Headscarf Ban in France - Essay Example

Headscarf Ban In France Introduction - Islam And Secularism Islam is said to have been established in the year 610 C.E. by Muhammad (PBUH), Messenger of Allah (God) in the city of Mecca (current day Saudi Arabia). Supporters of Islam are called Muslims and usually as "Moslem's". Since Islam is an extremely stern monotheism, most will find it unpleasant to propose that they adore a human being. The standard texts of Islam are the Qur'an and the Hadith. Islamic viewpoints and practices are enclosed in the Shari'a, the Sunna, and the "Five Pillars." At present, Islam is the second biggest religion in the world, with about 20% of the world's inhabitants calling themselves Muslims (for assessment, about 33% of the world's population identify themselves Christians). Though, Islam is the highest growing religion, and calculation approximately proposes that they will outnumber Christians sometime approximately by the year 2020 (Secularism 101, Online). Each religion appears to have some wisdom of the "sanctified" - counting holy texts, sacred times, and holy places. Islam is surely not extraordinary in that consideration. That which is blessed is measured particular, sacred, sanctified - understanding what a belief observes as sacred can go a long way in serving one comprehend more about the religion itself and the approach in which it compact with outsiders. Unnecessary to say, secularism had not forever been observed as a widespread good. Yet nowadays, there are many who not simply fall short to discover secularism and the procedure of secularization to be advantageous to society, but in fact argue that it is the foundation of all of society's evils. According to them, discarding secularism in errand of a more openly religious foundation for politics and civilization would create a more steady, more ethical, and eventually improved social arrangement (Cline, Secularism 101, Online). Religion Islam And Hijab (Headscarf) The application of hijab among Muslim women is one supported on religious principle, even though the Qur'an does not permit it. In its place, it appears from the Hadith of Sahih Bukhari. The Hadith, the "custom of Mohammed," discloses the knowledge of the Prophet to supporters. Bukhari's description of this text is normally observed as the customary one, even though plentiful versions survive. In a very extensive logic, the relation the Hadith has to the Qur'an be like the New Testament's to the Old in Christian scriptures (Hijab In The Workplace Q&A, Online) From the studies of Hadith, Prophet Mohammad said "My Lord agreed with me ('Umar) in three things... (2) And as regards the veiling of women, I said 'O Allah's Apostle! I wish you ordered your wives to cover themselves from the men because good and bad ones talk to them.' So the verse of the veiling of the women was revealled" (Bukhari, v1, bk 8, sunnah 395). One portion of the Qur'an is mainly frequently cited in maintaining of veiling. It affirms "O Prophet! Tell thy wives and thy daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks close around them. That will be better, so that they may be recognized and not annoyed. Allah is ever forgiving, merciful...." (From translation of the Qur'an). The intention of the hijab, frequently worn as headscarf, is to conceal a woman's beauty. All Muslim women are requisite to be dressed in the hijab according to Islam. Except, with the exemption of Iran and Saudi Arabia, women in Muslim countries have the liberty to decide to whether to be dressed in it or not. Their husbands or fathers can never force women. The hijab is a performance of respect and shield against the immodest looks of others. When any Muslim women intermingle with others, people critic them by their intelligence and personality, not by their appearance. The hijab also assist keep them from infusing sex into whichever relations (Souheila, Online). The Hijab also assists a woman control her actions and character. With the hijab, one cannot spotlight surplus on looks, which avert Muslim girls from evaluating themselves to others or rising pride or self-importance. Like this they can converse to both men and women with humbleness, not with pride. Regulations regarding Muslim women's (and men's) clothing are derivative from the Quran, Islam's exposed text, and the customs (hadith) of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). In one ritual, the Prophet Muhammad is citated as saying: "...If the woman reaches the age of puberty, no part of her body should be seen but this --- and he pointed to his face and hands." (Hijab In The Workplace Q&A, Online) A number of Muslim women decide not to wear hijab. A few might want to be dressed in it but consider they cannot get a work wearing a headscarf. Others might not be conscious of the prerequisite or are beneath the mistaken thought that wearing hijab is a signal of substandard class (Online). Headscarf Ban In France Schools A presidential commission in France has suggested the prohibition of the hijab - the Islamic headscarf - in public buildings; counting most prominently state schools, together with other noticeable religious clothing such as crosses and Jewish skullcaps. It is a verdict that has cracked France. Spiritual leaders, Catholic bishops and Jewish rabbis in addition to Muslim ecclesiastics have destined the projected ban saying it would damage the assimilation of schools. President Chirac and his presidential team have also supported the ban (BBC News, Online). France's government intends to have the commandment -- desirable, it says, to stay behind religion out of worldly schools -- in position for the 2004-2005 educational year that starts in September. France acquired a crucial step in February 2004 on the road to legislating, with parliament's lower house overpoweringly favoring the prohibition on religious attire by an enormous 494-36 margin voting, in spite of objections and disparagement from all over the world that the assessment disobeys on religious autonomy (Kurucan, 2004, Online). The statement specifies, "In schools, junior high schools and high schools, signs and dress that conspicuously show the religious affiliation of students are forbidden." It would not relate to students in private schools or to French schools in further nation (CNN.Com, Online). The conclusion to forbid Muslim headscarves from public schools express to extensive condemnation of France. Many disputed that it was merely anti-Muslim law and had nothing to do with safeguarding French secularism. The result by French President Jacques Chirac to ban the use of Islamic headscarves in public schools has flashed a hurricane. It has polarized the public here, with some crowds coming out in support of the move, which they see as essential to restrain the increase of Islamic fanaticism. Others have rejected, saying the ban will only make unfriendly Muslims and obstruct their incorporation into French society (Hijab, Online). Europe's opinionated oratory over the sartorial choices of Muslim women is though gone astray. As an alternative of worrying over the covering, European politicians should be gearing the real harms of unfairness, antagonism and segregation facing approximately all of the continent's 12.5 million Muslims. It is this separation that has made confident some to hold close a more inflexible understanding of Islam. France might have the leading number of Muslims - around 5 million - but it is in no way the only European country opposing the confront of incorporating its Muslims. (See chart) Stress for new Belgian law to ban Islamic headscarves in the country's schools, courts and public managements has activated a most important political line up, cracking the undersized country of 10 million people, which comprises a predictable 400,000 Muslims. Number of Muslims in Europe. English Non-Secular School System In America The attendance and degree of religion in community schools is one of the mainly complex and controversial matters while it appears to the division of church and state. Usually, public schools in America have been extremely overt in their festivity of the holiday period - for students, it was a Christmas holiday period, a Christmas time, and special proceedings were particularly leaning towards Christmas. Thus extensively as America has been primarily Christian in the blend such a focal point went unconcealed and yet ignored by the common. Although the time is altering, and the suppositions of the history are no longer sufficient to the truth of the current times. Inquisitively, though, schools are mostly varying not since they are strained to do so by the courts. Reasonably the differing, the courts have repeatedly lined that a lot of customary features of how schools identify Christmas are completely legitimate. Where schools alter, it is because they themselves make out that whichever holiday celebrations, focus on one spiritual custom, and are intolerable in a society where a lot of pious customs are anticipated to subsist in identical conditions. In a single logic, the French administration has selected one amid a lot of diverse explanations of the worldly state. The United States, for instance, covers its own claim of secularism, where President George W. Bush has in person acknowledged religious term in open, although at the same time activating argument as well. For a lot of in the U.S., a prohibition on pious cipher would be an infringement of spiritual liberty (Ali, Online). French Proposed Law Against Headscarf's - February 2004 French MPs have selected by a huge bulk to prohibit the Islamic headscarf and all additional obvious spiritual cipher from state schools. The invoice was approved by 494 votes to 36. It currently goes to the upper house, the Senate, for support (BBC News, Online). The planned French law proscription Islamic headscarves and further observable spiritual cipher in state schools would infringe the rights to liberty of religious conviction and expression, Human Rights Watch said today. The law, which forbids "signs and dress that conspicuously show the religious affiliation of students," will be debated in the French Senate on March 2, 2004. "The proposed law is an unwarranted infringement on the right to religious practice," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "For many Muslims, wearing a headscarf is not only about religious expression, it is about religious obligation." (Human Rights News, Online) International human rights law compels state powers to evade compulsion in topics of spiritual autonomy, and this compulsion ought to be taken into explanation when planning school dress policies. The projected ban on headscarves in France, as with laws in some Muslim countries to compel girls to carry headscarves in schools, defies this code. In the international law, nations can merely limit spiritual observance when there is a forceful public security motive, when the demonstration of spiritual viewpoints would impose on the privileges of others, or when it provides a lawful learning purpose. Muslim headscarves, Sikh turbans, Jewish skullcaps and huge Christian crosses-which are amongst the noticeable spiritual cipher that would be forbidden-do not pretense a danger to public health, array or ethics; they have no result on the basic privileges and freedoms of different students; and they do not weaken a school's instructive purpose. Though, defending the right of all learners to spiritual liberty does not damage secularism in schools. On the opposite side, it reveals high opinion for spiritual miscellany, a point entirely steady with upholding the severe division of community organization from some picky religious communication. Human Rights Watch distinguishes the legality of community foundations looking for not to endorse any faith using their behavior or declarations, but the French administration has taken this a pace additional by signifying that the state is dejecting secularism if it permits students to dress in religious cipher. Supporters of the law have also secured the ban on the grounds that it will defend Muslim girls from being enforced or forced to wear the headscarf by their parents. Simultaneously, states are accountable for taking suitable lawmaking, managerial, social and educational actions to defend children where parents are accountable for corporeal or mental aggression, damage or abuse, abandon or neglectful behavior, mistreatment or misuse, counting sexual abuse. Pointless limitations on children's individual rights and liberty should not be encouraged as a means of child defense. A number of people in France have used the headscarf matter as an alleged reason for expression anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim reaction. Some influences materialize to be founded on the principle that all Muslims want to keep down women, or that women and girls who decide to veil do not recognize women's rights. Mr Dalil Boubakeur, president of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), entitle for peaceful terms, saying: 'We have already said that the law of our nation is our law. It is up to society to fix the norms and values that it wants respected." (Hijab, Online) Opposition To Scarf Ban There have been objections against the law in India and amongst France's 7,000 strong Sikh societies. The International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights has as well informed the French government adjacent to the ban, as has US-based suggested group, the Commission on International Religious Freedom. Some French MP's assert young Muslim women are being obligated to wear the headscarf, although the only some hundred who have bowed out for protests against the fresh commandment say they wear it of their personal free motivation (BBC News, Online). Two French journalists take hostages in Iraq have beseeched for Paris to meet their subjugator's commands and overturn a ban on Muslim headscarves for girls in public schools in France. The Arabic-language news network Al-Jazeera send a videotaped declaration late February from Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot. "We ask the French government to show their good intentions towards the Arab and Islamic world and abolish the headscarf law, which is an unjust and unfair law," said Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot (CNN.Com, Online). Thousands of demonstrators, many of them women wearing headscarves, have objected to a law to ban Islamic head coverings (Hijab) and additional religious clothing in public schools. Police predicted that 2,600 people demonstrated in the southern city of Lyon in February 2004. Planners put the number at 8,000. In Paris, demonstrator marched through the east of the city. Police said the throng numbered 1,300. Journalists anticipated 2,000 to 3,000 (CNN.Com, Online). Demonstrators in Paris carried posters distincting "The veil, my voice," "Secularism: Shame," and "School is my right. The veil is my choice. France is my shelter." In Jakarta, Muslim women complaint France's headscarf ban at state schools in face of the French Embassy. To these Indonesian women, France's exclusion of religious signs, counting big crosses and Jewish skullcaps, infringes the rights of French citizens. Headscarves, they uphold, are a religious compulsion, not an enlightening appearance, and prohibition them obstructs with a Muslim woman's right to free spiritual performances (Ali Muhamad, Online). The ban generated enormous protests in France and objections in several cities around the world formerly this year. Critics predestined the law as an assault on religious liberty and said it would stigmatize the predictable 5 million Muslims in France. Some Muslim groups guaranteed additional objections, calling the constraints anti-Islamic. Conclusion The French budge to ban headscarves might be mistaken, but it has lastly be successful in limelighting the many confronts facing governments and Muslims as they thrash about to come to conditions with Europe's fresh multi-cultural and multi-religious authenticity. But the levelheaded explanations essential to permit pleasant-sounding co-existence will necessitate an expansion of the present discussion on the Islamic veil. Europe's Muslims are not going anyplace: the continent is their home (Islam, Online). One is not convinced up till now what the percentage is of those Muslims living in France (five million, or 8 percent of the country's total strength) who resist and who concur with the ban, but certainly their views are diverse: Opposing, accepting or being unbiased. French secularism (laiciti) desires to be placed in framework. To uphold the secular nature of the French state - liberty and society -- the French require preventing fundamentalism. Their have for eternity been predicaments between personal rights and collective rights. Nowadays, freedom appears to be a worldwide belief, but its understanding and submission differs. Secularists adore freedom, but many of the spiritual fundamentalists in the West and the Muslim world have evenly used impartiality or freedom as their political tongue, but they understand them in a different way; many would use freedom to tyrannize others' freedom. The subject here is not so greatly about whether or not wearing the headscarf is a religious compulsion, as has been discussed in Muslim spheres (France distinguishes that for many wearing the headscarf is supposed to be compulsory for Muslim women, and as well appreciates the blessed features of Jewish and Christian symbols which are too to be barred). Somewhat, it is about whether or not the state authorize the religious appearance of its citizens. Those who support the outlaw and those who resist it have dissimilar understanding of freedom. The previous dispute that there is a closer association between freedom and commandment, and that the law to forbid the headscarf at state schools is intended at guaranteeing freedom in the supposition that the ban will put off religious fundamentalism and its additional consequences, terrorism, and consequently make sure freedom. Those who go up against the ban compete that the ban would mean disobeying freedom. The law should make sure that civil freedom, counting examining religious rites and wearing religious signs, is guaranteed. Here the position of discussion is the concept of freedom. Therefore, France is under pressure between individual freedom and civil freedom, in addition to between religious freedom and political regulation (Williams, Online). Works Cited Top of Form Ali Muhamad; The Jakarta Post, Headscarf Ban and Multi-Secularisms, 20 January 2004, http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.articleid=3162 Arab News; Headscarf Ban in France, 13 December 2003, http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2003%20Opinion%20Editorials/December/13%20o/Headscarf%20Ban%20in%20France,%20Arab%20News.htm BBC News; Tuesday, 10 February 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3309885.stm Cline Austin; ABOUT.com, April 02, 2004, http://atheism.about.com/b/a/075373.htm CNN.Com; Hostages plead: Lift headscarf ban, Tuesday, August 31, 2004, http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/08/30/france.hostages.villepin/ CNN.Com; Thousands protest head scarf ban, Sunday, February 15, 2004, http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/02/15/france.headscarves.ap/ Dr Alan Riley; The Headscarf Ban: Is France risking European court action http://www.ceps.be/Article.phparticle_id=328 Feillard Andree; Most Muslim Women in France Do Not Wear Headscarfs, Published: 26/1/2004, http://www.imdiversity.com/villages/woman/dialogue_opinion_letters/pns_hijab_0305.asp Hijab In The Workplace Q&A, http://www.islam101.com/women/hijabfaq.html Hijab: Headscarf ban divides France, Paris, Sunday, December 21, 2004, http://www.quran.ca/modules.phpname=News&file=article&sid=145 Human Rights News; (New York, February 27, 2004), http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/02/26/france7666.htm Kurucan Ahmet; Global Fact: Headscarf, Published: Friday, January 16, 2004, zaman.com, http://www.zaman.org/bl=showcase&alt=&hn=5003 Sebastian Rotella, Times Staff Writer; LOS ANGELES TIMES, Militants Tell France to End Head Scarf Ban, August 30, 2004, http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-083004france_lat,1,7458762.storycoll=la-home-headlines&ctrack=1&cset=true Secularism 101: Religion, Society, and Politics, http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/religion/blrel_sec.htm, http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/islam/blfaq_islam_index.htm Shada Islam; France's proposed law illustrates cultural divide between the state and its Islamic population, YaleGlobal, 30 January 2004, http://islamlib.com/en/page.phppage=article&id=542 Souheila Al-Jadda; Pacific News Service, Commentary: Why I Wear the Hijab, SAN JOSE, Calif.- Mar 30, 2005, http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.articleid=3225&page=2 Taheri Amir; Muslim Headscarf Ban In France, January 17, 2004, http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/1271 The Journal of Turkish Weekly; European Parliament (EP) Members Oppose Headscarf Ban in France, Published: Wed, 24 Feb 2005, http://www.prohijab.net/english/france-hijab-news18.htm Williams Daniel; Washington Post Foreign Service, In France, Students Observe Scarf Ban, Friday, September 3, 2004; Page A11, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55425-2004Sep2.html Read More