Naturalising, Neutralising Women's Bodies: The “Headscarf Affair” and the Politics of Representation

Abstract

The recent “headscarf affair” has created a divisive national crisis in several European countries. Like Turkey, France and Germany have introduced legislation prohibiting “conspicuous” religious symbols in government institutions. The article argues that interpretations of ‘Muslim’ female head covering as a sign of oppression ignore their resemblance to European symbols of ideal womanhood. The question of the ‘ethnicity’ of the symbol is thus elusive, and the assertion of categorical difference can be challenged on the level of citizenship law. Recent amendments to German citizenship law based on jus sanguinis have eased immigrants' adoption of citizenship, diminishing the contrast with the French jus soli. Thus, in Germany there has been a shift from the emphasis on the transmission of substance toward display of cultural competence through other forms of embodiment. In both Germany and France, in key social locations of state reproduction, national belonging and loyalty to the state must be demonstrated through linguistic competence and modes of bodily performance that mainly focus on women.

Key Words:

• headscarf affair in France and Germany
• politics of dress
• citizenship
• colonial legacy
• bodily performance

An earlier version of the article was submitted at a seminar on “Relations, représentations, confrontations: anthropologies du monde arabe” at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in November 2002 and at the conference on “Muslims of Europe” at the Al-Khu'i Foundation in 2003. I thank the participants and anonymous reviewers for Identities for their helpful comments. I am much obliged to all those who generously provided materials and advice: Petra Brixel, Robert Gibb, Bernhard Lang, Patricia Morris, Harold Schickler, Gregor Schöllgen, Georg Schöllgen, Ryme Seferdjeli, and Charles Stewart. I also thank Maurice Bloch for drawing my attention to the work of Maurice Agulhon and Pierre Bonte.

Notes

1. On sumptuary legislation in Elizabethan England, see McCracken (1988: 33). In France there does not seem to be a strong tradition requiring citizens to declare their commitment to the republic through dress styles. In the ancien régime, ribbons were an essential part of a servant's livery, but after 1793 every citizen was required to wear a tricolour cockade (of ribbon or leather) (Jones and Spang 1999: 56). According to French women who attended school during the 1950s and 1960s, permission was required to wear trousers because of a nineteenth-century decree that prohibited women from wearing them. On considerations of sexual morality in public institutions in Britain, see the recent NHS dress code that discourages hospital staff from wearing sexually provocative clothing.

2. The House of Lords, on appeal, ruled that the boy had been unlawfully discriminated against in terms of the Race Relations Act of 1976 (RAIN 1983: 16).

3. http://news.bbc.co.uk 13 October 2006. In 2002 a British schoolgirl was turned away from a state school in Luton for ignoring school uniform regulations by wearing the ankle-long jilbab, but she later won her case in the Court of Appeal (Tarlo 2005: 14).

4. Prior to the occupation of the Rhineland following the Versailles Treaty of 1919, as a result of which dark-skinned soldiers entered Germany, Germans had had little contact with non-whites. The economic boom of the post-war era brought the first migrant workers (Gastarbeiter) from Italy, Spain, Greece, and Yugoslavia, followed by those from Turkey.

5. Discussion will be limited to certain aspects of the headscarf debates in those two countries. For a broader comparative analysis, see Amir-Moazami 2005.

6. On the law in Turkey, see Ewing 2000; Göle 2002; on Egypt, Bälz 1999.

7. Such fears were heightened when French Islamists declared France as part of the Dar al-Islam or “Muslim community” (Die Welt 8 July 2002). The philosopher André Glucksmann warned that France might face a “theocratic revolution” (quoted in Amir-Moazami 1999–2000: 362; compare Der Spiegel 29 September 2003: 84).

8. The rise of the FIS in Algeria, which announced that if it was to gain power it would enforce the hijab (‘veiling’) (Smith 1998: 28), also had an impact on the debate in France. Presumably, the French government, which lent support to the military coup in 1991, felt that tolerance of headscarves in French schools would have been interpreted as a conciliatory gesture toward the FIS and would have strengthened its support inside France.

9. BVerwG 2 C 21.01, Court ruling of 4 July 2002. Ludin, who has pursued her case in court since 1998, invokes the right to freedom of religious expression and to access to the civil service irrespective of her religious conviction. She claims that her religion is as much part of her identity as are liberal democratic values and that she has no intention to convert anyone to Islam (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 26 June 2001, 5 July 2002; TAZ No.6791, 4 July 2002; Stuttgarter Zeitung (SZ), 4 June 2003; Weser-Kurier, 4 June 2003).

10. TAZ No. 6791, 4 July 2002, No.6792, 5 July 2002.

11. German Press Agency, 4 July 2002.

12. Debus (1999) argues that the actual concern of the judges was Ludin's credibility (i.e., her commitment to the German constitution) rather than the impact her scarf might have on students. In letters to newspapers, sometimes taking up a whole page, German citizens revealed a remarkable confidence in their knowledge of Islam. In a letter to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (3 July 2003), an anxious parent argued that the real issue was the contrast between the Qur'an and the German constitution rather than the scarf. Apparently assuming that teachers who wear scarves are not committed to the German constitution, he wrote “I for one favour the constitution, especially with respect to those who teach my daughter.” Islamic approaches to gender equality and democracy were not discussed (e.g., see Mir-Hosseini 1996).

13. Hamburger Morgenpost 14 July 1998; Die Zeit 16 July 1998; Die Welt 8 July 2002; www.uni-tuebingen.de/kirchenrecht/ aktuell/kopftuch1 (13 July 1998).

14. FAZ 25 September 2003. In addition to unresolved questions about the meanings of the symbol, during the trial it was debated whether the scarf might have adverse effects on students. There were reports by experts of intercultural pedagogy and psychiatrists who did not consider the scarf to be “too great a danger” (SZ 4 June 2003; Weser-Kurier 4 June 2003).

15. By 2006 the wearing of scarves in government-run schools was forbidden in eight federal states. In Niedersachsen women lawyers are required to provide a written undertaking that they will appear bare-headed in the courtroom (Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung 14 November 2003). In Baden-Württemberg the law is to be extended to crèche teachers. One of the crèches that dismissed its covered carer from her job argued that her outfit was incompatible with its commitment to ideological neutrality and harmony. Nonetheless, it habitually requires parents to provide written confirmation that they would not object to a Christian education (SZ 23 August 2005).

16. Stuttgarter Nachrichten 25 September 2003; SZ 29 October 2003, 5 November 2003, 9 October 2004; Die Zeit 9 October 2003; The Economist 25 October 2003. In fact, the sheitl (wig), worn by orthodox Jewish women, shows the elusiveness of the symbolic meanings of head coverings even more fully than the scarf. Designed to be inconspicuous, it may nonetheless acquire political significance. On this issue in relation to the yarmulke, see Boyarin and Boyarin (1995: 29–30). In France, too, neither yarmulkes nor small crosses are prohibited (Scott 2005: 119).

17. In a work published on rural German costumes in the 1930s, most women are depicted as covered. The costumes are described as “an expression of a psychological disposition and value consciousness” (Retzlaff 1936: 4).

18. SZ 25 March /1 April 2000; Weser-Kurier 31 March 2000 (emphasis added).

19. SZ 25 July 2000. Graber has been wearing her scarf in school since 1995. In the year the federal court ruled that Ludin could not take up a job as a teacher (2000), Graber was asked to abandon her scarf. She refused to do so but was not prevented from teaching. When the school authority repeated its demand, Graber went to court and was allowed to wear a scarf at school because she “threatened social harmony in school merely in abstract ways.” Speakers for the Liberal Democratic Party, the junior partner of the ruling coalition in Baden-Württemberg, declared that the judgment was “evidence against anti-Islamic discrimination” and that it was an expression of the “livedcultural plurality in Germany” (SZ 14 October 2004; Die Welt 28 July 2006).

20. The right to French nationality is based on descent from French parents and on birthplace. A person is French if one of his or her parents is French. Children born in France of foreign parents qualify for French nationality at the age of eighteen. Citizenship is attributed at birth to third-generation immigrants (Maschino 2002). By contrast, in Germany naturalisation has been perceived as a change in a person's political and cultural identity rather than merely of legal status. This notion is rooted in the Wilhelmine period that sought to nationalise the Empire's citizenship law, thereby reifying German nationhood as ethnic and descent-based (Brubaker 1992: 52, 78, 81). Since then, German law has granted nationality to those who have German parents. However, Germany has begun to incorporate territorial criteria into its law on nationality. Following the adoption of the Nationality Act in 2000, a child of foreign parents shall acquire German citizenship by birth in the domestic territory if one parent (1) has legally been normally resident in the domestic territory for eight years and (2) possesses a right of residence or has possessed for three years a residence permit for an unlimited period.

21. In the context of the new law, note how the French government distinguishes between private and public spaces even in places formally under its control. For example, women prisoners are allowed to wear scarves inside, but not outside their cells (Khosrokhavar 2003).

22. In Europe the notion of protecting women, based on conceptualisations of women as vulnerable and susceptible, has informed gendered legislation that has had support from feminists. Concerns about women's ‘oppression’ focus on the covered rather than the uncovered body that has not been privileged in public debate in the same way. Unlike the naked body of pornographic representation, the interdiction on head covering is not treated as an issue of censorship and sexual control (on arguments in favour of outlawing certain forms of bodily exposure, see Bryson 1999: 178–179; Dworkin 2000.) Feminists problematise the issue of head covering only with respect to relations of power between men and women rather than women and the state.

23. There has of course been considerable debate among Muslims about this issue in both France and Germany (e.g., Colpe 1994: 123–124; Gaspard and Khosrokhavar 1995; Bloul 1996; Venel 1999).

24. On this issue, compare Bowen 2004: 46; on Turkey, Navaro-Yashin 2002: 237.

25. For exceptions, see for example MacMaster and Lewis 1998; Scott 2005: 117.

26. On French colonial policy toward women, see Lazreg 1994; Seferdjeli 2004.

27. Seferdjeli 2004: 252, 254; personal communication.

28. For example, Bernard Henri-Lévy suggested that the best way to liberate young Muslim girls from the oppressive embrace of Islam was to expose them to Voltaire and Rabelais rather than to exclude them from school (cited in Silverman 1992: 113).

29. Compare this notion to contrasting ideas in Iran where religious scholars stress the need for legislation in the form of the hijab to prevent women from being victimised and transformed into objects of male desire (Mir-Hosseini 1999: 91).

30. See, for example, Stoler (1997: 213–215).

31. The inability to speak German properly and to look like “Germans” is one of the diacritics that disqualify Ausländer (foreigners) from being recognised as “German” (Peck 1995: 111). Ludin succeeded in one domain only.

32. Navaro-Yashin's (2002: 237, 248) work also demonstrates this problematic issue by showing that the ready-to-wear türban worn by Islamist women in Turkey is modelled on European-style scarves and are therefore neither ‘Western’ nor ‘local.’

33. The commissioning of this sculpture by the colonial government in Algeria suggests an adaptation of the national icon to the cultural sensibilities of its predominantly Muslim département without failing to stress its Frenchness.

34. During demonstrations in Flers in 2003, covered women carried placards declaring “Oui au foulard, oui à la tolérance, oui à la laïcité” (Le Monde diplomatique [Engl], August, p. 15).

35. This also calls into question the supposed dichotomy between “Enlightenment” nationalism inspired by individualistic universalism and organic cultural nationalism associated with the Romantic movement (compare Boyarin 1995: 128). I am grateful to Jonathan Boyarin for drawing my attention to this issue.