After several posts, I tried to move on from the European Burqa Ban issue, and the NY Times’ coverage of it, but Martha Nussbaum’s eloquent explanation of John Locke’s and Roger Williams’s liberal conceptions of religious freedom and equally eloquent deconstruction of the most common arguments for such bans – all of which have been wheeled out as justification for the current Belgian Burqa Ban and similar proposals in other European states – certainly deserve a mention and a link. I would like to find a similarly cogent philosophical argument in favour of such bans – especially one that argues from a variant of a liberal position - if anyone can point me to one, or wishes to write one themselves I would be much obliged!
Nussbaum responds to readers comments (June 15, 2010)
The female genital mutilations are forbidden in most of the countries as no tradition of legislation issued from the “natural right” perspective considers mutilation as a right. Some rights are inalienable, even against the will of the citizen. The burqa is close to a “image” mutilation as the bearer volounteerly renounces to public image, exactly like the cloistered nuns, but without renouncing to the public interaction. For the western eyes, therefore, the burga is like a “monstrum”, the visible aspect of self-martirisation in a manner that, unlike the cloistered nuns, has not been socially assimilated and accepted. Martha Nussbaum’s discourse is questionable when she points out the weakness of the first two arguments. It is not the technicality that should be pointed out (the gesture itself of covering one’s face) but the finality. For reasonability’s sake, no police man would give a fine while I’m wearing a hooked wintercoat but if I were wearing it on summer, then I would be probably asked the reason, at list in the countries where the ban of masks and disguise still exist since years (Italian anti-terrorism law). Burqa is the actual nemesis of the western womens’ evolution, that’s why Nussbaum remarks about mercification of body are theoretically corrects but historically wrong. Womens did not fight against the abuse or exposure of female body, they fought against the opposite, and to chose freely how to use and expose their body, while in this progressive perspective of emancipation, the burqa is the degree ‘zero’. When Martha Nussbaum is surprisingly wrong is when she mentions the Turkish case, acceptable according to her because in defence of womens’ condition. As if now, in some monoethnical or monoreligious neighbourhood of western towns, these migrants women were really in condition to chose freely their public appearance. If one can honestly believe this, is because of a serious disconnection from everyday life, including taking the subway. Western countries are, maybe akwardly, trying to accomplish an important gesture pointing the burqa as alien to the core values on which the liberal societies lie on. Allowing the burqa is like a selfsabotage.
And not to forget that French Republic is built against religion. “Laicité” and customs related to religious beliefs, in the French tradition, are not indifferent, for instance it is still forbidden to get married in the Church before than at the Town Hall. Rather than the Locke approach, France seems to be still more attached to the Condorcet idea of supremacy of “laicité”. The burqa, unlike many other religious traditions, has the power to violently highlight the non-neutrality of French republicanism and the non-indifference of that Muslim tradition.
The debate is dangerously hypocrite, as the real problem is not the question of the privacy (the “security” concern made CCTV widespread) or the discrimination of religious habits (there is no debate about polygamy for instance). The core problems lies on the relation with the Muslim soul of France and European countries, where populist propaganda and bans, like the one on Burqa, slip the debate about the real challenge, i.e. effective measures to foster integration of minorities, and not hinder it because of supposed electoral gains.