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The analysis of hijab, Islamic religious clothing based on codes of female modesty, which David Pendletone asserts in his article in Solidarity 517 is commonplace amongst many Muslim-background feminists, amongst whom the issue of state bans is highly contested.
Iranian writer Chadhortt Djavan, who does support state bans on hijab for young girls, wrote in her pamphlet ‘Bas les Voiles’ (Down with Veils): “What does veiling do to a girl child? It turns her into a sexual object [...] it defines her essentially by and for men’s eyes.” Algerian socialist-feminist Marieme Helie Lucas, who has opposed state bans of the French type, has written extensively of how hijab and veiling has developed into a cultural-political practise posed in religious terms, asserted by Islamists to promote a conservative interpretation of Islamic cultural-political identity.
Such views are not commonplace on the left. During the past two decades, various tendencies on the left, most prominently the Socialist Workers Party, have adopted a view of Islamic religiosity that sees it almost necessarily as an expression of a progressive anti-imperialism. The argument runs that, since Muslims are discriminated against in the west and since the “Muslim world” is in a secondary position relative to US imperialism, the practise of Islam itself becomes a form of resistance.
Those who took our politics to their highest ever peak would abhor such a view: the Bolsheviks conducted vigorous campaigns against religious obscurantism in general and against veiling and hijab in particular, despite the very much oppressed position Muslim-majority national and ethnic groups occupied within the Tsarist Empire the Bolsheviks sought to dismantle.
They managed to combine a militant hostility to the patriarchal oppression inherent in conservative religious practise with a militant commitment to the democratic, national, and civil rights of the Muslim-majority peoples Tsarism had colonised.
Reconnecting to those traditions of militant secularism, which have deteriorated significantly under the influence not only of a vulgar “anti-imperialism” but also a post-modernist cultural relativism, would be a very good thing indeed.
It does not at all follow, however, that the way to do this is for socialists to advocate state bans on hijab or other religious practises connected to gender oppression.
Such bans - or, more likely, the campaigns for them - will inevitably be exploited by those who oppose Islam not on the basis of a secularist or feminist critique of religion but on the basis of an ethnonationalist hostility to Muslim immigrants.
Context and agency matter, and David makes his argument in the context of a vicious and ongoing campaign of demonisation of Muslims in the tabloid press, given license by the dogwhistles of senior politicians.
Should the state, under the administration of such people, move to ban hijab from any sphere of public life it would certainly not be doing so on the basis of a commitment to secularism and women’s rights, but as a means of protecting its right flank and playing to the nationalist gallery whipped into an anti-migrant frenzy by the context of Brexit.
David’s argument also relies on an unsubstantiated assertion that the wearing of hijab amongst primary-school-aged girls is increasing, with the implication that state action is necessary to protect the rights of children whose ability to meaningfully consent to participation in gendered religious or cultural practises is more complicated than with older girls
or women.
Other than the National Secular Society’s 2017 study into compulsory hijab for primary-aged children in specifically Islamic religious schools (a slightly different context), I am not aware of any definitive statistical research on the matter. If David knows of some, he should provide it. To advocate a state ban on the basis of impressionistic evidence is not good
politics.
To advocate one only on hijab, and not on the perhaps less visible but similarly oppressive cultural practises of other conservative faith groups, such as ultra-Orthodox Jews, risks feeding into a sense of discrimination and singling out.
I have no doubt that David, who undoubtedly had in mind the context of what has been a specific and live issue in the British education system as recently as last year, with the furore over headteacher Neena Lall’s attempt to ban hijab in her east London primary school, does not intend this. Nevertheless, the risk is there.
The practise of hijab can be targeted by a ban because of its nature as a physical item. But all religions, especially in their conservative and orthodox forms, are patriarchal and oppressive, at the level of ideas. We cannot simply call on the state to “ban” such oppression; we can only look to build an assertive secularist, feminist, and LGBT+ liberation movement
that can confront it at its ideological root.
The agency that will push back oppressive religious or cultural customs is primarily feminist and secularist movements within faith communities. Those of us outside such communities can contribute best by supporting and amplifying their struggles, not by calling for bans.
Some Muslim-background feminists do call for a ban on the hijab in primary schools. In February 2018, Iranian-British comedian and writer Shappi Khorshandi spoke up in defence of Neena Lall, saying: “Let little girls have the freedom to feel the wind in their hair as they tear around the playground with their friends.” The argument is compelling and should be respected and engaged with without simply being denounced, and certainly Lall should have been defended from the vicious campaign against her that decried her as a racist and compared her to Hitler. But ultimately a ban is too blunt an instrument in this case, and in this context.
David is right that lines have to be drawn somewhere. The protests against LGBT+ education in primary schools pose the question: to what extent should socialists advocate the state intervene into schools against the “right” of parents to educate their children in their own religious ideas?
I am certainly for compulsory RSE, including LGBT+ education, and against the right of religious parents to withdraw their children from science or PE classes. And schools should certainly encourage an atmosphere of freedom and choice in which girls and young women who want to question and potentially reject the strictures of their parents’ religion are able to do so.
I do not believe a state ban on hijab would do this. More likely it will have the affect of increasing the sense of social siege under which Muslim communities as a whole feel, making the development of dissenting politics harder, not easier. The left has to combine a vigorous defence of Muslim communities against racism, from both the press, the far right, and the state, with a vigorous campaign for secularism and feminism, including secularist and feminist education, primarily in solidarity with those asserting such ideas and critiques within Muslim and other faith communities.
How else to protect children?
David Pendletone replies:
Daniel Randall’s response to my article in Solidarity is valuable. There is much common ground. I will not dwell on that. I do want to continue the discussion on the points of contention.
Firstly, the title of Daniel’s piece suggests some of the problems with it; “Criticise religion, oppose state bans”.
I suspect Daniel doesn’t oppose all state bans or even all state bans on conservative religious practices. The question is where to draw the line. Presumably he supports bans on FGM. Furthermore, there is much that I guess he would support banning in schools which he might not support banning in society in general: pornography, far-right propaganda, drugs.
More than that, we aspire to do more than simply criticise religion. In the case of conservative religion we do aim to push it back and destroy it.
Daniel points out that banning the hijab is contested amongst Muslim-feminists. Indeed, he quotes movingly Shappi Khorshandi, only to follow this by simply saying a ban in schools is too blunt an instrument.
But what instrument do you propose instead Daniel? The question then is, what do we say to those Muslim-feminists who support a ban? Sorry, but we are going to wait until you are strong enough to win a ban within your communities. Until then your children have to go to school under the immediate pressure of the hijab.
Or are we going to duck the argument on the ban with them? One of the big questions that has to be addressed by all of those who are against banning the hijab in schools is what our programme should argue for, short of socialism, to protect these children in schools. I believe it is an immediate issue.
Daniel rightly describes the “ongoing campaign of demonisation of Muslims in the tabloid press, given licence by the dog-whistles of senior politicians”. But that is the same context for the introduction of the RSE curriculum including LGBT+ which many Muslim parents see as an attack against their religion, culture and traditions.
The campaign to defend the new curriculum, or at least to oppose the demonstrations by parents against it, was picked up by anti-Muslim racists both organised and un-organised and probably has “[had] the effect of increasing the sense of social siege under which Muslim communities as a whole feel”.
But there Daniel is “certainly for compulsory RSE, including LGBT+ education, and against the right of religious parents to withdraw their children from science or PE classes.” Good, but why the difference? Is it because someone else did it for us?
Maybe we should have waited until the progressives, LGBT+, and feminists within the Muslim communities had won the argument on LGBT+ education?
If agency matters how come it only matters in some cases?
The issue of agency is informative. Rather like the “left” on the People’s Vote, comrades want to remove our voice from the argument from those arguing for a ban. Then they exclaim that the people making the argument are the right and so we can’t join them!
Daniel writes: “To advocate [a ban] … only on hijab, and not on the perhaps less visible but similarly oppressive cultural practices of other conservative faith groups, such as ultra-Orthodox Jews, risks feeding into a sense of discrimination and singling out”. My response is simple. I am in favour of banning all “similarly oppressive cultural practices of other conservative faith groups” in primary school. I have centred this question on the hijab because it is the most widespread.
Further Daniel writes: “I am not aware of any definitive statistical research on the matter. If David knows of some, he should provide it. To advocate a state ban on the basis of impressionistic evidence is not good politics”.
I too am not aware of any definitive statistical research but as I have pointed out it is it is commonly accepted in the serious bourgeois press. See for example The Economist (econ.st/2mnc6YI): “All over the Islamic world, the age at which girls start covering their head (usually around the time they hit puberty) has been falling. British Muslims have begun to follow the trend, which has caused pushback among the more secular-minded”.
Perhaps if Daniel doesn’t accept the view of the serious bourgeois press and anecdotal evidence of comrades he could supply some evidence to the contrary.
In summary, I get a sense of comrades squirming here, looking for a “good argument” to avoid the logic of their positions.
As always, we must strive “to face reality squarely; not to seek the line of least resistance; to call things by their right names; to speak the truth to the masses”.
