A Devised Truth-Morgan Green

Truth is a political construction.  Last week, two women were fined for wearing burqas in a suburb of Paris.  This was the first application of a controversial law passed in France forbidding Muslim women from covering their faces in public.  Compulsory unveiling in France creates a narrative of a homogeneous French identity. In an age of mass immigration and turmoil between Islam and the West, the veil functions as a synecdoche for Muslim dissonance.  Cultural battles are often fought through the form of the female body, though the conflict is much deeper than a thin layer of fabric across the face.  Women are traditionally the mothers, home-keepers, and face of moral society, and therefore visually represent national ideals. A cultural battle is being fought through the body of the Muslim French woman, using her image to project political truth.

The right wing political pursuits in France have encroached on women’s right to freely practice their religion. While France claims to be in favor of women’s rights and freedoms, a woman’s right to identify with her religion, a precious freedom, is now forbidden.  The choice to wear a headscarf should be personal and not legal.  Muslim women who choose to wear the hijab believe that Islam liberates and empowers them, while the image of the veil challenges the Western notion of these words.

This ban is accompanied by a great ignorance that will not be recognized until the controversy is over.  This shrouding of the truth must be dispelled in the name of human rights.  Seeing a woman fully covered from head to toe can be discomforting.  From a Western perspective the covering of ones face can be interpreted as a refusal to exist, an erasure from society, an equivalent to silence.  Muslim women cover their face in order to be modest and diminish their publicly exposed sexuality, but when out of context as in France the veil intensifies sexuality in its excessiveness. It is conspicuous, and being so visible calls more attention to Muslim women rather than less.  There is mystery and fear of what is under the veil, and this ban is an attempt to control women, more so than the veil is misconstrued to do so itself.  Save for extreme circumstances in conservative Muslim countries, women choose to wear their head coverings and are not required to do so.

The only obligatory dress code for Muslims according to the Koran is to dress modestly. The Koran actually says in Surah XXIV Light “And tell the believing women to lower their gaze and be modest, and to display of their adornment only what which is apparent, and to draw their veils over their bosom”  It goes on to describe the close relations with whom the woman can share her

adornments.  There are no specifics about the hijab or burqa.  There is no sketch or diagram.  Covering the head is a cultural and personal choice in order to identify with faith.  Muslim women wear the hijab to feel connected with their faith and with their community, as well as to distinguish themselves from Western traditions.  Men are    [i]not limited in their choices. This tradition is not distinctly Islamic.  There are Hasidic Jews, as well as Amish men and woman who dress in a distinctive conservative style as well.  A headscarf can even be as secular as a fashion statement as seen above on the lovely Grace Kelly! France especially recognizes the power of clothes, where being fashionable and beautiful is an expression of patriotism.