Will Islam bend the knee to feminism? Michael Paterson-Seymour relates some disturbing news from France:
I have noticed, particularly in France, where I spend a fair amount of time, the extent to which Muslim women, at least in t he West are adopting a feminist agenda.
The president of the Muslim women’s movement Ni Putes Ni Soumises [Neither Sluts nor Door-mats] Sihen Habchi, in a forceful attack on “multiculturalism” has demanded
“No more justifications of our oppression in the name of the right to be different and of respect toward those who force us to bow our heads”
and Rachida Dati, herself a Muslim and former French Minister of Justice told the National Assembly that
“The Republic is alone capable of uniting men and women of different origins, colours and religions around the principles of tolerance, liberty, solidarity and laïcité, making the Republic truly one and indivisible.”
Likewise, Fadela Amara, another Muslim and Secretary of State for Urban Policies has declared that
“For this generation, the crucial issues are laïcité, gender equality and gender desegregation, based upon living together in harmony throughout the world, and not only in France.”
Nor are these lonely or isolated voices. Every politician, of the Left or of the Right, berates the perceived racism of “Anglo-Saxon” multiculturalism – Try Goggling “l’affaire du voile or l’affaire du foulard [The headscarf business] However much people might have differed over the particular policy, they vied with each other in declaring their commitment to the Jules Ferry Laws, the Law of 9 December 1905, the ideal of laïcité[ and their unbounded faith in the capacity of the educational system to eliminate “communautarism” (that fertile source of all social ills) and to mould future citizens of the Republic, one and indivisible.
Muslims, it seems, make as good mindless little Jacobins as everybody else.
Also, check out this (sympathetic) report at Contending Modernities on the spread of Islamic feminism in Spain.
The rest of the world has largely surrendered to feminism and the satanic Liberal principle of autonomy. If Islam too should fall, what would be left? In my mind, I imagine feminist atheism completely triumphant over the world, age after age of autonomy rather than virtue, “persons” rather than men and women, calculation rather than faith–a spiritual night without end.
Filed under: Gender roles, Islam |
Throne and Altar 
Friend, I don’t think feminist atheism is as stable as all that. I see it as merely a cancer that is growing throughout our social body. The more it grows, the weaker the body, leading, if unchecked, to eventual death. A nihilistic civilization is an oxymoron, and an impossibility.
Hi Justin,
I hope you’re right. Funny how we’re talking about civilizational death as the optimistic scenario.
Perhaps I could trespass on your indulgence to explain that I believe the reason this clash of Feminism and traditional Islam has achieved so much public prominence in France is the whole issue of « communautarisme »
Anyone who knows France and the French press will know that there is great concern about “ communautarisme », by which they mean ethnic or religious solidarities and allegiances that threaten to override Republican unity. This concern is largely incomprehensible to Britons and Americans, who have learned to accept the realities of their multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society, but it is deeply rooted in French political culture, going back at least as far as Rousseau’s suspicion of particular interests that undermined the General Will. Hence, the determination to keep the State and Civil Society, « l’’espace public » [the public sphere] and « l’espace privé » [the private sphere] distinct and separate. Religious and cultural activities belong to « l’espace privé »
This leads to some curious compromises: the State provides, not “state education,” for, under the Civil Code, education is the responsibility of the family and belongs firmly in the « l’espace privé » but “public instruction” and the state pays the salaries of teachers and librarians (but not the principal or other staff) in private faith schools, which Americans would see as contrary to the “Separation of Church and State.” Similarly, children at state schools, much to the annoyance of working parents, are given a half-day off (usually Thursday afternoons) so that they may receive religious instruction, if that is what their families wish. It used to be Thursday and Saturday afternoons, when Saturday was a school day.
That is why, for example, a largely symbolic matter like « l’affaire du voile » or « l’affaire du foulard » led to a national political debate. Significantly, no one ever refers to it as the “hijab,” as the media does in Britain, but always by the French word for veil [« le voile »] or scarf [« le foulard »].
Quite a few middle-class Muslim parents have enrolled their daughters in convent schools, which allow the scarf, but not the full face-veil.