One question that arises from this is: what is a veil? This is rather like the old philosophical conundrum: does a tree falling in a deserted forest make any noise? Does a piece of cloth that everyone recognizes as a bandana count as a veil? This point explains the difficulty in counting the number of veiled pupils in French schools: who is wearing a bandana, a large beret and an Islamic veil?
Let us now consider some representative statements by French commentators, all of whom participated in the ‘debate’ of 2003–4, concerning the veil and its meanings:
Anne Vigerie and Anne Zelensky: ‘[The veil] symbolises the place of women in Islam as interpreted by Islamism. That place is in the shade: it’s her relegation, her submission to men.’109
Michèle Vianès: ‘[the veil is] … a symbol of degradation … it is a “marker” for discrimination, of sexual apartheid, preventing convergence, and preserving the tutelage of women.’110
Libération: ‘a symbol of oppression’.111
Michel Gauchet: ‘The veil is a religious symbol but, obviously, it’s something else as well. It is fundamentally a sign of the subjection of women, and that’s what causes the problem.’112
François Bayrou: ‘[The veil means that] men and women have a relationship which is not one of equality.’113
Union des familles laïques (The Union of Laïque Families): ‘[The veil is] symbolic of women’s oppression.’114
Raymonde Coudert and Thérèse Filippi: ‘While the turban worn by Sikh boys and the kippa worn by practicing Jewish boys are not signs of sexual subjection, the headscarf is.’115
Martine Billard: ‘[The veil] is, in all cases, either a sign of submission or a sign of alienation.’116
In these quotations, we can see some similarities with the manner in which laïcité is debated. There is the same tendency to make big, abstract, free-standing statements, with no attempt to provide evidence or contextualization, and no reference to the more serious, nuanced analyses of the topic. In this case, there is a surprising consensus among these varied commentators. However, it is important to identify the exact nature of this consensus. These commentators are not saying ‘The rule of the Taliban in Kabul made women’s lives a living hell, and their imposition of the burqa was the most visible sign of their authoritarian and tyrannical power.’ These commentators are not saying ‘The legal enforcement of veil-wearing on women in Saudi Arabia is an essential part of a law code which severely and unjustly oppresses women.’ These commentators are not saying ‘The regulations on veil-wearing in Iran are unjust, and produce a situation in which police authorities harass and humiliate women.’ All these statements are empirically verifiable, politically sensitive and accurate. In the statements by the French commentators, there is a skidding between cause and effect: they sidestep issues of political and religious authority, they ignore context and they invest the veil itself with a particular and eternal meaning. The veil itself, however, is merely a piece of cloth: it has no more meaning than, for example, trousers. It is context which gives it meaning.
What is the origin of this idea that the veil itself is, intrinsically and irremediably, an instrument of women’s oppression? It is not an explanation for its origins. The veil pre-dates Islam, and among the ancient societies that grew up around the Mediterranean it was ‘a mark of exclusivity, status, privilege and privacy’.117 It certainly cannot be found in the Koran. In fact, there is no direct reference to veiling in the Koran, although there is a specific instruction that women should not go topless, and there is a more general injunction that men and women should adopt modest dress. It is from this second reference that the connection between Islam and veiling starts: many Muslims have interpreted ‘modest dress’ to mean veiling. However, there is no implication that modest dress is a means to demonstrate female inferiority: on the contrary, it seems rather a way of affirming women’s legitimate, public presence in society. In passing, we can note that veiling has certainly entered French culture in this way: for centuries, pious Catholic women have been expected to cover their hair in public and even Marianne herself was usually depicted by nineteenth-century illustrators with her hair covered.
Among the French veil-wearing Muslim women of our time, a variety of explanations are given for their choices. Hervé Flanquart conducted a series of in-depth interviews with twenty-five Muslims girls, of whom about half wore the veil. He found that all of them, veiled and unveiled, automatically refuted any element in Islam that seemed to contradict their belief in male–female equality.118 For Sabrina, a 25-year-old law student, wearing a veil was a means to bring her closer to God.119 For another girl, it was a means to surpass the Islam of her father and to find a pride in her Arab identity.120 A third speaks of the veil as a form of vengeance for the suffering that her parents had experienced ‘when they were forced to pray in garages’.121 Commentators close to French Muslims produce a range of interpretations of the veil. Sophie Bessis, born in Tunis and working in France, makes the obvious – but necessary – points that the veil has no single meaning, and that the ‘new veil … is not a return to tradition’.122 Hajji and Marteau, on their journey through Muslim France, present the interesting idea that the new veil carries a new significance: it is a way of asserting a double loyalty, to Islam and to France.123 Gaspard and Khosrokhavar suggest a similar complexity: the new veil-wearers are French and Muslim, modern and veiled, autonomous and dressing in an Islamic manner.124 Halima Zouhar, a Muslim activist, makes a similar comment about the dichotomy-bridging veil: ‘these girls have adopted the emancipated lifestyle so praised by the West, while living according to the precepts of Islam.’125 Caitlin Killian interviewed 100 Muslim women in France. She describes what could be termed ‘the passport veil’: the ability of the veil to act ‘as a way to negotiate between the community of the parents and the French society in which they are immersed’.126 Writing rather more eloquently, Lucette Valensi makes the same point, paraphrasing the typical young veil-wearer as saying ‘father, mother, I am not betraying you. I share your values, and I am taking them to the public world’.127
Researchers working outside France who have interviewed or studied Muslim women have come to similar conclusions: they find a variety of explanations for veiling, but none report that Muslim women choose to veil in order to present themselves as inferior to men. Karin Ask and Marit Tjomsland, in a general review of women’s lives and Islam, stress the heterogeneity of the religion, but also make the simple point that ‘for the individual woman the veil materializes as a public statement of personal commitment’.128 Jenny B. White, studying Islamist women in contemporary Turkey, identifies a ‘new veil’ which can be at once ‘political symbol, marker of modesty and … fashion’.129 While she is aware of the contradictory nature of this symbolism, and of the manner in which the veil can contribute to frustrate women’s aspirations to full political participation, she certainly does not consider that the veil is a symbol of inequality. Meena Dhanda, writing in the Times Higher Education Supplement, found that the veil worked as ‘a means of seclusion from the rampant materialism of a hyper-commercial culture’;130 while Reina Lewis arrived at almost the opposite conclusion, noting how veil-wearing is developing its own fashion industry.131 Karen Armstrong, a perceptive analyst of religions who was once a veil-wearing nun herself, considers that the new Muslim veil symbolizes ‘resistance to oppression’.132 Jen’nan Ghazal Read and John P. Bartkowski, interviewing Muslim women in Texas, found a sort of internationalism among them. The veil led to ‘a feeling of connectedness with a broader religious community of other veiled Muslim women’.133 The contrast between these analyses and the clichés that