French burqa ban leads to more racism

Is this what the current Dutch government wants for our country too?

In April, France introduced a law against covering your face in public. Muslim women in full-face veils, or niqab, are now banned from any public activity including walking down the street, taking a bus, going to the shops or collecting their children from school. French politicians in favour of the ban said they were acting to protect the “gender equality” and “dignity” of women. But five months after the law was introduced, the result is a mixture of confusion and apathy. Muslim groups report a worrying increase in discrimination and verbal and physical violence against women in veils. There have been instances of people in the street taking the law into their hands and trying to rip off full-face veils, of bus drivers refusing to carry women in niqab or of shop-owners trying to bar entry. A few women have taken to wearing bird-flu-style medical masks to keep their face covered; some describe a climate of divisiveness, mistrust and fear. One politician who backed the law said that women still going out in niqab were simply being “provocative”.

Ahmas, 32, French, a divorced single mother of a three-year-old daughter, puts her handbag on the table and takes out a pepper spray and attack alarm. She doesn’t live on the high-rise estates but on a quiet street of semi-detached houses. The last time she was attacked in the street a man and woman punched her in front of her daughter, called her a whore and told her to go back to Afghanistan. “My quality of life has seriously deteriorated since the ban. In my head, I have to prepare for war every time I step outside, prepare to come up against people who want to put a bullet in my head. The politicians claimed they were liberating us; what they’ve done is to exclude us from the social sphere. Before this law, I never asked myself whether I’d be able to make it to a cafe or collect documents from a town hall. One politician in favour of the ban said niqabs were ‘walking prisons’. Well, that’s exactly where we’ve been stuck by this law.”

Very roughly estimated, there are probably some 100 to 200 women in the whole of the Netherlands who wear the full on face covering veil. In my own Amsterdam neighbourhood, which does have a high percentage of people with a Muslim background, with a mosque only a few blocks away, there are one or two, perhaps three women I’ve seen wearing this. Even if we accept the prejudices of those arguing for a ban, this is not a real problem. But then of course it’s meant as a distraction from the very real problems our country is facing,what with the economy and having a rightwing government with no ideas how to handle these problems other than by keep on cutting spending even when it’s clear this is counterproductive.

For the politicians pushing this, not just Geert Wilders, but supposedly respectable politicians like our prime minister Mark Rutte, this may not be an issue they take seriously other than to pull the whool over the electorate eyes, but for the women who’ll be caught in the backlash this will only make worse the racism and bigotry they’re already facing. After all, once the law has singled out a certain group of people as beyond the pale for how they look or act, it does encourage people to take justice in their own hands, as the French example shows, but we also know from closer to home. We have seen an increase in accepted casual racism and islamophobia once the politicians and opinion makers decided it was alright to break these taboos — and it’s not all stuff that has been bubbling under the surface before that. Having these sorts of negative examples and stereotypes of a certain population group fired at you day in day out matter. Having the law say that certain religious attributes are wrong matters even more.