"The Politics of the Veil"--Joan Wallach Scott

In Joan Wallach Scott’s book The Politics of the Veil, published in 2007, the author examines and discusses the French ban on the wearing of headscarves in public schools, enacted in 2004. Many Americans see the republic of France as a modern stronghold of Western thinking, and follow its ideologies. In fact, proponents of the law tout its benefits in protecting that sacred tenet of republican democracies, the separation of church and state. The ban on the wearing of the hijab, however, sets the French back to medieval thinking of fear and exclusion. Scott’s overarching statement is that by wearing the hijab, Muslims openly challenge the homogeneity that the Republic seeks to achieve in its society. She cites many reasons behind the ban, one of the greatest of which being fear. “[T]he veil became a screen onto which were projected images of strangeness and fantasies of danger—danger to the fabric of French society and to the future of the republican nation” (Scott 10). Moreover, she endorses the repeal of the ban and the acceptance of other cultures. “By refusing to accept and respect the difference of these others we turn them into enemies, producing that which we most feared about them in the first place” (19). Before reading The Politics of the Veil and investigating Muslim women’s sentiments on the hijab, I might have agreed with the French policymakers. While I certainly believe in the separation of church and state (especially in school systems, where members of the next generation form their personal ideologies), I do not think that the advertisement by Muslim women of their faith interferes with secular education. Unless the public-school teachers preach the teachings of Islam during their classes, no infringement is being made upon the secular ideals of the French republic.

This image is courtesy of http://muslimmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/hijab-ban1.jpg .