WUNRN
http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/europe/53533-141206-to-wear-or-not-to-wear
Also via Human Rights without Frontiers
GERMANY, WITH SECOND LARGEST MUSLIM POPULATION IN EUROPE,
GRAPPLES WITH CALLS FOR BURQA BAN
Julia Klöckner, vice-chairman of Angela
Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party (CDU), stirred a public storm in Germany
this week when she called for a ban of the full body Muslim veil in public
spaces. "Burqas don’t stand for religious diversity," she told German
media, "but for a degrading image of women." The politician referred
to the German constitution, emphasizing that women and men are equal, and
described the act of looking at other people’s faces as a key feature of an
open society.
AFP"Muslim women wearing various type
of Islamic veils, a hijab (top L), a niqab (top R) a tchador (bottom L) and a
burqa"
German politicians have repeatedly called
for a ban on the burqa in the past months, following a ruling by the European
Court of Justice which held up the ban instituted in France. This is no
surprise given that Germany has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe
after France.
The vice-president of the Social Democratic
Party, Axel Schäfer, has also claimed that the burqa "does not belong in
our culture." Others, both from the left and the right, followed and in
February 2011, the west-central state of Hesse became the first in Germany to
ban the wearing of burqa in public places.
In Frankfurt, a city of 700,000 residents,
including a large Muslim population, the issue has split Chancellor Angela
Merkel’s CDU Party and the Greens within the ruling coalition. Currently, staff
in the city administration are not allowed to wear veils at work.
A burqa is a full body veil, which leaves
open only a tiny slash for its female wearer’s eyes. It is most common in Muslim
countries like Afghanistan and goes back to a strict interpretation of the
Koran. But burqas aren't solely Islamic. Some years ago, a fringe group of
ultra-Orthodox Jewish women near Jerusalem began wearing similar
full-body-veils as a symbol of piety.
In France, where Muslims make up about
eight percent of the population, many of them being first- and
second-generation immigrants from France's former colonies, the ban became
state law in 2010. Belgium and parts of Switzerland followed the French model.
Earlier this year, the European Council for Human Rights (ECHR) affirmed the
decision. "The question of accepting or not that the full veil can be worn
in public is a society's choice," it ruled, explicitly declaring the
French ban to be legally justified.
AFP/ Torsten BLACKWOOD"Men and women
dressed in burqas from the group ‘Faceless’ call for the banning of the
conservative Muslim apparel throughout Australia during a rally in Sydney on
April 2, 2012. The group says the complete covering of a woman’s face leads to
cultural isol"
This ongoing European debate highlights
tensions between those who claim to defend women's rights not to cover their
faces and others concerned about growing racism in Western Europe – racism
disguised as an enlightened critique of religion.
In fact, anti-Islamic sentiments have had a
notable revival in the recent months, especially in Germany. Since the
increased media attention to the Islamic State organization and its recruitment
of Europeans, racist undertones are unmistakable.
In the East German city of Dresden, up to
5,500 people of the "Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the
Occident," many of them neo-Nazis, marched against the alleged "Islamization"
of Europe last week. The fact that Klöckner called for the burqa ban now is no
coincidence, argues German journalist Christian Bangel.
In an article for ZEIT-Online he
accused her of pandering to voters in the light of the rise of the German AfD-party,
whose position on immigrant integration is farther to the right of the CDU. In
Neukölln, a Berlin district with up to 20 percent Muslim population, one can
frequently see burqas on the streets. The area is said to be a proof of the
supposed unwillingness of Muslims to integrate into German society. "How
does this fit with the fact that Neukölln is today seen as one of the most
desirable places to live in by Israelis, Americans and Europeans?" asks
Bangel.
The danger that some advocates of the burqa
ban have repeatedly pointed to – that women do not really have a free choice on
the matter given their surroundings – seems evident. However, it is similarly
unclear if forbidding women to wear the full body veil would emancipate them
from their husbands - or rather lock them up at home. In a contribution on the
subject in the Frankfurter Rundschau , German publicist Hilal Sezgin suggested
that instead of prohibiting women from wearing a certain garment, they should
be provided with translators in order to increase their scope in society.
Dr. Meral Avci, who researches
international relations, migration and gender at the University of Aaachen,
questions the status of the burqa as a symbol of religious freedom.
"Women's rights and the wearing of a burqa pose a contradiction," she
comments. "The Koran determines a hierarchic precedence of the man in
front of the woman. The burqa represents this hierarchy that clashes with our
fundamental values. In Germany it is the person itself that matters. I think it
is just natural that we want to be able look into a person's face", she
told i24news.