The niqab vs. gender equality

NICE, FRANCE— It is maddening how the gender equality rights of women are being turned inside-out to safeguard the . . . gender equality rights of women.

To be absolutely clear about what should be as obvious as the nose on a woman’s face, if said nose were not hidden by a niqab: There is no feminist rationale to the inverse feminist argument that face coverings should be viewed as some kind of religious equivalent to reproductive choice.

What have we been fighting for all these years — the right to disappear behind a swatch of cloth that in fact represents the most odious ghettoizing of females, delicate (or dangerously seductive) creatures whose modesty depends on their symbolic and literal seclusion from the world, the concealing of faces?

Freedom of religious expression, larded over with contorted feminist reasoning and “egalitarian” cant, was most aggressively promoted in France by a mother-offour from Avignon, Kenza Drider, who had sought to run as a fringe candidate in next month’s presidential elections. By last week’s deadline, she had not received the 500 signatures necessary from French mayors — of which there are about 36,000 — to qualify as an official candidate. That was never in the cards, as Drider acknowledged when launching her quixotic bid last September.

It was notoriety and martyrdom the 32-year-old surely coveted, eager, as she went about her campaigning in head swaddle, to provoke police into charging her for breaking the law.

France banned the niqab (and burqa) outright last April, seven years after outlawing the head covering hijab in French schools. Only a tiny minority of French Muslim women — perhaps about 2,000 — wore the niqab anyway, so this was hardly a widely intrusive proscription.

Few have defied the ban, which calls for up to a 180-Euro fine for non-compliance and, should it come to that, mandatory classes in citizenship courses. Drider is the daughter of Moroccan immigrants. She did not adopt the niqab until after marrying 14 years ago.“it is my personal preference, one I feel entitled to express in a country that values freedom, democracy and human rights, just as others exercise the right to wear very little,’’ Drider said recently. She’s claimed the ban contravenes fundamental rights guaranteed to French citizens and that “women who hide their faces stand for freedom, not submission.’’ President Nicolas Sarkozy, with agreement from just about all, took the contrary view in invoking the ban, arguing the niqab and burqa “compromise the nation’s secular foundations and undermine gender equality and women’s dignity.” There was, further, a concern that permitting the niqab — with everything it represents about sexist attitudes, women as possessions in patriarchal societies, the she-visage an enticement to immorality — could open the door to a radical form of Islam in France, which has the largest Muslim population in Europe. Drider insists she is “entitled’’ — so many clashing entitlements among the crusading classes — to express and profess herself in a country that values freedom, democracy and human rights. See how the finest of principles can be co-opted to justify the most counter-intuitive argument? Her niqab evangelicalism had found scant traction in France. Yet Drider and a couple of accomplices who’ve been charged under the law hope to push their case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights. Conventional feminism — that is to say, a feminism that has put the alleged discrimination against minority Muslim women ahead of the secular gender rights as we have for decades understood them — is all tangled up about this. It shouldn’t be such a conundrum. And it’s regrettable so many have gotten it resoundingly wrong. To wit: LEAF, the Women’s Legal and Action Fund intervened for standing in the Toronto niqab case that has gone all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, with a ruling expected any day. LEAF argued on behalf of a woman, N.S., who wanted to keep her niqab on while testifying against two male defendants who’d been charged with sexual assault.

Religion is not necessarily the paramount reason for adopting facial covering

LEAF counsel Susan Chapman observed: “Women who have been sexually assaulted should not be shut out of this judicial system just because they wear the niqab. The first question people should ask is not ‘can N.S. wear the niqab,’ but ‘why are the accused demanding the niqab be removed?’” No, that’s not the first question to be asked. In fact, it’s the fundamentally incorrect question to pose given presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial for any accused. Ironically, it took the Canadian Islamic Congress to point out what should have been obvious — that religion is not necessarily the paramount reason for adopting facial covering. “There are a number of reasons that a woman could wear a niqab,” observed the CIC lawyer. “They could be cultural, they could be political, they could be familial and if there’s no connection to religion, it doesn’t deserve protection.”

How to assess whether the demand is religious or ideological? Should ideology also trump fair trial rights?

The trial judge in the N.S. case weighed the issues and ruled that the witness had to remove her niqab because the accused and their lawyers had a right to study her demeanor. That decision was quashed by the Ontario Superior Court, their ruling then overturned by the Ontario Court of Appeal, which rendered a painfully opaque decision — directing judges to respect religious rights by allowing witnesses to testify about their beliefs before compelling them to remove the niqab, but only if no compromise could be reached.

N.S. appealed again, with the Supreme Court hearing arguments in December. Their decision is pending.

It took LEAF and the convoluted Ontario Court of Appeals ruling to convince me I had it wrong in my original inclination to accommodate N.S. I’d covered her case and argued, at the time, that allowing the witness (and alleged victim) to keep her face concealed was the lesser of two evils; that forcing women to remove the niqab to testify would discourage other violated victims from pursuing justice.

This was before I learned, without seeking out the information, the actual identity of N.S. Her identity is protected. But what I believe I can reveal is that this woman only took to wearing her niqab a few years ago and a very strong argument can be made that her epiphany resulted less from religious conviction than political engagement. Should that matter? When trading off fair trial rights under the rubric of religious beliefs, it sure as hell does.

The truth, I think, is being covered up.