By Salimullah Khan

In 1989, the bicentennial of the revolution, France was visited (or revisited) by a new spectre, the spectre of Islam. That year, young girls trying to go to schools wearing a scarf over their heads were expelled. The scarf was euphemistically called the ‘veil’, it also acquired the epithet ‘Islamic’. In March 2004, a law was passed, by a majority of 494, in a parliament of 577, that prohibits wearing in public schools of ‘signs and clothes clearly manifesting the religious affiliations of pupils’.
   This is in addition to, as Valérie Amiraux, an expert on European Muslims, notes, ‘the difficulties some workers have in procuring halal food at lunchtime, the lack of chaplains in hospitals and prisons, conflict over Muslim plots in local cemeteries; or the construction and opening up of places of worship – not to mention the negative coverage filling the media.’ (V Amiraux, ‘To be laic or not to be laic?’, London, 2004, p 12)
   And this is neither new nor specific to France, save for the irony that in France they are resurrecting the old order in the name of ‘republican values’. Among the ‘republican values’ one invokes today there is a concept called laïcité. It has acquired more heat than light of a religion and is bent on overthrowing a constitutional principle of religious pluralism.
   
   Laïcité: a new Catholicism?
   How did France come to such a misery? What can account for such a wild degree of violence, such primary passions in the discussions that erupted over a school-girl scarf preferred by some Muslims? Despite what I appreciate in her work, I cannot unfortunately go here all the way with Amiraux. She contends that this hysteria over the scarf ‘has less to do with the “specificity” of Muslims, than with the complex and violent history of the tie binding religion and the state in the French experience’. She thinks it is laïcité, a French specificity, which is at the root.
   ‘Questioning French citizens about the legitimacy and relevance of their passionate commitment to laïcité,’ Amiraux admits, ‘might appear as great a blasphemy as asking the English about the rationale for having a queen.’ ‘In a way,’ she writes, ‘laïcité is our queen: part of the national patrimony you don’t dare to contemplate a younger generation criticising. Today, it even takes precedence over the tradition of jus soli that we were so proud to defend only one or two decade ago.’
   In that good old new age, when France boasted of its reputation as ‘liberal country’ whoever was willing to live in France, given the nationality code, could become a citizen. This was known as jus soli. And it was beyond doubt more liberal, as every French liberal was proud to claim, than the infamous pre-1999 German jus sanguinis (with restrictions on double citizenship) system or that not so old British ‘there ain’t no Black in the Union Jack’ system. A trend of convergence towards a conservative Europe is getting more and more visible.
   ‘Laïcité is being invoked today as a non-negotiable set of criteria as a result,’ writes Amiraux, thus taking some wind off her own contention that there is more of ‘French specificity’, rather than Muslim specificity involved behind the fracas. It is precisely here where I appreciate the openness in her argument.
   
   The battle over the scarf
   I find more sense, however, in what lawyer Genoviève Koubi said in 1998: ‘When the starting point of any discussion of laïcité is the wearing of a religious sign, the scarf in this case, it rather disguises the fact that what is at stake in this controversy is not state schooling, but the capacity of the whole of our civil society to put some of its major schisms behind it, and to approach the social, cultural and religious diversity of France with a degree of serenity.’ (Quoted in V Amiraux, ‘To be laic or not to be laic?’, London, 2004, p 16)
   A cursory glance at the two centuries since the revolution of 1789 will not only reveal the major fault-lines of French society, but also show some of the sources causing dehydration of liberalism, real or imaginary, seen in the loss of France’s colonial possessions.
   Laïcité’s grand narrative includes post-revolutionary challenges of opening up the state to religious pluralism, particularly to admitting the legitimacy of the two wings of Protestantism and Judaism. After all, in 1789 French Protestants were enfranchised and admitted to the college of candidates in elections. Jews were admitted to citizenship in 1791. The admittance of the right to public expression of private beliefs in the set of fundamental rights must be counted as a contribution of that, by-now-much-maligned landmark revolution.
   As a concerned scholar puts it, the French revolution organised the change from a system based on tolerance, to a regime of freedom where the central borderline becomes the private-public one. Given the rather longer history of a monolithic religion, Catholicism, in France and in light of the principle of the post-Reformation settlement in the Holy Roman Empire (cujus regio, ejus religio) the French revolution’s burden can hardly be overestimated.
   Religious pluralism was made law in 1802, as part of Bonaparte’s concordat with the Pope, which introduced a system of recognised religions. Catholicism as the religion of the majority, together with the two branches of Protestantism and Judaism, was admitted as religion in the state.
   France’s law on freedom of association, ‘a central plank of republican values’, was passed in 1901. This has been extended to foreigners in France too in 1981. With the 1905 law separating the state from the church, a second wave of the secular principle was further consolidated. It was, however, not an easy ride. There was substantial resistance, because of the deep-rooted hold of Catholicism on French society. The 1905 law on the separation of church and state was adopted by a thin majority of only 341 against 233 MPs. One compares this with the thickness of 494 in crowd of 577.
   Laïcité once, till the backlash of 1989, meant ensuring equal treatment of all religions, according equal opportunities to practise and promote themselves to all denominations present on French turf. This has been one component of public freedoms that the state was supposed to be proud of guaranteeing. In practice, of course, matters fell out rather differently.
   
   Laïcité as a phobia
   The battle over the scarf is perhaps just another piece of evidence, if any evidence is still needed. An increasing ‘islamophobia’, a symptom of gathering racism and the multiplication of acts of discrimination and vilification as wily terrorists are only some of the difficulties Muslims experience on a daily basis. J Lacan, a great psychoanalyst, in prophesying rise of racism in Europe, in course of a television interview, said in 1973:
   ‘With our jouissance going off the track, only the Other is able to mark its position, but insofar as we are separated from this Other. Whence certain fantasies—unheard of before the melting pot. … Even if God, thus newly strengthened, should end up existing, this bodes nothing better than a return of this baneful past.’ (J Lacan, Television, New York, 1990, pp 32-3)
   Laïcité is not quite that what we in Bangladesh and other former colonies know as ‘secularism’. It is just a little bit more and hence, the subjects supposed to know tell us, defies export and even translation. To wit: ‘When it comes to laicite, there is a tendency to claim French exclusivity. It begins with the word itself. This is not the same thing as secularism, even if the latter is a component pat of the former.’ On a similar note: ‘Internationally, France is well-known for many things. But there is something we claim to be ours alone and not exportable, laïcité. We do not have a problem with religion. We do not have a problem with religion. We do, however, have a problem with our founding myths. And laïcité is a core element.’ As events unravel it the greatest of the myths must be the three fictions of liberty, fraternity and equality.
   A hysterical battle raged over the issue of the veil in public schools at the heart of French public life, as all hardened arteries by now know, from April 2003 to March 2004, when the law was passed prohibiting the presence in public schools of ‘signs and clothes clearly manifesting the religious affiliations of pupils’. This legislation, in fact, represents the culmination of the third wave of a reaction, a hysteria rightly so-called.
   In November 1989, in the first wave of ‘Islamic’ veils in public schools, the state found that ‘it is not possible strictly to prohibit the donning of religious insignia at school, but limits can be drawn’. Wearing a religious sign, as the Ministry of Education, at the moment a ‘left wing’ administration, finds, does not in itself offend laïcité. The Council of State in its opinion communicated to the ministry declares that their project of national instruction is based on freedom of conscience of all its pupils. ‘As citizens,’ to quote V Amiraux, ‘they are thus allowed to express their beliefs, on condition that this does not amount to proselytizing or propaganda, or creating confusion and disorder at school.’
   In course of the ‘second’ wave, in 1994, the same ministry, by now a ‘right wing’ establishment, opines that heads of schools may be allowed to draw a line between two kinds of veils: ‘discreet’ and ‘ostentatious’ ones. In other words discreet veils, but not the ostentatious one, were to be allowed. Amiraux writes:
   ‘Up until 2004, all cases of final expulsion from school were those of girls refusing to submit to the obligation to be taught (asking not to participate in certain classes, such as sport or biology) or creating troubles in class (for example, by criticising the validity of teaching Holocaust in history). For all other young girls, whatever their age or circumstance, mediation and discussion had secured their reintegration into school life.’ (V Amiraux, ‘To be laic or not to be laic?’, London, 2004, p 25)
   Everything is reversed by 2003-2004, ending up with a law banning certain religious signs from state schools ? a ban which, if flouted, leads to expulsion. Amiraux attributes this, first of all, to a lack of a clear definition of laïcité. ‘There is,’ she rather reluctantly adds, ‘also a general distrust of Muslims and the grounds of their religious commitment, which cannot be underestimated.’
   How can this zeal to uphold secularism, one wonders, go to such hysterical heights? How can constitutional principles be so flatly flouted in whimpers of interpretation, if not with a big bang of return to the ancien regime? Laïcité is a constitutional principle in the constitutions of both 1946 and 1958. It then meant defending ‘a legal framework in which freedom of conscience and the free exercise of religion are not only guaranteed but protected through a system separating the French state from religious affairs.’
   And now it means a ‘republican value’, demanding the banishing and the expulsion of the unsociable, if not the ungodly. What is this thing called a republican value, by the way? One can cite J-J Rousseau writing in the infamous chapter (IV.8) of his famous On the Social Contract:
   There is, therefore, a purely civil profession of faith, the articles of which are for the sovereign to determine, not precisely as religious dogmas, but as sentiments of sociability, without which it is impossible to be a good citizen or a faithful subject. Without being able to obligate anyone to believe them, the sovereign can banish from the state anyone who does not believe them; it can banish him not for being impious but for being unsociable, for being incapable of sincerely loving the laws and justice, and of sacrificing his life, if need be, for his duty. If after having publicly acknowledged these same dogmas, someone behaves as though he does not believe them, let his punishment be death; he has committed the greatest of crimes; he has lied before the laws. (J-J Rousseau, Political Writings, New York, 1988, p 172)
   The 1905 law codified many aspects of local life and practice, such as the acoustic level of the church bells, the right to make a religious statement outside a religious building, and so on. As an affair of the state it meant to privatise religion, without negating religion in public space and without prohibiting religious affiliation for citizens.
   But was the circle ever really squared? Doesn’t Catholicism remain central to the Republican tradition itself? Among many examples, many observers singled out, the setting aside of certain religious dates as national holidays. It was supposed to be revisited in 2003 by a Presidential Commission, formed to advise the government on the wearing of ‘visible religious signs in public schools’ but to what clear effects, except for the ban on the ‘veil’ is not yet known.
   The French law of 1905 was, however, never applied in French Algeria. Even after 1947, when Islam was declared independent of the colonial state, it ‘in practice remained under the authority of the French state and its local representatives in Algeria.’
   
   Is France Algeria?
   French colonialists perceived Algerian women as embodying ‘the true and authentic self’ of Algeria. Women were, as someone said, ‘points of contact between colonialism and the native civil society’. Having access to women’s bodies, through unveiling them, symbolised the means for a successful penetration to the heart of the colonised. The battle over women’s veil became the locus of that contest. The unique ‘textile’ of the veil became a text to read for cross-purposes, of resistance and of colonisation. As, Meyda Ye?ono?lu, a secular modern observer comments: ‘the veil was seen as the concrete manifestation of the colonized’s resistance to an imposed reciprocity: veiled women are able to see without being seen.
   ‘Orientalist desire was thus articulated as the desire to unveil the colony, for women’s insistence on wearing the veil really meant the colony’s resistance to being colonized. In other words, for the colonial gaze, just wearing the veil was sufficient sign of resistance.’ (M. Ye?ono?lu, Colonial fantasies, Cambridge, 1998, p 142)
   In Algeria, the campaign against the veil was intensified in the 1930s with the French campaign to encourage women’s education. On May 13, 1958, a coup by some colonial generals toppled the colonial governor of Algeria. The same day, the generals organised a rally in front of the governor’s palace and featured the unveiling of a group of Algerian women. This staging act was meant, as Ye?ono?lu writes, ‘to symbolize the conquest of the last but foremost obstacle in the total capitulation of Algerian culture’, or that, in P Bourdieu’s words she quotes, ‘the whole of Algerian society was offering itself, naked and willingly, to the embrace of European society’.
   The 1905 law of separation is often looked at as a laicite law, which it is really not. Until 1989, as V Amiraux points out, the debate on the mantle of laicite was indeed primarily juridical, in terms of interpretation of the letter of the law. But by 1989 it got all the way political. It is invoked today as a set of ‘republican values’, not just the expression of a constitutional principle. ‘The law of 1905 was supposed to produce equality between all faiths in the Republican framework. One century later, the current situation is more like a concatenation of ‘implicitly recognised faiths’ than a pure laic system.’ (V Amiraux, ‘To be laic or not to be laic?’ London, 2004, p 28)
   France, despite her colonial record, benefited for long from its liberal reputation. Until March 2004, there was no single law that defined laïcité. It conveys the impression that ‘institutional dissociation of religion and morals; the creation of secular morals, the transmission of which is ensured by educational institutions’. If laïcité requires upholding of a free, nationalised and compulsory educational system, then the tremendous influence of churches on education needed some treatment. The old order in education survived until the Third Republic, If not before 1905, at least prior to the educational reform of 1886, most teaching was carried out by religious institutions.
   What then explains then this return to the baneful past of a God who, as rumours have it, ended up not existing?
   I think the elements of an answer may be found in some observations of Eqbal Ahmad’s on the Iranian revolution of 1978-79. ‘The Iranian Revolution,’ Ahmad writes, ‘caused a shift in US preference for pliable dictators; thenceforth Washington began to seek peaceful transitions to democracy.’ Iran revealed not only the vulnerabilities of authoritarian governments, which were greatly favoured in the 1960s and 1970s by both the Communist and Western powers, but also the emergence of new spectre, the spectre of Islam. Scholars think they know this spectre well enough, it should be easy to defeat it. Europe met it earlier in the crusades and in many battles of colonialism.
   In terms of intensity, scope, and the social forces involved, the Iranian revolution was by far the most modern and objectively advanced revolution in the Third World. Yet, ironically, revolutionary power in Iran was seized by a clerical leadership of theocratic outlook, medieval culture, and millenarian style.
   The fall of the shah was received in the West as a message about the future. ‘Since the Cuban Revolution,’ says Ahmad, ‘it was the first successful popular revolution in a postcolonial state, and unlike Cuba under Batista, Iran under the Shah had become a prototypical pro-Western dictatorship.’ (E Ahmad, Selected Writings, New York, 2006, pp 83-4) If what France lost in Algeria is material, it may be argued that beginning with Iran what it is losing on a world scale is more than morale, it is losing sanity. Hence the return of certain fantasies heard of before Setif, Algiers and even Avian.
   
   References
   Eqbal Ahmad, Selected Writings of Eqbal Ahmad, eds. C. Bengelsdorf, et al. (New York, Columbia University Press, 2006).
   J.-J. Rousseau, Rousseau’s Political Writings, eds. A. Ritter and J.C. Bondanella (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988)
   Jacques Lacan, Television: a challenge to the psychoanalytic establishment, ed. J. Copjec (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990).
   M. Ye?ono?lu, Colonial fantasies: Towards a feminist reading of Orientalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
   V. Amiraux, ‘To be laic or not to be laic? A French dilemma’ in ed. R. Bechler, Faith and secularism (London: British Council, 2004).