MARYAM NAMAZIE interviews MARIEME HELIE LUCAS
PHOTO/Maryam Namazie/Fitnah
Marieme Helie Lucas is an Algerian sociologist and founder of the organizations Women Living Under Muslim Laws and Secularism is a Women’s Issue. In this interview, conducted by Iranian exiled feminist leader Maryam Namazie, she presents a provocative view of the controversy over the face-veil ban in France—an issue which has paradoxically seen Western progressives making common cause with Muslim conservatives, and Western conservatives purporting to act in the name of feminism. This interview is presented in the spirit of airing iconoclastic perspectives and broadening the scope of debate on an issue where conflicting definitions of civil liberties have created much confusion. —World War 4 Report
Maryam Namazie: Limitations on the veil in schools and an all-out ban on the burqa or niqab are often seen to be authoritarian. Your views?
Marieme Helie Lucas: First of all, it is useful not to conflate the two issues: that of veiling girls in schools and banning the face covering. I will thus answer them as two separate questions.
When talking of veils in schools, one automatically refers to the veiling of under-aged girls, i.e. not the veiling of women. The question thus becomes: who is to decide on girls’ veiling – themselves or the adults who are in charge of them? And which adults?
I know of only one book that looks at this issue; it is a pamphlet entitled Bas les Voiles (by Chahdortt Djavann, Gallimard 2003) that was published by an Iranian woman exiled in Paris at the time when the Stasi Commission in France was collecting the views of concerned women (and men) before the adoption of the new law on religious symbols in secular state schools. The author states that the psychological damage done to girls by veiling them is immense as it makes them responsible for men’s arousal from a very early age. This point requires special consideration given the new trend to veil girls as young as five as shown in the numerous campaigns throughout North Africa.
The author goes on to explain that the girl’s body is thus turned into the site of “fitnah”(seduction or source of disorder), meaning that she cannot look at it or think of it in positive terms. This attitude builds girls that fear, distrust, and feel disgust and anguish at their own bodies. At such an early age, little girls have no way of countering this shaping of their self; they are entirely under the thumb of anti-women men. The women growing up from these psychologically damaged girls are likely to need a lot of help to be able to reconsider themselves and their bodies in more positive terms, to reconstruct their self image, to conquer their bodily autonomy, to abandon guilt and fear – and to give back to men the responsibility of their sexual acts. I think it would be very useful for more women researchers to delve into the psychological damage done to girls who are veiled from an early age.
Also, who is the “adult” in charge of protecting the girl-child’s rights? The state already plays this role on numerous occasions, such as in preventing families from perform FGM [female genital mutilation] on girls, or in preventing forced marriages for instance. Why should it not also take responsibility in preventing the deep psychological damage induced by wearing a veil before adulthood?
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