a headscarf has grown. This number may soon increase as a new campaign is underway. It has been a long time coming, but finally feminist activists in Morocco have launched a campaign against the veiling of Muslim girls at young age, describing the practice as a form of “child abuse”.

“Girls at this age know nothing about religion and what is prohibited and what is not,” the Center for Woman’s Equality said in a statement cited by Al-Arabiya television. The center says that girls at the age of three to 10 are forced by parents to take on the headscarf (hijab).

The activists argue that the veiling of young girls amounted “child abuse”. “Islamic bodies need to interfere to make things clear and tell people that forcing young girls to wear the veil is not part of Islam,” the center says. The activists cited the case of a 10-year old child, Mariam, who was said to have taken on the hijab at the order of her father. “He said that it will protect me from harassment,” she said.

The girl also says that she was told by her mother that hijab is a religious obligation. “She said I have to get used to it while I am still young, otherwise I would go to hell,” she said.

Conservative Muslims Islam still see the hijab as an obligatory code of dress, not a religious symbol displaying one’s affiliations and say that a Muslim woman is obliged to wear hijab as soon as she reaches puberty and Muslim parents should encourage their daughters to wear it.

However, forcing underage girls into wearing hijab is against the Islamic teachings and  activists argue that forcing girls to wear hijab at a young age would threaten their psychological stability. “Their inability to distinguish between those concepts will put them in a constant state of confusion and eventually drive them to isolate themselves from the outside world.”

Sociologists also warn that forcing young girls to wear hijab has psychological ramifications. “They will start associating their bodies to shame which has to be hidden and this view contradicts the true essence of Islam,” sociologist Karima Wadghiri said.

She argued that when they grow up these girls will confuse conservatism with fanaticism and liberalism with immorality. “Society will later be divided not on class or financial status as is usually the case, but on religious and ideological basis.”

Koranic Law Does not Impose the Headscarf

Khaled Fouad Allam writes that historically speaking, the “hijab” (or Islamic headscarf) has never represented any form of Islamic dogma, legal obligation or religious symbol, even if today the impression is such.

Jurists during the classical period of Islam – who when Muslim law was first formulated for the four great legal schools of Islam – never presented any theories on the headscarf. The celebrated jurist and founder of the Theological University of Fez in Morocco, Qayrawin (died in 996), spoke about the headscarf only in reference to prayer rituals, when women enter mosques to pray on Fridays. And the word he used was “khimar”, a veil covering women from head to toe. He never used the term “hijab”. It is the same with other authors of the period.

There is indeed an explanation for all this. Classical Islam jurists warned of the need to formulate legal theory concerning the headscarf or veil, simply because a woman’s medieval world was that of a cloister, where she didn’t leave home, leading her life within the borders of private property. And when she did venture out, which was rare, she had to do so with the authorization of a male figure – whether it be her father, husband or brother –and only under exceptional circumstances, as for some formal ceremony or pilgrimage.

The hijab in an invention of the 14th century, and it has not real basis in the Koran. In the Koran, “hijab” comes from the root “hjb”, which refers not to an object, but an action: wearing a headscarf, pulling down a curtain or screen or reducing light so as to prevent others from prying or looking in.

GENDER EQUALITY

The timing of this campaign coincides with the European Union determining to promote Gender Equality in Morocco. The EU has granted the Morocco 45 million euros.

The grant will support the Moroccan government's plan to enhance equality between men and women in harmony with the cultural and family values of the Moroccan society.

Under the new arrangement, the Moroccan government aims to increase from 15 to 22 per cent the number of women managers in public administration by 2014.

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No Islamic Dress Code for Moroccan Women

The announcement by Abdelilah Benkirane, the head of the Justice and Development Party (PJD), that he and his party are not interested in imposing a strict Islamic dress code, has been warmly welcomed in Morocco.

"I will never ask if a woman is wearing a short skirt or a long skirt." - Abdelilah Benkirane

"It is a relief that the PJD are not wanting to tell women how to dress,' says Souad (22) a seamstress in Fez. "I wear a headscarf if I want to and sometimes I don't want to."

Headscarves are not mandatory

The appointment of Abdelilah Benkirane as Morocco's first Islamist prime minister was greeted with general approval in the population. "I hope he will do something about corruption," Samir (40), a taxi driver grins, 'But we will keep an eye on him to see that he delivers what he promised".

Reuters is reporting that the PJD is anxious to reassure powerful secularists in the Moroccan establishment, foreign investors, and the tourists who provide much of the country's revenue, that it will not try to impose a strict Muslim moral code, Reuters reports.

"We are proud that our point of reference is Islamist," Benkirane, the PJD's secretary general and prime minister designate, told a small group of reporters invited to a briefing.

"I will never be interested in the private life of people, Allah created mankind free. I will never ask if a woman is wearing a short skirt or a long skirt."

"But there are things forbidden by the law. I think even in some European countries, people cannot be naked in public places," he said.

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France's supreme court outlaws veil for Muslim women

France's supreme court upheld a decree that refused citizenship to a Muslim woman from Morocco, ruling that she had failed to assimilate French culture. It was ruled that her radical practice of Islam is incompatible with French values.

On June 27, 2008, the Council of State (Conseil d’Etat), the French Supreme Administrative Court, upheld a Prime Minister’s decree refusing citizenship to a Moroccan woman who was married to a French national and had two French children. The Council’s decision was based on the grounds that the woman lacked assimilation to French society because of her radical practice of religion, deemed incompatible with the essential values of the French community, in particular equality of the genders. These findings were supported by elements in the court file that the Moroccan woman was a Salafist Muslim and wore the Burqa.

Citizenship is not a guaranteed right for foreign spouses under French law and the authorities can deny it under the control of administrative courts for reasons of lack of assimilation. However, this does not mean that the State can discriminate and deny citizenship because of the practice of a religion. In this case, the Council of State did not base its decision on motives of public order, such as membership in extremist groups like it has done in the past, or because of problems of identification because the Burqa covered the woman’s whole face, but has ruled for the first time on the basis of the domestic practice of a religion, thereby entering the sphere of private life and beliefs. Such a decision contravenes international human rights standards.

This is a potentially dangerous trend which could lead to further discriminatory evaluations in the area of private religious practice. However, the case law of the Council of State has not followed such a trend in the past. On the contrary, for years it has played a neutral role concerning the wearing of the Muslim veil.

This decision must be understood in the context of French history, where longstanding conflicts have opposed the partisans of moderate secularism and those who wanted to eradicate the manifestation of religious beliefs from the public place under a radical interpretation—or extrapolation—of secularism.

The same argument—prevention of proselytizing—used by these radicals to claim the prohibition of the clerical robe during the debates for the vote of the 1905 law on separation of Churches and State has been used to enact the 2004 law prohibiting wearing conspicuous religious signs in public schools. This latter law was passed in order to reverse the jurisprudence of the Council of State, which used to be neutral and respectful of international human rights norms by defining secularism as neutrality of teachers and programs along with freedom of conscience of the pupils, including their right to express their religious beliefs.


After the vote of the 2004 law, the Council of State’s case law has been totally re-oriented, considering prohibitions against "the insignias and attire, including the Islamic veil, the Jewish kippa, or big crosses, the wearing of which by itself expresses conspicuously a religious adherence." With these grounds, it has upheld expulsions from public schools, sanctioning wearing any version of the Islamic veil and the Sikh Keshi (under turban).

Certainly, the law on religious insignias violates international human rights norms. The United Nations Human Rights Committee, as part of its periodic review of the Member States compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights has excoriated the law in its Concluding Observations of July 22, 2008 by finding that "respect for a public culture of secularism would not seem to require forbidding wearing such common religious symbols [as] a skullcap or kippa [or] a headscarf or hijab." The Human Rights Committee recommended that France review its law, which infringes on Article 18 of the Covenant.

The Council of State’s jurisprudence has followed a similar trend concerning accession to citizenship. Under laws passed in 2003 and 2006 promoting "selected immigration," the construction of "lack of assimilation" has been extended to include the June 27, 2008 decision, allowing assessment by authorities and Courts of religious practices to determine if they conflict with French Republic values. Not to mention the fact that the finding by the Council of State that Salafism is a "radical practice" of Islam amounts to deciding an internal conflict within Islamology.

Such an evaluation contravenes the European Court of Human Rights case law as well as international human rights standards. The European Human Rights Court has consistently ruled that the States have a duty of neutrality and impartiality and that "the right to freedom of religion as guaranteed under the Convention excludes any discretion on the part of the State to determine whether religious beliefs or the means used to express such beliefs are legitimate."

It remains to be seen to see if an application is filed with the Human Rights Court to challenge the decision of the Council of State and, if so, what the outcome will be.

The author of the article, Patricia Duval, is a contributor to the Cutting Edge News and a member of the Paris Bar.

Tags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news

The hijab debate (Part One)

The debate about the wearing of a hijab has been raging in the Western media and with little attempt to understand its roots. In Morocco the hijab is worn more often in rural areas and in the cities of Fes, Moulay Idriss and Meknes. In Tangier and Casablanca the younger women dress freely - often looking like French fashion models. So what lies behind the hijab debate?

Here is an article that was emailed to me:

Koranic Law Does not Impose the Headscarf

by Khaled Fouad Allam

Historically speaking, the “hijab” (or Islamic headscarf) has never represented any form of Islamic dogma, legal obligation or religious symbol, even if today the impression is such.

Jurists during the classical period of Islam – who when Muslim law was first formulated for the four great legal schools of Islam – never presented any theories on the headscarf. The celebrated jurist and founder of the Theological University of Fez in Morocco, Qayrawin (died in 996), spoke about the headscarf only in reference to prayer rituals, when women enter mosques to pray on Fridays. And the word he used was “khimar”, a veil covering women from head to toe. He never used the term “hijab”. It is the same with other authors of the period.

There is indeed an explanation for all this. Classical Islam jurists warned of the need to formulate legal theory concerning the headscarf or veil, simply because a woman’s medieval world was that of a cloister, where she didn’t leave home, leading her life within the borders of private property. And when she did venture out, which was rare, she had to do so with the authorization of a male figure – whether it be her father, husband or brother –and only under exceptional circumstances, as for some formal ceremony or pilgrimage.

The hijab in an invention of the 14th century, and it has not real basis in the Koran. In the Koran, “hijab” comes from the root “hjb”, which refers not to an object, but an action: wearing a headscarf, pulling down a curtain or screen or reducing light so as to prevent others from prying or looking in.

The change to the word “hijab”, from signifying an action to meaning an object, comes in the 14th century. The jurist, Ibn Taymiyya, was the first to use the word “hijab” to mean “headscarf”. It was a headscarf that distinguished Muslim from non-Muslim women. It came to distinguish a woman’s identity and religious association.

Ibn Taymiyya stated that a free woman has the obligation to cover herself with a headscarf, while a slave is not obliged as such He justified this based on a maximalist interpretation (cf. Koran, verse 21, sura 24), transforming the words of a generic statement into a principle, by giving it a binding or legal sense. Yet all this – and we do well to point it out – was still an interpretation, an interpretation which gave rise to a rule.

This change in language and social interpretation is a sign of crisis within the 14th century Muslim world: the end of the great Islamic empires and the invasion of Baghdad by a foreign power – the Mongols of Genghis Khan. The “ummah” (the community of believers) had to therefore face and struggle with what nowadays we call the principle of “otherness”. This posed the same problem then as it does nowadays: today’s Muslims now must cope with how to be themselves in a society dominated by non-Muslims. The headscarf is a sign of the Muslim community’s defensive reactions and focuses on legal norms not to create leeway for freedom of expression, but rather to establish a form of control – on Islam itself.

Therefore it is no coincidence that Ibn Taymiyya (died 1328) is a daily point of reference in neo-fundamentalist language.

However the decisive change for the “hijab” in terms of meaning and law occurs in the 20th century, especially in its last fifty years. In Muslim countries, following the period of decolonization, the processes of modernization create great difficulties for traditional societal structures and institutions. Two unprecedented phenomena occur: literacy of the masses and women going to school, work and out from their homes. The outside world is added to their main world of reference.

In the face of such social changes, many exegetes in Islam have reacted in neo-conservative ways, creating a legal system legitimizing and prescribing the use of the hijab The headscarf thus becomes a distinct symbol of Islamic identity and separation between sexes. The headscarf’s introduction and use into public areas indeed favors the creation of a gender barrier, which today is not limited to the headscarf itself, but in some other countries has given rise to an actual division of space, even in public transport vehicles (e.g. some neo-fundamentalist-minded architects have drawn up ideas for separate elevators for men and women). Thus public space, instead of sanctioning a principle of equality, focuses on sexual discrimination.

However, all these changes in the headscarf’s use and practice is joined to that which is a constant in the customs and norms of Muslim society: the dichotomy between the pure and impure, and prohibition as a basis for Islamic law.

The frequent emphasis in sacred texts – that women mustn’t do anything to look at other men and draw attention to themselves, hence covering up their figures – has indeed led the collective Muslim unconscious to associate femininity with lust. In this way women have become synonymous with the chaos and disorder attributed to vice. Hence with women there is always the imminent risk of committing acts of impurity. Due to their reproductive role, women are invested with a certain sacred nature. Therefore, breaking the rule – that is say, showing themselves off – means contaminating their original purity.

This taboo spells for a puritan society and articulates a legal system of control. Muslim societies are obsessed by issues of impurity; and the headscarf tends to symbolically preserve the bounds between the pure and impure.

Today the headscarf takes on the meaning of an identity crisis. In addition to expressing the widespread malaise found in Islamic society, the headscarf conceals its changes and exacerbates people’s fears. Whoever wears it, especially in the West, does so because they are coerced or conditioned to do so or are claiming their rights and asserting free choices. There are many opinions, but they all defer to a series of unsolved conflicts: between Islam and the West, with Islam itself and between law and culture.



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Related Post on Sabbah's Blog

The Hijab Debate (Part Two)

Tags: Morocco, Fes, Islam, Hijab